V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 8

 OBJECT OF CARE

The state's object of care is its entire population, and the state's objective is to bring it (closer) to the implementation of the program defined by its source of will.

Pluralism

The population is not an organized entity, nor is it an amorphous entity. Each of its individuals pursues certain secondary goals similar or identical with other subjects, and in accordance with this similarity (or identity) they form not only movements, but also groups with the same interest. Such common interests may be commercial, labor, agricultural, gender oriented, regional, ideological, religious, ethnic, national, minority and any other of the myriad of purposes derived fom the purpose of happiness, capable of being expressed, communicated and found to be in common with similar derived purposes of others..

Interest groups exist in any type of state, they are expressions of pluralism of its population, an important part of each political system as they express and crystallize particular interests in the form of demands on the system, or in its support, propose solutions to their particular problems and recommend or resist certain measures taken by the public power. By their demands and attitudes, they affect domestic policies and can also influence foreign policy of the state, especially if they maintain contacts and cooperation with groups of similar interests abroad.

For autocratic systems, pluralism created by interest groups represents a potential competition to the ruling political organization, because they grant at least some form of support against the state; they give their members an opportunity to be active in areas in which they are interested (for instance chess players in chess or trade unionists in labor organizations) and to participate in public affairs in ways outside of politics; their representatives have an opportunity to voice publicly their opinions and needs. Totalitarian states, therefore, integrate them into their system of monopolies and use them for their own purposes.

In democracies, interest groups contribute to create political pluralism. Members of society are free to aggregate in groups and to organize, and thus protect and promote their interests and ideas. All groups have a chance to share freely and actively in political life in defense of their members' interest, compete or cooperate with each other, but no group has so much power as to dominate political life; power is widely dispersed. Because interest groups can back certain political programs, parties or politicians, the government is sensitive to their needs and demands.

In a democracy, interest groups have several traits common with political parties: both aggregate and articulate opinions and needs, both express such needs in the form of demands and both act as political subjects demanding that the state include such demands into its purpose of betterment of society.

Minorities

The fact that all people under the state's sovereignty are its object of care, does not mean that the ideal to which its policies ( = utilization of its means) lead is the providing of power and wealth for all parts of society. The ideal of society as formulated by the political process (the legislature) usually includes the increase of power and wealth of some groups at the expense of other groups. Some political ideals include a complete removal (liquidation) of certain portions of society; the communist ideal had no place for owners of means of production, the Nazi ideal of society had no place for members of certain racial groups. The successor states of Yugoslavia have no place for members of other than one nationality. The elimination of minorities is the goal of many states especially if said minorities threaten their state's existence or integrity. The elimination of unwanted or undesirable components is, in the value system of a state which pursues the elimination, "betterment" in the sense that it implements the program of governing political organizations transformed legally into the will of the state.

For autocratic states, minorities do not represent a separate problem; they are a part of the overall effort to impose the will of the ruling political organization on the entire population. Methods of oppression used against everybody differ in degree, but not in kind, when used against members of minorities. Depending on the political ideal of the state, members of minorities can either escape the intensified persecution by  giving up their minority status, like renouncing their ethnic, national or religious allegiance and accepting ethnicity, nationality or religion demanded by the state. In other instances, such option is not left to them: they are considered "enemies of the state" by virtue of their very existence as they are members of an undesirable group and cannot change their appurtnance by an action of will; their source of cohesion with the group is causal and not optional; their discrimination or persecution is permanent.

For a democratic state, minorities present a twofold problem: heterogeneity of norms felt by an outvoted minority, and incompatibility of equality of individuals with equality of groups.

The fact that outvoted minorities will be subject to the will of numerical majorities and that the norms issued by the majorities will be imposed upon them without their consent, is integral to democracy. One of the main features of democracy, which permits the outvoted minority to tolerate and respect norms given against its will by a majority, is the possibility that the minority has the chance of becoming a majority and to change the heterogeneous norms. However, when the situation is such that it prevents permanently or for a long tim the outvoted minority from becoming  a majority, democracy becomes in the eyes of the minority a "dictatorship of the majority" even if all the rights of the members of the minority are equal to the rights of the majority and are fully respected.

Equality for Individuals

Acceptance of heterogeneous norms by the minority is facilitated by the limitations imposed on the state by the democratic form of government, i.e., laws must not interfere with fundamental liberties and human rights of members of minorities. This delineates for each individual a sphere of freedom inviolable by the state. Such basic rights are embodied in the constitution, and in order that they cannot be affected even by amendments of the constitution, there is the tendency to put certain spheres of life completely beyond the jurisdiction of the state, i.e., place them above the constitution. This type of rights is called "inalienable  human rights."  

