Text:American and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers

STATE POWER

Slide 1

Text:American and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers

Presentation 2: State Power

Audio:Welcome to American and Arizona Government for Elementary Teachers. This is presentation 2, state power. We established in presentation 1 that some government is necessary. Cow counters are needed to coordinate and even compel private behavior towards achieving the common good. But how much power should the cow counter have? Political philosophers struggled with this question for centuries. In this presentation we'll look at some of the answers that they've come up with, paying special attention to the enlightenment thought that was so influential on our founding fathers.

Slide 2

Text: AEPA Objectives

0005 understand the history of political thought through the modern era

AZ Social Studies Standard, Strand 3

Concept 1: Foundations of Government

Audio: The AEPA objectives that correspond to this presentation is number 5, understand the history of political thought through the modern era. The strand 3 objective is concept 1, foundations of government. You're again encouraged to look at the social studies standard of articulated by grade level former concept 1, the foundations of government, to look at some of the concept that you will be using as a teacher. At the end of this presentation you should again review those concepts and connect that with what you've learned through the presentation.

Slide 3

Text: The State of Nature

[Photo of sign that says “Looters will be shot”]

Audio: The tragedy of the commons exercise that was involved in the first presentation was an example of a philosophical construct called the State of Nature. It's a situation where there is no government, that you can explore and experiment with the different possibilities of why government has the reforms it does, what different forms might that government take, what is the relationship between the citizen and the govern? By putting forward this artificial construct called the state of nature, philosophers can play with that idea and try to imagine what life was like in the absence of government in order to better understand why we have governments the way we do. The tragedy of the commons that we looked at was just one example of this. Of course in the world today we don't often see the state of nature because government is all around us. Occasionally though government breaks down. When hurricane Katrina happened and for a few days at least, the normal resources and protection that we associate with government was absence and the chaos and pain that resulted from that absence of government gave us an insight into what it might be to live in a state of nature.

Slide 4

Text: The Enlightenment

[Image of abattle during the English Civil War] [Image of King Charles I]

Audio: Now as I said, lots of philosophers have considered the state of nature as a thought experiment. The group of philosophers that had the most impact on the founders of our country, though, are those who wrote during the period of enlightenment and understand these writings, we need to understand the context that they occurred in. Now imagine back in the feudal period, the Middle Ages, how were governments run? Well for the most part they were hereditary monarchies. And what was the legitimacy of those governments? Well for the most part the legitimacy, the basis of legitimacy, was the divine right of kings. And what that meant is that in a situation where you have a hereditary monarchy, who decides who the next rulers going to be? Well the answer is God because God is the one who decides who gets born into the royal family. And God knows full well that the eldest son of that family will be the next ruler. So God in His wisdom chooses a particular individual to be born. And that means that that person, because of the fact that they were born into that family, have the consent of God for them to rule and they can rule with that legitimation. If you resist the king, if you rebel, not only do you face the wrath of the secular government as that rebellion is put down but after the king deals with you, you then go to hell because you've resisted the will of God in resisting the king that God chose. Well the problem for the Enlightenment philosophers is they had a problem, which was that during the English Civil War they killed their king, they chopped his head off. Well according to the existing political philosophy, that was a very bad thing to do. And so they had to figure out what is of basis legitimacy government other than the divine right of kings.

Slide 5

Text: Natural Rights

• Life
• Liberty
• Property

These Rights are Unalienable

[Image of John Locke]

Audio: Now one of the more influential enlightenment philosophers that explored this state of nature was John Locke. Now Locke argued that the rules that applied in the state of nature were undeniable and it didn't matter what base or what religion or what locality a group of people lived in, that in this state of nature there were things they had to abide by. And these rules were that no one could harm another in their life, their liberty or their property. And that the right to enjoy these things were called the natural rights by law. Locke argued that these natural rights were unalienable, meaning they are not exclusive so everyone has them, nor can they be taken away or even given away. I cannot voluntarily give up my rights to life, liberty or property and no one has the right to take those away from me because they're natural, they're my natural rights and natural law dictates that I get to have them.

