In thinking about political polarization in today’s America, I have asked myself a troubling question: Can a populace, heterogenous in race, gender, ethnicity, and religion, live harmoniously in a polity of shared goals and ideals? The answer appears to be “no.”
The oldest divide in America is that between North and South, which, because of slavery, resulted in the Civil War. Slavery was a material realization of a fundamental political belief opposed to the first principle in the Declaration of Independence, the equality of all men. The North gradually eliminated slavery in accordance with that principle; the South continued its repudiation by entrenching slavery and seeking its expansion. This belief in white supremacy has since metastasized to the trans-Mississippi west, especially the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, and spread everywhere else. The result: racism exists to a greater or lesser extent throughout the county. The repudiation of equality extends to other identifiable groups based on sex and gender (women, LGBTQ), ethnicity (immigrants), and religion (Jews, Muslims). Christian nationalism is explicitly antisemitic and anti-Islamic. The next Civil War in America is less likely to be fought by armies than by paramilitary gangs (“active clubs”), between neighbors, and among family members. It will involve in-your-face rudeness, insults, and worse—bullying, intimidation, assaults, shootings—between those who believe in political equality and those who do not.
The difference in belief about equality becomes the basis of differences in conduct toward other people, with resulting inter-personal dissension, acrimony, hatred, and violence on both sides, but more on the Right than on the Left. The near-universal rule for treating others is the Golden Rule (not invented by either Judaism or Christianity) has different phrasings, one positive, one negative. The positive phrasing—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—occurs in both the Holy Scriptures and the New Testament. The negative phrasing—do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you—occurs only in the Holy Scriptures. Both can be appropriate, but one can be perverted more than the other.
The difference between them is large and important. The positive form is self-centered and assertive; it enjoins a person to define what is good for another in terms of what is good for the definer. This positive form of the Golden Rule may invite a person to meddle in the lives of others. The negative form is empathetic and passive; it urges inaction out of regard for the personal autonomy of others and leaves them alone.
These different phrasings of the Golden Rule are paralleled in today’s culture wars being waged by the Right and resisted by the Left. The Right tacitly assumes the positive Golden Rule to justify government intervention and meddling in the lives of people with different beliefs and practices. The Left tacitly assumes the negative Golden Rule to justify respecting people with those differences and wanting them able to do or be as they wish. Here, some might think of Jefferson’s position, that that government is best which governs least. Jefferson would repudiate the Right’s belief that that government governs best which makes choices in the private domain according to its ideology and imposes them on others, whether they agree or not. He might not reject the Left’s belief that that government is best which governs in the public interest without encroaching on personal choices not adversely affecting others. After all, Jefferson inspired the Bill of Rights, with its many protections of individual rights against government power.
The Right wants to deny abortions to all women because some people object to them on narrow religious or irrelevant scientific grounds. The Left wants to allow them to those who seek one but does not want to impose them on women who do not want one. Take other culture-war issues. If a neighbor’s child requires a change of sex, neither the operation nor the result affects, much less threatens, me except for a concern for the child’s welfare. I believe that the child’s parents are more likely than not to know what is best. If the local LGBTQ community plans a parade, I can attend or not, but I shall hope that it does not rain on it. And if my children learn about the history of race in America, I do not worry that they will grow up hating America; I did not. Instead, I would worry if they did not grow up hating racism. To end the culture wars, embrace the negative Golden Rule: mind your business, and leave others alone to mind theirs.
Ironically, the positive Golden Rule as famously espoused by Jesus (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31) makes a mockery of those who proclaim themselves “Christians,” not to mention “Christian nationalists,” in our culture wars. Religion, traditionally thought to imply respect, decency, and love toward others, is becoming its antithesis in hatred, abuse, and domination of others. These radical Christians, militarized or sectarian imperialists on steroids, seek to erode or destroy a democratic system of government which affirms a laissez-faire, a negative Golden Rule, approach to racial, gender, ethnic, and religious differences. As I blogged, the Christian right is neither Christian nor right.
The question is what motivates the perverse tarnishing of the positive Golden Rule into an Iron Rule of Authoritarianism. The answer is fear, a common, reflexive response to anything different, including the onset of change, by the weak, the ignorant, and the insecure. The Right wants power to compensate for its condition by controlling, erasing, or eradicating differences, and impede or prevent change. As culture and society change, the Right fears that these differences will, according to “replacement theory,” overcome them, not by coercive means, but by the attraction of what appears to be true, right, or good. The contrast between reversions to political abuses like Jim Crow laws and gerrymandering, and efforts to enlarge the franchise and make all votes equal works to the disadvantage of the Right and to the advantage of the Left. The Right loathes the Left because of its popular appeal to what is best for all. What the villain Iago says of Othello’s honorable friend Cassio—“He hath a daily beauty which makes me ugly”—perfectly articulates the Right’s response to the increasing attraction of the Left. So, to support democracy, support equality in all matters civic and political.
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