Because the nature of inalienable rights is not contingent upon the constitution, it has to be considered as a norm superior to the constitution, and be derived from a normgiver superior to the state. As an ordering legal principle, this superiority was adopted by British colonies in North America as justification of their segregation from England: their legal philosophy appealed to the Creator who created people as equal and endowed them with certain inalienable rights whose violation empowered the state's subjects to revolt. The Declaration of Independence mentions only three such rights: life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and the Constitution left open the question who, if any (except, of course, the Creator)  is authorized to  create additional inalienable rights. In practice, this power, actually the power to define the will of the Creator, was usurped by the Supreme Court and the arbitrariness by which it was discovering, narrowing and expanding inalienable rights, evoked efforts to subject this normgiving to the political process and equate it with an amendment of the Constitution.

As long as the derivation of inalienable rights from the will of the Creator is accepted as real, their content and extent remains basically a religious question; once this acceptance becomes questionable, the entire concept of inalienability is undermined and different concepts of their normgiver are brought forward. The French Revolution that replaced the rule of God by a rule of Reason, deduced the inalienability of some rights from the very nature of man; man has inalienable rights simply because he is human. This philosophy very quickly became even more vulnerable than the American concept because different people can for different reasons arrive at different rights inherent in man's nature. The relative inalienability of such rights was expressed by the very text of the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme which allowed their limitations by law and led to revolutionary terror, a phenomenon through which the American Revolution never passed.

The philosophy of inalienability of human rights found a new and strong support in international law; the demand for respect of inalienable rights was a very effective means by which democratic states defeated autocratic states in both world wars. (For their present role in international relations see Chapter 24.)

Observance of human rights and civil liberties creates a formal equality of opportunities and equality of opportunities leads to competition in which some individuals get ahead and others remain behind. If the winners in the competition -- in schools, jobs, life -- are sorted on the basis of properties which are the source of coherence of minorities (race, gender, nationality, religion) and if numbers of minority members are substantially higher or lower than its share of the population, the question is posed why the results are such as they are. The explanations are of two types: One of them finds the explanation in the properties of the minority members. They may be caused by heredity of genes proper to certain groups (Chinese and Jews dominate on American universities in mathematics and theoretical physics, in chess Russians, in sports Negroes). Another explanation is based on sociological facts (in American schools, the best students are children of immigrants from the Far East, the lowest are Afro-Americans; the cause is said to be the family structure of these minorities: immigrants from the Far East maintain a hierarchical structure of the family with relatively strict discipline and high regard for education; the Negro family has mostly fallen apart during the last two decades -- about half of them has no father; in a high percentage of families already the third generation lives on welfare.

The other type of explanations locates the reasons of unequal results outside of the minorities; these explanations come mostly from members or advocates of low performance minorities. The simplest explanation is that the below average achievements are due to hidden, but real prejudices of the rest of the society (racism, religious intolerance). Another explanation is the accusation of the entire culture -- patriarchy is responsible for a lower percentage of women in leading positions; industrial civilization overvalues technological and technocratic competence in comparison to other abilities.

Both explanations agree that the principle of formal equality of opportunity is unjust because not all competitors start from the same material point of departure. From this reasoning derive two demands. The principle of equal opportunity must be replaced by the principle of equal results. Where results are not equal, this in itself is a proof of discrimination. The principle of equal rights and equal liberties must be replaced by the principle of fairness which is basically a somewhat diluted principle of solidarity: the weaker must be supported at the expense of the stronger, so that the outcome is the same. Translated into practice this means that various groups strive to be legally recognized as victimized minorities (such is in the United States the status of women who are legally a minority while numerically being a majority), and that their leaders carefully follow the statistical composition of all areas of life: what percentage is given in school books to female, Negro, Indian and Hispanic authors, how many pages in history are devoted to non-Christian religions, how many hurricanes are given male or female names, how many faces of this or that group appear on stamps, members of which minority have been promoted in this or that corporation, how many homosexuals were denied renting apartments, how many public projects are assigned to minority owned businesses, what is the percentage of minority members jailed for criminal offenses, and so on ad infinitum.

The principles of equal results and subjectively defined fairness can be implemented only by abandoning the principle of equality of all citizens in favor of members of minorities. The size of this abandonment  is proportionate to the actual power relationship between the majority and the relative minority and the power relationship of the minority to the state. The state gives priority in allocating material aid, opportunity and positions to members of a minority (minorities) over members of the majority. (A political movement and/or a political party advocating this reverse discrimination is not necessarily composed only of members of the minority which is its object of care; it comprises also other individuals for whom the betterment of the status of a minority is a part of the purpose of happiness. This is true especially when the discrimination of a minority is real and generally recognized as such). If the basis for the allocation of certain goods is a numerical relationship, the allocated proportions represent quotas whose implementation is enforced by the state power. Quotas can decide access to jobs, promotions, education, to housing, number of employees and their hierarchical positions, numbers and functions in public administration and in the highest organs of the state or even in number of convicts on the death row. If access is related to competitive tests and if the outcome is unfavorable for a minority, changes in the scoring of tests are introduced. One of the changes is the socalled race- or gender-norming: prior to comparing test results, a multiplier is applied to scores of minority members; if this practice is challenged, the ratings of various questions or composition of tests are adjusted so as to bring about the desired results (11). This type of equalization of results causes resentment of those who are its victims, i.e., members of the majority, and affects adversely mutual individual and group relations between the majority and the favorized minorities.

