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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
Polemical Hacks, Bastardized Gonzo,
and the Death Of Democracy - Page 12
By Eric Kaufmann
Secondly, I question Gogol's argument regarding the decline in community and shared ethics. I find that the history of the United States has exhibited anything but a shared sense of community and ethics: the Native American genocide commencing with the start of colonialism and pushing westward, the three-fifths compromise in 1787, civil war from 1861-1865, slavery until the 13 th Amendment in 1865, women denied suffrage until the 19 th Amendment in 1920, Jim Crow laws and their progenies failing to be officially addressed until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the legality of marital rape until 1993 (some exemptions still exist in thirty-three states). The "community" pointed to in the history of the United States is the experience of a miniscule subset of society, mainly that of white, middle- and upper-class men of proper political and religious persuasion.
However, if one wishes to posit that some generalized community exists and is now in decline, I must also argue against such a conclusion as preemptive. Let me first clarify that when I speak of community in my research, I was interested particularly in political community, thus recognizing that social community does not exist en masse. Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," one of the most prominent voices regarding the decline of community life cites five main areas as evidence for a shift in citizen engagement. These are religious attendance, labor unions, parent-teacher associations, civic and fraternal organizations, and bowling leagues (69-70). Read those again. What do they have in common? They are indicative of a certain subset of social experiences mentioned earlier. More importantly though, they are all vestiges of a past age and are no longer likely to arrest the concern of young adults or their elder counterparts. In contemporary society, communities are small, individualized, decentralized, and their intricacies not easily identified or understood. Sociological case studies can provide insight into specific circumstances surrounding individualized group experiences which can then be generalized to some degree, but the vast social community Putnam longs for simply does not exist.
My final thoughts and some clarification of my original thesis: The United States has never contained a coherently and commonly held view of community or ethics, but there has been a degree of integration through political institutions and practices such as voting. At this point in time, due to stylistic and institutional changes in the media, individuals have become alienated from political participation, the last remaining link to each other and to democratic government. Media reform is necessary to reinvigorate civic dialogue, to bring individuals back to a communal world, to encourage employees to question their employers, and to once again make concerned and empathetic citizens into voters, activists, and political participants.
Work Cited
Putnam, R. D. "Bowling Alone: American's Declining Social Capital." Journal of Democracy 6.1 (1995): 65-78.