I would read and mark the readings from the PDF file (print them to be comfortable reading), then copy and paste from this file. I'll try to add the remaining files as they come up.
The errors from the OCR (Scanning) conversion remain -- you can correct as needed.
-the World
Editor: Charles R. Cooper and Susan Peck MacDonald
SENBmr: The Triumph of Liberalism 253
Publisher: BedfordlSt. Martin's
City: Boston
Year: 2000
'I'HE 'I'RIUMPH OF L IBERA LI S M
Roger Rosenblatt
Roger Rosenblatt is an editor and writer whose essays have appeared in the New
York Times, Time magazine, the New Republic , and other magazines, as well as
on The Lehrer Report, a PBS television news shoiv. He has received a number of
awards for journnlism and is the author offive books.
In this article, published in the New York Times in 1996, Rosenblatt defends
liberal is mi^ against some of its recent critics. Arguing, in part, that liberalism is
"robust and established," hefirst reviews some of the criticisms ofliberalism and
then defines what he nzeans by the term, He discusses some of the misunderstandings
(as he sees it) that have lessened the reputation of liberalism and ends with a
review of its accomnplishments.
As you read, note what rights Rosenblatt believes that liberalism has protected
and how he thinks liberalism fosters equality.
The America I heard singing o when I was a teen-ager in the late 1950's forced
homosexuals into hiding, ignored or derided the disabled, withheld rights from
suspects of crimes and kept women in their place, which was usually the kitchen
and sometimes an abortionist's back room. It foisted prayers on schoolchildren,
paid no attention to the health needs of the impoverished or the elderly, endangered
endangered species and threw people out of work because they held an un-
American ideology o In certain places, it denied black Americans the right to sit
where they wished to on a public bus, to drink from a public water fountain, to
eat in restaurants, to stay in hotels, to go to public schools with whites or to vote.
Every one of these conditions has been corrected or improved by laws and
attitudes derived from a philosophy that is held in such low esteem it dare not :
speak its name. Today, as America enters the 1996 Presidential election year, it -
is singing two different tunes. One is "Liberalism Is Dead and I'm Feeling So
Sad." The other is "Liberalism Is Dead aid I'm Feeling So Glad." If this keening
and gloating sounds familiar, it is. You last heard it in the election year of 1992.
The gloating came most elegantly from Irving and William Kristol, the formidable
father-son team of conservative thinkers. In an article in Commentary,
William, the son, stated that "liberalism is in a deep crisis" and has "a hollowness
at the core." Irving wrote in the Wall StreetJournal that "the beginning of
"I heard singing: An allusion to '1 Hear America Singing," a poem by nineteenth-century Ameri can
poet Walt Whitman. 'on-American ideology: During hearings of the House Un-American
Activities Committee in the 19505, some Americans were accused of being Communists and conse quently
lost their jobs.
254 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
political wisdom in the 1990's is the recognition that liberalism today is at the
end of its intellectual tether"
Regrets over liberalism's death arrived in defensive books from equally
thoughtful people who celebrated the New Deal and the Great Society as brave
last stands against the inevitable, and in statements like that of the former
Democratic Presidential candidate Walter Mondale that liberals "kind of used
up the old agenda." The final draft of the Democratic Party platform in 1992
openly spurned liberalisnl by trying to stake out a middle ground between
laissez-faire capitalism and the welfare state.O Respected authors sought to
redefine the term. Jim Sleeper; Mary D, and Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mickey
Kaus, among others, produced books that searched for a liberalism that repudiated
liberalism.
What is interesting about these two kinds of attacks, since both are attacks
with different motives, is that underneath it all, they take their ardor from the
presumption that liberalism is not dead, but robust and established. They are
right. "Liberal society is in trouble," says the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
"but I would be surprised at a retreat from a basic liberal ethos.". . .
Liberalism dominates the debate and defines the terms of the debate. The s
conservative assaults on the L word, which were made most effectively by President
Reagan, have been so routine over the past 16 years that there is a whole
generation of people under 35 who have never heard "liberal" uttered as anything
other than a joke or an insult. Yet they live in a liberal country Consen~atives
may have ruined the word but have adopted most of the content of
Iiheralisn~ . . . .
The liberalism 1 am thinking of is a kind of general cultural-political liberalism,
a mixture of the New Deal programs of the 19305 and the individual rights
movements of the 1960'5, which knocked the wind out of all the callous,
restrictive and narrow-minded conditions that I grew up with a few decades
ago. It is a malleable philosophy, generous and socially responsible, that governs
how people ought to live with one another in a healthy democracy. It is
not the specific liberalism of the Franklin Roosevelt era, or the Lyndon Johnson
era, or explicitly that of voting rights laws or expanded civil liberties, though it
creates and encourages such developments. Rather, it is the sentiment that may
be traced back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. . .and
to the moderate Enlightenment o from which those documents sprang, that
people are inherently equal, that they have a right to pursue their individuality
in an open society and that the state must use its power and authority to secure
their rights and to help the needier among them.
"laisser-laire capitalism and the welfare state: Laissez-faire is capitalism unrestrained by govern ment
regulations or saferynets. Welfare rtnte isa general term for a rovernrnent that takes respansib
ROSENBMIT: The Trium~ho f Liberalism 255
This liheralism is neither dead nor on the run. The country hacks away from
it in frightened and hardscrabble times. Most observers concede that it needs to
make some correktions in its details and attitudes. And from the viewpoint of
liberal candidates seeking office, it needs to regain political power td further its
aims. But in its competition with conservative thinking for the soul of America,
it has won hands down.
"People say that the Great Society failed," says Robert Caro, the historian of
the Lyndon Johnson Presidency. "That really is nonsense. Is anyone today snggesting
that we resegregate public accommodations, that we have 'colored' and
'white' toilets? It is unthinkable that we would make such retreats. Those
aspects of liberalism are now so much a part of America that they are indistinguishable
from America. In that sense, America is liheralism.". . .
