Customer Reviews

Spirit Of Community

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Communitarianism, I believe, is the natural, common sense philosophy towards personal, social and political life that the majority of this nation holds. Before Dr. Etzioni and his cohorts in the DC area gathered, no one had put into words what many of us have felt and believed. The world is not one of absolutes; there are many shades of grey. Individual rights cannot rule supreme and the needs of the community cannot always overrule the needs of the individual. There has to be a middle ground and I believe this book speaks to that middle ground.

Many people find it easy to complain and degrade our social and polical structures and people in general, without suggesting any solutions. Dr. Etzioni provides clearcut resolutions to the problems of our day, such as drug use, AIDS, and even the corruption of our politicians.

What strikes me most about this book is how Etzioni shows that Americans have come to feel entitled to "rights" that are not really rights, and all this without having any responsibilities in turn.

If you wonder constantly how the ACLU can mount so many campaigns against laws that seem perfectly reasonable to you, or if you are tired of hearing kids getting kicked out of school for giving a friend a cough drop (no drugs at all!!!) then you will enjoy this book. I couldn't put it down.

Communitarianism - as proposed in Amitai Etzioni's "The Spirit of Community" assumes the moral legitimacy and truth of your community's assumptions about your life. It offers an external morality without epistemology, theology or logic, without any messy philosophic notions of essence or virtue, without judge or jury. It offers a slap-dash recipe for suffocating Stepford communities where neighbors are encouraged to interfere in each others lives. And this call to action is not grounded firmly in a basis of friendship, common humanity or agape caring as in Scott Peck's work on community building.

Mr. Etzioni himself should not be pointing any fingers. His communitarian morality represents either an ineptly presented or a cleverly muddled patchwork of positions with a little something for everyone. His occasionally tempting construct was designed to attract supporters for an underlying agenda of campaign reform in Washington, which he openly states must be leveraged from a position outside of politics through the political energy of a new social movement tied to morality.

The self-declared "single core thesis" on which Etzioni states Communitarianism is based is that "Americans .... can now act without fear. We can act with out fear that attempts to shore up our values... will cause us to charge into a dark tunnel of moralist and authoritarianism that leads to a church-dominated state or a right-wing world."

Besides the obvious difficulty in the notion of "shoring up" values, this statement is not a premise. "Trust me you liberals and libertarians, there is nothing to fear in supporting my as yet unstated proposals to curtail your self-centered freedoms," Etzioni seems to coo reassuringly. His self-declared premise does not undergird any of the recommendations he subsequently proposes - but it is the basis on which he selected them.

He suggests "notching" rights established in the constitution - after all if you have a right to privacy how can the community find out what you're up to? He states individual conscience is not enough to inspire virtue, and that communities should marshal focused social pressure to force people to do right. He later expresses dismay that the public pays so much attention to the private scandals of politicians. Hey - attack Washington about something that really matters and save the moral nit-picking for the neighbors.

The family should be strengthened, he says. Somebody should be home with the children. Etzioni repeatedly says it doesn't have to be the wife. It is a suggestion already among the compromises couples routinely work out without this communitarian guidance.

When he talks about the farm boys raised in moral homes and working for other farmers in moral family-like settings, it's interesting to note how ineffective his externally imposed morality really is. The minute these farm boys head to the city they turn into reprobates according to Etzioni.

Just as an aside, he notes we are all born half a human and must find wholeness in marriage. He declares flatly that thousands of productive single and divorced people are "damaged" goods, "in every sense of the word." This is common knowledge according to Etzioni, with no need for argument or supporting evidence for this outrageous dehumanization of significant portion of the population.

With no real premise stated, the first two sections of the book set the communitarian table with a smorgasbord of many flexible cheerleading-type phrases and many contradictory statements. Even the books opening bit - the pathetic flag-waving "We hold these truths" says very little in specific terms. Yes - -"We can do "A" (fill in some appealing but vague proposal) without offending you by causing "B" (fill in some authoritarian horror.)

