Robert Fuller’s 6/26/06 Washington Journal (C-Span) interview on the Politics of Dignity can be found here.

(To view the video, you need RealPlayer on your computer.)

Fuller appeared on Washinton Journal this morning. He talked a bit about forming a larger political consensus, and the questions were extremely varied. Most of the callers seemed to be from the older part of the population, and I was impressed by their grasp of political issues. I tend to assume the “netroots” are more informed because of ease of access to information on the Internet, but I may be underestimating how much people still learn from newspapers and radio.

The most interesting thing was several of these callers, who had a very long view on American history, thought that the country was more divided today than it ever has been

Over the last few weeks a number of articles on Daily Kos called attention to Garcetti vs. Ceballos, where retaliation for reporting discipline was outrageously restyled as managerial discipline. The issues range from free speech to enabling government corruption to the chill on whistleblowers.

I have nothing to add but gratitude for all who recognized immediately that any decision that give employees reason to be afraid to report fraud, negligence, and incompetence to their superiors will be a savage blow to the public good. I’m only here today to do my citizen’s duty and pass on that on Thursday, June 29th, National Whistleblower Center Chairman Stephen Kohn will be testifying before the House Committee on Government Reform about the ramifications of Garcetti v. Ceballos. Please note this link includes the handy-dandy Capwiz link to write your political representatives and let them know that you resent every move our government makes toward establishing the Orwellian state.

I’m heartened by the title of the The Human Dignity Act - legislation to extend at least some Federal labor law to the U.S. territory of the Marianas. While The Human Dignity Act is a specific response to Tom DeLay and K Street corruption, I think it implicitly affirms that respect for labor is still an American value.

We all need to hear that affirmation in light of BushCo’s ongoing quest to turn the clock back to the good old days of slave labor. While relentlessly exhorting the masses to the Protestant Work Ethic, what the Bush Crony Class really has in mind is the other American history of the quasi-feudal plantation system - where people flocked to the Colonies for the opportunity to become a gentile landowner, relieved manual labor by cheap, docile dependents.

In the U.S., fueling economic expansion has become an end in itself. Human beings are mere fodder for this process. While weasel-eyed Bush cronies proclaim the moral uplift of tough competition, no one really dwells on what happens to the losers in this process. People are just expected to “keep trying” until they are institutionalized either through the prison system or the mental health system. According to these rules, you either do what you have to do to win or you’re subjected to chronic indignity.

It’s time to refocus the shame where it belongs: on the people who are advocating and upholding this system of top predator exploitation and plunder. Government and corporate employers need to go beyond giving lip service to policies that respect and defend labor - they should get serious about enforcing them.

Take this case of sexual harrassment: the managers elected to look the other way and left their vulnerable subordinate to deal with the ranky panky on her own.

Today the Supreme Court did the right thing by reducing the personal risk involved in filing a sexual harassment complaint and, moreover, making it easier to enforce all anti-discrimination law. By upholding Sheila White’s claim of retaliation:

…the justices defined retaliation as any action taken by an employer that would intimidate “a reasonable employee” into backing off from a discrimination complaint.

The next step is for workers to rise up and demand justice wherever this intimidation occurs. This would be a significant step toward asserting the dignity of our labor and finding the common ground to repel the predations of the Crony Class.

The introduction to my edition of The Tale of Genji describes the author Murasaki Shikibu’s father as a “man who was either unable or unwilling to form and preserve the patronage relationships necessary for bureaucratic advancement…”

This struck a sharp chord for me, because I tend to chose to go with the truth of a situation instead of promoting the personal will of those in a position to guarantee my livelihood. I’ve often pondered why I don’t act according to my economic self-interest. It’s not only anti-Darwinian - it seems to go against the U.S. cultural consensus and the consistent advice of all who care about me. Everyone insists “networking” and “relationships with key people” are the main path to employment and political existence, and all who shirk the social game must be inherently self-destructive or just stupid (or, in business-speak, “needs coaching in social skills“).

