Written Review: Beware the C-Word - Essay Example

Written Review: Beware the C-Word The article Beware the C-Word by Tom Morton tackles the issue of what Morton calls communitarianism or the cult of community currently being played out as the byword of politicians, academics and social commentators. This, according to Morton, is the state of affairs in the countries of Great Britain, the United States and Australia. Communities are being hailed as the nucleus of social and governmental concerns. What troubles Morton however is the fact that communitarianism is being promoted at the expense of individual rights and prerogatives as well as the fact that it is being used by the governments to slowly divest themselves of what used to be their inherent responsibilities, passing them off to voluntary groups and organisations. Thus, Morton’s dilemma is that the rise of the cult of community seems to be equated with the growing moralization imposed upon by communities on all their members and the increasing power of communities to impose their morality on individuals owing to the shifting of government responsibilities to them. Morton’s point then is that while communitarianism answers the people’s need for connection and belonging, yet it will make it difficult to draw a line between the responsibilities of being a member of a community and the rights of individual guaranteed under a democratic society. Morton believed that while the warmth of communitarianism answers the need of people to belong and connect with other people, blind adherence to it can lead to the promotion of bigotry, intolerance and the ultimate destroyer of individuality – conformity. What he recommends therefore is that people should adopt a “healthy skepticism” regarding excessive communitarianism and “robust suspicion” of anyone pushing for community values. This is because, according to Morton, community values are not necessarily equated to good values nor are shared values good values. The test should be how values figure in the community’s treatment of strangers. As an illustration, Morton cited the example of the gay community in Australia who demurred to the joining of the bisexuals in the Mardi Gras celebration on the ground that the latter were not fully committed to the gay cause. This particular incident showed that communitarianism tended to isolate the community from those strangers or those perceived not belonging to it. In addition, the unity that necessarily accompanies communitarianism results in the loss of the exercise of individual sense of right and wrong. Communitarianism results in the adoption of the entire community of a single set of values, in this case the acknowledgment of gay rights and the rejection of bisexual people’s rights. In addition, Morton bewails the governments’ strategy in using communitarianism as a catch basket for all responsibilities they are trying to divest themselves of like employment, education and social services. In Australia, Morton cited with disbelief the convergence of the unlikely partnership of the Left and the Right with respect to the issue of communitarianism thereby blurring political distinctions. The Australian government, for example, relies on the Job Network, a group of organisations which are private, community and church based, to take care of employment services. Tony Abbott, the Federal Minister for Employment Services, in trying to promote the group, went on air and harped on the advantages of communitarianism and the government’s efforts towards empowering communities and strengthening civil society. To Morton, Abbott, an adherent of the Right, seemed to have been sleeping with the enemy parliamentarian Lindsay Tanner, a known Leftist who is an advocate of community-building and social capital. The case of the Job Network illustrates yet the point of Morton when Abbott defended it from discriminating against homosexuals in the past. Since most of the organizations in the Job Network are largely church-based, like Centacare, Mission Australia and the Salvation Army, it imposed a palpable discrimination against homosexuals. This was however corrected by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission by issuing a guideline which, in effect, prohibited against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment. Abbott, however, defended the Job Network by stating that it is the prerogative of the church to reject the application for employment of people who lead lives which opposed the teachings of the church. In this respect, communitarianism illustrates that it could promote negative values like bigotry because communities tend to adopt the values imposed upon it by its most powerful and influential member. In short, Morton’s article points out the fact that the cult of community may tend to limit people’s perspectives because as one community, everybody is expected to adopt a common way of looking at things imposed by the leaders of the community. This conformity eventually negates individualism and people become used to thinking alike and the sad thing about it is that the government is on the forefront of the movement, relinquishing its responsibilities to private and voluntary groups who then become more influential in imposing their will on the rest of the community. The article, in effect, advances the values of individualism, democracy, personal autonomy, freedom and respect for the rights of every individual over that of the community as a whole. It assumes however, that communitarianism fosters such negative values as bigotry, intolerance, conformity and moral authoritarianism. It would seem that the only positive values perceived by Morton that can be brought about by communitarianism are that it serves as a means for people to give vent to their need to socialize and connect with others. Morton failed to see the positive side of communitarianism as a means to foster neighborhood security, the means of facilitating objectives conveniently and more importantly, a means of fostering awareness of and reaching out to those who are financially deprived. In a narrow kind of way, Morton succeeded in imparting his ideas about communitarrianism to the reader. By assembling sources from different social commentators, books and political figures, Morton could easily succeed in instilling apprehension on the part of the reader as to the dangers that communitarianism could bring and forgetting the actual positive side that it offers. The palpable assumption of the author is that communitarianism inhibits democratic values which need not be true. Such a scenario could only be sustained under non-democratic ideas where freedom of speech and of the press are inexistent but so long as such freedoms are still respected Morton’s fears need not happen. Despite the fact that Tony Blair of Great Britain and Abbott of Australia openly promoted communitarianism, individualism need not be in jeopardy because people are more prone to egocentricity and self-preservation than neighborliness. As a matter of fact, communities are aftermaths of progress in civilization. Man is first an individual, looking after only his own good first and foremost, before he became a member of the community. This is not to say however that Morton’s assumptions are outright false as proven also by history. Anything that has ‘isms’ attach to them tended to bring some danger of fanaticism but then so do phobia for anything, like extreme phobia for community living and cooperation. Read More