A2 task: affirmative action or reverse discrimination?

Americans (and apparently our politics class!) are split clear down the middle on affirmative action. Is “fair” a matter of equality of opportunity, or of outcome? Is a level playing field for all to compete, with legally equally status, the way American liberty ought to be? Or do ten generations and more since slavery, still leading to Eric Garner’s death, suggest racist exploitation of power and wealth is endemic, and the odds stacked forever against minorities without concerted government action? Do we want an American liberty of “free-to” (try your best to socially climb) or a more French liberty of “free from” (remaining trapped in inferiority)?

This week’s task is to post an extended personal view on this matter. Make sure you in some way incorporate the following into your post:

• the historical principles of the US (cf the Declaration, the Constitution and its amendments and the traditions of English liberty from which they derive and which they extend)
• the long race-relations history of the US (slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Civil War, the passage of the 13th to 15th, the Jim Crow laws, the civil rights era)
• the current influential champions or exemplars of each side (eg Obama vs Thomas)
• landmark legal rulings, especially by the Supreme Court, from Dred Scott to Plessy vs Ferguson to Brown vs Topeka to the most recent generation of legal examples
• current state affirmative action laws and current state scholarships / programmes which complement, or provide an alternative to, AA laws
• statistical evidence about representation in certain professions, income or opportunity
• arguments of principle about the failings or inconsistency of the opposing viewpoint

It’s probably also worth seeking arguments from other blogs online and / or linking to as many useful sources of evidence as possible. In time, feel free to comment on and reply on one another’s blogs – keep the debate going informally.

Bear in mind this is a controversial issue and hot opinion runs strongly through this stuff. Be reasoned, use evidence and argue clearly, even if strongly. Don’t rant – only weak writers do that.

AS task: join two or more pressure groups

Pressure groups, broadly speaking, fall on a spectrum between the idealistic kind and the political kind. At the former end are those who eschew expressly political positions and focus very specifically on one charitable cause which few people would disagree in principle with (Oxfam, RSPCA, Greenpeace) and whose campaigns, whilst they might stray into more political territory at times, try to maintain consensus and move popular opinion in a direction of being more charitable, kind or caring. Pressure groups at the more political end seek significant social change that might be considered more conventionally “political” – ie it might favour one side of a political opinion debate than another. The Taxpayers’ Alliance, for example, is basically anti-tax and sets out to be more demanding of (comparatively miserly) public sector expenditure while having no view on the private sector’s bonus culture (which might be viewed as grotesque by many.) As such, it’s pretty transparently right-wing and political. By comparison, Britain in Europe might be viewed as disgustingly centre-left by an infuriated majority of Clacton UKIP voters. And political can just mean in alignment of its supporters rather than avowedly on the political spectrum: most supporters of the National Secular Society (anti-religious) are likely to be leftist, and most members of the (anti-abortion) Society for the Protection of Unborn Children are likely to be rightist; but since they’re groups devoted to a specific cause, with no other political aims, you can’t generalise for certain. In some cases it’s debatable how far down the idealistic to political spectrum a group is. Most people would say Liberty is mostly idealistic, but their defence of the rights of terrorists on trial would rile some right-wingers, and Amnesty International also is considered political by some; on the right of the political spectrum, the Countryside Alliance would argue it is idealistic but centre-leftists would view an organisation that opposes affordable homes and promotes blood sports to be political. Either way, be able to make a case for which is your idealistic and which your political group, and why. Try looking at this excellent (though not totally comprehensive) Wikipedia list of UK pressure groups. You will need to spend plenty of time reading here – both the groups’ individual entries and also the links to their own webpages. As well as the two you choose to get involved with, your need to build up wider knowledge of a broad range for exam answers.

• What are their aims?
• What campaigns do they run?
• What successes have they previously had?
• By what methods do they attempt to influence public opinion?
• By what methods do they attempt to influence legislation and government policy?