During the past few weeks the call for government intervention to preserve net neutrality has once more stirred up my thoughts on what creates pressure to seek patronage. Ever since 9/11 I’ve been worried about the problem of trading freedom for safety - particularly the freedom of speech. However, I’m now even more worried that if we go too far in dismantling government, individual freedom will be all but demolished by corporate interests, mafias, and roving street gangs. Individual freedom isn’t the default: it needs to be actively protected.

The freedom of the individual is being betrayed by the civic culture that now dominates the U.S. Jared Bernstein has described how YOYO economics has maximized the freedom of a few well-placed individuals at the expense of the many. On the cultural side, Robert Fuller has been arguing how rankism places relentless pressure on people to turn to patrons, fueling an epic expansion of indignity. I’ve been arguing that the New Puritans are seeking to block the marginalized from putting their opinions on record, invoking risk to potential patronage relationships. Note the underlying problem of all of this is that people are increasingly turning to the patronage system, while resistance to the patronage system leads to ostracization and homelessness.

Not since the days of corvee labor have average individuals been so powerless in society. Everyone feels dependent on a corrupt employment system. But, moreover, the nation of “nobodies” has no recourse when corporate interests infringe on their most basic civil and human rights. This might be because the powerful forces of our society are not answerable to any institution charged with protecting the rights of each and every individual. The media has become a purveyor of corporate messaging, the legal system is impossible for regular people to cope with even though most can’t afford a lawyer to do the coping for them, and the State can run roughshod over the rights of the individual now that our ostensible “representatives” don’t bother to help constituents unless a good photo op or a bribe is involved. Individual financial viability is being eroded by enormous systems of theft, from health care price gouging to corporate litigation herding into mass settlement centers. While “public interest” groups such as the ACLU seem to be protecting individuals, they actually only help people if it serves their policy agenda.

No wonder everyone feels like they are puppets forced to play out someone else’s lie. And frankly, the current Democratic emphasis on “framing” just reinforces this feeling of being squeezed into a mold of unreality. Even blogging only gives a few people a serious megaphone to stand up for their truth, and this just underscores the plight of those without a megaphone. Why should a megaphone be required? Why do we need to tarry for people in the streets (not to mention fake mobs)?

Big government can be costly and oppressive, especially when the checks and balances fail. However, if we throw out government all together, we will quickly find ourselves in a new feudal age where patronage-seeking and constant indignity are the only possible way of life.

Both political parties know that a unifying core value expressed in a pithy slogan translates into votes. FDR’s Democrats had “The New Deal”; LBJ’s party advanced “The Great Society.” Republicans rally to “lower taxes,” “smaller government,” “strong defense,” and “family values.”

What core value, what slogan, could move us beyond the toxic standoff that paralyzes American politics today?

The answer lies in a single word—Dignity.

This core value takes wings on the inclusive slogan: “Dignity For All.” The bumper sticker reads “Dignity4All,” and it will soon begin appearing on cars across America.

The idea of a universal right to dignity may at first seem too simple to pull together the disparate elements of this divided nation, but it’s not. Dignity is what people want, on the left, on the right, and most importantly, in the vast, non-ideological middle.

Dignity is not negotiable. People will stand up for their dignity, and once they’re on their feet, it’s usually not long before they’re marching for justice.

Two hundred years of bloody world history have shown that there is no direct path from Liberty to Justice. But if we interpose a steppingstone, we can build a bridge to justice. The name of that stone is not “Equality,” it’s “Dignity.” By establishing the right to dignity, and then enacting legislation that protects everyone’s dignity equally, we can give concrete meaning to Thomas Jefferson’s evocative claim that “All men are created equal.”

A “dignitarian society” pulls together what’s best from the three broad strands of civic culture dominating politics since the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The polarizing stranglehold these ideals exert on the contemporary imagination, when any one is prioritized over the others, is a major source of the incivility that infects our politics today.

Conservatives see themselves as Liberty’s defenders; progressives pride themselves as the champions of equality. Both parties promise Fraternity, but neither delivers it.