Equality  for groups

The demands of minority groups may not be, and often are not, satisfied by satisfaction of private needs of their individual members. Democracy, civil liberties and human rights, and principles of equality of results and fairness are insufficient in cases, when a minority group pursues also a goal of securing equality for itself as a whole. This is true mainly about national and religious minorities and creates a conflict between two concepts of equality; one of them is based on the principle of equal individuals, the other on the principle of equal groups (without regard to the number of members).

In the organization of a democratic state, those two concepts of equality are irreconcilable. Integral application of the principle of equality of individuals means that the numerically stronger group can always outvote the smaller group; integral application of the principle of equality of groups means that a vote of each member of a minority has politically a greater weight than a vote of a member of the majority. Members of the majority consider this as discrimination.

One way of solving this dilemma is to chose one of the principles and enforce it by means of the state's power. This causes constant tension and alienation of a permanent group of citizens to the legal order and necessitates increased outlays for enforcement of the law against the dissatisfied group, especially if it feels morally justified in using illegal means of political struggle -- passive resistance (civil disobedience) or violence (terror). Another option is adopting quotas according to which the minority and majority groups are represented equally and not in proportion to their numerical share of the population. This necessitates enforcement against the majority which might resist in the same way.

Another solution to the contention between the two principles is often sought in the bicameral system of the legislature: one house is elected on the principle of equality of citizens, the other house is elected on the basis of equality of groups constituting the state, for instance of national minorities ("House of Nationalities"). Laws do not acquire validity unless approved by a majority of both houses. This arrangement can still create situations, when representatives of the majority allied with a minority of the delegates of the other groups can consistently impose their will on a majority of the representatives of the minority (minorities). An instrument to prevent this from happening is the rule called "prohibition of majorization": for a law to be adopted, a majority of all groups represented in the "chamber of equal representation of minorities" is required. In practice, this method has succeeded nowhere.

Still another option of how to comply with the requests of minorities is decentralization of state structure on the territorial basis. It is practical only if members of the minority inhabit a continuous and reasonably compact territory. In this case, the constitution can assign to lower level normgivers a share of the central legislative, executive and judicial powers sufficient to satisfy the minorities' demands. Such a decentralization granted to an area inhabited by one minority and not to other parts of the state, it is called autonomy of the territory privileged in this way. States are usually hesitant to grant extensive autonomy because it harbors the potential that the autonomous territory will declare its independence of the state's sovereignty and opt for its own sovereignty or the sovereignty of another state.

All of the above mentioned methods of securing rights of minorities are in practice variously combined, but any arrangement based on equality of numerically unequal groups harbors one danger which grows in proportion to the numerical disparity between majority and minority (minorities), namely that the price paid for elimination of dissatisfaction and alienation of a minority is the creation of dissatisfaction and alienation of the majority,. Under certain circumstances, the only peaceful solution is the legal separation of the majority and the minority which preserves the democratic principle of equality of citizens by the division of the state's sovereignty, in extreme situations the cessation of territory to another state or the break-up of the common state.

Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism requires a separate analysis because it differs in important ways from other types of discrimination and because the protection against it has its specific features.

In the first place, its designation is inaccurate. By anti-Semitism is not meant discrimination of any Semitic nation or ethnic group, but only of a certain branch of the Semitic race, namely the Jews. Nor is the definition of Jewishness or Jewry quite clear - is it a religious, race, national or ethnic minority? Because the definition of the term is not clear, it is not clear who is affected as a member of the discriminated group, respectively who belongs to it. Here all three, possibly four, characteristics play a role: Jews are a Semitic nation whose cultural source of cohesion is a specific religion. As a nation they are characterized by the fact that a majority of its members for a majority of its history lived among other nations as a minority and that only they survived these conditions as a combination of a national and religious community.

In this connection, it is useful to mention one biological fact: the average weight of a male brain exceeds the average weight of a female brain; the average weigth of a brain of a white male brain of a white female; the average brain of a male of the Negro race equals the average weight of a brain of a white female; the average weight of a brain of a white male equals the average weight of a Mongol female brain and does not reach the average weight of the brain of Mongol males. But the average weight of Jews' brains equals the average weight of the Mongols, i.e., exceeds the average brain of the members of the rest of the white race. The importance of these relationships is a matter of dispute among biologists, anthropologists, sociologists and politicians, but it is a factual datum.

