Citizens and Their Obligations: Richard Haass
June 29th, 2023
“Rights alone will not guarantee the smooth functioning of a society.”
Dr. Richard Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens. We discuss how we, as citizens, can fulfill our role in the social contract.
The United States is a country founded on an idea about equality, about opportunity, about freedom. Rights alone will not guarantee the smooth functioning of a society, but must be coupled with obligations. These include being informed, getting involved, civic education, and rejecting violence. If 1 or 2% more Americans were to get informed and involved in American politics, we could have very different outcomes.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Dr. Richard Haass
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis
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Richard Haass Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Please join me in thanking America's number one meal kit HelloFresh for their support. Go to hellofresh.com/hopeful 16 and use code hopeful 16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:19] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
Something I keep coming back to as we explore the diverse and varied themes we tackle on this show -- Everything from policing and justice to reproductive rights, from dirt road organizing to privacy and autonomy in the digital age -- what I keep coming back to is the social contract. The deal we make with the state to submit to being governed. And what often gets overlooked when we're fighting about our rights is our obligations. How can we keep up our end of that bargain as citizens?
And so we're going to think about those obligations today with Dr. Richard Haass. He's president of the Council on Foreign Relations and most recently the author of The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens.
Welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Richard Haass: [00:01:22] Great to be with you. And I love your title. Future Hindsight. It's a perfect oxymoron.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:28] Yes. Yes, indeed. So I thought it's interesting to start here: You're the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, an expert in foreign affairs, and that you should write a book on American citizenship. Why did you write this book?
Richard Haass: [00:01:46] Well, in all honesty, it was not something several years ago I had set out to do. It happened almost by accident. Often when I speak about international subjects, about foreign policy. People ask me, out of everything you've talked about, what keeps you up most at night? Is it China? Is it Russia? Is it climate change? And increasingly, I found myself answering the question, actually, what keeps
me up most at night is us. Whether we as a democracy are going to be able to continue to function, to deliver the basics to our own people, from economic prosperity to security and the like. Whether we are going to be sufficiently functional that we can be seen as a reliable partner by our allies around the world. So it was from there that I increasingly came to think of our national security as a coin with two sides. One side is the stuff I normally do, foreign policy, but the other side is what happens here at home. It's our domestic base. It's the foundations of American democracy. I am genuinely concerned about the erosion or deterioration in American democracy, which has all sorts of consequences for our functioning as a society and as an economy, and obviously as a result, has implications for our ability to act successfully in the world and also has implications for how we are seen in the world and whether we pose or represent a model that anybody would want to emulate.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:11] Well, in the book you argue that a democracy solely based on rights is failing. Why, in your view, is it so crucial to marry obligations to rights?
Richard Haass: [00:03:24] Well, it's the fundamental question at the core of the book. And don't get me wrong, rights are essential if you think about American political history. Rights are essential; some would argue, the central thread. It's what led to the Declaration of Independence. Just as an aside, we're three years away from the 250th anniversary as we talk here, and a lot of our history, to use Mr. Lincoln's construct, is about our unfinished work. It's narrowing the gap between the rights we value, respect, so admire, and what our practices are. And obviously, there are major gaps in American history -- slavery being the most pronounced -- but other gaps. And over the years, whether it's through amendments to the Constitution, 14th Amendment in particular, civil rights legislation, other amendments giving women the right to vote and so forth, we have narrowed the gap between the principles and the practices when it comes to rights. But just imagine you or I had a magic wand and we could eliminate the gap and we could finish the unfinished work of Abraham Lincoln. Even that would not be enough because rights inevitably collide. Look at some of the biggest current debates now. The debate over abortion. Someone's right to bear arms pursuant to their interpretation of the Second Amendment versus someone else's right to physical and public safety. The right not to wear a mask or get vaccinated during Covid. So what this suggests to me is rights alone will not guarantee the smooth functioning of a society. Rights inevitably clash. Well, what then? How do we avoid gridlock? Or worse yet, how do we avoid
violence? And the idea that violence couldn't come to America, alas, is not true. We've seen elements of politically inspired violence come to this country, and that's where obligations kick in; obligations that you and I, the two of us, would have to one another and to other people in this society an obligations that each of us would have to this country and to to the government. So my argument is that rights alone are necessary, but not sufficient. And so what I wanted to do was rebalance our notion of citizenship and add a much greater dose of obligations to it.
