Balkinization: Another Crisis Moment? Why?

Another Crisis Moment? Why?

Brian Tamanaha

In The Progressive Historians (1969), historian Richard Hofstadter identified this pattern:

[A]bout once in each generation they [American people] endured a crisis of real and troubling severity. The Union was in some danger of division during 1798-1801; it was in serious trouble during the years 1807-14 and again in 1832. It was racked by such grave differences in the 1850's that it finally broke in two. It went through a touchy crisis again in Reconstruction, climaxed by the events of 1876-7. It was deeply disturbed in the 1890's and again in the 1930's. And now, in the 1960's it is in the midst of a dangerous major crisis the outcome of which I hesitate to try to predict.

A sign of a crisis is a lapse of comity:

Comity exists in a society to the degree that those enlisted in its contending interests have a basic minimal regard for each other: one party or interest seeks the defeat of an opposing interest on matters of policy, but at the same time seeks to avoid crushing the opposition, denying the legitimacy of its existence or values, or inflicting upon it extreme or gratuitous humiliations beyond the substance of the gains that are being sought. The basic humanity of the opposition is not forgotten; civility is not abandoned; the sense that a community life must be carried on after the acerbic issues of the moment have been fought over and won is seldom very far out of mind; an awareness that the opposition will some day be the government is always present.

Are we in another once-in-a-generation crisis moment? The timing is right, and his description of the breakdown of civility fits. If that's so, you have to wonder why. Circumstances today do not appear that bad, on the surface anwyay.

The present situation combines two characteristics, at least one of which was present in previous crisis moments. We are at war, though in the absence of a draft this is not a total national war. And we appear to be in the midst of a severe economic readjustment (economic uncertainty, extraordinary disparity in wealth between rich and poor, wages losing to inflation, personal and national debt), though it falls short of past depressions. Arguably the current redistribution of wealth to the rich and the loss of economic power of labor is taking place on a scale analogous to past structural changes in the economy (from agriculture to industry, from South to Northeast), but that seems a stretch.

Maybe this just feels like a crisis because the talking heads are blowing a lot of hot hair in the media and blog world. Protests and social disruptions are few and mostly docile (reaching a peak two days ago when a dozen or so Grandma's Against the Irag War were arrested in Times Square at a military recruiting office for demanding to be allowed to enlist). Maybe we are experiencing a breakdown in civility but not a full blown crisis. Maybe this is just a continuing echo of the unresolved crisis of the 1960's and 1970's.

Perhaps if you have to ask whether you are in a crisis, you're not in one--yet. But it sure feels like one.

Posted 8:39 AM by Brian Tamanaha [link]