Your task, over 2-3 months, is to join and become active in two pressure groups, one from the political end and one from the idealistic end of the spectrum. So you could choose Charter 88 and Oxfam; or the English Defense League and Save The Children; or Occupy and Marie Curie. Your performance on this task will form the basis for your data point 3 grade in March. Remember you have to be able to show evidence of your committed and effective involvement. This means:

• you will be able to present on both pressure groups and your involvement for 10+ minutes at speed and in depth
• … and field almost any reasonable question about their background, campaigns, action or your involvement
• and will provide a comprehensive supporting dossier of paper evidence (like a coursework project for GCSE)
• getting grade A or effort 2 or better will be impossible without also running at least one high-profile awareness campaign in your own local context (ie at school) which raises funds and changes people’s opinions

Tasks like this, completed “slow roast” over time, can often be easy to accidentally neglect. So we’ll give you one lesson a fortnight, every other Sunday lesson, to work towards this. But you will also need to set aside a couple of other 20-40 minute slots at other regular times of the week to keep pushing the process along. Make these regular slots in your week. Also try giving yourself landmark goals – a fundraising target, a public event – and don’t miss them. Make sure your portfolio shows this progression through stages of achievement.

Here’s an assessment framework to let you know what I’m looking for and how it will be graded. It might change over time.

A2: negative Washington, mistreating women and wounds that get worse

The Senate is in a lame-duck session (old members still sitting before the recently-elected wave begin their service) and so, still holding a small majority, the Dems tried to pass a bill restricting NSA surveillance, supposedly a bipartisan bill (the left hate excessive NSA power because it’s military / breaches civil liberties, the right because it’s big government; but both parties contain an alliance of national security hawks with big defense money behind giving those agencies all the powers they want). The bill failed again yesterday. Note the Republican 2016 frontrunners in this: Tea Party favourite Cruz backed it (a way of looking, since he’s extreme right on other stuff, like he can “work across the aisle”?) Perhaps recognising this may strengthen Cruz, Rubio (vying for Cruz’s minority vote, and wanting to knock Cruz out early in the invisible primary) voted against it, claiming it weakened the nation against attack, hoping to paint Cruz as (a) unpatriotic (a serious charge on the right) and (b) incapable of pushing things through in Congress. In the process doubtless he was also aiming to win the big money and influential national security lobby’s backing. Rand Paul also voted against, for the opposite reason – as a libertarian he finds it too weak and objects to surveillance in principle and, never likely to win the national security lobby’s backing, he might as well stake a distinctive position on small government out early. In short, Cruz wants to win by appearing small government / Bill of Rights, and able to get things done; Rubio by showing Cruz ineffective / unreaslistic early on and taking his minority and Tea Party vote; and Paul by hoping they continue to split their similar vote and leave him to sail clear through the middle on a distinct platform.

It’s not just defeat week for the Democrats. The Republicans also tried passing their longtime favourite issue, the Keystone XL pipeline, and also failed to push it through despite the fact that rebel moderate Dems (“dinos” in some cases) strongly backed and co-led it. With a more Republican Senate in January, this could be back soon – again. You’d have thought they might want to spend more time fixing America’s broken (read: underfunded) tax system. Instead, the Democrats at least are uncertain of strategy and split since the midterms defeat, unsure how to respond (even on safe Democrat ground like immigration) to the Republican surge. It’s complex to analyse America, and (as recently discussed in class) it’s not so European-simple as “poor vote left, rich vote right” – spend some time drilling down through the intriguing detail in this analysis of poverty vs inequality in the US.

Notice how each new electoral cycle American sort of rebuilds itself, renews its assessment of its values and intentions, and achieves organic change over time. Here’s a nice visual analogy for that – always being remedied and repaired, yet essentially unchanging.

Also unchanging, it seems, is the objectification of women and how they’re exploited in one way or another. First there’s Uber, which jokes it should be called Boober, but exploits women (please, please do not use this firm’s services); or the observation that it’s not until a man calls Cosby a rapist that the media pay attention; or the 36 sexual assault charges against women filed against a police officer in Oklahoma (yes, for real; though surely defendants also deserve anonymity in cases this emotive.) So thank heavens for some calm rational feminism pointing out that those things, and not tasteless NASA shirts, are the issue. And just in case you wrongly thought the treatment of women was at its worst in America, read this.

