PoliSci for beginners

“Politics is the deliberation on how we order our lives together,” said Aristotle, the Greek tutor to the Macedonian Alexander. “Politics is the science of the possible,” is the current slogan of polished politicians.

Political economy, the academic discipline that emerged and flourished with Malthus, has been the classic understanding of the way economics was to be beheld, not as the science to human’s response to the drive to survive, but as a discipline in parceling out the scarce resource in a world where “the poor will always be with us.” It is no wonder that English Divines called it “the dismal science.”

Malthus was actually preceded by another Thomas. Hobbes’ famous 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. Humans are inherently selfish, he would claim, and are predisposed to kill each other to preserve themselves, thus the necessity of a social contract, the requisite forerunner to our contemporary state/national political institutions.

One can feel the long shadow of Augustine’s “original sin,” and the pervasive influence of Christian dogma on the untrustworthiness of being human, casting everyone from the beginning as needing to be saved. Marry that to Hobbes and Malthus and one has a political economy that is based on “dog-eat-dog” and the varied methods of one-up-wo/manship widely practiced today!

Ex-Dominican Matthew Fox countered original sin with original blessings, and Christian theology had not been the same ever since. Creation spirituality has recovered the virtue of the human scale once more.

My first trip to Saipan in the late ’80s was on the invitation of a friend who was launching a political career. He was overwhelmed by his deep sense that to even venture into the field is to be considered a profound honor, a status befitting the elite. He broke down in tears at the announcement of his candidacy.

Having just lived through the People’s Power politics of the Philippines, I was not prepared for my friend’s sense of the political field that beckoned more to the age of the Man of La Mancha than to the Chamorii who needed to bring order and social stability in the socio-economic cauldron brewing in Saipanda. This was the period when Reagan’s executive penchant for deregulation and the tweaking of the dollar to seek a level of comfort vis-à-vis other currencies, especially the yen, that we witnessed the influx of Nippon’s investments into the Far East and Pacifica, and casting the mold of our island’s economy.

We still suffer from this sense of politics narrowed down to the workings of the electoral process where the holding of elected public office is primarily an attainment of personal and familial status of the privileged few, a pathway to upward social mobility.

Happily, the world has changed. The U.S. declaration of independence itself speaks of self-evident truths like “all men (sic) are created equal” and that all are endowed with inalienable rights. In this vein, a century later, Abe Lincoln would thunder in Gettysburg the much quoted phrase “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In 1920, we finally gave the women in the United States the right to vote. Less than a century later, Hillary Clinton dared to shatter the crystal ceiling to the White House and has triumphed wonderfully toward that effort. A woman President is no longer a matter of whether or not, but a question of “when.” Former congressional Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous “All politics is local” points to one of those self-evident truths, and post-1964 Civil Rights legislation, 45 years to the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech in Washington, D.C., Barack Obama might very well become the first man of African-American descent to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Moving then out of the picture of simply the electoral process, how might we picture politics? The second process (the first, being to survive, and the third, the search for meaning) that all humans and its societies have is in response to the drive for order, for the organization of society through law-making and law-enforcing bodies so that there is security and justice for all. This is the political dimension of every social order from the local to the global.

Three words would point to three dynamics in this dimension: order, justice and welfare (well-being). Processes that enforce social stability, provide security to the resident population, and sustain the equilibrium of social power define the ordering dynamic. Processes which spell out the consent to be governed, ensure equity so that everyone can assume responsibility and ownership in decision-making, and structures built to adequately care for everyone—especially the sick, the elderly, the poor and the outsider—are indications that corporate justice is being done. Beyond the currently reduced meaning of “welfare,” processes that establishes all-round well-being and well-doing, ensuring people’s access to food, shelter and social benefits, including the efforts of the civil society beyond public order, all inclusive of the political process of welfare.

Taotao Tano’s clamor for respect, and recovery of integrity, is deeply rooted in the tradition of the people of the land. This needs to be balanced with the Remetau’s (Taotao Tasi) experience that before the storm, one cares only on the ability of the other to assist in navigating the sails and steering the rudder of the ship of the State, and that might mean working with those who we might not otherwise sup with the night before. Or, that we jettison those who might decide to be deadwood to lighten the load even if one is a close relative or favorite associate. Respect and integrity can no longer be a matter of personal morals and virtues but of deep political honoring of everyone’s political rights and responsibilities.

We laud the seemingly quixotic efforts of Tina Sablan and Ed Salas in pushing for unpopular measures such as extending accountability processes to the Legislature, and being proactive to our represented but non-voting residents among the contract workers. John Davis and Chong Won’s tossing their berets to the local electoral process is a sign of maturity of the local scene. John Davis’ listing of where he stands on issues as a candidate for the U.S. Delegate position is commendable. We await the others to do the same.

Current Economics courses divides content between the micro and macro levels. What has become evident is that the globalization of economic processes has become a done deal. The challenge is the strengthening the localization of the political process, so that federalization and other intermediate level of governance would not come as a threat but be an integral component of the political process.

We would do well if in our schools, we teach our STUCOs that politics is not about the art of strutting like a peacock into the podium, which is probably too late for the Youth Congress, but is about the function of service.

So, let us not be threatened by more expressions of opinions and perspective in all media. Let us not hesitate to attend any or all public meetings, nor refrain from having our voices heard, but more importantly, let there be a flowering of civil alliances, associations and aggregations, so that indeed, politics becomes truly of the people, by the people and for the people.

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