Dignity is more encompassing than Liberty, Equality, or Fraternity. It’s the missing link that when restored will yield an electoral mandate to make good on America’s founding promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

The politics of dignity puts the “We” back in “We the People.” It spans the conservative-liberal divide. It closes the ideological fissures that separate libertarian, egalitarian, and fraternitarian ideologies and breaks the stalemate that has stalled the advance of justice since the 1960s.

A dignitarian society does not tolerate indignity—towards anyone. When this principle is translated into policy, it rules out acceptance of a permanent underclass. It disallows prejudice and discrimination toward all the groups that have rallied around the various flags of identity politics. It transforms the stalemate over abortion and gay marriage into a civil discussion of whose rights to dignity are being abridged. It proclaims everyone’s right to a sustainable environment.

Like liberty and justice, dignity is most easily defined in the negative. As a precursor to banishment or enslavement, we’re all attuned to pick up on the slightest hint of indignity.

What causes people to experience indignity? The precise and universal cause of indignity is the abuse of power. Make a list of the most distressing issues of recent years: corporate corruption, the Katrina catastrophe, sexual abuse by clergy, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, etc. Every one of them can be traced to an abuse of power by individuals of high rank. Often the abuses had the blessing of people of even higher rank.

To effectively oppose the full range of abuses of power vested in rank, we need a word that identifies them collectively. Abuse and discrimination based on color and gender are called “racism” and “sexism,” respectively. By analogy, abuse and discrimination based on the power inherent in rank is “rankism.” This coinage provides a vitalizing link between the methods of identity politics and the moral values of democratic governance. Having a generic name for abuses of power makes them much easier to target, and targeting them is precisely what’s called for if democracy is to resume its evolution.

However principled the cause, no party can present itself as a champion of dignity so long as its members reserve the right to indulge in rankism. This includes treating political opponents with indignity. Humiliation and condescension—toward domestic opponents or foreign enemies—are inherently rankist postures, and as such they have no place in a dignitarian politics.

How would a society that makes dignity its linchpin differ from ones shaped by ideologies that accentuate liberty, equality, or fraternity? The difference is one of nuance, not opposition, for a dignitarian society combines the strengths of all three traditions.

A dignitarian society promotes individual freedom, while at the same time tempering the uninhibited free market with institutions of social responsibility that insure that economic power does not confer unwarranted educational or political advantages. For example, you shouldn’t have to be rich to attend good schools, or command a fortune to stand for office.

A dignitarian society provides genuine equality of opportunity. In a dignitarian society, loss of social mobility, let alone division into master and servant classes, is unacceptable. There’s a way out of poverty in a dignitarian society. Everyone earns a living wage and has access to quality health care.

The politics of dignity sees democracy as a work in progress. Democracy’s next step—one that will enlarge liberty, deliver justice, and foster fraternity—is to overcome rankism and build a dignitarian society.

Dignity is an idea whose time has come. The party that takes dignity as its core value can mobilize the energy not merely to win at the polls, but to win with a mandate to fulfill our nation’s implicit promise of “Dignity For All.”

*This article was a featured column on Huffington Post on June 15, 2006.

Over the last year there has been a torrent of media articles intended to discipline (or terrorize) people into using what the power elite considers to be “good judgment” in the presentation of your online self. This reminds me of the early Puritans scurrying across the wilderness with a mission to scold and rebuke all those who weren’t toeing the line for the theocratic Millenium.

CNet struck the gusher of contemporary fear, loathing, and perpetual irony when Elinor Mills googled Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Ever since then, the mainstream media has been obsessed with “digital dirt”, preaching to the reprobate bloggers and warning parents that their children will be damned to unemployment for their injudicious use of MySpace, Facebook, and other social sites (nope, I’m not going to clue the snooping Puritans in).

This week the New York Times hit with the old one-two punch. First sticking your neck out in the public space is a threat to your livelihood. Second, the Internet is a playground for stalkers. All that was missing from the set was the ever-popular screed against the Internet as a moral hazard that facilitates goofing off in the workplace, therefore undermining the Puritan work ethic.