Mila Atmos: [00:05:43] Well, it was really interesting the way that you posited these obligations, because you also talk about that we have a problem in this moment in agreeing on what it means to be American, and to be American is to practice those obligations, in part. We are failing to teach each other, the younger generation, but has already been the case, of course, for decades now, what it means to be American. Isn't part of the challenge that there are so many ways to be an American? What, in your view, are the fundamental tenets?
Richard Haass: [00:06:21] Well, you put your finger on a big thing. This was a country that was founded essentially on ideas that we're not a hereditary monarchy. We declared independence against one. The last I checked. Even though that we've had imperfections or flaws in our past, we weren't a country founded on race or gender or class. We were a country founded on an idea about equality, about opportunity, about freedom. So that to me is the basic of the the idea. And for this country to work, this idea has to be transmitted. One of the lessons I take from history is don't assume anything and nothing is automatic. We're not born appreciating the values or comparative strengths of democracy. The child doesn't absorb from the mother lessons of history. We've got to teach that. I'm Jewish, and I come from a tradition where in Judaism you celebrate one of the holidays, Passover. And what's so special about the holiday is that you teach the story of the exodus from Egypt, which is the foundational narrative of Judaism and it's proven essential to the survival of Judaism, despite centuries of being dispersed, not having access to holy places facing persecution. But Jews have kept their identity alive. That, to me, is exactly what we Americans need to do. We need to keep our identity alive. Now, I realize that that then begs the larger question what's the core of that identity? And I think that's what you're getting at and that's the right question to ask. And to me, it does conjure up words like equality of opportunity, equality under the law and so forth. And those are the ideas, I think, that
are central in a lot of history. A lot of politics can be understood as our struggle to live up to that.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:14] Mm hmm. I love this example of learning at Passover time about the identity of being Jewish. And you talk in the book about the challenge of having a cohesive civic education for Americans. And in this moment, in this year, at this time, it's very difficult, I think, to even conceive of a way to agree. But in your mind, how do you see reaching an agreement on what civic education should look like nationally?
Richard Haass: [00:08:53] You're right. I have no illusions as to the difficulty. We've seen education get politicized. You might even say weaponized. And battles over education, battles over history are battles over identity. One of the things I did in the course of my career is I was the US envoy to Northern Ireland. I spent three years there in that capacity and then about a decade later I was asked back by the political leaders of Northern Ireland to help them deal with their past. And this is a society that's divided mostly along the lines of religion between Protestants and Catholics. And dealing with the legacy of the past, particularly the three decades of violence known as the Troubles is something that has never been done, and many societies have difficulty dealing with their past. And we've had real difficulties. Some of what we see coming out in the present is a reflection of that. There's just a lot of unresolved tensions about the American experience and about American identity. But to me still, we've got to make the effort and there's a substantive aspect and a procedural one. Let's focus on the substantive, because getting it adopted has its own dynamics. I want to introduce people to the basic documents, things like the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, which essentially is Constitution 2.0. I want them to read some of the classics, The Federalist, Tocqueville and so forth. One of the things I did in the course of writing this book is I read all the inaugural speeches, the farewell addresses. I read a lot of Supreme Court decisions and dissents. There's an enormously rich political literature. I want them to be aware of the basic history. And I think we have to distinguish or discern between two things. One is simply what happened. And then the interpretations about why what happened happen, and what were the consequences and what happened. We can't argue over that. To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we're all entitled to our own opinions, not to our own facts. So we've got to set forth what happened. I don't think, though, we ought to impose single
interpretations. I think that we ought to expose students to competing and serious interpretations of history. I think that would be healthy. We want to make sure people understand governance in this country, the federal system, federal, state, local, if you will, the layer cake of governance, also the basics of what happens at the federal or national level. They should understand things like rights. They should understand things like obligations. I think it's also important in this day and age to teach information literacy, how to be critical consumers of information in an age where so much of what circulates is often inaccurate. So it's got a lot of dimensions to it. And the reason I wrote this book is not that I profess to have all the answers. I clearly don't. You've already figured that out. I want to start a national conversation on this. I want to get people thinking and talking because when I do travel around the country talking about this book, everybody gets it. They know that there's something seriously wrong in our politics, in our country. They know that our educational system is failing. Again, there's no consensus necessarily on what ought to be taught, but I think people are open to the conversation. So let's take a page out of the book of Justice Brandeis, where he describes states as the laboratories of democracy. So I would think for middle schools and high schools, we could well have a decentralized approach. Let's have some experiments. It's already happening, actually, but let's make them better experiments. And then ideally some of these will be proven to be pretty good. And hopefully that will set a standard. Just to give you one example, New Jersey recently signed into law a requirement that students learn what I call information literacy. They're taught about how do you know a fact when you see one? What is information hygiene? The idea, for example, of getting multiple sources rather than just leaning on one source, understanding the difference between, say, edited or authenticated sources and those that not understanding that social media is social more than anything else. And I would love to see something like that done in all 50 states. Understanding that information literacy is something all Americans ought to have to be critical consumers. And again, what I'm hoping takes place is more of a national conversation about what you and I are talking about, more experiments, and then hopefully the best experiments gain traction.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:15] Right, Right. Those are all great ideas. And I want to point out here that at the back of the book, there's a whole list of literature that you refer to as good sources for us to read. And I think that's that's a great resource. So I want to say that the book felt to me like a cri de coeur from someone who clearly...
