Ideas vs. labels
Friday November 17, 2006
"I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person." -- Milton Friedman, 2002.From a Seattle reader of "Crunchy Cons":I've recently come across your "Crunchy Con...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Rod,
Great post. With reference to the following:
"Of course the concept of 'hate' is much abused in our political discourse; when someone accuses a critic of 'hate,' more often than not it's a lame attempt to shut down an argument the respondent would prefer not to be having."
Amen, Amen, Amen. I've got a major post on hate-speech and liberal pressure groups here: http://pomoconservative.blogspot.com/2006/11/abortion-and-gay-rights-for-christmas.html
I'm really worried now that exchanges such as those you're having with this guy are going to become more and more rare because liberal activists are going to attempt to render conservative speech illegal. Hard to have dialogue with one tongue tied behind our backs...>
I can't necessarily say I ever "hated" a political opponent (well...), I was distrustful of liberalism for a long time---for example, while I wasn't pro-animal torture or anything, I would automatically distrust anything environmentalist, based basically on the facts that liberals are for it and PETA people are nuts. As your reader says, being concerned about poverty has a similar effect---it's liberal, so bad! Actually, reading your blog, and realizing that "conservative" and "liberal" are rather vague terms, helped clear that up a bit. (Though I'm still afraid of hippies.)
God bless.>
Lukacs's distinction between fear and hate is overly simplistic and therefore of limited use in explaining what motivates political passion. Hate tends to be a response to fear and fear tends to be a response to some kind of present or anticipated pain. That being the case, it's easy to collapse the distinction Lukacs makes by looking at the pyschological dynamics in play in actual political disputes. Liberals who "fear" conservatives often hate them too, on the basis of their fear. Conservatives who "hate" liberals, often do so on the basis of their own fear. In each instance, one side is reacting (or over-reacting) to pain that is inflicted on them by the actions or sometimes merely by the existence of the opposite side. In my experience, both sides in a polarized political debate feel a degree of fear and hate toward the opposite side. But each side tends to think of itself as the justifiably fearful side reacting rationally to the hateful machinations of the other. The fundamental mistake here -- on both sides -- is in seeing good and evil, with evil defined in this context as that which we should fear or hate, as a difference between people rather than a difference *within* people. This is not to say that we should abandon moral distinctions in political debate -- far from it -- but merely to say that we should avoid the kind of excessive self-righteousness that such distinctions must inevitably tempt us toward.>
With regard to political labels, much confusion results from assuming that "liberal" and "conservative" are antonyms. The opposite of "liberal" or "libertarian" would be something like "communitarian." Generally speaking, the more someone talks about "rights," the more libertarian they are and the more someone talks about "responsibilities," the more communitarian they are in turn. The opposite of "conservative" would be something like "progressive." The more someone talks about *defending* either liberal or communitarian ideals, the more conservative they are. Conversely, The more someone talks about *extending* either liberatarian or communitarian ideals, the more progressive they are in turn. Obviously, most people are engaged in *both* defending and extending their political ideals, so in that sense most people are both conservative and progressive, depending on the context. And equally obviously most people favor some balance between libertarian and communitarian ideals, with the emphasis on one or the other depending on the context. As a practical example, I would argue that much of the Cruncy Conservative stance enunciated by Rod is a form of progressive communitarianism that takes place within the context of a broader liberalism that allows dissenting viewpoints to flourish if not always to prosper.>
A final addendum: G. K. Chesterton ("of all people") described himself (correctly) as both a liberal and a progressive. Liberal, in the sense that he drew on liberal notions of positive freedom to be Christian and negative freedom from persecution on the basis of his Christian beliefs. Progressive, in the sense that he saw Christianity as a project we should work to complete and a fixed ideal by which our progress in that work can be judged.>
"For conservative audiences, framing these ideas as conservative -- that is, showing how they are rooted in traditionalist conservatism -- is perhaps a way of having them drop their guard, and consider their validity as ideas."
