The real political (and cultural) divide in America (and the world) is not the left-right divide, but rather the divide between those, on the one hand, who strive (always with imperfect success) to be reasonable and imaginative and responsible people, aware of our interdependence and of their own fallibility, working together in service to our shared humanity, and those, on the other, who surrender to their ignorance and bigotry and brutality, and organize in service to those defects, in implicit partnership with the greedy and the ruthless. And while that real divide does track the left-right divide to some extent, it does not do so perfectly: There are people on the left who belong more to the latter group than to the former, and people on the right who belong more to the former than to the latter. So we should start a new narrative, one that says, okay, lets let go of all of the ideological certainties, and just agree to strive to be rational people working together in service to our shared humanity. Embrace moderate conservatives who agree to that, and chastise any, of any ideological stripe, who dont. That means as long as someone can state that their argument is based on the mobilization of reason and imagination in service to our shared humanity, it deserves a fair hearing, and a reception characterized by enough humility that none of us presume to know all of the answers before acknowledging the competing arguments.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 17:32:22 +0000