Richard Haass: [00:13:39] I'm sitting here, busted now.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:41] Well, you clearly, clearly care very deeply about America and American democracy. And like many of us, you've been on a journey in terms of your relationship with politics and the state of the nation in the past few years. And in the preface, you write that you reluctantly changed your party affiliation in the summer of 2020. For most of your adult life, you've been a registered Republican and you changed to no party affiliation. Can you tell me what changed for you that summer? What led to that decision?
Richard Haass: [00:14:16] It was not easy. I'd been a Republican for 40 years, and I've worked for three Republican presidents. I've also worked for a Democratic president. Just to be clear, I'm not a particularly partisan figure. I lead and led for 20 years a nonpartisan institution. But the president I felt closest to was George Bush, the father, the 41st president. So that sort of a Republican, if I can put it that way. But that's not where this Republican Party is anymore. The Republican Party that I joined doesn't exist. What's taken its place is a much more radical populist party, one that often doesn't believe in institutions. Not very internationalist in its foreign policy. Economically, it has become a party of big government rather than reduced involvement or interference in the economy. So almost all the things that brought me into the Republican Party no longer characterise this Republican Party. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn't leave the Republican Party so much as the Republican Party left me. And what finally pushed me over was my lack of confidence that this Republican Party could cleanse itself of extremism, this intolerance, this propensity to violence. This antipathy at times towards the norms of American democracy, what you described as a cri de coeur, the things that led me to write this book, I wasn't comfortable going over to the other party, but less as a threat to democracy and the Democratic Party, more as simply policy disagreements. So I reluctantly came out in orphaned land, no party affiliation. I hate it because, among other things, it often precludes me from participating in primaries. You actually lose some of your political voice. I'm something of a public figure and I just thought it was important to take a stand. I had intense conversations with both my kids, both of whom are 30 ish, both very politically active, and this became a regular, intense topic. So it wasn't something I did lightly. I'm still uneasy about it. I'm not 100% comfortable with what I've done because, again, as an outsider, you lose some of your potential ability to influence. But the realist in me said, come on, you had
no ability to influence what you were saying was no longer what people were listening to. So I guess I'm waiting out here in no man's land politically, to see if either of the major parties comes around to something I feel comfortable joining. And if not, I guess I stay where I am. Or conceivably there could be a new party one day. But history suggests probably not.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:51] Well, you're not alone. We have had several conversations about the independent voter in the United States. And as it turns out, about 50% of Americans are not affiliated. As you said, you lose political power because you cannot participate in closed primaries. And of course, we both live in New York, so we are part of a closed primary state. But, you know, we can advocate for open primaries. And I think that's hopefully the future so that at least the people who are unaffiliated do not lose their political voice.
Richard Haass: [00:17:23] I agree. And I'm a believer in the reform of open primaries. I think it's healthy for the most part. The problem is obviously that those who control primaries often see an advantage in keeping them closed because it often pushes things more towards the end zones. Those who are more involved, those who are registered, those are more likely to show up, will often be people, shall we say, who bring greater intensity to the political marketplace, and they're not particularly interested in the dilution, if I may use that word, that somebody like me would introduce. Indeed, it's part of the reason, again, I wrote this book. I can think of a million reforms about gerrymandering, about closed versus open primaries, about how we fund our politics. I've got a long list. There's any number of reports that you and I have both read in recent years that have 86 good ideas in them. The problem is that virtually none of them can get enacted because the very forces that have brought our politics to where they are will resist these changes because they will see these changes as one way or another representing ideas that are inimical to what it is they want to either preserve or bring about. It's one of the reasons in my book I never once go through policy changes. They're not going to happen. It's like sitting around advocating for changes in the composition of the UN Security Council. It's warranted. It's just not going to happen because the powers that be will prevent any change that they see as weakening their authority or their influence. So for me, the way to change American politics is less to generate lists of great ideas so much as to change the context in which things like that will be decided in. And the good news, by the way, is very small changes in American
politics, say, in informed political participation. If 1 or 2% more Americans were to get informed and involved in American politics, we could have very different outcomes. Look how close a lot of elections are in this country. So in order to change things, we don't need tidal waves of change behavior. Actually, modest changes could have potentially outsized impact.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:36] Yes, indeed. We had a conversation about that too recently, especially on the state level. You know, the state elections really rule our everyday lives in a way. Right. And determine how we walk through our everyday existence in a way that federal policy does not.
