Tom Friedman’s notion of what he calls “systemic misunderstanding” is a condition of debate or conflict between or among parties in disagreement wherein the conflict cannot be resolved with more facts or information.  With Thomas Sowell, among my favorite essayists, such a condition is even more deeply seated in what he has named “a conflict of visions”, which is also the title of his great book of twenty or so years ago.  For Sowell, the intellectual origins of the  sides of debate on essentially all public policy issues can ultimately be traced to the degree to which the opposing parties are of the “constrained” or “unconstrained” vision.  Consequently, the very meaning of words like “freedom”, “rights”, “equality”, and “power” may be drastically different, depending on their context within different worldviews, or visions of man.

Without getting too mired in the details of Sowell’s thought, the two key criteria for distinguishing the constrained and unconstrained visions are (1) the locus of discretion (who decides?) and (2) the mode of discretion (what is the decision process?).  Both visions acknowledge inherent limitations in man, but the nature and degree of these limitations is different.  Put simply, the unconstrained vision allows for considerably more knowledge, morality, virtue, and fortitude on the part of human nature to successfully accomplish its objectives than are thought humanly possible by the constrained vision.

I have been thinking of Sowell and his thought on these issues throughout the health care debate over the past year, and it occurs to me that nothing so vividly illustrates the validity of his theory, as well as Friedman’s, than the profound policy differences in evidence here.  Examine closely the comments from noted commentators from the left and you get the picture:  Thomas Frank writes that the left is “reclaiming freedom” from the right in this debate and he points to FDR’s Four Freedoms, particularly the one about “freedom from want”,  as the foundation for government intervention in the provision of health care.  Most people of the constrained vision would respond that freedom is not defined as a taxpayer-funded entitlement.  In his book, The Future of Liberalism, Alan Wolfe writes that “the welfare state is an institutionalization of the moral idea of empathy”, while most of us of the constrained vision are wary of those who seek power under the guise of government delivery of empathy.  Then there is our President, who, in response to a question by the New York Times on how we will deal with a health care system that will potentially allocate 80% of its resources to the chronically ill and those near the end of life, said “it is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels”.  You get the point–with universal health care we have the ultimate in unconstrained vision proposed by those  who are convinced of the efficacy, morality, virtue, and intentions of rational elites and their bureaucracies to deliver it.  The result so far is that our House of Representatives has just passed what the Wall Street Journal has called “the worst bill ever”.

Finally, there is another way to define the struggle at work here, ably noted by Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, but entirely consistent with Sowell’s conflict of visions.  Brooks notes that the health care debate is part of a larger moral issue over the free enterprise system (a constrained vision, by the way), and that it will be replayed in every other major policy area in coming months.  It comes down to competing visions of America’s future based on the same notions about the nature of man and his limitations–will we strengthen freedom (properly understood), opportunity, and enterprise, or will we expand the role and power of the state?  A source of systemic misunderstanding big time, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A number of additional thoughts have come to mind since the early October announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 and my brief October posting on it (The Nobel: Are They Serious?).

First, it seems obvious that the award was entirely predicated on President Obama’s disavowal of American exceptionalism, a view that he has repeatedly confirmed in interviews since his election.  The notion that America has a special role in the world, a kind of providential destiny, is simply anathema to him.  Even Bill Clinton subscribed to the long-standing notion of America as the “indispensable nation”.  This President seems to think we owe the world an apology for our presuming any such role.

Second, this tendency is part of a larger one noted by John Bolton that characterizes Obama as the first “post-American” President.  Not anti-American, just one that is “above” all of that so-called jingoism.  As Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said, “Reagan was all about America; Obama is ‘we’re above that now’ “, meaning we stand for something not so parochial, so chauvinistic.

Third, we shouldn’t be surprised at the shallowness of the award.  After all, as Bret Stephens notes, the Peace Prize always goes to a “Goodist”, the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding and that all evil springs from technologies and systems, anything but the hearts of men.  Certainly no warrior would ever be eligible (think Roosevelt, Churchill, Reagan, Bush) although it has been warriors who have been responsible for more lasting peace and saved more innocent lives than all the Goodist world leaders one can name.

Fourth, to follow on the last point, Tom Friedman had the best suggestion I have heard for those truly deserving of a peace prize in 2009–the men and women of the American armed services.