In a cultural atmosphere in which liberals are assumed to support the purveyors
of sacrilege and dirty talk, the pnrviyors of simpleminded virtue come off as
moral leaders, and the public has a choice between the tasteless and the boring.
In fact, most liberals who favor the protections of an open society are appalled by
its excesses, but they have not made that clear. It has been said that they are in
favor of every subculture except that of married, hard-working, home-buying,
chnrch-going Americans. The themes raised by conservatives that have been
warmly welcomed by the rest of the country are not taxes or a trickle-down economy,
hut rather an evocation of communal values and morals.. . .
Liberalism is most scorned for its association with big government, even la
though liberals were against the abuses of Presidential power under President
Johnson in Vietnam and President Nixon in Watergate. While originally fearing
a too-powerful state, it has been seen as willing and eager to give the state
power in order to realize egalitarian o goals. In -Liberal Purposes" (1991), Prof.
William A. Galston of the University of Maryland wrote: "A government too
weak to threaten our liberties may by that very fact be too weak to secure our
rights, let alone advance our shared purposes."
Yet the fact remains that with all of liberalism's missteps and inadequacies,
America has signed on to it. There are major areas of activity, like the rights of
women and of memhers of minorities, and the environment, that could not
have changed the American landscape without great numbers of people agreeing
that they wanted government in their lives. Since the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, the presence of minority-group memhers in the work force
his grown from 11 percent to 23 percent. "Of course we don't have social jnstice,"
says Robert Caro, "but we have moved a long way toward it."
Women today make up nearly half the managerial and professional ranks.
This is because of big government-Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Suzanne
"egalitarian: Promoting equality
256 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
Braun Levine, editor of the ColumbiaJoumalism Review, said, "There has not
been a single woman in this country who has not been changed by the last 30
years of activism, and even those who resist what used to be called 'women's lib'
are benefiGiaries of it."
Even affirmative action, one of the most fragile and hotly contested of liberal
programs-debated by both conservatives and liberals-has proved to he
wanted, at least in some form, by most Americans.. . .
One of the less notedbut highly significant areas in which govemment has
proved indispensable is the environment. According to the Environmental Protection
Agency, the effects of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, signed by
President Bush, will reduce the country's air pollution by more than 49 billion
pounds per year. The number of regions violating the air-quality standards for
carbon monoxide has dropped to 9 from more than 40 in the past five years.
Sulfur dioxide emissions, which cause acid rain, have been reduced by 2.6 million
tons since 1990.
In short, since the 1960's, the public, rather than seeking to reduce a govern- a
mental presence in the environment, has sought to ratchet it up. Bipartisan
support passed the Clean Air Act'Amendments in 1990 by 401 to 25 in the
House and by 89 to 10 in the Senate. Industry has experienced no serious loss.
Du Pont and other chemical companies have been given incentives to develop
substitutes for ozone-depleting chemicals. The timber interests in Oregon originally
claimed that forest-saving eff~rtsw ould threaten jobs in the state, but
keeping the trees vertical has so increased tourism-while making the state
attractive as a corporate location-that now Oregon has the lowest unemployment
numbers in a generation.
None of this is to claim that the country is not concerned with the
amount of big government in its life-although there often seems to be as much
formulaic reaction against it as there is against "knee-jerk liberalism," or "big busi-.
ness." The reality is that the counuy vety much wants to keep government big.
The triumph of liberalism is not a political victory. Rather it is a triumph of
temperament and attitudk; it reflects how America wishes to exist. It has been
said that liberalism is confounded by an unrealistic optimism about the possibilities
of human advancement. But the idea was born in 18th-century rationalism.
It picked up 19th-century Romanticismalong the way as it moved
forward, and the combination of thought may be read in the Constitution-an
18th-century document with 19th-century riders.
The truth of liberalism is that it is both optimistic and pragmatic. It believes
in improvement but not in perfectibility. It is often embarrassed by the freedoms
it supports and encourages, and by the unwieldiness of the government it
promotes. But it believes in the dreak of human nobility, which historically has
proved equally fanciful and reasonable.
Perhaps, as happens from time to time, America appears to be fed up with
liberalism and prepared to shut down its normal impulses for a while. But
D I O NNE : Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era 257
every such period is followed by a further advance of both freedom and equality,
because this is the way the country has wanted to go. Within my lifetime,
America has prdgressed from a nation &at quashed human rights and diminished
human dignity to one that worries about cultural influences and a budget.
Most people would call that a triumph.
T HEY O N LY L OOK D EAD :
W HY P ROGRESSIVES W ILL D OMINATE THE N EXT
P OLITICAL E RA
E. J. Dionne JI:
E. J. Dionne Jr is a colunlnist for the Washington Post Hisjrst book, Why Americans
Hate Politics (1991J, won several awards and reportedly influenced Bill
Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign. This reading comes from Dianne's
1996 book They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next
Political Era. Using the telm progressive as a synonym for liberal, he predicts that
the United States is on the verge of a new era of liberalism, orprogressivism.
Dionne begins by refuting the typical conservative and libertarian argument
against government, which he characterizes as a negative argument because it
emphasizes freedom from interference. In contrast, Dionne characterizes liberalism's
support ofenergetic government as positive because it emphasizes freedom
to-that is, it emphasizes government's role in helping citizens to be free to enjoy
good health and not be impoverished in old age; in preserving the envimnment;
and in providing public schools, police protection, parks, and other services.
As you read, try to understand why Dionne thinks that the markerplace, orfreemarket
capitalism, needs to be regulated. Also keep in mind his distinctions behveen
size of government and kind of govemment, and freedom from and freedom to.