In other stories of timeless American wounds (the ongoing poverty and / or marginalisation of the African-American community, the exploitation of the poor by the rich etc), notice how Ferguson is still playing out the after-effects of Civil War, the Three-Fifths Compromise and the pre-Independence plantation slave trade; and America’s rich and poor are as divided as ever.

As usual, expect a pop quiz shortly not only on current syllabus material but on obscure details of all these stories too – you’re expected to read all of them as a minimum, and plenty of surrounding material in depth.

AS: who’s to blame?

In economic hard times, things become less about who has a vision and more about who’s to blame. No wonder UKIP are going to win in Rochester tomorrow when Cameron talks nonsense-tough on immigration then oversees the largest immigration programme in Europe (BTW, I’m not saying immigration is bad, just that Cameron is rudderless on it. After all, I’m an immigrant to the country I work in, and I add significant value.) Labour are possibly even worse, their response strategy appearing a combination of mean and incoherent / incompetent right now: people are angry about immigration since it results in job insecurity and driving home the point about the economic marginalisation of normal people in favour of the rich would be better, but Miliband can’t seem to do that. Instead Labour bangs on about immigration itself, feeding the racist UKIP beast. Equally small-minded and Little-Englander, but at least a bit more sensible in budgetary terms, is their idea of charging an entry fee for visa waiver. But personally I avoid places that charge you just for coming in, if there’s a choice…

Meanwhile Ed can’t seem to charge anyone for the things we really ought to be charging for. (It’s called tax, when we take money for good reasons, and it’s morally good because it makes running a safe and functioning society possible.) Witness Miliband failing utterly to rebuff this mansion tax ambush on Newsnight by a washed-up popstar, but don’t laugh too hard: two million really IS a valuable house, and they are mostly NOT lived in by grannies, but by washed-up popstars arguing selfishlessly for the interests of their class of people who own £10M+ assets. Even when you bear in mind that her attack looked contrived (ie I suspect it was pre-planned with a Tory spin doctor having trained her) you’d really like the leader of the centre-left party to be able to immediately and skillfully explain some reasons why a bit of extra tax on people that own two-million pound homes is fair and reasonable. You can’t imagine Blair not having found a way to win this argument. Instead, Miliband’s office took twelve hours to reply, presumably because Labour’s current strategists are terrified and have to opinion-poll everything before speaking. What would have been a witty retort at the time looks crass this much later. L’espirit de l’escalier and all that.

Spare a thought, too, for the Lib Dems (not least because they have only a few months before the electorate guts them like a fish.) While we’re on being-more-right-wing-than-you-need-just-to-look-hard, Danny Alexander suggested the Tories (who’ve presided over the most dramatic cuts in British history) weren’t cutting enough, with their suggested £7Bn saving in the next parliament an underestimate, according to Alexander, by £23Bn. Difficult to believe this is the party that once proposed abolishing tuition fees and claimed to offer better local public services than Labour councils. At that level of cut we might as well just kill off everyone over 70 to save the NHS budget.

Speaking of which, NHS experts are predicting its total collapse. In fact they think the NHS alone will be short by the £30Bn Alexander says the budget as a whole will be short by, so maybe things are worse than anyone is saying. Being right-but-hated might be about to become the Lib Dems’ new identity for a decade, who knows?

Spare a thought in all this for the planet by reading the ever-brilliant George Monbiot on the dangers of being obsessed with GDP growth. And it’s growth we’re relying on to save us from austerity, caught between Scylla and Charybdis. But it’s greed – from self-interested popstars, politicians pandering to anti-immigrationism, rich tax dodgers and the average guy in the street alike – that reveals the ugly shared humanity across all divides: check out this ugly-if-humorous set of pictures. At least this proves the UKIPers wrong and Alexander right: we’re all greedy, and all prone to being unhealthy no matter where we’re from…

A2 debate: after the red dust settles

Thank you for today’s debate. Superb energy, depth and contributions. Now take the debate from in person to the internet. The motion you debated was:

“This house believes that today’s defeat spells doom for the Democrats.”

