Professor Kenneth Andersen Called for Civic Community in 2003. Are We Any Closer?

Kenneth Andersen

Among a speaker’s greatest roles is to call for moral renewal. Any democratic or republican form of government, indeed, any way of life that relies on people sharing a community, requires free, honest, respectful communication. Yet, Kenneth E. Andersen pointed out, in 2003, that we in the United States of America were already losing that sense of community and must work hard to regain it. He bemoaned the problem of the “free rider:”

“Many aspects of what we are talking about are problematic. One of them is the issue of the free rider – the person that takes advantage of the fact that we live by rules and they do not.”

At the 2003 National Communication Association (NCA) Convention in Miami Beach, I heard my former professor Dr. Kenneth E. Andersen deliver the prestigious Caroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture. The convention had gathered thousands of communication scholars, educators, and students. A former president of NCA, Andersen’s topic was, “Recovering the Civic Culture: The Imperative of Ethical Communication.” His thought-provoking talk called for moral renewal. He based that renewal on ethical communication and freedom of speech. Andersen focused his presentation on the NCA’s Credo for Ethical Communication, a document created under his guidance, which began by stating:

“Questions of right and wrong arise whenever people communicate. Ethical communication is fundamental to responsible thinking, decision-making, and the development of relationships within and across contexts, cultures, channels, and media.”

Yet, Andersen bemoaned the United States’ decreasing sense of civic community and ethical involvement. He noted the increasing tendency of people who tried to triumph by ignoring the rules that everyone else follows. As he explained, civic engagement requires us all to respect the rights of people to communicate with one another.

Although there are several ways to deal with the free rider, Andersen suggested that the most important was for us to work – as an entire society – to insist on moral standards. After all, he explained, laws do not provide our most important guidance. Andersen explained that true guidance comes from a society that cherishes citizenship:

“Create a culture, a set of practices and norms. Perhaps the society should be best known for the laws it does not need to enact.”

But if we do not need to enact so many laws, we must let common values guide us. Ethical communication must be among those values. Andersen’s view of civic involvement entails that citizens respect the basic norms of a free society governed by the people themselves. That sense of civic commitment requires the nation to reject totalitarianism and respect people’s different opinions and needs. Andersen continued:

“The communication process as it has and is being utilized has played a significant role in the decline of the civic culture. Altering communication activity can play a significant role in rebuilding the civic culture.”

Accordingly, in words that presaged the political clashes that we face in 2024, Andersen pointed out the great conflict between two opposing views of community. The authoritarian view holds that a nation needs strong guidance from above, while the other places confidence in our fellow citizens. The authoritarian view obviously invites the free rider, for totalitarian leaders seize power to ignore their own rules. Andersen explained:

“Many commentators see the world as caught between two great clashing views, one that would freeze time and individuals or return us to some better, previous state or what it is believed to have been. As we age many of us remember a past that never was. This view involves holding to existing standards and patterns, to what was and is and thus ought to be. The other view or want of a better term might be termed ‘modern,’ envisioning a progressive evolutionary change allowing different standards and patterns. Loaded words I know.”

The first of those views, which clings to an often-imaginary past, steals peoples’ free choice. Do not Andersen’s words resonate today? The greatest irony of 2024’s political climate is that the people who scream most loudly about freedom are often the first to demand their own freedom at the expense of others. That view predictably unleashes the free rider. Yet, if we live by ethical principles, Andersen points out, we will share by free expression and speech, respect one another’s views, and value truth and critical thinking. If we do those things, we still might restore the United States’ civic culture.

However, Andersen insisted that an ethical civic culture requires that we all accept a free society’s values. We form a community only when we agree to respect one another:

“We cannot live more morally with other individuals than they are willing to live with us.”

In other words, a society full of free riders – people who enforce the rules but do not follow the rules – makes good people feel precarious.

Indeed, a free society flourishes when people understand and accept their community’s civic values. That is why so much of civic community comes from education. That does not mean political indoctrination. Andersen did not talk about urging students to support one political party or another. Instead, he pointed out that students need to learn to evaluate the information that modern mediated communication floods across the airwaves. Accordingly, students need to learn critical thinking and evaluation. Andersen explained:

“We need to assist students in developing strategies for dealing with the mass communication stimuli coming at us.” 

Professor Andersen gave this talk, so critical to the communication discipline, more than 20 years ago. I question whether we have made any progress. On the contrary, the increasing disregard for factual communication only symbolizes our nation’s failure to commit itself to a common community. Wild conspiracy theories run rampant. Free riders infest the political scene.

Worse, too many people in 2024 reject the very concept of rational thinking. Shockingly, the failure of facts symbolizes that failure. Immature Internet memes replace factual dialogue. The prestigious Annenberg School of Communication established the first major fact-checking website, FactCheck.org, to call out public figures who misrepresent the truth. Sadly, this noble enterprise has met with utter failure: although FactCheck.org does a major service, the professional liars who infest American public life in 2024 casually dismiss its well-researched findings as liberal bias. Needless to say, no free rider can tolerate facts.

