Cynicism And Skepticism

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

It is a dilemma that classroom teachers struggle with: How do we promote a healthy skepticism among our students, without encouraging cynicism, when discussing the great issues of the past or current events? We want our students to learn to see through false claims and propaganda, to spot humbug. On the other hand, we do not want for them to assume that everyone is a phony with base motives.
There is, for example, a difference between the argument in favor of United States’ military and economic intervention in Eastern Europe after World War II and that of the Soviet Union.
That said, it cannot be denied that there is a tendency of political leaders and partisans to flip-flop on their principles when it becomes advantageous for them to do so. That is what is meant when we hear people say, “Arguments about process are bogus.”
Check the record: The party out of power tends to be the advocate of states’ rights and federalism; the party in power the champion of reforms carried out by the executive branch.
Examples are numerous: The New England states made the case for nullification and secession when their commercial interests were threatened by tariffs in the early 19th century. In opposition, the South called for national unity and Henry Clay’s American system of protectionism for American businesses. Both sides flipped on the question of federal power at the time of the Civil War when slavery became the issue. John C. Calhoun became known for articulating the South’s position on nullification.
We could also point to how busing students (for the purpose of preserving segregated schools) was once favored in the South and opposed by northern liberals, but then was opposed by most people in the South and championed by northern liberals when it was ordered to bring about integration of those schools.
A similar flip-flop can be seen on the question of the power of the Supreme Court. Conservatives tended to favor a powerful judiciary in the early 20th century when they saw the court as a defense against legislative bodies posing a threat to the property rights of business owners. Liberals disagreed. As Justice Oliver Wendell Homes phrased it, in his effort to make the point that the Supreme Court’s hands ought not be tied to a rigid view of laissez-faire economic theory: “The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
All this changed in the mid-20th century, when conservatives began to see the Supreme Court as a tool of liberal social engineers — and liberals viewed it as a vehicle to bring about social justice in the face of what they thought was unenlightened majority opinion, whether the issue was integrated schools, affirmative action programs, censorship, or the legalization of abortion.
Donald Trump’s election to the presidency has provided yet another example of how arguments based on principle tend to change when the political landscape changes. It has been a remarkable few weeks since he took office.
We can begin with how liberals and conservatives are reversing themselves on the question of infrastructure spending.
We find conservatives who back Trump making the case that this spending will “prime the pump” and lead to economic growth that will pay for the new roads and bridges, and so on. Liberals are resisting Trump, making the case that we must be “fiscally responsible” and pay for these improvements with higher taxes. Both sides seem to have forgotten what they have been telling us for 50 years about deficit financing.
Another example: Listen to the arguments about whether a tariff on Mexican products should be used to pay for the wall between the U.S. and Mexico that Trump intends to build. Liberal Democrats are arguing that this tax will be a tax on American consumers because businesses will “pass on” any taxes that are imposed on them in the form of higher prices, that businesses “do not pay taxes, but simply collect them.” That sounds like something you would have seen in a column in Forbes magazine for the past 50 years.
We could also point to the way Democrats scolded Americans who were “discourteous” toward President Obama and the first lady. Remember all the talk about how it was important for our civic life to “show the proper respect for the presidency”? We heard that from the same people who are now heaping insults and vulgarities on Donald Trump and his wife. People who once chastised Republican “xenophobes” are mocking Melania Trump’s accent. And, yes, many of those who depicted the Obamas in turbans and dashikis and as monkeys are aghast at the lack of decorum the left is displaying toward the Trumps.
And we should not overlook the change in perspective on filibustering appointments to the president’s cabinet and the Supreme Court. Democrats who came up with the “nuclear option” to push through President Obama’s appointees, changing the rules in 2013 to set the threshold for confirmation at 51 votes rather than 60, are now deploring the possibility that the Trump administration will do the same thing. The Democrats now see this practice as a “threat to the Constitution.”
The list goes on. It was liberal Democrats who used to admonish us during the Cold War about an “irrational fear” of Russian involvement in our political life. Now they are up-in-arms about Vladimir Putin’s role in the last election, while more than a few conservative Republicans are extolling the possible benefits of cooperation with the Kremlin in the war against terrorism.
Republicans who were convinced that Barack Obama was acting “like a dictator” when he bypassed Congress with his “pen and phone” to push through his policies, are praising Donald Trump’s “bold decisiveness” in his first days in office as he uses executive actions to fulfill his campaign promises.
We can point, as well, to the way the establishment press has discovered that the unemployment rate, “U-3,” is not as revealing as the “U-6” figure, which reflects the number of workers who have dropped out of the workforce. The media discovered this metric only after Trump was elected. Before then they would point with pride to the declining unemployment rate under Barack Obama.
Again: The point that should be explored with our students in this discussion is not whether the Democrats’ or Republicans’ principles are better for the country — which can be a topic for another time — but how easily both parties find it to swap them when it is convenient to do so.

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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.