Please reply to this post at length to express your views on this statement – your own views now, not the side you were forced to adopt for the debate! (Although we could do with a bit more pro-Republicanism, on balance.) Over the next ONE WEEK, you must make

1. An OPENING contribution, just stating your own views.
2. Two CRITICAL contributions, targeting someone else’s opening statement and challenging some or all of their points. (If you want, you can carry on this argument back and forth.)
3. One or more DEFENSIVE contributions, responding to one or more critics’ attacks on your original post.

In terms of procedure please reply to THIS post for your opening contribution, but to be critical, please reply to the reply – etc.

Guidance:

• strong views are OK but be aware this language is in the public domain
• support every point with evidence or don’t bother!

AS and A2: combined UK / US news

Time for a hybrid post for both classes to read, I think – worth keeping track of politics on the other side of the pond from that which you’re studying.

We start with the US, and to understand just how deep-rooted American belief in the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) is, read how it’s considered unacceptable to even allow those whose children have been killed by guns to tell people about their feelings (you know, in case it upsets Charlton Heston etc.) On the other hand, whilst guns are fine, I wrote previously about how being able to vote (if you are poor / black etc) apparently is not – read this detailed article about how this obvious election fraud by Republicans is perpetrated.

Back in the UK, here’s a fabulous tool for AS students trying to understand how the principles, ideas and traditions of the two parties fit into their coalition shoehorning – have they kept the compromise promises the coalition agreement said they would? By contrast, Labour are agonising about whether to talk about budget at all, since they started this parliament in a fit of self-doubt, stupidly allowing the coalition to present the claim that Labour blew all the money and that’s why there’s a deficit (it’s not. There’s a deficit because Labour were stupid enough to attach no conditions to the money they gave the banks, so all of it just lined the pockets of the rich – most of whom now support the Tories.) As a result, Ed Balls can’t make up his mind whether to say he wants to cut or not. Hard to conceive of Labour being elected when no-one knows what they stand for any more…

On the other hand, other ominous signs suggest the Conservatives will stuggle massively to get the outright majority they want: the mess made of schools is reflected in the hidden costs that have entered the supposedly free state sector, the NHS is heading for collapse, and (critically, in electoral terms), people believe they and / or society are worse off (remember, in US terms, this is what sunk Carter in 1980, Bush in 1992 and in the UK, Labour in 1979.) No surprise, when standards of living have been falling for more than a decade and an empty passageway in London costs a quarter of a million quid. Some EU countries, though, like France, hang on to a degree of social justice and social democracy: here’s France making mercenary Ryanair pay their taxes. Not that this will last, because the TTP is going to make democracy on both sides of the Atlantic the servant of corporate power: if you want a candidate for the award for “even more depressing destruction of democracy than the soft money takeover of US politics”, the TTP is it.

And if anyone doubted that power is exercised in a shady way, read the horrifying story of how the US and UK collaborated with the Australian spy agencies to overthrow the democratically-elected Gough Whitlam and prevent real Australian independence. The agencies of power wouldn’t do stuff like that now, would they? Wrong, they’re doing that and worse – is there ever a reason for a governing authority to intrude needlessly and secretly into people’s privacy? Thank heavens schools don’t do this. Ahem.

In a handful of places some liberal resistance to hardline views is still winning. This protest is a nice response to the Ben Affleck story I wrote about previously. But elsewhere in the US the dems are in battered retreat and in trouble for the mid-terms: the reps are clearly winning by more each day as the elections approach, and you need to realise that loss of control of one of the houses determines significant issues of local and national politics. Fox, despite their coverage of Obama’s attempt to support Democrats in states he won in 2012, is positively salivating at the idea of a total Republican Congress; this reads as either glorious or terrifying, depending on your political colour. Even Boehner, the House Speaker (who’s lost most of his showdowns with Obama) seems to believe a big win is there to be had – and this is the leftish HuffPost. The dems will be desperately hoping to keep the final score under 52-48 in the Senate, but either way Obama looks dead in the water for the last two years. The HuffPost delves intellectually into this historical curiosity too this week; the leftists might indeed need the assistance of long-vanished gods to triumph on Tuesday coming.

