Richard Dagger

Neo-republicanism and the civic economy

It is clear that a revival of republicanism is under way, but it is not clear that the republican tradition truly speaks to contemporary concerns. In particular, it is not clear that republicanism has anything of value to say about economic matters in the early 21st century. I respond to this worry by delineating the main features of a neo-republican civic economy that is, I argue, reasonably coherent and attractive. Such an economy will preserve the market, while constraining it to serve public purposes, and promote what John Rawls calls a ‘property-owning democracy’. To accomplish these ends, a civic economy is likely to concern itself with the character of work and the workplace, to take steps to preserve and protect the sense of community or publicity, to levy an inheritance tax and a progressive consumption tax, and to provide some kind of ‘social’ or ‘civic’ minimum of support to all citizens.

Metropolis, Memory, and Citizenship

The city, it is sometimes said, is the true home of citizenship. I suggest in this essay that it would be more accurate to say that the city can be the true home of citizenship, for many of our cities today discourage their residents from practicing the citizens vocation. This is because citizenship depends upon civic memory, and the conditions which prevail in our metropolises-their overwhelming size, their political fragmentation, and the mobility of their people-are hostile to this memory. If we wish to encourage active citizenship, therefore, we should consider the reformation and redirection of our cities.

Membership, Fair Play, and Political Obligation

In recent years a number of theorists have maintained that the obligation to obey the law is best conceived and justified as an associational obligation. Not consent or utility or fair play but membership is the source of political obligation. These theorists are wrong, I argue, but they are wrong in interesting and illuminating ways. For an examination of the advantages and disadvantages of the membership account of political obligation underscores the merits of a rival account of obligation grounded in the principle of fair play.

THE SANDELIAN REPUBLIC AND THE ENCUMBERED SELF

In Democracys Discontent , Michael Sandel argues for a revival of the republican tradition in order to counteract the pernicious effects of contemporary liberalism. As in his earlier work, Sandel charges that liberals who embrace the ideals of political neutrality and the unencumbered self are engaged in a self–subverting enterprise, for no society that lives by these ideals can sustain itself. Sandel is right to endorse the republican emphasis on forming citizens and cultivating civic virtues. By opposing liberalism as vigorously as he does, however, he engages in a self–subverting enterprise of his own. That is, Sandel is in danger of undercutting his position by threatening the liberal principles upon which he implicitly relies. This danger is greatest when he presses his case against the unencumbered self, when he appeals to the obligations of membership, and when he treats republicanism and liberalism as adversaries rather than allies.

Rights, Boundaries, and the Bonds of Community: A Qualified Defense of Moral Parochialism

One effect of the cosmopolitan turn in recent political philosophy is that widely held beliefs and intuitions are being called into question. My purpose here is to scrutinize one of these beliefs—that we should attend to the needs of our compatriots before the needs of the foreigners—from the perspective of a rights-based theory. After sketching a theory that takes the right of autonomy as its cornerstone, I consider four arguments that might support the intuition that compatriots take priority. Only one of the four is sound, I conclude, and even this argument, the argument from reciprocity, supports the intuition only in a highly qualified form.

Ideals and ideologies : a reader

1. The Concept of Ideology 2. The Democratic Ideal: Historical and Philosophical Foundations 3. Liberalism 4. Conservatism 5. Socialism and Communism After Marx 6. Fascism 8. Liberation Ideologies and the Politics of Identity 9. Green Politics: Ecology as Ideology 10. Radical Islamism

What Is Political Obligation

Political philosophers have long been exercised by the problem of political obligation. Many have tried to solve it, and others, more recently, have dismissed it as a pseudo-problem which cannot be solved and need not be posed. This essay is an attempt to clarify the problem of political obligation and to see why it is a problem. My argument, briefly, is that the traditional understanding of the problem is misleading because it fails to distinguish questions of obedience from questions of obligation. When it is properly stated the problem can be solved–in principle, at least–and I try to show what form a solution will take.

Inside The Turner Diaries: Neo-nazi scripture

At 9:02 on the morning of April 19, 1995, a powerful fertilizer bomb exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. One hundred sixty-eight people, including twenty children, were killed. More than 500 people were badly injured. Federal authorities at first suspected foreign terrorists. The trail, however, led elsewhere—to two (and possibly more) self-styled American “patriots” with ties to the neo-nazi “militia” movement. One of the suspects, Timothy McVeigh, carried a copy of The Turner Diaries , the “bible” of various radical right, neo-nazi militia groups. At his trial in Denver, the prosecution made numerous references to The Turner Diaries . McVeigh himself chose not to speak during the trial in which he was found guilty and sentenced to death. If we are to understand the thinking of McVeigh and other home-grown terrorists, we must understand the contents of this book. The Turner Diaries is a work of fiction. It purports to be the diaries kept by Earl Turner, a militant member of a neo-nazi group called the Organization which in the “Great Revolution” of the late twentieth century overthrew the Jewishled “System” (i.e., the U.S. government) and in the twenty-first century inaugurated an all-white, racially pure New Era. During the Old Era, the System discriminated against patriotic white Americans by confiscating their guns, promoting policies of affirmative action, encouraging non-white foreign immigration and interracial marriage, and putting Jews, African-Americans, and other minorities in positions of authority in schools and universities, the mass media, the FBI, and other governmental institutions.

Republicanism and the Politics of Place

Abstract Republicanism may seem to be a nostalgic politics of place that is incapable of responding to the challenges of globalization. The burden of this essay is to demonstrate that this view is both right and wrong – right in regarding republicanism as a politics of place, but wrong in thinking that such a form of politics is irrelevant to an increasingly interconnected world. On the contrary, the republican concern for place provides the basis for the responsible, public-spirited action that cosmopolitan theorists need to sustain their visions of global politics. * For comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to Bert van den Brink, Thomas A. Spragens, Jr., and my colleagues in the ASUMPL reading group.

Michael Sandel, Public Philosopher

For better or worse, political philosophy is now largely the province of who find this situation deplorable are not so much nostalgic for by are convinced that political philosophers are engaged in an arid and ab enamoured of fine distinctions, technical jargon, and hypothetical situati from the real world of politics and the pressing concerns of real people some basis for this complaint. Some work in political philosophy is ind is surely more abstract than it needs to be. I am puzzled, though, by th that academic philosophers and political theorists have lost touch with societies in which they live. To take the leading example, the late Joh speech-making, manifesto-writing philosopher in the mould of Burke o address a number of pressing concerns, among them equality of opp obedience and political obligation, the just distribution of property relations among peoples. If Rawls had little to say about the more imme troversies of the day, such as the war in Vietnam, affirmative action controversy, there are plenty of other academic political philosophers w his reticence. Ronald Dworkin, Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor, Marth Singer, Amartya Sen, William Galston, Benjamin Barber, and Jean Bet quickly to mind as some of the most prominent among them. For an example of an academic political philosopher who is clearly political issues of the day, however, we can do no better than to University’s Michael Sandel. In addition to writing two much-discusse by university presses, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (2nd edn, 199 Discontent (1996), Professor Sandel is a frequent contributor to journals o his most recent book, Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, coll previously published writings, some drawn from academic journals and them brief essays that originally appeared in such venues as the Atlanti York Times, and, in seventeen cases, the New Republic. Among other th advice in these essays to candidates of the Democratic Party, condem lotteries, and comments on a wide range of topics, from abortion and cell research to environmental pollution and the part that sports team civic identity. His tone is always temperate, given more to the gentl