Those who believe in government's possibilities cannot pretend that they share
the new conservatism's view of the state. At the heart of the new conservatism
is the belief that government action is not only essentially inefficient but also
inherently oppressive. Democratic government, in this telling, has interests all
its own that have nothing to do with what the voters want. What's especially
important about this idea is that it ultimately sees no fundamental distinction
between free government and dictatorship. The differences are only a matter of
degree, not of kind: The more limited democratic government is, the better; the
258 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
more active democratic government is, the more it begins to approach the evils
of Nazism or communism. "Behind our New Deals and New Frontiers and
Great Societies," writes [conservative U.S.1 House majority leader Dick
Armey," "you will find, with a difference only in power and nerve, the same sort of
person who gave the world its Five Year Plans and Great Leaps Forward o -the
Soviet and Chinese counterparts." [Emphasis added.]
This an extraordinary and radical claim, effectively equating Roosevelt,
Kennedy and Johnson with Stalin and Ma0.O If the problem is stated like this,
then there is only one choice: Preserving freedom means having government
do as little as possible. A government that might levy taxes to provide health
care coverage for all or pensions for the old is seen as marching the people
down "the road to serfdom," in the evocative phrase of the libertarian economist
Friedrich A. Hayek. Better, in this view, to have no health care and no pensions
than to have the government embark on this terrible path. Environmental
regulations are seen not as preserving streams and forests for future generations;
they are viewed as ways of interfering with the free use of private property.
Work safety regulations are no longer ways of providing employees with
some protections against hazardous machines or conditions; they are seen as
"interference in the right of contract.""
This sort of thinking is now so common that it hasbeen forgotten how ra'dically
different it is from the tradition on which the United States was
founded-a tradition to which contemporary liberals, moderates,. conservatives
and libertarians all trace their roots. As the political philosopher Stephen
Holmes has argued (Holmes, 18,23), the entire project of freedom going back
to America's founders rests not on weak government, but rather on an energetic
government, government strong enough to protect individual rights. Free government
is different in kind from despotic regimes because its fundamental
purpose-to vindicate the rights of individuals-is different.
Imagine on the one side a dictatorship that has no government-provided
social security, health, welfare or pension systems of any type. It levies relatively
low taxes which go almost entirely toward supporting large military and
secret police forces that regularly jail or kill people because of their political
views, religious beliefs--or for any other reason the regime decides. Then
imagine a democracy with regular open elections and full freedoms of speech
and religion. Imagine further that its government levies higher taxes than the
dictatorship to support an extensive welfare state, generous old-age pensions
"Dick Amey: Conservative U.S. House majority leader at the time of Dionneb writing and an
unsuccesshl candidale in the 1496 Republican presidential primaries. *Five Year Plans and
Great Leaps Forward: The economic plans of, respectively, the Soviet and the khinese Communists.
'Stalin end Mao: ~osephS tklin and Mao Zedang, reprwive past Communist leaders of,
respectively, the Soviet union and China. *right of contract: The right of individuals to enter
freely into contracts. an important element in the political theory of libertarians like Hayek.
D IONNE : Why Progressives Will Dorninale the Nexl Political Era 259
and a governmtnt health system. The first country might technically have a
"smaller government," but there is no doubt that it is not a free Society The second
country would have a "bigger goGernment," measured as a percentage of
gross domestic product," yet there is no doubt that it is a free society. This point
might seem obvious, hut it is in fact obscured by the presumptions that underlie
the conservative anti-government talk now so popular. The size of government
is an important issue. but it is not as imvortant as-and should not be
confusedwith-the kind ufgovernment a society has.
, . Because the anti-government ideology of the new conservatism views almost s
all formspfgove~mgitn t . e . r vention (beyond basic police protec . t - io n . ) w ,. i , th . ~ su spicion,
it misses entirely the fact that democratic governments i nin tervene inGiys
that apand individual liberty. At the e%&e,it tooka viiy strong national government
(and very forceful intervention) to end slavery and literally free four million
Americans from bondage. It's worth remembering that supporters of slavery
saw abolitionists as "enemies of liberty" interfering with the "property rights" of
slaveholders and imposing the federal government's wishes over "the rights of
states." Similarly, it took a strong federal government to end segregation in the
1960s and vindicate the right of African-Americans to vote. Such actions were well
within the liberal iradition of free government which, notes Stephen Holmes,
accepted that there were occasions when "only a powerful centralized state could
protect individual rights against local strongmen and religious majorities" (20).
In the current cacophony of anti-gdverinment *lbganeering, it is forgotten
that the ever-popular slogan "equality of opportunity" was made real only by
extensive government efforts to offer individuals opportunities to develop their
own capacities. As Holmes points out, Adam Smith," the intellectual father of
the free market, favored a publicly financed, compulsory system of elementary
education. After World War I1 the government's investment in the college education
of millions through the GI Bill simultaneously opened new opportunities
for individuals and promoted an explosive period of general economic
growth. As Holmes puts it: "Far from being a road to serfdom, government
intervention was meant to enhance individual autonomy Publicly financed
schooling, as Mill wrote, is 'help toward doing without help"' (Holmes 23).
John Stuart MilP offers here a powerful counter to those who would insist that
government intervention always and everywhere increases "dependency"
Government also fosters liberty by doing something so obvious that it is
little noticed: It insists that certain things cannot be bought and sold. We do
not, for example, believe that justice in the courts should be bought and sold.
We presume that votes and public offices cannot be bought (even if expensive
political campaigns raise questions about the depth of our commitment to this
"grass domestic product: The total value at goods and services produced within a country during
a year "Adam Smith: Late-eighteenth-century philosopher and economist. *John Smart Mill:
Nineteenth-century British philosopher. author of Oa Liberfy
260 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
proposition). We now accept, though we once did not, that it is wrong for a
wealthy person to buy his way out of the draft during a time of war. And, of
course, we do not believe that human beings can be bought and sold.