A2 task: predict the mid-terms

Simple task requiring plenty of depth: write a detailed blogpost with your predictions for what will happen in the mid-terms, and as a result of them – and how we got here / what it means. You can write about anything you like and adopt any tone you like but here are some suggested points:

• make sure you focus in depth on 2-4 specific Congressional races – who are the candidates, what are the polls saying, what are the issues in that specific state, what is the past history of the state’s voting record etc
• what will the effect be overall (be numerical!) on the balance of Congress, and what implications are there for Obama in 2014-16, and for the 2016 race?
• also take a look at the gubernatorial races in case they tell you something about the politics of the states they are occurring in (they could give a 2016 heads-up, or say something about the current moderate voter)
• focus on who is retiring, why, and whether incumbents have advantages in Congressional elections
• what is the extent of split-ticket voting? what do the current elections tell you about split-ticketing now, and back in 2008?
• does the likely Republican victory reflect a real rise in Republican chances? or is it an attribute of anti-President mid-terms / natural Republican mid-terms / the particular states that are up for grabs?
• what’s the history of mid-terms for second-term Presidents? (2006, 1998, 1986 etc…)

I insist on a specific prediction of the final score in both houses, and named victors of several key races!

Don’t forget to post a link in reply to this article which takes us to your own.

AS task: parties and ideologies

Now you’re well-informed about the basics of parties (broad historical outline, leadership, general policy areas, number of MPs and regional representation etc) it’s time to delve into their history a little bit, and to move over to the political philosophy that underpins them. By Sunday, research the following ideologies:

• liberalism
• socialism
• conservatism
• individualism
• pragmatism (politically)
• equality
• libertarianism
• anarchism

Several of these overlap, but understanding the exact differences, and the best term to use in a given context, is critical. The top three are the most important broad ideas. Note that these are all traditions of ideas, not exactly mapable onto any given party simply. Try asking yourself the following questions:

1. What is the defining idea of each of these political philosophies? How would you summarise it in a nutshell?
2. What features or implications does the philosophy have? What would be typical policies you would seek to enforce if you held this specific set of beliefs?
3. For each of the current main British parties, which is the nearest to their current position?
4. … and which other ideologies partially influence that party? Can you specify groups or movements within parties with this specific aim?
5. Are the parties the same ideologically as they were 25 years ago? 50 years ago? Be able to specify how / why they have changed.
6. Which do you think are the natural instincts of the British people? How do you know this? What evidence can you provide for this?
7. Perhaps most importantly – which of these political philosophies feels closest to your natural beliefs? (Or are you, like me, torn between two distinctly opposed philosophies from this list? Bonus marks to whomever guesses where I am on these…)

Your notes can take any form you like – your understanding will be assessed through oral input and later exam questions. Building the knowledge is more important than building the notes at this stage. Both the textbook and Wikipedia have plenty here, but do any reading that suits.

A2: mid-terms news

A range of coverage from US websites today, mixed from left and right. Firstly, use the detailed data breakdown at the Washington Post’s election lab to find out which seats are up, what the trends and likely outcomes are. The Chair of the DNC claims the dems will hold the Senate but it’s now looking very unlikely in a perfect storm of pro-Republican variables: it’s dem seats up, too many incumbent dems are retiring, the economy is in the tank, there’s a dem President so mid-terms will run against them (and he has low approval ratings) etc. But the best article I’ve read on US politics for ages is this analysis of how winning the Senate might be bad for the reps.

Another feature favouring the reps is the foreign news (Isis, Ebola etc): when the world looks bleak, people hunker down and vote right-wing. In addition, current administrations suffer if they can’t seem to handle foreign policy problems, so Fox reports that Ebola is harming the dems’ ratings.