Richard Haass: [00:19:52] There's that. But even take federal things, the composition, say congressional elections, New York State in the midterms, close to a half dozen seats that traditionally went Democrat, went Republican. It would not have taken a whole lot of political participation to have changed those outcomes. Indeed, there are those who think that the Democratic Party in New York was guilty of political malpractice. A small amount of changed political behavior would have probably turned those half dozen or so races, which means right now you would have a Democratic House rather than a Republican House, and Hakeem Jeffries would be speaker and not Kevin McCarthy. My point is not to say that one is better or worse than the other. My point, again, is to say that politics can be changed. My first two obligations are be informed and be involved. If more people were simply to adopt those two obligations and make it their own, we would see significant change in this country.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:49] Totally agree.
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Mila Atmos: [00:22:23] I also want to share about a podcast presented by Betches Media called Betches Sup. Staying informed doesn't have to be painful in this News and Politics podcast presented by Betches Media, Amanda Duberman, Alex Morales, and Millie Tamarez run through the week's wildest headlines with accessible analysis and commentary you will actually relate to. Their episodes bring fact-based news delivered with humor, plus interviews with members of Congress, candidates, activists, comedians and political experts to discuss WTF is going on and how we're all getting through it for constant news updates. Sign up for the Sup email newsletter at betches.co/sup and follow them on Instagram @betches_sup. That's BETCHES underscore SUP. Make sure to tune in to the Betches Sup podcast every Monday through Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
And now let's return to my conversation with Dr. Haass.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:35] Well, you're keeping it real. So I'm going to ask you about the January 6th insurrection. We're two years out and we're not yet in the clear, as you wrote yourself. And you dedicate a chapter on rejecting violence. Actually one of the things that really struck me is that you write that the use of violence for political purposes is terrorism. And I think a lot of people are not willing to say that. We're also, though, in a country where we have 400 million guns. How do you think about balancing the demands of the second and first Amendments and the explosive combination of hyper polarization and open carry?
Richard Haass: [00:24:14] Well, couple reactions. One on guns. I understand rights. Second Amendment. So no one's talking about banning or confiscating guns. But there's got to be two constraints, I would say. One is on who can have access to guns. And there's legitimate conversations about age limits, about mental and emotional
stability and so forth. Proven behaviors that we would say this is an individual who ought not to have access to a gun. That's what background checks and other such things are all about. And by the way, 90% of Americans agree with me. This is hardly a radical proposition. And the other is what kind of gun should one have access to? Now, we have certain limits, you and I. Even under the Second Amendment, we can't go out and buy our own F-35 fighter and park it in our front yard. We probably can't buy an Abrams tank. We have certain limits. Okay, so let's get serious about limits. The idea that either one of us, though, could go out and get an AR-15 is nuts. This is a weapon of war. It was designed to kill a lot of people on battlefields. It should not be brought into our streets and our cities, our shopping malls, our churches, our schools. So that to me, is a way of balancing the right of gun ownership under the second with also the collective right, the individual right of gun ownership versus the collective right of public safety. And I just think that's something that has to be brought into the political marketplace. The problem is that those who fight hardest for unrestricted access to guns and the rest they bring to the political marketplace far greater intensity than those who push from the other side. So my guess is you will have 90% of Americans favoring restraints, but very few restraints until that changes. Politicians, they may not be responsible, but they're always responsive. They feel pressure. They respond to pressure. So until those who care about what I would call reasonable restrictions on access to guns, until they get more politically active. With their time, their votes, their money, what have you. Things won't change. But if and when they do get more active, things will change. I don't think this in any way a hopeless situation, but it's a dangerous situation, as you say. We've got a polarized society. Look, the idea that I have to write one of the ten obligations is non-violence, that's a depressing thought. And by the way, it is terrorism. The definition of terrorism is the use of force by non-state actors for political purposes. That's what Hezbollah does in the Middle East. That's what Hamas and groups like that do. That's what al-Qaeda does. And militias in this country who are using force that's not sanctioned by the state for political purposes. That's what terrorists do. It's a tough word, but this is a dangerous situation. And we shouldn't be sanguine that what happened on January 6th can't happen again. It can happen again. It probably will happen again, if not against Congress, it could happen at a state house. We've seen protests. There could be assassinations of judges or certain officials. And that's why it's important we delegitimize violence. If our politicians won't do it, then among others, religious leaders need to do it. Americans may not go to church as much as they used to, but they still go to church in large numbers. Religious leaders, I would
say, have an obligation to use that pulpit of theirs and not just comfort the afflicted. They've also got to afflict the comfortable. And they have got to tell people, hey, no matter what your differences are, nothing, nothing, nothing. Your strongest views on abortion, what have you, or the right to life, nothing justifies using force.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:03] Mhm. I totally agree with you. Well, in this time where we have lawmakers posing with automatic weapons on their Christmas cards, it's almost incomprehensible. I mean... It is obviously totally imaginable that people have normalized violence. I kind of want to pan out to the bigger idea. Why is it important for democracy to reject violence and what does that rejection look like?