But these do not exhaust the instances in which a free people might decide
to limit the writ of money and the supremacy of the market." As the political
philosopher Michael Walzer has argued, one of the central issues confronting
democratic societies concerns which rights and privileges should not be put up
' f; sale. As an abstract proposition, we reject the notion that a wealthy person
should he able to buy extra years of life that a poor persor cannot Einre I;%
itself ought not he bought and sold. Yet the availabilitv of health care &cts
longevity, and by manmg health care a purely market transaction, we come
clo-and deatn. This was the primary argument for Medicare a
and remains the central moral claim made by advocates of national health
insurance. Similarly, we do not believe that children should be deprived of
access to food, medicine or educationjust because their parents are poor. As
Holmes puts it, "Why should children be hopelessly snared in a web of underprivilege
into which they were born through no fault of their own?"
The current vogue for the superioiity of markets over government carries
the risk of obscuring the basic issue of what should be for sale in the first place.
In a society characterized by growing economic inequality, the dangers of making
the marketplace the sole arbiter of the basic elements of a decent life are
especially large. Doing so could put many of the basics out of the reach of many
people who "work hard and play by the wles." The interrelationship between
the moral and economic crises can be seen most powerfully in families where
the need to earn enough income forces both parents to spend increasing
amounts of time outside the home. One of the great achievements of this centuly
was "the family wage," which allowed the vast majority of workers to provide
their families with both a decent living and the parental time to give their
children a decent upbringing. The family~bagew as not simply a product of the
marketplace. It was secured through a combination of economic growth, social
legislation and unionization. If the marketplace becomes not simply the main
arbiter of income, as it will inevitably be, but the only judge of liviugstaudards,
then all social factors, including the need to strengthen families and improve
the care given children, become entirely irrelevant in the world of work.
Two questions are frequently confused in the current debate: whether mar- lo
ketplace ineclianismso might be usefully invoked to solve certain problems, and
whether the solution of the problems themselves should be left entirely to the
market. This confusion afflicts Progressives and conservatives alike.
On the one hand, applying marketplace logic to government programs can
be highly useful. One of the most telling criticisms of government is that it does
'the market: The free, unplanned economy responding to economic supply and demand.
'Medicare: Government program ofnledical care lor those over sixty-five. Dmarketplacem ecltfl sismc
Free-market economic features such as supply and demand or the profit motive.
D IONNE : Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era 261
not live by the disciplines of the market, and can thus-in theory at leastdeliver
serviies as shoddily as it chooses, with as large a bureaucracy as it
wishes. ~his'ar~umecnatn become h parody of itself, denying that there are, in
fact, good public schools, fine police forces, excellent public parks, great public
libraries and the like. But the argument does point fairly to certain limits on the
government's capacities.. . . There are instances when it is more efficient for government
to give each citizen a voucher to purchase services in a competitive
marketplace than to provide the services directly The GI Bill, for example, did
not prescribe where veterans would go to college. It let them choose and gave
them the means to pay for the education of their choice. Clinton's housingsecretary,
Henry Cisneros, proposed scrapping federal subsidies for local public housing
agencies and turning federal aid into housing vouchers that would go
directly to poor people. If a given public housing project was so crime-infested
and run-down that poor people wbuld choose not to live in it, it could be closed
and sold off. An abstract fear of marketplace logic should not impede experiments
of this sort.
But supporting markrt-oriented solutions to problems is not the same as suggesting
that the market itself,left to its own devices, wiisolve aIlprobLms. Tt fie
government had not given rtre educatilrn voucliers to the GIs, many of them
would never have gone to college. The market can break down, recessions can
throw people out of work, families can lose their health insurance, poor people
can lack the money to buy food and shelter for their children. The answer to the
most rabid free-market advocates is that the free market is a wonderful instrument
that also creates problems and leaves others unsolved. To assert as a flat
rule, as Representative Armey does, that "the market is rational and the govemment
is dumb" (Armey 316) is to assume that it is rational to accept problems
created by unemployment, low wages, business cycles, pollution and simple
human failings; and dumb to use government to try to lessen the human costs
associated with them. Mr. Armey might believe that; most Americans do not.
The difference between this era's conservatives and the American Progressive
tradition lies in the distinction between two phrases, "freedom from" and
"freedom to." Free-market conservatives are very much alive to the importance
of what the philosopher Isaiah ~erlinca lled "negative liberty," defined as freedom
from coercion by the state. American Progressives and liberals share this
concern for negative liberty, which is why they accept with the conservatives
the need for limited government. Historically, however, Progressives have been
more alive to the promise of "positive liberty" and to free government's capacity
for promoting it. To be the master of one's own fate-a fair definition of lib- i
erty-means not simply being free from overt coercion (though that is a precondition);
it also involves being given the means to overcome various external
forces that impinge on freedom of choice and self-sufficiency It means being
free to set one's course.
From the beginning, therefore, the Progressive project has involved the use
of government to give men and women the tools needed for achieving positive
262 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
liberty, beginning with free elementary and secondary education and moving in
the Depression and postwar era to Social Security, unemployment compensation
and access to college and to health insurance. (The Progressives, beginning
with women's suffrage, were also at the forefront in expanding the realm
of freedom for women.). . .
In our era, conservatives have monopolized the concept of liberty and given 15
it a particular and largely negative definition. Progressives have been castand
have sometimes foolishly cast themselves-as defenders of coercion and
bureaucracy, of government for government's sake. The imperative for Progressives
is to rediscover their own tradition a< the party of liberty. In a free society
all parties to the debate should be arguing about the best ways to enhance and
advance human freedom. For Progressives, that is and always has been the central
purpose of government.. . .