Incidentally, it’s the mid-terms are also a chance for 2016 invisible primary candidates to show they’re prominent in their parties. Witness Senator Rubio (R-Fla) advocating an Ebola travel ban while the eyes of America are on US politicians in the mid-term run-up. It’s a no-brainer, because it sounds pro-American and anti-foreigner without sounding anti-immigrant. Who cares that it’s meaningless medically? Meanwhile one of his likely Republican primary opponents, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) claims, astonishingly, that he can get 30% of the African American vote, and the liberal Huff Post almost agrees. Neither are up for election, but both are making a lot of political noise while they can.

Libertarianism (see Senator Paul, and his father Ron Paul) is an interesting hybrid position which threatens both the main parties, and it may be on the slow rise: witness this chance that it may unbalance the dems in Illinois. They can’t afford to lose a state like that (and Obama’s own, to boot.) One of the main dem responses from 2008 onwards – especially important in winning 2012 – has been their ability to get out their “ground game” – how are both parties doing at that right now? Another is to have extended voting windows: so notice Obama voting two full weeks before the Illinois elections. Whether it will work, who knows? He’s a lame duck for the last two years if the dems lose control of the Senate as well as not having the house.

AS: parties, pressure groups – current news

Everyone takes UKIP seriously; I’m not sure I do. They’re a protest party and (despite the decentralisation of party loyalty and the increasing trend towards political fragmentation and protest voting in an age of austerity) no-one knows what they stand for other than thinly-veiled racism and perhaps bad Calypso. But their coup of getting Douglas Carswell to defect has been effective and his critique of the Tories (that he left) is interesting reading. And before any UKIP supporter protests that they’re a real party with important values and not racist at all, note that the racism is no longer thinly-veiled: they’re just vile, hateful people and anyone who supports them ought to be beaten to death with a list of the six-million names of Holocaust victims. Full disclosure: I have an opinion about UKIP and this is not aiming to be a balanced article.

UKIP is interesting mainly because they’re a problem for the Tories, pulling them rightwards for no apparent gain. Cameron seems to think he looks strong provoking a rebuttal from major European figures about his proposed changes to EU law, but it’s difficult to see how he wins by pushing this home: no movement to the right / to be isolationist will satisfy the extreme malcontents drifting to UKIP, and yet each movement puts him beyond the moderate mainstream (or economic good sense.)

A minor party worth taking much more seriously is the SNP, so read about their new leader and the new First Minister of Scotland. Read  around the aftermath of independence and notice that Labour is suffering in the polls because of the vote, despite it being Cameron who’s going back on his promises; but their seats have buffers and it looks like Lib Dem seats that will fall – yet more proof that Clegg hitched his party to disaster back in 2010.

Labour values, by contrast, are all about supporting the poor and weak. Usually they have to disguise this a little but, but Tory minister Lord Freud’s screw-up last week has been a gift. And read a shadow minister on the intentions of the party in government. Do you know enough of the shadow cabinet?

Despite differentiation attempts, both main parties in practice do have to behave somewhat similarly in practice. Labour does have to be tougher on budgets than it would like; the Tories do have to subsidise things on a large-scale, though at least it’s industry they’re supporting. Note that this level of subsidy is £28k per job. I’d like to be subsidised to that level. Economically, it’s also of note how concerned the markets are about another hung parliament – it’s getting hard to remember that coalitions are historically very very rare in the UK, as the system is designed to avoid them.

Pressure groups are any body which has a (small ‘p’) political aim but is not a party. They tend to function in just one area – environment, health, international aid, homelessness etc; usually “good causes” – but they can also include corporate lobbying bodies like the CBI. Here are some stories about current issues at the fore: a move to make corporations pay fair tax; environmental concerns, both in terms of extinction events and climate change effects; and how the government thinks charities should shut up as the poor get poorer.

Yet in a world with multiple parties to support or join, and pressure groups we could take part in, we apparently feel more powerless than ever. It’s enough to drive you to drink.