E-Pluribus | May 7, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq: Does Disqualification Work?
Future disqualification from office was hotly debated during Donald Trump’s second impeachment proceedings. While now a moot point (unless Trump wins the presidency again as has a third go at impeachment), the practice is not uncommon even among democracies. However, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq make the case that free societies should be loathe to take this drastic step. While perhaps well intentioned, disqualification is ripe for abuse and manipulation by both its targets and executors.
Disqualification then is not just an American idea. It is found in constitutions and bodies of law around the world. Sometimes, it is used to expel particular people; sometimes, to push whole groups out of political life. In Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, lustrations — a term derived from ancient purification rituals — led to the ban from public employment of tens of thousands of people who had been complicit in the regimes.
But disqualification raises profound questions: When should an elected majority be able to act in an undemocratic way, invoking the need to protect democracy? Is it ever fair to single out specific people for exclusion from political life? Should it matter if, like Trump, they have significant support among the voting public? And does it make matters worse or better if groups rather than individuals are targeted?
[…]
The core problem is a common tension within democracies. Some elements of political participation — the forms of elections, rules for candidate qualification and for voter qualification, terms of ballot access — may need to be adapted to changing conditions, such as when a pandemic disrupts voting. But power to set the rules comes with power to manipulate them: to handicap political opponents and entrench incumbents, creating an image of democratic competition without its substance.
Disqualification struggles with this tension. It is not alone: Debates over redistricting, the choice of electoral systems, and citizenship eligibility, all raise similar issues. Each is within the heartland of democracy, but each presents a temptation to abuse.
Read it all at Persuasion.
Christos A. Makridis: Religious Liberty and Economic Freedom
In a brief piece at City Journal, Christos A. Makridis, a research professor at Arizona State University and a non-resident fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, explores the relationship between two fundamental freedoms, religious and economic. Makridis contends that due to the focus on basic personal autonomy these rights involve, any efforts to restrict the one will inevitably impact the other, and not for good.
Using data on more than 146 countries since 1996, my research finds that increases in religious freedom precede, and help explain, increases in economic freedom. The logic is simple: since religious freedom fundamentally involves granting individuals the autonomy to think and worship in whatever form they wish, it is arguably the most basic of all freedoms. Property rights are of little use if those who retain them do not have the freedom to think what they wish and practice what they believe.
Unfortunately, that freedom is under threat. Religious liberty has sharply declined over the past decade — particularly in such heavily populated countries as China and India. The decline has also been concentrated among countries that traditionally rank high in economic freedom and property rights. Even the United States, the United Kingdom, and France experienced declines.
Read it all here.
Chris Ferguson: Rethinking Diversity Training
Writing for Heterodox Academy, Chris Ferguson says that while racial and ethnic imbalances exist in a variety of occupational settings, the relatively recent emphasis on “diversity training” may be doing little to affect change and may even be harmful. Ferguson particularly finds fault with some of the more trendy concepts (microaggressions, critical race theory,) but, while not dismissing the entire practice, he suggests more data is needed on truly effective methods if the objectives of diversity training are to be achieved.
Significant controversy has emerged in the psychological literature regarding diversity training in educational settings and in the workplace. Put simply, many diversity training initiatives appear to fail. When done well, diversity training can promote greater cooperation among individuals of different backgrounds, foster understanding, and reduce unwanted or discriminatory behaviors. But, as with all things, research evidence sometimes changes, and some practices may become trendy despite evidence they are of limited value or even negative. On university campuses, advocacy groups and administrators may push ideologically loaded trainings that may ultimately contribute not to increased empathy but to a culture of fear, hostility, and intimidation.
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Another controversial issue revolves around trainings focused on microaggressions, which are particularly popular on university campuses and often part of first-year programs. Microaggressions are slights, often unintended, that highlight the differentness of people not in the majority group. As with implicit bias, the concept of microaggressions has gotten considerable attention in the public. However, recent scholarship reveals that the concept is not built on a solid foundation of scientific evidence and trainings, which suggests it may actually do more damage than good in polarizing different groups. In essence, people may become more primed to interpret ambiguous events as aggressive, become more upset by these events, and be less forgiving of minor or accidental transgressions after being informed to scan for and interpret them negatively.
Read the whole thing.
Around Twitter
Speaking of diversity training:
And also speaking of critical race theory:
In an situation involving Jesse Singal, the ACLU continues to demonstrate its present day mission is more ideological than principled:
Speaks for itself:
States (in this case, Arizona) continue to fiddle around with ideas of how to control what it taught in their schools, but proposed solutions can be just as contentious as the problems they are seeking to solve:
“The authorities” used to almost always be a pejorative term among liberals. No longer, it seems.
