Among the true believers

Tim Lee, who is a liberal blogger, is creeped out by the near-fanaticism of partisans on his side (and by partisans in general). He's onto the same thing that bothers me and others about American politics: that they're driven more by hate and fear than by devotion to principle. As Dan Larison recently pointed out, the past few years have taught him that a lot of people who call themselves conservative are really just people who share common hatred of liberals. (And, I should add, vice versa).

Roger Scruton points out why it's so hard to practice normal politics around the environmental issue: because so many on the left have removed it from the realm of normal politics, and made it into a Movement. Excerpt:

These movements also provide an enemy, and enemies are useful for defining your place in the world. While it is difficult to share friends, you can easily share enemies, since hatred is far less demanding than love and requires no shared judgment—only a common target.

Such movements provide a dynamic experience of belonging, in which you are engaged in doing something and doing it collectively. They offer a balm for loneliness and alienation.

On the other hand, they exemplify what Engels, following Hegel, referred to as the “labor of the negative.” The cause is too vague or vast or beyond the reach of human nature to form itself as a concrete goal. The only certain thing is the enemy you can destroy rather than the goal you can achieve.
[snip]
The problem is that when an important issue like the environment gets captured by a left-wing movement, this disrupts the possibility of developing a proper political approach. Fertile disagreement gives way to imposed orthodoxy and viable solutions to impossible utopias. Political approaches are distinguished by the fact that they have no single goal. A political solution is worked out by taking into consideration all the competing interests and trying to reconcile them. Its characteristic outcome is a compromise, not an absolute dictate.

For this reason, political approaches don’t identify enemies. Unlike revolutionary movements, they are not conceived in quasi-military terms. They try to initiate a discussion against a background of social unity and social harmony, such as is provided by shared membership in a single nation-state. Working for a political solution means working for a modus vivendi among competing interests. The political process does not offer membership in any dynamic sense. Unlike movements that say, “Join us, and you will be redeemed,” political approaches say, “We are assuming that we are all citizens together. Let’s sit down and work out a solution acceptable to each of us.”

One problem with allowing the environmental cause to be captured by the Left, therefore, is that it is then radicalized and cast as a movement. This tends to militate against the possibility of genuine political solutions.

Scruton focuses on the left in this particular essay, but I think his insights here are applicable to American politics as practiced by both left and right today. It's hard for politicians to think creatively, because there are so many partisans on both sides ready to pounce on anything that sounds remotely heretical, and consign the politician to the dustbin.