Despite widespread interest in privacy and defending the few individual rights we have left, public response to this elite reformism has been muffled at best. I think some of the confusion stems from the idea the Internet is a public space: of course your employer, an army of marketers, random stalkers, and men in black are as free to seek you out as anyone. Sure your presence is amplified and perma-recorded in that public space, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that the glitterati have always known: you can’t get the benefits of visibility without being prepared to fend off the dangers.

Most people, of course, don’t command the social influence, legal resources, or public relations personnel that celebrities wield to cope with attacks on their reputation in public space. The Puritan Reformers of this age as well as the 17th century are concerned above all with everyone else’s reputation. In the previous Puritan heyday of 17th-century England, it was common to go to court for just being called a rude name in the street. Today this is rarely a feasible option, and frankly I don’t think using the MSM megaphone to shout “Repent, Sinners!” is going to rollback the Information Age, either.

I’d like to propose another way to look at our online over-exposure. It’s not only “public space” - it’s a form of civic “third space” - i.e., a place for socializing and discussion that is apart from family and apart from the workplace. The third space used to happen in the market, at church, and in the local pub. Now it happens on the Internet, too.

The third space is publicly accessible, but it is not a standing invitation to be attacked or abused. When the people who have power over you seek you out for the purposes of threatening your livelihood or putting pressure on your political opinions, that’s abuse.

While I’m sure there are a stampede of lawsuits just around the corner that will ultimately persuade the beancounters in risk management to discourage corporate HR from stalking hapless personnel, I would rather see the monied elite rethink the New Puritanism, and, instead, make a move in the direction of progressive leadership. For instance, at the next Business Ethics Summit, the big decision-makers could pledge to establish corporate policies to forbid snooping into the private lives of either potential or existing employees. They could instead declare themselves to be in favor of free public discourse and support the emerging third space. The sort of heavy-handed discipline imposed in the workplace is often counter-productive and stressful during working hours: it’s certainly inappropriate, if not inhuman, to extend the New Puritanism into the “third space”, too.

Robert Fuller is back in Berkeley, bearing pictures from YearlyKos. Here’s a summary of his thoughts on the gathering:

YearlyKos was not exactly a passing of the torch from traditional to Internet journalists-there remains a need for books, newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV-but it was certainly the acknowledgement by the former of the latter as co-equal members of the indispensable Fourth Estate. If a democracy needs a free and vigilant press to hold government accountable, then the traditional media that historically played that role need the new Internet journalists to hold it accountable. The Romans used to ask “Who guards the guardians?” The analogous questions for media are “Who watches the watchers?”, “Who chronicles the chroniclers?”

The emergent Blogosphere provides an answer. A swarm of bloggers can force the media to live up to the standards of integrity taught in journalism schools or depicted in movies like Good Night and Good Luck. At YearlyKos, 1000 bloggers assembled for the first time and a few famous traditional journalists wrote about the phenomenon with a mixture of condescension and respect. It’s hard to imagine democracy making the evolutionary step to a dignitarian society,
without this new breed of watchdogs that has found a home in the Blogosphere.

While at YearlyKos, Fuller hung out with the Link TV crew as they video-blogged the event.

If anyone is interested, you can see clips from YearlyKos here: http://www.linktv.org/yearlykos/

Longer segments with better video controls and chat are posted here: http://www.fora.tv/ - I was told by Robert Fuller that these are going to be free. When I searched, I found this one.

Robert Fuller just called to update me on all the goings-on at YearlyKos. He attended the Political Journalism panel, where representatives of the main stream media incuding Atrios, Matt Bai, Jay Rosen, Christy Hardin Smith, and Paul Waldman engaged with the increasing influence of bloggers in the national conversation. Fuller was particularly impressed with blogger Marcy Wheeler (”emptywheel” on Daily Kos and The Next Hurrah).

Fuller also spoke highly of the New Politics Begins panel, led by New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg and New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden. This panel examined specific social and political factors (such as immigration) that the Democrats would have to take into account in order to win the presidency in 2008.

Fuller also met Dr. Joel Rogers (Professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Center On Wisconsin Strategy) at a panel on Labor and Power.