Why Intellectual Leadership
“Intellectual.” It sounds elitist. It sounds like it doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about that.
“Leadership.” Ah! Now that sounds like it matters. Especially good leadership. Leaders I want to follow. Let’s talk about that too.
“The Public Square.” That’s where we meet to talk about politics and what is and is not working in our society and public lives. It’s not personal; it’s public. Yea, but . . . No one talks in the public square. Too much noise. Too much hostility. Let’s talk about that too.
I will argue, demonstrate if you will, that one of the major reasons the public square is a mess is because there has been a lot of bad leadership that likes it that way. Radical capitalists get their way when the public square is in chaos. Why? Simple. Democracy depends on an informed public participating in rational arguments that reach sound conclusions that inform good laws that can be sustained in practice. Good laws do not divide the people. Good laws unite the people.
It is impossible to arrive at good agreement in the public square without good leaders. It is impossible to be a good leader in the public square without good ideas. It is impossible to develop good ideas without giving their topics intellectual attention. That’s where good ideas come from: intellectual attention.
We the People have not been able to meet in the public square and develop good ideas that benefit us all. However, some members of the rich and powerful, some members of the top 1%, have had no problem developing ideas that benefit them and do great harm to the rest of society. Not all one-percenters are guilty of this conduct. We need a name for the ones who do. Let’s call them radical capitalists. Capitalism is a great economic system for generating wealth. We gotta have it. However, it fails to distribute wealth justly. That’s a problem that radical capitalists do not want us, We the People, to talk about. They certainly don’t wanted us making laws that will help distribute wealth justly. That’s why they’re radical.
How have radical capitalists won the argument that is so harmful to the majority of Americans? Simple. They have promoted a bad idea. Well, bad for most Americans but great for them. It allows them to increase their wealth and power at the expense of the majority of Americans. The point is that a bad idea has allowed them to win the arguments that lead to laws that benefit them and harm most Americans.
This is not all the fault of radical capitalists. They have not done it by themselves. The leaders who oppose them have failed to win the arguments that they must win if We the People are to benefit from our laws. America is divided because radical capitalists are winning arguments that harm and divide the rest of us. The are winning because “our leaders” are losing.
I didn’t start out to write this blog or address this topic. I started in the 1990s when I wrote “Intellectual Leadership in Education,” (1999). I learned so much while writing that book that without trying it began to impact how I perceived leadership in politics, journalism, and the public square. One day my wife stated rather firmly, “Quit yelling at the television and write your damned book!” So I wrote Let’s Get Civil: Healing Our Fractured Body Politic.” I thought about calling it “Intellectual Leadership in the Public Square,” but “Let’s Get Civil . . .” seemed friendlier and to get to the point. Now, I just want to speak as plainly as possible and to get to the essential points right off the top.
I would encourage any readers who want to be intellectual leaders in education to read my first book. For our purposes, I will use Let’s Get Civil because it deals with the topics I want to deal with here.
One of the things I learned while writing Let’s Get Civil is that without economic justice there can be virtually no other social justices: no education justice, health justice, no housing justice, no judicial or prison justice, no retirement justice, on and on. Although Economic Justice was the tenth chapter in Let’s Get Civil, I will make it the first chapter in this blog. Then I will back up and provide the information needed to get fully developed intellectual leaders. This is a good time to introduce a few axioms upon which this work is founded.
Axiom: Full intellectual development consists of both full cognitive development (the ability to use formal reasoning) and full moral development (the ability to use universal ─ or mature ─ formal moral reasoning.
That axiom requires further development that gives attention to the science of cognitive and moral development. There are two additional axioms that provide foundations to this work and require no further explanation.
Axiom: If as proposal is morally indefensible, it must be abandoned.
Axiom: If a program destroys itself in practice, it must be abandoned and replaced.
We will use all three of these axioms throughout this project. We will start out in-depth conversations with economic justice because that will let the reader see very quickly how important this work is. Before we turn to than conversation, a quick overview of what we will be talking about might be a helpful way to complete this introduction.
Overview of Topics Discussed in this Blog
Economic Justice
This will get us started, get a sense of how important ideas are to leadership. It will discuss the bad ideas and good ideas and put the good ideas in a relationship that will let them work for all of us.
First, it clarifies our thinking about economic theory by developing a formal conceptual framework to guide that thinking.
It establishes the necessity of both capitalism and socialism in our economy and sets them in a dynamic relationship that I define (and explain) as a Morally Grounded Pragmatic Dialectic.
It creates a Golden Mean that identifies mercantilism and communism as the failed extremes of economic theory in the West and establishes the Golden Mean as capitalism and socialism when set in a morally grounded pragmatic dialectic.
This formal conceptual framework allows us to imagine the powerful, cooperative dialectic that citizens could use to guide discourse in the public square and politicians could use in debates, in public and private.
Introduction
Emphasizes the impact of the dominance individualism has on our moral reasoning. That’s a major issue for which the book provides its intellectual roots, power, and challenges to our democracy. It also provides a solution. Later I develop the foundations of a system of mature public moral reasoning.
Cognitive Development
Briefly describes the stages of cognitive development with considerable attention given to Concrete Operations, which many but not all children develop organically. Importantly, it gives considerable attention to Formal Operations which has not been understood, at all, by educators and is critical to the full development of adult leaders in the public square. Formal operations consist of syllogisms, which most can learn to construct and use, conceptual frameworks that fewer can construct without training but many can use, and complete theoretical models and paradigms that represent major intellectual achievements in their field. Their difference is that theoretical models compete with each other and paradigms are theoretical models that have won the acceptance by their disciplines. It’s in the book.
