On his book The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945–1975
Cover Interview of February 13, 2019
Lastly
I wish for this book to help people see that even some of
the things we have come to take for granted in our own everyday lives, things
that seem to us practices of obvious value, were not obvious to most people but
emerged in the imaginations of reformers. Today some of the practices the reformers
changed sound unbelievable: that the House of Representatives voted secretly on
major amendments to major legislation until 1970? That milk, cottage cheese,
and eggs at the supermarket until about the same time had “sell-by” dates
stamped on them – but stamped in code so that store employees but not consumers
could read them? That doctors until about the same time avoided telling their
patients with cancer that they had cancer? Times have changed!
I’m not a political scientist and I’m not a specialist in
the study of Congress, so examining the inner life of a handful of legislative
acts and the people in and out of the Congress who shaped them was revelatory
to me. And I think the fact that I knew so little and learned so much in doing
the research for this book helps the book to preserve the sense of drama that
these legislative efforts had at the time, and the sense of how much new legislation
can be a step into the unknown, with no one sure just where it might lead.
Those who supported the Freedom of Information Act had no clue that
corporations would be the primary users of “FOIA.” Those who supported the
environmental impact statement had no clue that it would generate hundreds of
lawsuits against the government for inadequate environmental protections and
half-baked impact assessments.
And no one in 1970 saw coming – and coming fairly soon down
the road – that “transparency” would become a magic word in American political
culture, seen as a solution, or a half-solution, or a sop when more substantive
efforts at reform seemed impossible.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
Lastly
I wish for this book to help people see that even some of the things we have come to take for granted in our own everyday lives, things that seem to us practices of obvious value, were not obvious to most people but emerged in the imaginations of reformers. Today some of the practices the reformers changed sound unbelievable: that the House of Representatives voted secretly on major amendments to major legislation until 1970? That milk, cottage cheese, and eggs at the supermarket until about the same time had “sell-by” dates stamped on them – but stamped in code so that store employees but not consumers could read them? That doctors until about the same time avoided telling their patients with cancer that they had cancer? Times have changed!
I’m not a political scientist and I’m not a specialist in the study of Congress, so examining the inner life of a handful of legislative acts and the people in and out of the Congress who shaped them was revelatory to me. And I think the fact that I knew so little and learned so much in doing the research for this book helps the book to preserve the sense of drama that these legislative efforts had at the time, and the sense of how much new legislation can be a step into the unknown, with no one sure just where it might lead. Those who supported the Freedom of Information Act had no clue that corporations would be the primary users of “FOIA.” Those who supported the environmental impact statement had no clue that it would generate hundreds of lawsuits against the government for inadequate environmental protections and half-baked impact assessments.
And no one in 1970 saw coming – and coming fairly soon down the road – that “transparency” would become a magic word in American political culture, seen as a solution, or a half-solution, or a sop when more substantive efforts at reform seemed impossible.