No where in this patchwork of moralizing and reassurance do we find Etzioni's motivations for stitching this crazy quilt together. It's not until the third section "The Public Interest." that we come to a clear sequence of cogent reasoning - which I propose is the underlying motive for the entire unwieldy structure in first two chapters. In this section he targets big-monied special interests in Washington. "What is missing is a wide recognition that special interests are at the core of our systemic problems, a consensus powerful enough to unlock their grip on our legislature," (Page 221). Great. but does does his legislative end justify his means?

What Etzioni really wants is a "neoprogressive, communitarian," legislative solution:

Finance congressional elections with public funds." (Starting on page 234)
"Curb the flow of private money into the coffers of members of congress.
Impose a ban on PACS."
Reduce the cost of running for office by offering free TV and radio ads.
Promote disclosure of the political process by lobbyists sign into a registration book each time they visit a congressional office.
Enhance the enforcement of all rules, old and new
Enhance the role of political parties - Channel campaign contributions through political parties rather than directly to individual candidates. (Isn't that the so-called "soft money" that is so hard to track.?)

To get these reforms Etzioni has a plan: "There must be a new source of political energy sufficiently powerful to over come strong opposition and to propel far reaching changes..." (Page 226) "Historical experience suggest that social movements are the source of the needed political energy... They command cadres that mobilize the rank and file to what ever social action is called for..." (Page 230)

From the text of "The Spirit of Community" it's hard to avoid concluding that entire moral construct of Etzioni's communitarianism has been built to sign people up so later they can be called out to vote for his legislative reforms.

As a member of an about-to-be-oppressed minority, I'm taking my damaged goods over the to American Civil Liberties Union. My wallet suddenly seems one ID card too light.

A prescription for whipping American Society into shape in the tradition of Plato, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Marx. The premise is that Americans have too much freedom, not enough responsibility and Etziona puts forth a "Communitarian Manifesto" to fix that.
The book came out just after Gary Hart's challenge to the media to just try and catch him with his girlfriend. They did, and this demolished his presidential campaign. Henry Sisneros was promoted as a communitarian but his political career went down in flames over a similar private affair.
Etzioni advised the proletariat to ignore the personal foibles of public leaders and dwell instead upon their efficiency as governors. In the tradition of Plato's republic, the author sugggests a trained ruling class with the Priest-Kings drawn from Etzioni's own profession-Sociology. His other prescriptions will have a familiar ring to readers of his earlier work "The Active Society." They include work/residential communals where there would be no need for private automobiles, a zero-growth economy with a reduction and leveling of personal wealth and a great deal of community servitude of the involuntary variety.
Etzioni's works do change with the times. The earlier work suggests that men become involved in low consumption activities such as male bonding encounter groups and basket weaving a-la-Mohandis Ghandi. In the time of the current book, family values had become a platform issue and the author swapped basket weaving for taking time away from work to nurture children and build the family unit.
This book excited a mild amount of interest on college campus(s) and has faded into the background. The communitarian movemeent persists and may gain a significant following in the unpredictable future. Some readers may applaud the jacket picture of Etzioni and Al Gore walking arm-in-arm while others will swear they hear the distant beat of jackboots echoing in the distance

We want LIBERTY.
LIBERTY FIRST & FOREVER.

Communism-Police State in New Guise.

Amitai "Karl Marx" Etzioni is really just re-dressing the old Communist
argument in the new form of Community.

Community are by definion a form of coercion, i.e. police state. We do not
want values, lifestyles, thinking imposed by the community.

We want and need LIBERTY. We want free speech, free association.
People want to be free to live their own life and free from a life they do not
want.

Readers Beware. Community is just one word for a police state, like the
Marx-Lenin police state that caused 50 million death in the 20th. century.

We want LIBERTY, not the false, fraud, sham called community.