A unique feature of the status of the Jewish minority is that international law and international institutions grant it a special protection not granted to any other minority; for instance the European Union does not grant membership to states where anti-Semitism exists. Nor is the content of this term anywhere specified. It includes, of course, the defamation of Jews as a nation or denial of equal rights to persons considered and/or claiming to be Jewish; sometimes, any criticism of the state of Israel, whether its foreign policy (annexation of conquered territories) or domestic policies (discrimination of Arabs) is pilloried as anti-Semitism; the same applies to collection and/or publication of statistics about the share of Jews in the upper management of certain sectors (finance, business, mass media) or professions (physicians, lawyers).

There exists a certain pattern repeating itself in Jewish history. They arrive in a foreign country under pressure (political, military, economic) as needy immigrants; then, for whatever reason, in a relatively short time they rise to leadership and advantageous positions. This produces, in the aboriginal population, first envy and then hatred. As a minority in strange surroundings, the Jewish minority (which always brings with it its own organizational structure) relies on protection of the ruler or of the government which, in the eyes of underprivileged strata, identifies it with the oppressors and alienates them even more. It is these least educated and most disadvantaged parts of the population which are the first to "avenge" themselves on Jews as a group. (A similar phenomenon are attacks on Asian owned businesses in the Negro neighborhoods of American cities.)

The perceptibility of Jews is increased by their inability to merge with the host nation. This is inevitable. What can German myths, Slav history, Wickliff's and Luther's efforts at reforming Christendom, wars and blood letting about national borders mean to a member of a nation to whom God Himself was personally acting as lawgiver because He selected them as His special nation thousands of years before all these nations and Christianity even existed? How important can empire building of the Habsburgs, the British Empire or the settlement of America appear to a member of the nation which survived long ago the emergence and disappearance of mightier empires (Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Romans)? His perspectives must of necessity be different from the attitude of those who lack them. The limits of Jewish identification with the cultures of the host nations brings with itself a certain distance accompanied with an admixture of condescendence towards the domestic culture, resulting from the excellence of Jewish culture, the tradition of Jews as the elect nation and the unique continuity of their history which precedes and exceeds the very existence of the host nations.

The success of Jewish elements in the host nations is related to their ability to view and understand the world from another, different angle, to discover relationships not perceptible to the surrounding culture. Among the best thinkers of Jewish origin, this ability manifests itself by unique revelations which the domestic culture is sometimes able to assimilate, but sometimes not; if not, they produce a disruptive effect. Jesus had such an influence on the ancient world; Marx on economics and politics; Freud and Jung on morality; Einstein on physics, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan on marriage and sexual relations. The primitive envy and hatred then acquire a cultural dimension, and because the domestic population cannot equal the Jewish minority in any other way, it reaches for the last resort of those who find themselves in a corner, endangered, helpless to match those of superior mind: violence which takes on the form of formal discrimination, expulsion or even genocide. This was the fate of the Jewry from their settlement in Egypt up to the Third Reich. It is a sign of the intellectual dominance of the Jewish mind that they managed to obtain the condemnation of all their host nations in various eras and various continents while preventing the examination of the common element of their tribulations: the effects of their presence on a foreign environment.

From the superiority of the abilities of members of the Jewish group flows also a basic difference between the prohibition of anti-Semitism from other measures aiming at protection of minorities. Minorities commonly strive to have their own protected sphere of cultural freedom and a numerically proportional share in the wealth and power in the state. These demands result in claims for autonomy and quotas. The prohibition of anti-Semitism does not aim in the same direction: it demands removal of all obstacles to free competition, cultural or economic, it strives to free members of the Jewish community from any  limitations and barriers by any kind of application of power. They do not need autonomy or quotas; where their innate abilities are given free play, the strength of their culture and the power of their intellect will secure for them positions and influence exceeding visibly their numbers. Rise of anti-Jewish sentiments among the populace follows. Historically, the Jewish communities relied on the protection of the ruler or the group in power; at present, the indispensable condition of their free growth is individualistic democracy and a new world order whose organs would guarantee them the necessary freedom and security against application of power wherever they feel or are endangered. In the past, the strategy of relying on rulers and governments failed sooner or later because national rulers or governments would be reluctant to use force against their own people in protection of an markedly different community; on the contrary, they often used anti-Semitic passions for their own purposes. Because this motif of national solidarity is lacking in international organizations, there is hope that international organizations could grant them the desired protection; if a latent resentment of the indigenous population can be prevented, remains in doubt.