pluralism http://www.answers.com/topic/pluralism
Literally, a belief in more than one entity or a tendency to be, hold, or do more than one thing. This literal meaning is common to all the political and social applications of the word, but it has applied in contexts so varied that the uses seem like separate meanings. The most established of these is pluralism as the tendency of people to hold more than one job or benefice, most specifically in the context of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. In the late nineteenth century, pluralis
http://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/rules/policy/9_021.pdf
Employees shall treat all members of the public with professionalism and
courtesy. Further, employees have a reasonable expectation that they will also
be treated civilly by members of the public. Procedures will be developed that will
provide employees with appropriate responses to individuals who are abusive,
threatening and discourteous and strategies for dealing with such individuals.
STATUTORY AUTHORITY: 1001.41
LAWS IMPLEMENTED: 1001.41; 1001.42 F.S.
HISTORY DATE ADOPTED: 09/09/2008m was applied to philosophical theories or systems of thought which recognized more than one ultimate principle, as opposed to those which were ‘monist’. At the same time, the word came to be applied in the United States to the view that the country could legitimately continue to be formed of distinct ethnic groups, the Jewish-Americans, Irish-Americans, and so on, rather than that all differences should dissolve into a ‘melting-pot’ (see also multiculturalism).All of these uses have had at least a slight influence on the primary contemporary meaning in which the pluralist model of society is one in which the existence of groups is the political essence of society. Pluralists in this sense contrast with elitists because they see the membership of village and neighbourhood communities, trade unions, voluntary societies, churches, and similar organizations as being more important than distinctions between a ruling class and a class that is ruled: vertical distinctions in society are less important than horizontal.The forerunner of this kind of pluralism was F. R. de Lammenais who edited the journal L'Avenir in France in the early nineteenth century. Lammenais attacked both the individualism and the universalism of the Enlightenment and the Revolution. The individual, he said, was ‘a mere shadow’, who could not be said to exist at all socially except in so far as he was part of one or more groups. Both Lammenais and modern pluralists, including such notable American writers as Robert Dahl and Nelson Polsby, tend to believe both that society consists essentially of groups, with its political life a competition for group influence, and that this state of affairs is a good thing. Thus pluralism is often a relatively conservative doctrine, at least in relation to Marxism or radical democratic theory, which both tend to portray society as a predominance of an elite over a non-elite rather than a competition between groups.
— Lincoln Allison
Archaeology Dictionary: pluralism
[Th]
Diversity in interpretation. Because the world cannot be reduced to a series of simple conceptual categories there will always be a range of approaches, understandings, and interpretations. In this sense the world is polysemous and characterized by multiplicity. See also multivocality.
US History Encyclopedia: Pluralism
Pluralism is both a doctrine and the label for a commonsense perception. As a doctrine, pluralism holds that multiplicity is a virtue in ideas and institutions; hence pluralism rejects unity as the measure of intellectual and institutional development. As a label, pluralism describes the cultural diversity and interest-group politics that characterize American life. Pluralist doctrine implies a commitment to difference often unacknowledged in uses of the label. In early-twentieth-century debates about immigration and national identity, doctrine and label converged. Their union was short-lived, however, as the cultural pluralism that emerged from these debates upheld a collectivist vision of American life anathema to liberal individuality. Over the course of the twentieth century, social scientists enlisted the term to describe a range of social and political developments. The triumph of multiculturalism at the century's end revived pluralism's association with ethnicity and culture, though few contemporary multiculturalists endorse the racial essentialism and ethnic separatism that distinguished cultural pluralism.