Richard Haass: [00:28:28] It's an interesting question. I think it's necessary for any society. What governments do is they ought to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within the society. That's what governmental authority is. That's true of democracies and anybody else. But what makes it, I believe, precious for democracies is that that's an environment in which if we feel safe, then rights can flourish. And that's what makes a democracy, a democracy. So I would say we have the obligation to work together to make it safe so we can enjoy our rights. But even authoritarian societies, the government has the imperative to ensure that there's law and order. Indeed, in some ways, the political bargain of some authoritarian societies is just that. We'll provide you law and order and you give up your rights. That's, if you will, you use the phrase at the beginning, social contract. Well, for many authoritarian societies, that's a big part of the social contract. We've got a very different social contract in our society. Government provides certain things like law and order, but not as an end in itself, but as a means, as a context in which you and I and everybody can go about and enjoy his or her rights. And that's, again, where obligations and rights go hand in hand.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:45] Right, Right. That's a question of legitimacy in some sense. So we talk about norms a lot on this show. And of course, norms are unwritten traditions, conventions, practices. And you write that laws are the scaffolding of society and norms are what fill it in and make it livable. And I have to say here that the experience of the Trump years was that norms are very easily ignored. And I'm not sure we're not still in a race for the bottom, in terms of norm busting. When you think of the conventions that have been licked to the curb, or fallen by the wayside, which are the most worrying and why?
Richard Haass: [00:30:25] It's a long list, but you're right. At times I feel that Donald Trump has never met a norm he likes or one he doesn't want to repudiate. Norm busting resonates with those who support him because norms are seen as establishment, to some extent with political correctness, and so forth. But norms existed long before words like woke and political correctness even existed. Norms are traditions and behaviors that can't be necessarily or not matters of law or matters of legislation, but it's simply the stuff that makes society work. You know, in our personal lives, we have all sorts of norms. It's "please" and "thank you." It's not cutting in lines. It's a degree of civility and how we interact. It's not essential to do this. There's no law that says you can't shout at people or berate people or curse at people and things. But but we tend not to do it or we give charity. There's no law that says you have to give to charities. But that's a norm that if you're well off enough to do so, you do so. It's one of the things you owe your fellow human being who may not be as successful as you are. No one forces you to do it, but you choose to do it. Norms are the right things to do and politics they play also a central role. The most basic norm in American politics is that when you lose an election, you call up the other person and you say, Congrats, well done. You concede. You wish them well. At the presidential level, you have that demonstrative ride down Pennsylvania Avenue from the driveway at the White House to Capitol Hill. And that sends a signal to the country and to the world that American democracy is bigger than any differences between these candidates, that their common commitment to democracy far outweighs any differences they have over policy, outweighs any personal animosity between them. I thought Al Gore's finest moment was his concession speech. It's actually the best speech of the campaign. If he probably given more speeches like it, he wouldn't have had to give one. It was such a good speech. It was classy. When Nixon wouldn't challenge the results in Illinois, as a lot of his advisers wanted him to in the '60 election, which he lost very narrowly to John Kennedy. Part of his reason was it would be terrible for the country. Nixon was many things, but he was also a conservative. Conservatives believe in institutions, and he believed in the norms that were central to American life. He made terrible mistakes with Watergate and the rest, but at the end of the day, he was a conservative. He did accept that there were things bigger than himself, and that's what norms are all about. We've now reached a point where we have individuals in our political space who don't see things as bigger than themselves. Again, in this current age, norms have become too associated with what the establishment wants political correctness, wokeness and so forth. So norm busting
has become popular. It's unfortunate that there's not more differentiation and sensitivity to what you might call desirable norms in a society and others which at least are up for debate.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:38] Mhm. Yes. I think the debate is very narrow. In fact I wouldn't call it a debate. It's just a little bit of shouting from both sides at each other without actually debating. But you just talked about essentially country over party, country over person. And I have a question about patriotism. Patriot today is a tricky word in America, and former President Trump described the January 6th attackers as, "great patriots." And the Patriot Front is a white nationalist and neo fascist hate group. But you argue that patriot is someone who puts the country before party and person the way that you just explained Nixon, and that patriotism is a thread that binds the fabric of society. Are you hopeful that we can reclaim that word?