Slide 6

Text:The Problem of Power

The strong prey upon the weak

People are neither rational nor good

[Photo ofchildren playing on a playground, some behind bars and one kicking a ball at them]

Audio: Well that's all well and good as an idea but the problem, as Locke identified it, is that in reality people are prevented from enjoying these rights they have. That these rights that are unalienable are nevertheless taken away from us, sometimes it's life, sometimes it's liberty, sometimes it's property. The problem with securing these natural rights in the state of nature is that the strong prey upon the weak, that there are people who are not rational nor good so you can't reason with them and say hey, we're in a state of nature. I have my natural rights. You can't do this to me. As they're hitting you over the head with their club to take away your money, that argument doesn't work well. And you can also say what you're doing is unjust, it's immoral. And as they leave your bloody body walking by, they go nah. Now if all people were subject to reason or morality then perhaps the state of nature could persist and continue but the problem is it's simply not true, that there are people who are not persuaded by rationality or morality and we leave in a world where the strong preys upon the weak in the state of nature.

Slide 7

Text: The Social Contract

• Individuals surrender a measure of personal sovereignty to the state
• The State protects the individual’s natural rights by
• Enforcing contracts
• Protecting from domestic predators
• Protecting from foreign threats

Audio: So how do we protect ourselves in a world where bullies exist? Locke's solution was a social contract that in the state of nature people can give up their absolute rights in exchange for security. If I want to live in the woods by myself and I'm a hermit and I just love swinging my sticks around and smacking the trees. I'm welcome to do that. It's my natural right to enjoy that liberty of smacking everything I run into when I'm living by myself in the woods. But when I come down from those woods and enter society and try to live alongside other people, I cannot exercise my absolute right, my absolute liberty, to swing that stick anywhere I want to go. I have to surrender a measure of that personal sovereignty, that freedom to swing my stick around, if I want to live in society. So the social contract is a grand bargain. Individuals, subjects of a state, surrender their sovereignty. In exchange the state, with that sovereignty, enforces contracts, protects from domestic predators and protects from foreign threats. Now you might have heard of another institution that performs those things in the state of nature and that's the Mafia. There's some great studies out that show that the reason the Mafia become so strong in some societies is because the state is weak and some entity needs to perform these three functions in the state of nature. And a private entity, called the Mafia, is willing to do that. But in most places instead of private provision we have the public provision of a state and we have a social contract between the citizen and the government in that state.

Slide 8

Text: Social Contract

A contract implies consent.

This means that legitimacy of a government depends upon the consent of the governed

[Image of medieval king and court]

Audio: Locke concludes from this that the entire purpose of government is to protect someone's natural rights, remember that's life, liberty and property. Now sense these rights are given to the state in the contract that means that the people must give consent for the government to be legitimate. No longer can a government go by divine right. The governments instead have to work for the power that they have. They have to do something to maintain that legitimacy, to maintain that consent. Now this was a revolutionary concept when it was put forward by John Locke because this state of nature is a philosophical construct. People have never really lived in such a place so it leads to the question of how then in the real world do the citizens provide consent to enter into this social contract?

Slide 9

Text: Consent of Governed

• Explicit Consent
• Implicit Consent

[Photo of people taking an oath] [Photo of children saying the pledge]

Audio: Now there are two types of consent that can be given by citizens to the state. The first is an explicit consent where a citizen will actually make the decision and take an oath of some kind to give consent to be ruled by a particular place or group of peoples. The picture of an oath swearing ceremony captures this form of consent. The people in this picture are immigrants who have gone through the naturalization process and they are raising their hand to the square and swearing by an oath that they will accept the government of the United States as their government and swear their loyalty to the constitution so that's a form of explicit consent. Most of us though don't ever go through that process. In fact it's a common complaint that new citizens know a whole lot more about American government, American history, than people who were born here because they have to learn those things to pass the test. Whereas Americans, we don't have to, there's no approval to cross to maintain our citizenship in the country. I appreciate that you are taking this class so that you can learn about America's government and history but odds are you gave an implicit consent. And what implicit consent means is that you don't ever actually say the words and take an oath and raise your hand to the square, as the naturalized immigrant does. Instead you give your consent by your continuation of living here. You were born here, you were born under the laws of the country, you were born under the sovereignty of the country and you've made a decision to remain. Now if you don't give your consent, if you believe the government is illegitimate, the way you withdraw that consent is by leaving. That old refrain that was often thrown about during the cold war of our country, love it or leave it. Well that has a little bit of truth to it that if you remain here then that meant that you were granting your sovereign consent to live under the laws and rules of this country. And even if you don't actually say it out loud, that consent nevertheless remains by your participating; you're continuing to participate in the society. Now the important point here is that both types of consent are sufficient to establish the social contract. If you live in a society you have implicitly accepted the right of that society to govern you.