Early Commonsense Perceptions of Pluralism
Americans perceived the fact of pluralism long before they delineated pluralist doctrine. From colonial times, but especially after the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), American writers trumpeted the egalitarianism and religious and ethnic diversity of the New World to bemused European audiences. None exceeded in enthusiasm French immigrant farmer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur. "What, then, is the American, this new man," Crèvecoeur demanded in Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (1782):
"He is either an European or the descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds." (pp. 69–70)
Two generations later, Herman Melville boasted in Redburn (1849) that one could not "spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world." (p. 238) In a similar vein, Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed America an "asylum of all nations" and predicted that "the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles & Cossacks, & all the European tribes,—of the Africans, & of the Polynesians" would combine on American soil to forge "a new race, a new religion, a new State, a new literature" to rival modern Europe's. (Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, pp. 299–300) Emerson's paean to American exceptionalism was unusual in including non-Westerners in the mix; most denied the presence in the New World of slaves, Indians, and other "undesirables," elisions that suggest an enduring characteristic of pluralist discourse, namely its tendency to fix and maintain intellectual and social boundaries. But Emerson followed convention in regarding national homogeneity as a requisite of politics and culture. Neither he, Melville, nor Crèvecoeur was pluralist in the sense of wanting to preserve diversity for diversity's sake. All three regarded ethnic diversity as a defining but not enduring quality of American life. All expected pluribus to yield ineluctably to unum.
Indeed, unity was America's burden in its first century of national life. Only after the Civil War (1861–1865) did Americans possess sufficient national consciousness to abide a flirtation with genuine difference. Which is not to say that most, let alone many, Americans embraced pluralism either before or after the Civil War. The majority probably concurred with John Jay, who, in Federalist 2, counted ethnic and cultural homogeneity among the blessings Providence bestowed on the thirteen states. No asylum for European refugees, Jay's America was home to a vigorous "people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, [and] very similar in manners and customs…"(p. 38). This America seems to have little in common with that of the literary bards. But from a pluralist perspective, the product of all these visions is more or less the same: cultural homogeneity in the service of national unity; unum, though with a different face.
Two other frequently cited pluralist texts from the late eighteenth century, James Madison's Federalist 10 and Thomas Jefferson's commentary on religious toleration, similarly aimed not to promote diversity for its own sake, but to neutralize political and social divisions in the name of civic order. Witness Madison, whose reputation as a pluralist stems from his conception of republican politics as an arena of competing factions. Madison cannot be said to have valued faction in its own right. He regarded factionalism as a mortal disease conducive to overbearing majorities and corrosive of the public good. Had it been possible, Madison would have expunged faction from politics. But "the latent causes of faction" were "sown in the nature of man," he recognized, hence there could be no eradicating faction without extinguishing liberty—a remedy "worse than the disease." Rather, he would mitigate faction's toxin by delineating a model of federal republicanism designed to propel individuals out of the ruts of local self-interest and into more amplitudinous state and national coalitions. "Extend the sphere" of government, he maintained, "and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens …" (pp. 77, 84). Concern for individual and minority rights likewise motivated Jefferson's defense of religious toleration in Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson viewed faith as a matter of private conscience and therefore beyond government jurisdiction. States that insisted on imposing an official religion invited social discord; by contrast, states that exercised religious tolerance enjoyed unrivaled prosperity. A self-described Christian who eschewed institutional religion, Jefferson appears to have been indifferent about the long-term fate of the world's faiths. He even suggests that given peace, prosperity, and the free play of reason, belief will converge on "the true religion," a proposition anathema to pluralist doctrine (p. 256).
http://www.beacononlinenews.com/news/daily/1032 :
Larizza, who defended Flagler County Jail guard Samuel Ferris against charges of abuse, unrelated to Lisa Tanner's case, disagrees.
Tanner is working hard to keep the results sealed — at least until after the election, Larizza said.
Larizza worked at the State Attorney's Office 1996-2002. "I was hired by [State Attorney] Steve Alexander," he said. "I worked the bulk of the time under Tanner's regime."
Larizza said he would institute regular merit reviews in the State Attorney's Office — something he didn't get.
"I had only one performance evaluation," he said.