Richard Haass: [00:34:30] Great question. Let me tell you an experience I had in the course of talking about this book. So I was speaking about it in Washington one night. And a congressman asked me a question and he said, if you ask the people who were in the capital on January 6th, "Are you a patriot?" They would say, "Of course I am. That's why I was doing what I was doing." It was a version of your question. How do you basically embrace the word patriot when so many people who are doing or advocating for things that are inconsistent with your message also use the word. It stopped me in my tracks for a second. And it gets back to what you said. We've got to reclaim that word. And that brings me back to Ronald Reagan, of all people, which may surprise some of your listeners. But Ronald Reagan, I think it was his farewell address, talked about: Yes, he said patriotism is good; but, he said, it's not enough. There has to be in this country an informed patriotism. It was a conditional patriotism because anybody can do anything and call themselves a patriot or do it in the name of patriotism. It's a handy word for abuse. And it could become a rationale or a justification for just about anything and everything, for prejudice, for discrimination and as we've seen, for violence. So the word patriotism can't be licensed. We need to have this conversation in this country about citizenship and civics, about what the obligations of citizens are. Patriotism can't simply be an absolutist approach to rights. Which is what it's often become. Patriotism has to reflect something of a balance between rights and obligations. So patriots have to have obligations to their fellow citizens. Patriots have to have obligations to this country. They have to be willing to rule out political violence if you want to use the word
patriot. Here's the conditions you have to meet. And otherwise. Sorry, you don't get to use that word or I'm not going to use it to describe you. But that's that's a worthy conversation in our society about who actually gets to use the word patriot.
Mila Atmos: [00:36:48] Yeah, we should definitely have this conversation. We should have conversations. I think right now a lot of people just aren't having conversations. That's a big part of the problem.
Richard Haass: [00:36:56] No, you're right. Conversations involve listening as well as talking. And I think our collective listening skills, shall we say, are somewhat impaired.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:03] That's that's a very diplomatic way to put it.
Richard Haass: [00:37:07] Well, I used to be a diplomat, as you know.
Mila Atmos: [00:37:08] Yes. Well, speaking of which, so much of the book stems from your years of public service and a clear affection for the men and women who dedicate themselves to it. You devote a chapter to respecting government service, and you open with saying that Americans have a long history of being distrustful of government. But of course the government is us. And further, I'm quoting you now "the deep state is us." So you want people to respect the government and civil servants instead of vilifying government. And the answer to flawed government -- I thought this was very beautiful in your book -- the answer to flawed government is better government. And one way to get there is to hire better people. I thought you made a really good case for a national civilian corps of some sort for young people. Tell us more.