The Progressive's goal is not to strengthen government for government's
sake, but to use government where possible to strengthen the institutions of
civil society o Those institutions need protection against the state, but they also
need protection from market forces. How, for example, can families be liberated
from some of the pressures of the marketplace-through more "familyfriendly"
tax laws, through better rules on parental leave, through incentives to
create more flexible workplaces so parents feel less conflicted between the
obligations of work and home? How can government policies strengthen rather
than weaken the voluntary sector? Can the poor who live in public housing
projects be given more control of their surroundings and a larger stake in their
communities? Can rules be written so that employers who feel a sense of loyalty
and obligation to their employees will not be punished by the marketplace?
Given that the American charitable sector prospered for years on the
unpaid labor of women volunteers, how can it be revitalized now that so many
women both want and need to work for wages and salaries?. . .
Progressives-liberals-thus need to embrace a politia of liberty and community.
They cannot leave the definition of liberty to their conservative adversaries.
They need to contest the negative definition of liberty as incomplete. Yes,
individuals need to be protected against omnipotent, abusive government. But
they also have a right to look to government for help in defending their autonomy
and expanding the possibilities of self-reliance. Government should not weaken
the bonds of civil society. But government can step in to strengthen civil society
and protect it against the disruptions created by the normal workings of the economic
market. Surely anyone who claims to believe in "family values" should
\ . want to relieve falniliesof some of the pressures placed upon them by work and
economic distress. As Theodore Rooseve!t put it: "No man n -he could have
added women-"can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more'than sufficient
'insciNtions of civil society: Structures like families, neighborhoods, clubs, or volunteer program
that are important inour lives hut are not controlled or financed by government.
LUKER: Dubious Conceptions 263
to cover the bare costs of l~vinga, nd hours of labor short enough so that after lus
day's work,is done, he will have ume and energy to bear hls share in the management
of the community, to help ;n canying the general load (Roosevelt 146).
Long before "civil society" was a fashionable phrase, TR understood its meanmg.
A New Progressivism based on these principles would take seriously Bill Kristol'so
talk about "the politics of liberty and the sociology of vlrtue." But n would
contest the effectiveness of the new conservative program supported by Kristol
and his allies, arguing that liberty and virtue require not only freedom from government
coercion, but also the active support of a government that understands
not only its l~mitsb ut also its obligations. It is not enough to preach virtue to a
family that finds its living standard falling despite its own best efforts to work, '
save, invest and care for its children. Such a family surely deserves some support
for its own efforts to expand its gpportunities-and, at the least, some insurance
agalnst the worst economic catastrophes that might befall it.
Worn C ITED
Armey, Dlck The FreedomRevolution. Washmgton, D C. Regnery, 19
Berhn, Isaiah Four Essays on L~bertyN ew York Oxford, 1969.
Holmes, Stephen Passrons and Constrdlnt On the Theory oJLibera1
U of Chicago P, 1995.
Roosevelt, Theodore. "The New Nauonalism " Theodore Roosevelt, an Amencan Mind A
Se~edloafroinH is Wrrtjngs Ed. Mano R. DINUNION. ew York. St Martin's, 1974.
Waltzer, Mlchael Spheres ofJustrce A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Baslc,
1983.
D UBIOUS C ONCEPTIONS
Kristin Luker
Kristin Luker is aprofessor of sociology and jurisprudence and social policy at the
University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Abortion and the Politics of
Motherhood (1984) and a number of articles on teenpregnancy This reading comes
from her 1996 book Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy.
You will see that Luker shares one assumption with Jacqueline R. Kasnn: that
women who become pregnant as teenagers are less likely to complete their education
and take advantage of the opportunities available to those who pursue an
"Bill Kristol: William Kristol, an influential conlemporaly American neoconservative.
264 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
education first and marry later: Beyond that assumption, however; Luker's views
on sex education differ markedly from Kasun's. When Luker writes that "some
people thznk that sen education is part of the problem," you can assume that she
has conservative writers like Kasun in mind.
As you read, identify and thznk about the assumptions that Luker makes about
whose responsibilzfy it is to promote the welfare of teenagers. How does Luker's
answer to this question differ fmm Kasun's? Also note that Luker's argument
shares some of the same liberal assumptions that are evident in E. J. Dionne JK's
reading- the distinction between freedom from and freedom to.
In the past twenty years we have acquired a great deal of knowledge about preventing
mvoluntary pregnancy and ch~ldbearinga mong teenagers. But it's the
young people who voluntarily get pregnant (although we've seen how passive
th~s"v oluntary" choice can be) who elicit the most concern and whom we
know the least about helping. And many of the current pubhc-policy proposals
seem likely to reverse the gains of the recent past.
This is a dispiriting time to be thinking about teenagers and their pregnancies.
We know more than ever about how to help young people avoid getting pregnant
and having babies they don't want We can point with pride to effecuve puhhc
policies that smce the 1970s have helped keep early childbearing fromreaching
uuly epidemic proportions, though the numbers of sexually acuve teens have increased
enormously in the United States, as they have in most industrial~zedc ounuies.
Despite their success, these policies havenever really addressed the plight of
young women who want a baby or of those who don't much care whether they
have one or not. Yet here, too, accumulating research has begun to suggest ways of
encouraging even these teens to postpone pregnanay, while other research.. .
shows that the reasons for postponement are mu~hle ss urgent than once
thought.. . .
