Pooh-poohing the grand poohba: progressive social change ended when liberals gave up on the Moose Lodge

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2003 by Gordon Silverstein

DIMINISHED DEMOCRACY: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life by Theda Skocpol University of Oklahoma Press, $29.95

BEFORE THE UNITED STATES CAN hope to export a vibrant democratic system to Iraq, it might pay to pause and try to figure out just what it is that brings about vibrant democratic systems in the first place--and what it takes to keep them going. Our own democracy, after all, seems to have lost a good deal of its vibrancy of late. Relatively few of us vote and fewer still run for office, while public policy increasingly is a professional endeavor engaged in not by citizen-voters but by paid advocates, lawyers, and lobbyists.

For years, academics have tried to understand how America turned from a nation of joiners, doers, and citizens into a nation of passive contributors whose interaction with public affairs is largely limited to responding to direct mail and cheering (or howling) at cable-TV programs. And Robert Putnam's influential 2000 book Bowling Alone has largely framed this debate. Arguing that we have become a nation of isolated individuals who have lost the personal interaction and social cooperation that builds the trust that ultimately creates community, Putnam called for a kind of civic renaissance--one launched from the individual level, one citizen-volunteer at a time. Putnam's ideas were extraordinarily influential, uniting social critics on both the left and right, from William Galston and Michael Sandel to William Schambra and George F. Will.

But Theda Skocpol, Putnam's Harvard colleague, rejects this approach. In Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, Skocpol persuasively argues that a vibrant democratic system requires institutions, leadership, networks, and national organization. In contrast to Putnam's model--which hinges on the claim that individual trust and interaction built from the bottom up uniquely generates the social capital that builds community--Skocpol emphasizes the importance of mass-membership groups that were built from the top down in a highly organized, complex federal network with national headquarters, regional offices, state units and then, finally, local lodges or clubs. They were consciously and carefully constructed by extraordinarily dedicated and creative national-policy entrepreneurs who created pathways to national power and influence for themselves and their members. These were what turned a nation of joiners into a nation of active and powerful citizens--and they didn't sprout organically from close friendships forged over a bowling ball or a bake-sale brownie.

It turns out all those silly-sounding civic associations--ranging from the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Eastern Star to the Knights of Pythias and the Loyal Order of Moose--were critical. They served as training grounds for political participation and political activism; provided sources of political support; and helped build bridges across America's class barriers, enabling the nation to develop and maintain a relatively egalitarian political ethos even in the midst of the creation of great wealth and power. Many of us, of course, have some dim memories of a grandfather with some sort of garish uniform stashed in an attic, or gilt-edged certificates hanging on grandma's wall. We've all seen the faded signs announcing these organizations at the town line of small cities across America, and who can forget that, on "The Honeymooners," Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton were loyal members of the International Order of Friendly Raccoons--Bensonhurst Chapter--led by the much-envied Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler? But these organizations weren't just an excuse to wear silly hats and drink beer in someone's basement. Not only did they forge links across America's class divide, but also during and after the First and Second World Wars these and other organizations like them pushed government to develop social-welfare programs and institutions and to provide social services, becoming key advocates for social insurance and health care. Skocpol notes, for example, that the Fraternal Order of Eagles led campaigns for old-age pensions in dozens of states in the 1920s. The Grange organized social events, but also played a critical role in generating political pressure for state and federal aid to farmers. And veterans' organizations--including the Grand Army of the Republic, the American Legion, and the Veterans Of Foreign Wars--waged successful campaigns for pensions and educational assistance.

Perhaps even more important, these organizations actively practiced what we now barely preach, nurturing America's commitment to citizenship, political participation, public service and cross-class cooperation--objectives that seem to have lost salience in an era of luxury skyboxes, gated communities, and an all-volunteer army with nary an Ivy-League graduate among its ranks. These groups, Skocpol writes, "constituted mobility ladders" for many Americans, and even though they were often led by members of the social elite, those leaders realized their positions of power required them to earn and maintain the respect and support of a host of members not normally among their social set: When President Warren G. Harding, for example, joined the Loyal Order of the Moose during his years in the White House, Skocpol notes that he was inducted into the organization by his chauffeur. The Moose Lodge certainly didn't make Harding a liberal Democrat--but it did make him take seriously the interests (and the power) of his own chauffeur and others like him.