Our 2024 presidential campaign does little to restore public confidence in national integrity. The leading Democratic candidate for the presidency, Joseph Biden, is an admitted plagiarist. Not only did he fail a law school course for plagiarism, but he admitted that he had repeatedly quoted other politicians without attribution. His opponent, Donald Trump, has been charged with dozens upon dozens of serious crimes and loudly boasted (on a sound recording!) about assaulting women sexually – and no one seems to care. Neither man has fared brilliantly on FactCheck.org, although Trump’s endless duplicity has almost overwhelmed the fact checkers. Trump won PolitFact’s Lie of the Year Award on three separate occasions.

In the 2003 Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, Andersen pointed out that civic community requires mutual respect, integrity, honesty, and compassion for others. He warned us of free riders, the people who thrive by forcing other people, but never themselves, to do the right thing. Andersen called for higher education to lead the way, not by partisanship, but by teaching compassion, mutual respect, and critical thinking. Is that too much to ask? 

By William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

In Buffalo, Joe Biden Challenged an Idea: The Idea of White Supremacy

Biden in Buffalo; White House YoutTube channnel

On May 17, 2022, President Joe Biden spoke at the Delavan Grider Community Center in Buffalo, New York, to commemorate the lives of the recent mass shooting in Buffalo that left ten innocent people dead and three wounded. The suspected shooter had been posting virulent white supremacist messaging. It appears that he traveled to Buffalo for the purpose of killing African Americans. After commemorating the victims, Biden spoke against the ideology of white supremacy. Readers of this blog know that ceremonial and commemorative speeches often advocate policies. For example, we might have expected Biden to speak out in favor of gun control. But he did not advocate a policy. Instead, he spoke about ideas—the pernicious ideas that drive the white supremacy movement.

Biden did, indeed, commemorate the victims’ lives. His main thrust, however, was to condemn the doctrine of white supremacy. This may be the key issue in current American public life, and it was high time for the president to address it forthrightly and forcefully. Biden did so during this speech. The United states’ conservative movement has become increasingly aggressive in pursuing specifically racial positions. The shooting marked the occasion when Biden ripped off the veneer that the United States can accept, compromise with, or tolerate white supremacy.

Do we realize how radical it was for Biden to repudiate white supremacy? For, as recently as my youth, large parts of the United States made it illegal for African Americans to attend quality schools, obtain home loans, or spend the night in public hotels. In today's post, I point out that Biden’s presidency arises from the fight for racial justice. Upcoming posts will examine previous rhetoric of white supremacy, so we can perceive how deeply that foul doctrine lies in American heritage. In other words, let's start with the present and work back to the past. Conservatives today no longer fear slave revolts, but the nation's diversification continues to trouble them. This sometimes leads white conservatives to fear that dark-skin people will dominate the United States. Thus, Biden talked about white replacement theory.


White Replacement?

What is white replacement? A number of leading conservatives, notably Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, have espoused the doctrine that immigration and social change endanger American culture. The implication—sometimes spoken and sometimes implied—is that American culture cannot survive if non-white people come to dominate. Biden, a white man himself, reminded his audience that pro-Donald Trump marchers had advocated white replacement doctrine:

“We heard the chants, ‘You will not replace us,’ in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Continuing, Biden revealed that he ran for President precisely to oppose white supremacy:

“I wasn’t going to run, as the Senator knows, again for President. But when I saw those people coming out of the woods — of the fields of — in Virginia, in Charlottesville, carrying torches, shouting ‘You will not replace us,’ accompanied by white supremacists and carrying Nazi banners — that’s when I said, ‘No.’ ‘No.’”

“White Supremacy Is Poison”

Indeed, Biden called white supremacy a “poison.” A poison, we must remember, is always dangerous. A poison seeps through the body until it kills the host. A poison might be unseen until it is too late. Poison is a powerful metaphor:

“White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison — (applause) — running through — it really is — running through our body politic. And it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes.”

President Trump: Are Neo-Nazis "Fine People?" 

Does White Supremacy Belong in America?

Using the power of the presidency—the bully pulpit of which Theodore Roosevelt spoke—Biden offered a simple solution. His solution was to wipe out the ideology. This is much different from the Democratic Party's usual tendency to offer technical, bureaucratic solutions. As the great conservative writer Richard Weaver said, “Ideas Have Consequences.” Policy alone, Biden implied, could not cure the United States’ problems. For the problem was not specific policy, but the ideology itself:

“No more. I mean, no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. (Applause.) None.”

Morally, Biden is obviously right. Even diehard white supremacists often deny that they believe in white supremacy. To be sure, maverick Republican Liz Cheney accused her fellow Republicans of enabling white supremacy and urged them to stop. Yet, the ultra-conservative Cheney is a maverick only because she displays a semblance of integrity.

In "The Fire Next Time," James Baldwin Warned America Not to Hide from Evil

American politicians historically try to walk on a middle track to attract as many voters as possible. In contrast, unable or unwilling to admit that the white supremacist movement has any merit, Biden came down forcefully to wipe out that ideology. Yes, ideas have consequences. Will Biden’s relatively calm voice outweigh the fear-mongering, hate-filled, shrieking nonsense on cable news and talk radio?