Slide 10

Text: Violation of the Contract

[Photo of British colonial soldiers marching] [Woodcut of colonial people in a square]

Audio: Now the idea that people must give their consent for the government to be legitimate means that the people have a right to revolution when their natural rights are not being upheld. They can make the argument that the contract has been violated, not by the citizen but by the state. Now the remedy when a citizen violates the contract is the state usually takes that person and incarcerates them. But the remedy when the state violates the contract is revolution and that's the justification that John Locke gave for the English Civil War when they cut the head off of their king. And that argument, that rationale, was very influential on the founders of our country. Now if the purpose of government is to secure the natural rights that people have, then the failure to do that delegitimizes the government and authorizes the subjects to establishing new government which will protect those rights. As we'll see later, these ideas of natural law were placed almost verbatim into the American Declaration of Independence.

Slide 11

Text: Other State of Nature Theories

[Image of Thomas Hobbes] [Image of Jean-Jacques Rousseau] [Image of Karl Marx] [Image of John Rawls]

Audio: Now while John Locke had a very strong influence on the founders, you should know that there are other philosophers that also explored the state of nature and came up with some very different conclusions then John Locke as to the proper role of government is and what the relationship should be between the subjects and the state. Thomas Hobbes also experienced the English Civil War as a child and he had a fairly negative view of that because of the privations that he suffered as a child. And he argued that the state of nature was a very bad place. That he didn't have the sort of idyllic notion that John Locke did that people enjoyed life, liberty and property at the state of nature. What Hobbes saw in the state of nature were people with clubs smashing in the heads of people who didn't have clubs. He famously wrote that in the state of nature or anarchy, life is nasty, brutish and short. There is no progress made, there's no civilization because there's no point in learning to read or building architecture or even planting crops because the next wave of Viking marauders are just going to come through and steal your crops, burn down your buildings and kill everybody, no matter what language you're speaking. So Hobbes solution was that the state had a collective power, a collective sovereignty that was required to protect the people who lived within the state from this dangerous situation of anarchy. And as a result a revolution is almost never justified from a Hobbes point of view, that that state of nature must be avoided, almost at all costs. Now Jean-Jacques Rousseau had another view as well. He also argued for a social contract but his social contract was a little bit different. He argued that people are, in the state of nature, are self-sufficient. He also had sort of an idyllic view of you know hermits living out in the woods but that they were selfish and that they weren't able to make any progress towards society or reason or progress with a capital P. A lot of the enlightenment philosophers used reason with a capital R and progress with a capital P and man with a capital M. They liked their capital letters to personify these ideas. But Rousseau saw state of nature as a limit to the progress that in order for good to take place, in order to overcome our selfless nature, we had to enter into these social contracts where we created a civil society where equality and reliable society could exist. So the social contract through Rousseau was more about restraining your animal nature, if you're going to live in society. Now Karl Marx, another famous political philosopher had another different view of the state of nature. He focused, like Hobbes, on the fact that the strong preyed upon the weak in the absence of government. He used the term exploitation. And in Marxist view of history, history begins when the state of nature ends. That this situation where the strong prey upon the weak, a war of all against all ends when the strongest asserts his will and power over everyone else. And the exploitation that is inherent in a state of nature is codified into law in the form of an Emperor. And you have an empire where the Emperor can do whatever they want to and everybody else are slaves to the Emperor. And that begins history, from Marx point of view and it moves in the progress of history from empire to kingdoms with aristocracy and from kingdoms with aristocracy to capitalism and then from capitalism to communism so that's his view of history but it begins in the state of nature. Alright finally, John Rawls, he used the state of nature as a way to try to decide how to get to a more just society. And what he offered was that we could put what he called a veil of ignorance over people, which would enable us to pretend as if we were in a state of nature even if we weren't. And in this veil of ignorance where you don't know who gets more, who's strong, who's weak, you don't know what the outcome of the dice roll is going to be, so to speak, you make the rules. Because in that situation everyone has a motive to make the rules as fairly as possible because you don't know who's going to be the winner or the loser. And so in that situation each person has basic rights and inequality should favor the least advantaged, not the strongest, so that was a difference that he had with Marx. So these were some examples of how you can come up with a state of nature and come out with a different conclusion then John Locke did.