Underblog Rides Again

What Kind of a Country Is This, Anyway?

Now we know. It is a country where evangelical Christians are a large section of the country. It is a country where a popular majority re-elected George W. Bush to the office of the Presidency.

One of yesterday's seminars was particularly cathartic: nearly the entire time was spent discussing the election. There were there, as I am sure there were in many political science departments across the nation, many long faces. People actually brought vodka, Bushmill's, gin and various mixers to class with which to drown their sorrows.

One classmate spoke of her anger: she did not know how she was going to carry on her research into a conservative group. "All I want to do is ask them 'What kind of idiots are you to vote for him?'" Another classmate was in a visible stupor. He had blown off all his other classes, and would not have attended ours but for the fact that he was presenting the material. Another classmate cried as she described her husband talking to a pissed-off NAACP leader in Ohio. "What can you tell your people? That their showing up to vote, their mobilizing was worthless?" A third classmate described how she worked for the Dems this election despite her more radical left-leaning inclination. She had learned the lesson of 2000: don't steal votes from the better of the two candidates that actually has a shot at winning. "If politics is going to be only an expressive activity, then I may as well express myself more genuinely and honestly with more radical groups."

The professor offered the following explanation: Liberals are stupid. We are arrogant snobs who do not listen to the opposition. We blow off people who believe in creationism as ignorant fools, even though 45-50% of Americans (including the President) do. He pointed out that some aspects of the Republican platform are fairly incompatible with Christian philosophy. Tax cuts for the wealthy, for starters. If liberals want to win, they will have to induce some cleavages into the Republican Party, which has traditionally been far superior in walking in lockstep.

There are some social liberals among the conservatives. Bears Will Attack darling John McCain, for example. Republicans could stand to lose these few, I think, and still win elections. What they cannot endure is the loss of the "Christian Right," which is probably an unfairly monolithic term for a large segment of the population.

He asked us how many of us knew conservatives, and knew them to be good and decent people despite the fact that their politics were to us inconceivably bad? We all knew at least a few. We know from the blogosphere that the Christian majority is closer to us personally than it is politically. This is frightening on the one hand, but also cause for hope.

The professor's main point is that liberals need to speak the language of the majority. Even if we do not agree with them, we need to understand them. Theorists call this "deliberative democracy." Not only do we vote on interests, we discuss their merits with our opponents. Liberals can no longer afford to shut out conservative opponents from the discussion by blanket denials of everything they stand for.

The professor offered two examples. The first was Bill Clinton, who despite violating many of the tenets of his own faith, was able to speak in the language of those who had fundamentalist Christian convictions. He listened to people. His quote on abortion -- that it should be "legal, safe, and, rare" -- demonstrated that he understood that people considered it something to be avoided and that he shared their concern. The second example the prof mentioned was the Communist Party in China during the Revolution. The Communists did a lot of horrible stuff he said, but they were exceedingly clever in one respect: they took their best and brightest -- their most educated -- and sent them to live among the peasants for a year. Not as punishment, but to understand what the concerns of the peasants were. By doing this, they were able to "frame" the Revolution in terms of its impact on the lives of peasants.

Lberals need to take their battles out of the cities and into the suburbs and rural America. There are some obvious hurdles. Many evangelicals take their cues from the pulpit; does this mean that liberals need to get to the pulpit to make a difference? I do not think that liberals have to "give" on their own values, so much as demonstrate that our own values are in fact Christian values. I think a case can be made that the current administration is very un-Christian, but very few seem to be making that case. This must change. Was Jesus a "warrior of righteousness"? If so, I haven't read that passage. Would Jesus favor tax-cuts for the rich, to spur investment? It seems to me that He would rather give to the poor, perhaps ask them to find the Lord, but accept them nonetheless. It is time to ask Christians to practice what they preach: Tolerance and compassion for those who suffer (including those that have abortions) rather than judgment and indignation; to demand that a so-called Christian nation wash the feet of the poor rather than condemn them to entrenched poverty; peace, goodwill, and charity toward all men -- including those in Iraq, Iran, and other nations that do not share our beliefs; to make justice a reality through our deeds. America must lead by example, as Jesus did.

It feels weird to me to use and perhaps abuse the language of Christianity, but I think the professor is right: it is something that liberals need to do if politics is going to be about getting things done rather than simply proclaiming a right to have our way. We are ourselves entrenched: we can dig deeper into our positions and pretend the conservative majority does not exist, or we can proclaim once and for all people that liberals do share some core values that are not shared by the administration in power.

Posted by webs0080 at November 4, 2004 06:33 AM