Lewis Hyde's New Observations on Civic Virtue, Mixing Values, and the Freedom to Listen
Two years ago, I wrote <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/569" target="”_blank”">a
blog post</a> about a book by Lewis Hyde entitled <i>The Gift</i>, which had a
lot to say, philosophically, about gift-giving and -receiving, an issue
of relevance to government ethics. I just
finished Hyde's book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aLe4HgLkgr0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=le…; target="”_blank”"><i>Common
As
Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership</i></a>, which just came out last
month from Farrar Straus. It's a fantastic book about the philosophical
bases of copyright and patent law (I used to be in book publishing),
but Hyde says a lot that applies to the philosophical bases and the
origins of
government ethics, as well.<br>
<br>
Intellectual property law, as the book's title implies, deals with a
sort of commons, a cultural commons. To define and preserve a commons,
one must
distinguish between what is private and what is public. It is because
the private-public distinction is central to government ethics that the
philosophy discussed in this book, especially the philosophy of
America's founding fathers, is relevant to us.<br>
<br>
<b>Civic Duties and Civic Virtue</b><br>
An important part of the private-public distinction in colonial America
involved the idea that property, which was required for voting, freed
individuals for public service. In other words, citizenship carried
with it duties within and to the community. Volunteer service was the
norm,
and was less a choice than a duty. When people squeal today about
ethics laws applying to volunteers in local government, perhaps they
should
be reminded that our nation was founded by volunteers, and that the
extension of the right to vote does not necessarily change the civic
duties of
citizenship.<br>
<br>
Here's a nice quote from Hyde: "Citizens acquire virtue in the civic
republic ... by willingly allowing self-interest to bow to the public
good (or by recognizing that the two are one). Civic virtue is not
something anyone is born with; it is acquired through civic action."<br>
<br>
Here is what John Adams wrote about civic virtue. "Every man must
seriously set himself to root out his Passions, Prejudices and
Attachments, and to get the better of his private interest." But
Benjamin Franklin, who was more realistic about human nature, felt that
what was needed were "systems of public virtue more than citizens of
public virtue." As one of Virginia's early senators wrote, even "an
avaricious society can form a government able to defend itself against
the avarice of its members." Back in colonial America there were
already those effectively favoring character education and those effectively favoring
enforceable ethics codes.<br>
<br>
And here's a nice quote from John Dickinson, a delegate at the
Constitutional Convention: "A people is traveling fast to destruction,
when individuals consider their interests as distinct from those of the
public." Hyde notes that the ancient Greek word for pertaining or
belonging to one's self is <i>idios</i>, a word that gave rise to our word
"idiot."<br>
<br>
It's worth recalling that, at the time of America's founding, there had
not been a contrast between private and public, so much as a contrast
between ruler and ruled. The public part of a kingdom was primarily
ceremonial. Hyde writes, "In the eighteenth century, the willingness to
erase the personal in favor of the public was an ideal regularly
expressed in political debate. It was part of the rhetoric by which
private citizens made themselves into public citizens; it was, in fact,
part of the rhetoric by which something new under the sun, 'the
public,' came into being, and with it what we call in retrospect 'the
public sphere.'"<br>
<br>
It's also worth recalling that legislative proceedings had not been
public at the time of the nation's
founding. Making them public was the first major step in government
transparency. Even this original sort of government transparency,
although it has made great progress in recent years, is still far from
achieved at the local level.<br>
<br>
<b>Mixing Business and Public Service Norms and Values</b><br>
Hyde notes that contemporary moral philosopher Michael Sandel feels
that corruption is based on a mistaken assumption that all goods are
commensurable, for example, that a vote is no different from a decision to
purchase. Buying votes corrupts the democratic ideal. (See Sandel's
"What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets," <a href="http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/sandel00.pdf" target="”_blank”">available
in PDF form online</a>).<br>
<br>
A government official arranging or voting for a family member or
business associate to get a contract or a zoning decision is
effectively acting on the same mistaken assumption. Even if the
government official does not personally benefit, our form of government
is corrupted.<br>
<br>
Hyde also considers Michael Walzer's argument in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Spheres-Justice-Defense-Pluralism-Equality/dp/046…; target="”_blank”"><i>Spheres
of Justice</i></a>, that there are discrete areas of social life, including
the market and the legislature, with distinct norms and values. When
one area dominates another, for example when government dominates business, or the military dominates government, there is tyranny.
Tyranny is "the wish to obtain by one means what can only be had by
another."<br>
<br>
In the government ethics context, this view calls into question the
wish to obtain a fortune not through business, where that is perfectly
acceptable, but through government, where the values and norms involve
not success in the market, but rather service to the public. Misuse of
office to help oneself does not itself create actual (as opposed to philosophical) tyranny, but misuse of
office rarely occurs in this sort of isolation. To run a government,
especially one that preys on its own citizens, requires many people,
and those people will also want to help themselves, unless they can be
intimidated into merely going along. It is the intimidation required to
allow misuse of office to occur that turns misuse of office into actual
tyranny. Ongoing misuse of office corrupts everyone involved.<br>
<br>
The same idea applies in the opposite direction. Few question the
creation of wealth through business. The question is
"whether this surplus value is convertible, whether it purchases
special privileges ... in the spheres of office and politics." When it
comes to the determination of public issues, why should wealth matter
more than, say, physical strength (which matters in sports),
spirituality (which matters in religion), friendliness (which matters
in socializing), or loyalty (which matters in family)? None of these
should matter in government, because they are not government values or
norms, but all of them do.<br>
<br>
<b>The Freedom to Listen</b><br>
Finally, Hyde speaks of the freedom to listen which, unlike freedom of
speech, is a collective rather than a personal right (see <a href="http://publius.cc/freedom_listening_eighteenth_century_root_net_neutral…; target="”_blank”">his short essay</a> on this topic). Just think how
different arguments about free speech rights in the campaign finance
domain would be if they were arguments about free listening rights. The
freedom to listen would emphasize diversity of speech. The drowning out
of others' political speech by those with lots of wealth would not be
protected, and the funding of the speech of those with fewer resources,
as happens in public campaign financing programs, would be protected.<br>
<br>
In a world that emphasized freedom of listening, a leader's obligations
would be "to transparency and to keeping the noise low enough that no
speaker gets drowned out."<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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