Richard Haass: [00:38:00] Look, I'm old enough to remember JFK's exhortation. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And that's what very quickly led to, among other things, to the Peace Corps. And when I came of age, which was at least ten years later, it never occurred to me to do anything else but have a life and a career that was involved one way or another with government. I thought I'd be an academic, but I was hoping that somehow I'd have a chance to serve. And I've been lucky enough to work at the Pentagon and the State Department and the White House, and I wrestle with these issues all the time. So, yeah, I want, again, the best and the brightest to get up and say, this is what I want to do. I mean, I understand
it's important to go to Silicon Valley and I understand it's important to go to Goldman Sachs, but I do want a chunk of the best and the brightest to go into government. We saw a little bit of a resurgence of that after 9/11. It seems to have faded again. You know, it would help if politicians stop tearing down government or, I hate phrases like the deep state. As you said, the deep state is us. Millions and millions of Americans work in government from the military, all the people who send people their Social Security checks, the firemen, the policemen. The public payrolls in this country are enormous. So, again, we want the best people to go in and serve. And we want all these institutions to be transparent, to deliver the services they're meant to. We as taxpayers, we want to get value for our money. I would love to see national service think this is a chance for it. The biggest problem may not be politics as economics. It's the kind of discretionary funding these days that's very tough to get. So my guess is if we see a resurgence of sorts of public service programs, it might be more likely to happen at the state level. California has piloted, I think, it is four public service programs. In all cases, they're voluntary, which I think they should be almost like the all volunteer force is voluntary for the military. You pay people a decent wage. Hopefully they get training as part of it. So at the end of it they're more hireable. They've got, if you will, value added. They've got skills. I would love to see universities, for example, offer preferential admissions to young people who had done this. I could imagine employers doing the same thing. Just like now, employers give preferences to veterans. I could see them giving preferences to people who had spent two years doing various types of public service. I think there's another benefit, though, that's at least as important, which is that it gets us out of our separateness. We talked for a few minutes before about Americanness. I worry that there's less and less of it because there's less and less common experience. We're now increasingly defined by what geography, class, levels of education, gender, race, religion, politics, what cable station we watch, you name it. And the people in one of these pots might meet very few, if any, of someone who has a totally different set of experiences. That is really dangerous. So what I like about public service is that it potentially brings people together who had normalized, never come together. When Tom Brokaw would write about the Greatest Generation. Part of the Wonder of World War Two was that it brought together all sorts of rich and poor, different religions, different colors, what have you. And yes, the draft brought people together. I'm not advocating for mandatory service. I don't think we're open for that as a society. But I would like to incentivize it and I would like more and more people to
participate in it. And I think it would introduce a degree of social mobility to this country that we desperately need.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:44] Mm. Yeah. It's really a great idea. I really love it. And I hope the experiment in California will be generalized across the country. But speaking of opportunities, you write about how equality of opportunity is critical for the functioning of democracy. And in the land of the American dream, it's considered a birthright. But it's another thing Americans have wildly divergent views on, the difference between freedom from and freedom to. And I was looking up at some statistics. Less than 1 in 13 children born into poverty in the United States will go on to hold a high income job in adulthood. The odds are far lower for Black men born into poverty at 1 in 40. So in your mind, what does equality of opportunity look like to you, and why is it important to democracy?
Richard Haass: [00:42:38] To me, equality of opportunity is central to the political DNA of this country. When I look at things like the direct Declaration of Independence and when I look at our unfinished work, this is high on my list. This is what we're about. And I think for a lot of our history, equal opportunity was pretty real. It wasn't perfect, but it was real enough. Some had more opportunities than others. As always, those with more advantages. But lots of people could get on that ladder. And because people got on that ladder, I think it injected a degree of optimism. It weakened cynicism. It weakened alienation. People actually said, you know, one day, if I work hard and I do this and I go to school and all that, I can maybe not be as rich as a Rockefeller, but I could be pretty well off and I could be better off than my parents. And what worries me so much now is too many people no longer think that, and in many cases they're probably right not to think it. Their eyes are wide open. And that to me is really, really dangerous because that's the beginning of class warfare or that's the beginning of a disillusionment with democracy, because democracy is not delivering. That's when we do get more tribal. And that is a real threat to the American democratic experiment. But right now, equality of opportunity, I think, is a slogan. I think it's increasingly not real. The biggest weakness is the quality of public education. One thing most Americans have to do is go to school till they're 16. The biggest area of investment in our society should be in public education or an educational opportunity. It could also be religious schools, charter schools, private schools, what have you. But public schools are where most kids go to school. We have got to make that good. And it ain't right. Now, as Condi Rice and
others would say, you show me the zip code and I can tell you a lot about the quality of the education and how much opportunity there will be. So we're failing a lot of our young people the way we fund our schools, the way we train our teachers. It's what courses we require a million different reasons, but right now our educational system is failing us. There's, you know, discrimination, and so forth. Sure, but I don't think that's any longer the principal reason we have some of these problems. By the way, I'm also fairly radical about some things. I want to get rid of legacy admissions. I think we need to have a level playing field. I don't want to perpetuate advantage. It's also the reason I think there ought to be real limits on how much wealth can be passed from one generation to another. I don't want people to be born on third base and think they hit a triple. I'd like them to start out at home plate. Or maybe only halfway to first base, but no more than that. But the emphasis should not, for the most part, be on reducing the advantages of the few. It should be on increasing the opportunities of the many. We've got to make sure, more than anything else, that educational opportunity is real in this country. So yeah, that's my other decor. And again, so I want to see things like civics and citizenship education as a staple of what we teach in our schools. I'd like to make Americans more globally literate. That's something we've done here at the Council on Foreign Relations. We've developed an entire curriculum to make Americans literate and knowledgeable about this world they're going to grow up in. But we have just got to improve the quality of education, if equal opportunity is going to be more than a slogan.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:59] Totally agree. So since you are an expert on foreign affairs, what are the global knock-on effects of a weakened American democracy? What's the fallout around the world, and what's the danger in that?