Fifth, you would think that the Nobel Peace Prize winner and the leader of the free world would have taken time to acknowledge with his presence the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the most significant events in the march of freedom from tyranny of the past century and certainly an event that greatly enhanced the cause of world peace, while also giving recognition to those who were responsible for its collapse, particularly one of his predecessors who was the first post-World War II President whose objective was to actually win the Cold War.  But of course he’s above all that.

I hope at least my Texas readers will be interested in an update on the efforts by many of us to advance standards and accountability based reforms in Texas K-12 education.  We made good progress on our objectives during the 82nd Texas Legislature this spring and are hard at work in assisting with the implementation of the resulting legislation and other aspects of regulatory oversight and advocacy.

The centerpiece of the work of the Texas Institute for Education Reform (TIER) and our coalition, the Texas Coalition for a Competitive Workforce, was House Bill 3, a hard fought overhaul of the Texas school accountability system.  The bill was over 200 pages in length and there are many moving parts, but the major breakthrough from which all else flows is that for the first time in Texas a high school diploma at the recommended curriculum level will represent “post-secondary readiness”, defined as a melding of college and 21st century career readiness without the need for remediation.  Folks, this may appear elemental, but it is big.  What follows is that from this graduation standard there will be benchmarked standards at every grade level, assessments that are vertically scaled so that we can track each student’s pathway toward the ultimate exit standard, and accountability on the part of educators for student progress along the “ramp” to this post-secondary readiness objective.

As you might imagine, it is one thing to have such standards and accountability in place in the law, but quite another to properly implement them.  And that is the phase of our work in which we have been heavily engaged since the end of the legislative session in early June.  In fact, we have developed the following agenda for our program of work over the interim period leading to the next legislative session:

* Work with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Commissioner of Education, the State Board of Education, and other appropriate officials to ensure that the discretionary aspects of the reforms embodied in HB 3 are implemented in accordance with our recommendations and legislative intent.

* Assist the appropriate officials in their work to upgrade the state’s education data systems in order to provide the necessary infrastructure to accommodate the enhanced accountability system.

* Work with the TEA to ensure appropriate standards for the use of the new Texas Projection Model, which tracks student growth toward proficiency on the post-secondary readiness  “ramp”.

* Assist the TEA in developing more rigorous and relevant career and technology courses that will improve the options for students who choose to pursue a high school pathway to  industry or commercial certification.

And, while the implementation of new legislation is important, we will also be working hard on other policy developments with a view toward the next legislative session as well as policy enhancements through the various rule-making authorities in the interim:

* We will work closely with the Texas charter school association to develop policy to strengthen charter schools as competitive alternatives by closing ineffective charters, providing equitable funding for successful charters, and increasing or eliminating the cap on charters.

* We will continue to advocate for measures that will enhance educator quality, partly through the implementation of new legislation and partly through working with the TEA, the State Board for Educator Certification, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop rules that will lower barriers to entry, more properly evaluate and compensate teacher effectiveness, assess and improve teacher preparation and professional development programs, and improve the quality of campus leadership.

* We will be actively engaged as a policy resource on such interim legislative study issues as expansion of pre-kindergarten and public school finance.

If all of this seems ambitious, it is.  But we must pursue these policy deliberations and enhancements with all deliberate speed and we cannot delay them any longer, because to do so would be a disservice to our kids and our future.

And while all of this is proceeding at the state policy level, let me add a point about federal initiatives.  I have been critical of the Obama administration in a number of deserving respects in terms of major policy disagreements, but I must say that his public education policy pronouncements and those of his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, have been right out of TIER’s “play book”.  The Race to the Top competition that has been established for the states encompasses a number of priorities that are absolutely essential, namely:

* Creating common, internationally benchmarked standards and holding educators and students accountable for meeting them.

* Nurturing effective teachers who are supported by effective leaders and removing those who are proven to be ineffective.

* Generating statewide longitudinal data systems to support the necessary sophistication of the accountability systems.

* Turning around or reconstituting chronically failing schools through aggressive intervention.

Our organization applauds the Obama team for its leadership in this initiative, we  support these objectives and this competition for funding among the states for their implementation, and we have encouraged our state’s leadership to aggressively pursue this funding.

Now a short commercial–this is a never ending battle and we need your help, including your financial support,  so please visit our web site at www.texaseducationreform.org and sign up.