~ uthte dismay and anxiety of the American public in an era of rapid shifts
in the economy, in family structures, and in social well-being have led the puhlic
discourse about teenagers to become more mean-spirited and imational than
ever. To take one example, government programs have in fact reduced pregnancy
rates among teenagqs. The political consensus in the 1960s among
traditional liberals and traditional conservatives on public funding of contraception
has paid off handsomely: today, poor and minority women have the
sort of control over their fertility that only middle-class women used to enjoy
And young women have benefited from such programs to a greater extent than
most people realize. More and more'teenagers havqbegun using contraception,
and using it effectively Teens can now obtain low-cost or free birth control
from a variety of sources (including hospitals, local health departmen& and
Planned Parenthood clinics), and they make good use of this access: according
to one study, about 53 percent of all teenagers-and 72 percent of black
LUKER: Dubious Conceptions 265
teenagers~ohtain their first contraceptive from a clinic, whereas about 40
percent ofLallt eens obtain it from a private physician.' Between 1969 and 1983
the number of teenagers using fa&ily planning clinics increased more than sixfold.
By 1988 the figure had doubled again, to approximately 3 milli~nt;w~o -
thirds of all teens using contraception identified a family planning clinic as the
most recent source of their contraception? During the 1980% as the economy
worsened and medical care became more expensive, clinics became an ever
more important source of contraception for teenagers, especially poor ones? In
1983 more than 80 percent of teenage users of clinics came from families living
below the poverty level and 13 percent from families on public assistance.
Overall, clinic users are likely to he poor and black, and they are younger at
first intercourse than people who go to a private physician.
Since the number of sexually active teenagers doubled between 1970 and
1990, it is unlikely that any soit of contraceptive services would have effected a
substantial decline in pregnancy rates among teenagers, given that the population
at risk doubled. Yet a douhling of the population of s~xuallya ctix Lecnsdid
not lead to a douhling of the pregnancy rare, amu public funding of contraception
is thE reason This enormuusIy successEt program-one that hasmade
teens less likely to get than ever before and one whose effects are most
visible in poor and minority communities-has been rewarded by having its
funding cut almost in ha1f.l In part this is due to a resurgence in political opposition
to publicly funded contraception, opposition based to some extent on the
fact that federal programs have slowed but not reversed the acceleration in the
pregnancy rates among teenagers, leading people to see these programs as a failure
rather than the considerable success that they are.. . . s
[Another] public' policy-sex education-seems to be making some
progress in preventing teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place.
Although sex education has been a feature of American public schools since the
Progressive Era, we are just beginning to understand what makes a successful
'Melvin Zelnik. M. A. Koenig, and Y. J. Kim, "Source of Prescription Contraceptives and Subsequent
Pregnancy among Women," FanUIx Planning Perspectives 16 (1984): 6-13.
'A. Torres andJ. D. Farrest, "Family Planning ClinicServices in theunited States, 1983," Farn ily
Planning Perspectives 17, no. 1 (1985): 30-35; Alan Guttmacher Institute. O~anizedF amily
Planning Services in the United States, 1981-1983 (New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1984); M.
Chamie, 5. Eisman, J. D. Forrest, M. Orr, and A. Torres, "Facton Affecting Adolescents' Use of
Family Planning Clinic;." Family Pla,tnir~g Perspectives 14 (1982): 126-131); R. Levine and L.
Tsolflias, "Publicly Supported Family Planning in the U.S.: Use in the 1980s." Henry J. Kaiser
Foundation. 1994.
'U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Service. Centers far Disease
Control, "Use of Family Planning Sewices in the United States, 1982-1988," Advallce Data from
Vital and Health Statistics, vol. 184 (Hyattsville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, 1990).
'Levine and Tsolflias, 'Publicly Supported Family ~ l a n n i n ~tihne U .S."
ILeighton Ku, "Financing of Family Planning Services in Publicly Supported Family Planning
Services in theUnited States" (Washington, D.C.: Urban institute and Child Trends, lnc., 1993).
266 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
program. In 1938 Benjamin Grnenberg, a noted Progressive~reformerf,o und
that a majority of the nation's h~ghsc hools had insututed sex education prorams,
and most of the rest were cons~dermgd oing so In his day "sex educaon"
meant everything from brief lectures about menstrual hyg~eneto complex
~scuss~onosf the social, ethical, and moral d~menwonso f relat~onsh~ps
between the sexes-and thmgs are not very different now. At least th~rty-one
states and the District of Columbia have policies that mandate or encourage sex
education, but curricula vary widely In their length and their content, and relatively
few have been systematically and ngorously evaluated? We do know from
surveys that a great many students receive sex educat~onm school and that the
number is increasing over time. One study from the 1970s found that 36 percent
of public high schools offered a sex education course; another found that 80
percent of large school districts with junior or senlor high schools offered such
courses, either separately or as part of another course (say, health or b~ology).~
Surveys m the early 1980s found that about 60 percent of young women and 52
percent of young men had taken a course on sex education, and longitudmal
surveys suggest that this number 1s growing- that junior high and high school
students today are more likely to have received some sex educat~ont han their
older brothers and sisters were when they were in school. An analysis of the
1988 National Survey of Family Growth, for example, found that almost 90 percent
of teenage girls reported having had sex education by the tlme they graduated?
When asked, even more young people than this report havlng had sex
educat~ons,i nce they include mformation they have received in nonschool programs
such as scout troops, G~rlsC' lubs and Boys' Clubs, church groups, fam~ly
planning services, and health clin~csa, s well as m conversations about sexuality
and contraception with their parents.Io
Some people thmk that sex educat~on 1s part of the problem-that by
addressing and "normalizmng" sexual activity among teenagers, sex educat~on
encourages it This belief has a certain logic, but if sex'edncation does have such
an effect at all, n 1s very weak. One study suggested that takmg a sex educat~on
6Benjamin C. Gmenberg,'High Schools asCSeu Education (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1940).
'U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Human Resources. Reauthorizfltioi~ of the ~dolescek
Family L@ Dsnor!stration Pmjects Act of 1981: Hearittg before the Subcominittee oat Family and
Human Services ofthe Cornrnittee on Labor and Humall Resources. 98th Congress, 2nd sess., 1984.
