As many of you know, American jurisprudence has wrestled with the challenge of conscience for most of the past century. Two issues have proved pivotal. First, are all conscientious claims against the ...state religious, or some rooted in secular philosophy and morality. And second, whether how broad are the claims against state power -- if any -- conscience warrants. The scope of conscience can be either narrow -- restricted to religion -- or broad extending beyond religion, and the writ of conscience over against civil law can be either strong-warranting numerous exemptions and accommodations -- or weak -- warranting few or none. In 1990, the other shoe dropped. In a decision that has remained controversial ever since, Justice Antonin Scalia rejected a claimed exemption from drug laws for peyote used in Native American religious rituals. Granting this claim, he argued, would create a system "in which each conscience is a law unto itself." A society that did this would be "courting anarchy."
However, in the aftermath of the political instability that World War I unleashed across Europe, new forms of government representing radical challenges to the status quo emerged. ... after World War ...II, debates about political theory focused increasingly instead on differences among forms of democracy - elitist versus populist, representative versus direct, consensus driven versus agonistic, deliberative versus bargaining based, substantive versus procedural. Both Christianity and Judaism developed doctrines that drew lines between civil and religious authority, a stance that eventually defeated the entrenched Constantinian tradition within the Catholic Church.
Galston discusses Alexis de Tocqueville's discussion of voluntary associations in "Democracy in America," in which he contends that political and civil associations support one another.
Signs of progress Galston, William A.
Theory and research in education,
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Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this reply to my critics, I begin by clearing away some misunderstandings: I do
not reject autonomy and critical self-reflection as possible bases for political
judgment and action; I do not ...dissent from the standard view that some civic
education should be mandatory; and I claim neither that each citizen need possess
civic virtue nor that there is a one-size-fits-all conception of pro-civic traits
within a liberal society. I do endorse the idea of a ‘civic
core’ - beliefs, skills and traits of character that ideally every citizen
would possess. I then distinguish civic from philosophic education, characterize
liberal civic virtues as instrumentally rather than intrinsically valuable, and
clarify the relation between these virtues and the idea of limited government that
lies at the heart of liberalism. I defend my account of civic education against the
claims that it cannot justify citizens’ resistance to unjust or immoral
government policies and that it safeguards neither the basic needs nor the
meaningful exit rights of children. I conclude by distinguishing between parental
influence over children, on the one hand, and brainwashing on the other; the latter
warrants external intervention, while the former does not.
Civil Society and Government brings together an unprecedented array of political, ethical, and religious perspectives to shed light on the complex and much-debated relationship between civil society ...and the state. Some argue that civil society is a bulwark against government; others see it as an indispensable support for government. Civil society has been portrayed both as a independent of the state and as dependent upon it. This book reveals the extraordinary diversity of views on the subject by examining how civil society has been treated in classical liberalism, liberal egalitarianism, critical theory, feminism, natural law, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Confucianism. The volume draws on the work of eminent scholars to address six questions: In terms of function and consequences, does it matter where the line is drawn between civil society and the state? What is the relationship of civil society to the state? In what contexts and under what conditions should government interact with individuals directly or instead indirectly through communal associations? What are the prerogatives and duties of citizenship, and what is the role of civil society in forming good citizens? How should a society handle the conflicts that sometimes arise between the demands of citizenship and those of membership in the non-governmental associations of civil society? A theoretical introduction by the editors--political theorist Nancy Rosenblum and legal scholar Robert Post--and a conclusion by religious ethicist Richard Miller, tie the book together. In addition to Rosenblum, the contributors are Kenneth Baynes, David Biale, John Coleman, Farhad Kazemi, John Kelsay, William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Tom Palmer, Fred Miller, Susan Moller Okin, Peter Nosco, Henry Rosemont, Steven Scalet, David Schmidtz, William Sullivan, Max Stackhouse, Stephen White, and Noam Zohar.
William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having also served from 1993-5 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. He is ...thus able to speak with an authority unique amongst political theorists about the implications of advancing certain moral and political values in practice. The foundational argument of this 2002 book is that liberalism is compatible with the value pluralism first espoused by Isaiah Berlin. William Galston defends a version of value pluralism - liberal pluralism - and argues, against the contentions of John Gray and others, that it undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life.
It is conventional to distinguish between an old liberalism, with a robust conception of private property and a limited role for government in the economy, and a new liberalism that permits ...government to override individual property rights in the pursuit of the general welfare. The New Deal is often taken to mark the dividing line between these two forms of liberal governance. But when we focus on property rights through the magnifying lens of Takings Clause jurisprudence, we find that the movement away from strong property rights begins not with the New Deal but in the late 19th century, at what is normally taken to be the peak of constitutionally protected private property. The much-criticized decision in Kelo v. New London (2005) represents, not a break with past doctrine, but rather its logical consequence. Protecting individual property-holders against expansive state powers of eminent domain runs into a structural conundrum: while categorical restraints on state power limit government's ability to promote important public purposes, an explicitly purposive approach renders all limits on government power (including individual rights) vulnerable to an aggregative calculus. The most plausible response is a two-tier approach: respect for legally established categories in ordinary circumstances, regardless of their aggregate consequences, and consequentialism in circumstances of emergency, when the lives or basic wellbeing of citizens are at stake. Judged against this template, the consequentialism guiding modern takings clause jurisprudence in ordinary, non-emergency circumstances is hard to justify. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
In
The Political Economy of Human Happiness: How Voters’ Choices Determine the Quality of Life
, Benjamin Radcliff considers a wide variety of data from North America and Europe and argues that, on ...balance, welfare state policies make people happier. In short, there is a positive correlation and a causal relationship between happiness and welfare state provisions. This is an important conclusion for anyone interested in public policy and debates about the size of government. In their reviews, Larry M. Bartels and William A. Galston take issue with Radcliff’s thesis. They challenge the relationships that Radcliff suggests exist between specific policies and happiness. Bartels challenges the way Radcliff uses his statistics to support his thesis about the relationship between happiness and specific policies as well as our ability to make generalisations from the data. Galson’s objections to Radcliff’s analysis and argument is more conceptual, and, among other things, he challenges the connection Radcliff seeks to establish between happiness and the satisfaction of human needs.