Some of my most important and creative work has been done with Formal Operations. I couldn’t have done it without Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution and his insights regarding paradigms.
Axiom: Learning Leads Development.
Teachers and professors need to provide instruction on how to learn along with instruction in course work. Like Will Hunting, some kids just need a library to learn, but most need quality instruction in at least some areas, others need it throughout their entire educations. Most students need more than their teachers recognize.
Moral Development
Let’s start with an Axiom.
Axiom: All Laws Are Moral Laws
Regardless of the impact that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) had on the courts, law schools, and civil society regarding the law and pragmatism, laws tell us what we should or should not do and therefore are fundamentally moral statements that require a system of universal public moral reasoning as a foundation to their development. That theme receives considerable attention throughout the book and this blog.
Leaders must be interested in the state of moral reasoning in the universities and the public square of our democracy. There is no doubt that there is no system of Public Moral Reasoning being used in our universities, in journalism in politics, or in the public square. It is easy to reject individualism, but that does no good if we don’t replace it with a system of universal public moral reasoning. We preserve and defend individuals to make their own personal moral decisions. However, when we come together in the public square to discuss and argue about laws and the public good, we must have and use a system of universal public moral reasoning.
Major Concept Regarding Human Developemt:
Human development must be understood as consisting or three domains: the individual (the physical domain), the person (the social domain) and the self (the psychological, spiritual, aesthetic domain) Virtually all racism and other forms of dehumanization begin by denying the full humanity of the individual and then fail even to consider and recognize the other domains in these humans who are treated as “others.”
Public Theology and American Politics
I provide a formal conceptual framework that allows the reader to consider this topic employing formal operations.
A major conclusion is that religions have the right to believe anything their reading of sacred texts prompts them to believe; but to enter the public square, they must first meet in the Religious Square and decide what they can all agree to with the guide of Mature Public Moral Reasoning. What they can’t agree to, they can continue to hold in their religious communities. Only what they can all agree to can they bing into and promote in the public square. We must protect religious freedom and we must protect the public square from religious domination.
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin (April 2, 1928 – November 14, 1996) of Chicago observed that we have given considerable intellectual attention to the separation of church and state but not enough to the connection of church and state. This chapter attempts to give that connection attention.
Religious Humanism and the Long Sixties
This chapter argues for the good that religion can and has done in the public square. It also attempts to correct the historical misinterpretations of the Long Sixties that have been promoted with great effort and at great expense by radical capitalists who oppose the achievements fought for and won during the Long Sixties. A greater understanding of and empathy for the changes wrought at this time seems to be one of many prerequisites to bringing peace to the public square.
Early Western Moral Philosophy and Social Science
This chapter provides the historical background to both the development and the ultimate failure of moral philosophy in the West. It also describes how the development and enormous successes of natural science during The Enlightenment so shamed philosophy that philosophers entered a long road to abandoning moral philosophy altogether. David Brooks of the NY Times recently gave a talk in which he blamed his generation (mistakenly gave them credit) for the place of individualism in our society. He flatters his generation. It only occurred during his generation. They had little to do with causing it which is why it is so difficult to defeat and replace. We don’t understand what happened. This chapter tries to repair that gap in our understanding of ourselves and our intellectual tradition.
Modern Moral Philosophy and Social Science
This chapter gets to how the Social Sciences were developed to meet the scientific standards set during The Enlightenment by abandoning moral philosophy and moral reasoning.
Integrating Moral Philosophy and Social Science
This chapter solves the problems that moral philosophers have not been able to solve. It creates a system of mature public moral reasoning that can be used it the social sciences to help them determine if what they propose is not only valid and reliable but also good. It fixes moral philosophy and social science in areas neither seem to notice are broken nor the extent to which they undermine everything they do, to the vast harm of society and our democracy.
I will find it interesting to see what I do with these three chapters in this blog.
Social Science Method and Methodology
If you are interested in how the social sciences generate knowledge, you will be interested in this chapter.
Education Justice
Education justice cannot exist without economic justice. It is a socialist enterprise. It does not generate revenue. It is a cost center and must be supported with revenue generated in capitalists enterprises. It is also an investment capitalists make to assure that they have an educated workforce. And it is an investment our society makes to support our democracy by providing an educated public. Education is also an enterprise on which all other forms of social justice depend. First, we must have economic justice, and second, we must have education justice.
Women’s Reproductive Rights
Women’s Reproduction is a part of women’s health which depends on economic justice. That alone is a challenge. However, abortion presents not just significant economic demands, it presents difficult moral challenges. Meeting moral challenges is one of the roles of strong intellectual leadership. Unfortunately, leading advocates for a woman’s right to choose have abandoned any attempt to deal with the moral questions that arise both in religious and secular concerns. This chapter resolves those concerns and provides mature public moral reasoning that supports both a woman’s right to choose and her agency to do so.
Social Justice
This was one of the most difficult topics for me to think about when I began to write it. Fortunately, early in my research I found an article written by the American Association of Social Work and Social Workers (AASWSW) that presented a list challenges to social justice. AASWSW organized the challenges into three categories: Individual and Family Well Being, Stronger Social Fabric, and Just Society. Those categories are useful for the work that AASWSW does, but they did not help me do what I tried to do in this chapter. I organized the challenges into four categories: Social Justice Challenges (SJC) that Demand Capitalist Solutions, SJC that Demand Socialist Solutions, SJC that Demand Individual and Community Solutions, and SJC that Demand Capitalist, Socialist, and Individual/Community Solutions.