Richard Haass: [00:46:13] There's nothing good that comes of it. A weakened American democracy that can't address our challenges means we're going to have fewer resources available to do anything if we're not doing well here at home. People aren't going to have the bandwidth to worry about the world. We're going to have much more of an old fashioned guns versus butter debate. And you're seeing it in both parties now, by the way. Why are we spending anything on the world? We should be doing more at home. Turns out what we're spending on the world as large as it is in absolute terms as a percentage of our GDP, is way down from what we spent during the Cold War. Yet you wouldn't know it from our debates. If we're divided and distracted here at home, none of our partners and friends will want to rely on us. So we'll end up with far
more countries with nuclear weapons, far more wars, possibly a world where bullies in their neighborhoods, whether it's in Russia or China and Iran, what have you, could have far more sway. You'd have far less democracy, human rights in the world. We're already seeing a slippage of what's called backsliding of democracies, in part because the example we're setting is not one that a lot of others are going to want to emulate. So there's nothing good that comes of failing here at home. And, you know, the last 75 years, it's been a pretty good run of history. Not perfect, but you haven't had great power war and democracies until about ten, 15 years ago were on the rise. Billions of people got lifted out of poverty. The average life span increased by decades. Rights for girls and women expanded dramatically around the world. So you look at all these things, you go, not bad, you know, not perfect. I get it. But pretty good run. And it didn't just happen. It happened in no small part because of American leadership. We built these institutions after World War two, whether they're alliances or these international organizations. We were active in the world. We set a good example here at home. And my concern is if we are no longer willing or able to make good things happen, they won't happen. And if bad things happen out there, they won't just stay there. The world is not Las Vegas. Bad stuff out there will come here. And when we fail, whether it's disease or climate change or war, they'll all become more common. And we will not be able to build moats around the United States to insulate ourselves from the consequences. We need to be strong at home in order to be strong in the world. And we need a world that's essentially stable and operational in order for us to do well here at home. So there's a kind of feedback loop. It's all connected in this global world of ours. So I actually think what happens here in our democracy has all sorts of strategic implications.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:54] What are the top two obligations that you want every US citizen to practice?
Richard Haass: [00:49:00] Be informed. It's the first obligation. And Jefferson and others would say it's the foundation for all else. And then after that, I'm happy with any of the other nine from getting involved, to voting, to supporting civics. And obviously, you know, all the behavioral things like putting the country before person or party and eschewing violence and being open to compromise and so forth. But the first of the obligations is to be informed. And I think that is foundational.
Mila Atmos: [00:49:31] Excellent. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Richard Haass: [00:49:36] I've been lucky enough to work for four presidents. There's nothing inevitable about history. And the good news about that is that bad things aren't baked into the cake. There's always the potential, just the possibility of good things happening. The not so good news is that good things just don't happen. It takes agency, takes people to help make them happen. But look, the structural advantage of democracies is their capacity to change and to learn. You know, we've made our share of mistakes. If you look at American history, we've had any number of mistakes, serious ones, deep, deep flaws, but many of them have been corrected. And we're still around, by the way, after 250 years. So we've been able to adapt. We've been able to learn from our own history. That's a pretty positive thing. And the question is: Can we avoid, almost like an aging individual, sclerosis? Can we avoid a situation where we can no longer adapt, where we can no longer change? There's a challenge out there, but I'm still positive. I'm just not sanguine if that's not a contradiction. So I feel optimistic. But I'm not sitting back. I'm not sanguine. And again, that's why I want people to read this or hear about listening to your podcast and essentially say, okay, I get it. I got to do my share and enough people get up and do their share, we'll be just fine.
Mila Atmos: [00:51:03] Hear. Hear. I totally, totally agree with you. Well, Dr. Haass, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.
Richard Haass: [00:51:12] No, thank you so much for this and for what you do.
Mila Atmos: [00:51:15] Dr. Richard Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and most recently author of The Bill of Obligations: Ten Habits of Good Citizens.
Next time on Future Hindsight, we'll be joined by Leila Law-Gisiko. She has served on Manhattan's Community Board 5 at the very center of Manhattan for over 18 years. We discuss her insights about community advocacy and the many land use issues the Community board considers, whether that's the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel or the future of New York's Penn Station. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks for listening. You must really like the show if you're still here. We have an ask of you. Could you rate us or leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me.
Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:52:35] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.