Responding To An Advocate of Municipalism

thank you for the synopsis. I wondered why you were so eager to engage me in conversation, and your essay does explain your motivation. I suspect that something like this provides the best strategy for freedom and agency against the abuses of state police power and the interests of capital accumulation, and there are many of us searching for better, more effective ways to rebalance the equation.

I thought you might be interested in this book review, which my browser offered for recreational reading. (Firefox Pocket, if you're familiar with it.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything?utm_source=pocket-newtab

It offers a sense of the fluidity of the project of maximizing freedom and agency with least harm. I don't think Municipalism is wrong, but sometimes the route to a goal isn't a straight line. I've engaged with many idealistic and ideological struggles, and have never had the satisfaction of persuading anyone at scale. Mostly I found myself in an echo-chamber, or completely alone. Consider the travails of Lao-Tzu, who tried to impart his philosophy to war lords across China (he wanted them to take care of their peoples), only to die without having persuaded even one. The model of change I follow is more organic. Ever keeping the largest vision in mind - maximum freedom with least harm - I engage the project that interests me, and keeps me engaged in the community, and by the small moments I am able to produce, move the world toward justice and kindness.

I suspect this is not helpful to you, but I will develop one more idea. When I was a teenager, I encountered the Born Again Christian movement, and later the Jehovah's Witnesses, who with many others, wanted to deliver paradise, if only everyone would believe. My answer to them was "You'll never persuade everyone, so why would I join you?"

But humanity is guided by that Pole star, equality. We are not seeking unfettered impulsiveness, we want that balance of freedom and accountability which fosters life. I assume you are also guided by that pole-star. So there may be a formula and there may be many formulas. The way we get there is by experimenting, and it's mostly a contingent process, I think they call it heuristic, where the agent of change doesn't make the change but (a-la Lao Tzu) tries to shape the change that finds them.

I believe, feel, that we are doing that here in our mutual aid society. We are collectively working toward something like what you are proposing, but you won't get everyone to make the leap of faith before they have arrived there on their own. I have worked as an advocate for the homeless for years, but my greatest impact has come after the emergence of the mutual aid group, completely without my making any effort to create it. It happened, and it has strengthened my voice.

Don't go big, seek change in the margin where your efforts will affect how people behave. Test your ideas by advancing them and seeing how people respond to them. Look for ideas that are appealing, and develop them. You may find that the growth is not in others, but in yourself.

I hope this explains why I have not been responsive to your appeal. I apologize for any disappointment I have imparted. I encourage you to continue the development of your ideas, but remember to ask yourself, "How does this help others solve problems they are trying to solve, in this moment?"

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Stephen.Alrich.Marshall@gmail.com

802-922-1446

Dispolemic.Blogspot.com

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The Funnel of the Constitution of Knowledge rejects the Conservative vision

Mr. Rauch is brilliant and well published. Here  are links to three websites which have printed this article. 

https://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/2018/09/the-constitution-of-knowledge.html

https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-constitution-of-knowledge

https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-constitution-of-knowledge

and here is a link to the book by the same name. 

https://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Knowledge-Jonathan-Rauch/dp/0815738862

I place in the public record my response: 

Dear Mr. Rauch,

I read your article, the Constitution of Knowledge with the deep satisfaction of finding the sublime truth of our current cultural moment, because it explained so much, and portends so much. Alas this moment was marred when you spun on your rhetoric to claim that, somehow, it is unjust for conservatives to be excluded from academe, because, you say, they must be part of the engine of the constitution of knowledge.

I’ll grant you that to some extent intolerance is being shown, by students and by faculty, when conservatives are excluded from campuses. I have seen it, and attended meetings where the protests were organized. The young people who want to deny to conservative speakers the right to speak are angry. We might ask why they are so angry, for what it is that they petition. And listen.  

Because you just finished explaining to us that the college campus is the epicenter of the institutions that engage in the vetting of knowledge and the constitution of knowledge. It is there that critical thinking and the methods of legitimate investigation are taught. Have you asked yourself whether the engine of the production of truth has not, perhaps, rejected the conservative ethos, for reason? This would of course be uncomfortable for you, as a conservative, but in the interest of truth, is this not a legitimate question?  

This indeed would seem to be the hinge on which your complaint turns: are the reasons for excluding conservatives from college campuses legitimate (that the conservative vision fails to provide an inclusive path toward truth, right action, a safe and healthy Earth), or are the reasons spurious (that people are viscerally repulsed by the affect and effects of conservative speakers and their policies, or they are engaged in propagandistic control of speech)? I would grant you that being socially ostracized for conservative perspectives, as some students claim, exists and is repugnant, if you will grant to me that conservatives, by espousing the prerogatives of wealth and the rights of power, and American exceptionalism, do all the heavy lifting of alienating the students and intellectuals who are engaged in the constitution of knowledge. Because they see the pursuit of wealth power and national exceptionalism as a death sentence for the planet. They have a right to exclude conservatives under the principles you espouse in your article. The funnel of knowledge is rejecting the conservative vision for the future.

I am old enough to have watched generations of conservative political leaders and intellectuals espouse property over people, wealth over environment, xenophobia and racism over a shared membership in a democracy, dance with fancy logic and slight of tongue, or outright lies, to preserve the rights of oil companies and coal companies to work workers in unsafe environments, pollute and add CO₂ to the atmosphere, threaten precious wilderness with logging and oil development, build industry in the poor and the colored and the native lands, and dodge responsibility for any of the effects. So while I have an emotional and intellectual interest in sharing the stage with (I am an inclusivist) anyone who respects the imperative of inclusiveness, my sympathies are with those who would exclude those who argue for the privileges of power and wealth. I am fed up with the crocodile tears from the right. The Conservative movement has argued itself off the stage. 

The right knows its arguments are not winning with the American people, despite 75 years of think tanks, organizing, publishing, propaganda, and political victories. It knows that in a fair election with universal enfranchisement, it cannot win. It knows that without the army formed with the propaganda of Fox news, Rush Limbaugh and NewsMax, it would not have a constituency at all. It knows that as the boomer generation dies off, so also will conservative vision for the future. This complaint of conservatives being kept off university grounds sounds to me like so much bellyaching over losing control of the narrative. Sure conservatives want to be part of the conversation, but that isn’t a privilege granted to everyone who enters the funnel of knowledge. It would be such a joy and such  an amazing gesture if the conservative movement were to be honest with us and itself: it has lots of brainpower, lots of logic, and lots of echoes, with which to convince itself that it is correct, but it is out of step with the best interests of humanity and the planet, and the young people professionals and intellectuals of the engine of the constitution of knowledge know this. And that is why conservatives find themselves poorly represented on campus, and in the media – except for those that it builds – where it produces not knowledge, but religion, conspiracy and propaganda. Thus it is excluded from campus. Fair is fair. 

I respect the moderation you seem to bring to your essays, the arguments of moderation you bring to the debate. But am I wrong you call yourself a conservative? No? Then you align yourself with many of the worst actors in American history. I suggest you change your label, and cease to defend this one.

You might have noted that despite a certain facility with words, I am really a nobody. Therefore I can say what I say, because I look up from below.