. .?Freya L. Sonenstein and KarenJ. Pithnan, "The Availability of Sex Education in Large City - .
9c'alculalionc b y Jane Mxuldon utrl Krirlin Lukrr, baanl "n thr IVdU Natin113Sl urvey uf l.amlly
(;rowth. >ce lane M.~ulrlon a nd Krwn I.okcr. 'Cuntr~cr~tidant Ftrpt Sex. ihe Lfiech of Sex Fdu-
1 cation," Working paper no. 206, Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California at ~.
: Berkeley, 1994.
'William Marsiglio and F: L. Mott, "The Impact of Sex Education on SexualActivity, Contraceptive
Use and Premarital Pregnancy among American Teenagers." Fflmily Planning Perspectives
18, no. 4 (1986): 151-162.
LUKER: Dubious Conceptions 267
coprse would increase by 2 percent the odds that a teenager, especially a very
young teenager, would be sexually active.ll Another study found that young
mkn who received some ihstmction in contraception had their fist intercourse
slightly earlier than other students, whereas those taking courses that covered
AIDS education and "resistance skills" (how to say no) tended to have first
intercourse at later ages.12 Still another study found that students taking sex
education courses were less l~kelyto have sex than those who did not take such
courses." But careful and rigorous review of all the varlous studies on the matter
suggests that, in general, taking sex education courses has virtually no effect
on an indlvldual's propensity to become sexually active.'*
Th~iss good news, because it is becoming apparent that some sex education
programs can reduce pregnancy under certaln circumstances. Today, as In Ben- ,
jamin Gmenberg's time, sex education (or "family hfe" educat~ona,s it is often
called) covers a wide ringe of topics in a variety of formats, and most sex education
courses m the United States are less than comprehens~ve in the11
approach and substance. Some are extremely short, lasting only five to twenty
hours, and they often hm~tth emselves to the safer topics, such as anatomy and
phys~ology; m one family life program offered in New Jersey, students were
taught how to fill out the state's income tax form.1s Teachers may be wary of or
feel uncomfortable about discussing contraception, and may do so abstractly
and euphem~stically rather than directly and concretely Information about
reproduct~ve anatomy is certainly educational, but m the absence of other
mformat~onit is unlikely to prevent pregnancy
Another factor limiting the pdtential effectiveness of sex education courses
is the fact that many school districts postpone sex education untll the later
years of high school, when students are thought to be more developmentally
mature. But about one-fourth of Americans do not finish high school, and
m some urban areas the figure approaches one-half. This means that a substantial
number of young people, and disproportionately high-risk ones at that,
may never reach the grade level at wh~chse x education courses are offered.
Furthermore, many students become sexually active pnor to the grades in which
sex education is offered. one study in the 1980s found that about 50 percent of
"Ibid.
"L. C. Ku. E Sonenslein, andJ. Pleck, "Factors rcdurse among Young Men,"
Public HealthReyons 108 (1993): 680694. .
"Frank Furstenberg et al., "Sex Education and Sexual Experience among Adolescents," AmericanJountal
afPublic Health 75, no. 11 (1985): 1331-1332.
"Deborah A. Dawson, :The EiTects of Sex Education on Adolescent Behavior," Family Planning
Perspecfives 18 (1986): 162-170. Melvin Zelnik and Y. J. Kim, "Sex Education and Its Association
with Teenage Sexual Activity, Pregnancy and Contraceptive Use," Fanlily Plnazating Perspectives 14
(1982): 117-126. Kirby et al., "School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors," pp.
339-359.
'?Lana D. Mumskin with Paul Jargowsky,Creating and Implementing Family Lfe Education in
NewJersey (Alexandria, Va.:.National Association of State Boards of Education. 1985).
268 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
young women and 65 percent of young men received their primary sex education
from a partner, not from a course. Among youngblack men, 81 percent had had
intercourse before ever receiving any sex education; among white men the figure
was 61 percent; and among Hispanics it was 73 percent.16 Delaying sex education
until the later years of hig - h school, therefore; can seriously compromise whatever
effectiveness it may have, because some students never get the information at all
and others get it after they have already become sexually active. Not surprisingly,
when sex education is given to young people who are already sexually active, it
seems to have little effect on their contraceptive and risk-taking behavior.
Increasing worries about early pregnancy and AIDS have led many school
districts in recent years to offer sex education courses to younger students and
to make such courses mandatory rather than elective. Consequently, many
more people are receiving sex education these days, and many more of them
are receiving it prior to their first sexual experience. One study found that
among women who turned twenty between 1983 and 1985, only 56 percent
had had sex education prior to first intercourse; among those who turned
twenty between 1991 and 1992, the figure was 81 percent.17
After the Adolescent Family Life Act was passed in 1984, the federal govern- 10
ment established about two dozen projects based on a new concept-that of
preventing sexual activity rather than providing contraception. One fairly typical
example is the Sex Respect curriculum, developed in Illinois and now used
in many school districts throughout the country. It is much more prescriptive
than other sex education programs, advising that students abstain from sex if
they wish to avoid pregnancy. As a group, such "abstinence-based programs
encourage young people to abstain from sex, warn them of the dangers of sexual
activity, and, through discussion and role playing, try to give them the communication
skills they need in order to implement their decisions. Proponents
of this approach believe that providing information about contraception would
undermine the goals of these programs.'8'~ome of the techniques used, particularly
the resistance skills that help teens say no, have been incorporated into other
sex education cumcula, and some school districts have adopted abstinencebased
sex education while also teaching about contraception. The purely abstinence-
based curricula (those that give no contraceptive advice or education)
are fairly new and have not yet been rigorously evaluated. Like other sex education
programs, they can improve students' knowledge and attitudes, but their
effects on behavior are less clear.lg Early research suggests that some parts of
lDK?sl~ccl l . ! n Fur ian a v r ~ $ ~ r . ~ ~ ~ 1 , s .1 c I r Ic r c . n Krlly Mas,. l.,nen,ld IJI. A (It!rrto,t Stxulrl M,#dI It)
(;t.irlcf.,r in,t*c (\.III Fr.#nl.>~toIX ~IIIIIF I 'resi. 19Xh).