Larizza said he wants to keep career prosecutors working for the state attorney. He also wants to be proactive and involved in preventive measures, working with high-risk families in the community.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:k-CYRZXK2bYJ:www.soulfulchemistry.com/mradelet.html+steve+alexander+Fl+state+attorney&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
Former State Attorney Steve Alexander was an assistant state attorney when he prosecuted Robinson in the 1980s. During the recent appeal, attorneys accused him of racism. He said their job was to throw mud on the wall and see if any of it stuck."It's kind of tough when you're there on the firing line, and they're talking about you. But I felt all along that this thing would resolve itself ... I was happy when the final order came out," Alexander said.He declined to comment about Radelet's report because he hadn't read it. But he pointed out that 4 of the 5 men sentenced to death in St. Johns County are white."It certainly looks like in St. Johns County we seem to be fairly well color-blind," he said.Radelet said that whites remain more likely to be sentenced to death in any given homicide. This is because whites make up a much higher percentage of the population than blacks. It makes white people more likely to be murder victims. If a person was randomly shot, odds arehigher that he or she would be white, he said.
Executions in Florida since 1979:-Total executions: 57-By murder victim: 49 of 57 executions involved convicts who killed white people.-7 of 57 involved convicts who killed black people.-1 execution involved a convict who killed a Latino person. By murder victim and defendant:-36 executions involved both white victims and defendants.-12 executions involved black defendants and white victims.-7 executions involved black defendants and black victims.-0 executions involved white defendants and black victims.-1 execution involved a Native American defendant and a white victim.-1 execution involved a Latino defendant and a Latino victim.-- Compiled by Michael Radelet, University of ColoradoThis article has been reproduced with the kind permission of Michael Radelet 2004
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:nAqTTFH4n1YJ:www.clr.org/fl.html+steve+alexander+Fl+state+attorney&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2008/09/sen-alexander-v.html
September 22, 2008
Sen. Alexander vs. Citizens, part 9?
Sen. J.D. Alexander, a frequent critic of Citizens Property Insurance Corp., wrote a scathing letter questioning Citizen's quest for new office space.
But Citizens says: Hold on a second, we haven't chosen anything yet.
Alexander, who chairs general government budget, suggested that Citizens is looking for certain amenities, such as a fitness center, restaurant and concierge services in its quest for 100,000 square feet.
"As I am sure you are aware, the State of Florida and the nation as a whole, are experiencing financial challenges. With these challenges, it is imperative that all of Citizens’ costs, as a government-sponsored entity, remain as low as possible in order to minimize policy costs and assessments to the taxpayers of Florida," Alexander wrote.
Citizens spokesman John Kuczwanski said the state-run insurer is still negotiating with two possible choices and "haven't disqualified anyone," at this point. They are looking for new digs for the summer of 2010 and they're hoping to combine offices spaces (they now have two) into one campus. The insurer first approached the Department of Management Services for space, and DMS said no dice.
Kuczwanski couldn't say where the top two locations were, and he wouldn't give out details on those who responded to the request for office space, citing an exemption to open records law for such proposals still in the works.
"Nothing is finalized at this point," Kuczwanski said.
Why don't you build some office space on your land J.D.? You know, right by USF Lakeland that you sold to the state. I'm certain you wouldn't be against the plan if it was on your land. You got your payoff J.D.-now go away!
http://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/depts/cl/
http://freedomisforeverybody.blogspot.com/2007/01/judge-calling-florida-judicial-system.html
http://staugustine.com/stories/102408/news_1024_046.shtml
"Character counts in life. ... Your character's going to leak out at some point," Matthews reminded the crowd.
District 2 school board member Tommy Allen is generally conceded to be the father of the Character Counts! program in the schools.
These days Character Counts! is such a part of the school system that when principals make their annual reports on schools they include character right along with math and reading scores.
It wasn't always so.
Individual Service Award - Carol Pemberton, St. Johns County School District
Special Character Advocate Award - Circuit Judge John Alexander
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