I, for one, am really glad you wrote the book this way, Rod. Last spring, when there were all those great discussions of your book going on in the blogosphere, I found myself fascinated but also frustrated by it, because I felt like your book tiptoed up to a major challenge to our whole society and economy, but then declined to go further, because to do so wouldn't be "conservative." But now, just through conversing with many members of my family who have read your book and are ordinary, Republican-voting conservatives, I've realized that by grounding your book's message the way you did, you spoke to an audience that desperately needed to hear what you had to say, and you did it in a way that wouldn't drive them away. So really, it was a very thoughtful way to go--one which, by making it's allegiances clear, enabled people to see the ideas rather than labels. Now, if I could only get more of my fellow leftists to see the same!>
"Lukacs's distinction between fear and hate is overly simplistic and therefore of limited use in explaining what motivates political passion. Hate tends to be a response to fear and fear tends to be a response to some kind of present or anticipated pain. That being the case, it's easy to collapse the distinction Lukacs makes by looking at the pyschological dynamics in play in actual political disputes."
Burlap Bagg, Prof. Lukacs makes this exact point in his book. One example: "Of course fear, like all primal human phenomena, is not simple, and it is often allied, if not combined, with hatred.">
Thanks, M.D.M.>
I'm old enough to remember when was incondsidered impolite to discuss politics, as well as religion in public. It seems to me that there was an understanding that ALL political views and ALL religious views were subjective opinions, and actually personal views.
Now, it seems that both sides of any political disagreement and even religious disagreement believe that simply because they hold their opinions passionately that those opinions rise to the level of "fact" or worse yet religious "truth.">
Starting a Christian eco-friendly, even eco-centric business, I find myself sitting right in the hotseat between both the "conservative" and "liberal" camps. Decidedly, it tends to be the "liberal" camp that is more suspicious, but there is cause for hope.
I got back a few days ago from a "Green Business Conference" that started the day of the elections. While I sat quietly observing and learning, the derision, even palpable hate that I heard and felt expressed for "conservatives" from the speakers and audience there, along with the unspoken, but overt normalization of much that the majority of our U.S. population would clearly call immoral, was so overwhelming that I literally got physically ill one of the days.
Once over that, I was able to regain composure and set out trying to do what I went there to do - find the things and people to build the business in order to glorify God and encourage good stewardship of this wonderful Earth God has given us responsibility for. I was able to approach an environment that was mostly consumed in a one-sided perspective in peace and profess what I was doing with a bit of new-found wisdom and - surprise! - found a few like me there, and a few who didn't know someone like me (a "crunchy" conservative) existed.
Ultimately, the pointers are simple, though the execution... well we have to work that out:
Matthew 22:
36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 37 And He said to him, " `YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 "The second is like it, `YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' 40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
And this helps me - Proverbs 16:3
"Commit your works to the LORD And your plans will be established.">
Burlap Bagg,
I think that Lukacs's distinction between fear and hatred is best understood at the level of decision-making, when we are confronted with incompatible and mutually exclusive courses of action. The distinction becomes necessary (and sharpened) when it boils down to these essential and unavoidable questions:
1. Are you willing to hurt yourself in order to hurt your enemy?
2. Or, are the things you value (and the people you love) more important to you than attacking or punishing your foes?
Hitler is of course a good example of #1 - the hatred of Jews and communists that led him to overcome and overlook the real fear of the destruction of Germany.
I don't think that Stalin is a good example of #2, but rather the Soviet people during the time of the Nazi invasion. They rallied around a leader they feared (and in many cases despised) in order to protect themselves and their country from an unprecedented threat.
Lukacs does a marvelous job of showing us that hatred is ultimately self-destructive, whereas fear, because it looks to protecting what one loves and values, at least makes way for some kind of truce between antagonistic parties. However, the problem today is that the Left does not quite know how to order its priorities, is not willing to compromise in order to address the most severe problems (as Rod pointed out, liberals are generally not willing to compromise on abortion in order to mitigate economic disparity). The Right, it seems to me, has been reeling after getting mugged by the reality of its own devising. Heaven help the conservative who gets mugged, for in what direction does he have to go, other than make the laws so harsh that they become crimes, i.e. become in effect a mafioso?>
I've spent a lot of time teaching college, and my students were mostly in the dark about what "liberalism" and "conservatism" mean (and even more so about the difference between "left" and "right.") The closest they could get was the idea that conservatism worried about sex and liberalism worried about racism. But conservatives really do make their platform a lot clearer--"opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research."
Liberals, on the other hand, seem to have not only a hard time defining themselves, but a hard time being clearly and logically defined by the other side. Nobody could possibly be simultaneously as weak, stupid, wily, and dangerous as liberals get depicted.
Which leads me to try to avoid the labels altogether whenever I can. Maybe we all need to try it?>
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