I9S. E . Weed andJ A. Olsen, "Evaluation Report of the Sex Respect Program: Results for the
1988-1989 School Year," Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, Office of Population Affairs,
Deparunent of Health and Human Services; 5. Christopher and M. Roosa, "An Evaluation of an
LuKER: Dubious Conceptionr 269
the abstinence-based programs can be quite effective. More conventional programs
that have i&orporated the teaching of resistance skills, for example, do
seem to have somk success in encouraging young people to postpone their first
sexual involvement, but often the postponement is not very great-on the
order of six months or so. Other research suggests that conventional programs
which are clearly directive-in their teaching (as are the abstinence-based programs)
rather than neutral in their approach are more likely to change students'
behavior. Preliminary data, however, suggest that all of these programs
may entail something of a tradeoff: the ones that focus on helping young
people say no have little effect on subsequent contraceptive use, and the ones
that impart contraceptive skills do not teach young people how to avoid sex.20
Since American teenagers face one to two decades during which they are sexually
mature but not married, programs that urge postponing sex but that have
no effect on contraceptive use may wofsen the situation.
According to new research, effective sex education programs can change
adolescents' behavior. Such programs typically begin before students have
become sexually active and they are usuallystrongly prescriptive in nature.
Effective programs focus clearly on goals and carefully evaluate what works.
Not only do some programs delay the onset of sexual activity, but others lead to
greater use of contraception. In comparison to people who have had no sex
education, those who have attended a good sex-ed program are more likely to
use contraception the first time they have sex, to obtain effective contraception
sooner, and to use contraception more reliably in general."
Thus, in view of all the evidence that public policies have done a reasonably
good job of containing early pregnancy despite a vast increase in sexual activity
arnon - z teens, the current conservative initiatives seem paradoxical at best and
self-defeating at worst. There are powerful pressures to cut public funding for
contraceptive programs, even as these programs are becoming recognized for
the success story they are.. . . Finally, just as we have begun to sort out which
sex education techniques work and which ones don't, the very notion of sex
education is more contested than it has ever been. In the face of accumulating
evidence which suggests that more students than ever are receiving sex education
and that well-designed programs tan indeed modify adolescents' risktaking
behavior, politically mobilized activists all over the United States are
pushing for hasty adoption of abstinence-based programs before rlgorous evaluation
has been able to show whether they are capable of doing anything other
than making adults feel better.
Adalercent Pregnancy Prevention Program: Is lust Say No' Enough? Family Relatia,~3 9 (1990):
68-72; M. Roasa and 5. Christopher, "Evaluation of an Abrtinence-Based Adolescent Pregnancy
Prevention Program: A Replication," Fataily Relatiarlr 39 (1990): 363-367.
l0Kirby, "School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors," pp. 339-359.
"Mauldon and Luker, "Contraception at First Sex."
270 EVALUATING CIVIC STANCES
To put this in the bluntest terms, society seems to have become comm~tted
to increasing the rates of pregnancy among teens, especrally among those who
are poor and those who are most at risk. Affluent and successful young women
see real costs to early pregnancy and thus have strong mcentlves to avoid it; but
poor young women face greater obstacles, both internal and external. Cuttmg
funding for pubhc contraceptive chnrcs, lmposrng parental-consent requrrements,
and limiting access to abort~ona ll increase the likel~hoodth at a young
woman will get pregnant and have a baby. Conversely, providing widespread
contraceptive services (perhaps even makmg the Pill available over the
counter), extendmg clinic hours, and affording greater access to abortion wlll
give at least some poor young women an alternative to early chlldbearing.
The news is even grimmer when it comes to preventmg or postponing childbearing
among teenagers who are not highly motivated m the first place. Even
as we amass evidence showing that early childbearing 1s not a root cause of
poverty In the United States, we are also realizing more clearly that the h~gh
rateof early childbearing is a measure of how bleaklife is for young people who
are hvmg m poor communities and who have no obvious arenas for success.
Here, too, just as we are developing a better sense of what it would take to offer
these young women and men more choice in life, the political temper of the
times makes even modest investments m young people seem like utopian
dreams. Far from making lives easier for actual and potential teenage parents,
society seems committed to makmg thmgs harder.
A quarter-century of research on poverty and early ch~ldbearrngh as yielded 15
some solid leads on ways to reduce early pregnancy and childbearing. But
because the young people mvolved have mult~ple problems, the solut~ons
aren't cheap. In order to reduce the number of teenagers who want babies, society
would have to be restructured so that poor people in the Un~tedS tates
would no longer be the poorest poor people tn the developed world Early
chlldbearing would decrease if poor teenagers had better schools and safer
ne~ghborhoods,a nd if their mothers and fathers had decent jobs so that teens
could afford the luxury of being chrldren for a whrle longer If in 1994 the
Un~tedS tates had finally succeeded in creating a national health care system o
(becoming the last industr~allzedc ountry to do so), th~csh ange alone would
have had a dramatic impact on poor people generally and poor women spec~fically.
Providing wider access to health care, for example, would have ehmrnated
some obstacles to contraception and poss~bly even to abortion. More
fundamentally, it would have meant that young women and men, even if they
did have babies and even if they did have them out of wedlock, could have
afforded to raise them wlthout going on welfare.
'nauanal health care system: In 1994 the Chnton ndrn~nstratmn's p roposed health care system
was defeated Conservatives objected to it as bang too large, expenswe, and bureaucraoc