I haven’t done much but sleep since I updated last night. That means I have to write about ideas. I’m going to get down to the heart of my political philosophy. Every political survey I have taken has placed me as very liberal. It’s how I view myself. To me, the heart of liberalism is an expansive view of “Us.” Right wing populism is about protecting Us against Them. Who is Us and who is Them varies but this idea that there is a foreign element, people that don’t share our values, that are out to get us. The Jews are the prototype “They”, but it can be blacks, Latinos, Catholics, Protestants, Masons, Communists, Croats, Israelis, Arabs, Westerners, etc. They don’t think like Us. The only motivations of Them are hate, greed, and a lust for power. We need to keep them out, to put up walls, physical and metaphorical. We need to keep out their ideas.
Liberalism, as I understand it, is against those notions. It says that all people are people and deserving of respect. American social support is notoriously ungenerous when compared to other developed nations. We are conservative. Why? One factor that can’t be ignored is that the American population is far more heterogenous than most other developed nations. There is a reaction in Europe against immigrants. The right-wing populists don’t want to rid the countries of their social benefits, but they want to deny them to the Others.
While that is my idea of liberalism, that is not shared by many who view themselves on the left. I still get mad when I think of one far left pundit that took a view of trade similar to Trump’s. He wanted the same sort of protectionism a disdain for the integrated world economy. Economics is not always intuitive and strange things can happen. As part of the idea that everyone us part of Us, liberals are against economic inequality. I’ve always placed that near the top of my political agenda. All you hear is how inequality is increasing. What you don’t hear is that is only within countries. On a global level inequality is plummeting; it is as the lowest level it has ever been. More people have been raised out of extreme poverty in India than there are people in the US. For the first time in history most people in the world are not living in poverty. Don’t take my word for it, read this, Global Economic Inequality
by Max Roser. When confronted with this the far-left pundit said, that’s the problem of the governments of India and China, not ours. The Indians and Chinese were Them, so didn’t count.
There is much talk about similarities with Germany in the time leading up to the rise of the Nazis. One thing that strikes me is how the Nazis portrayed themselves as a bulwark against the Communists and the Communists portrayed themselves as the resistance to the Nazis. This Manichean view was an important aspect of the ascension of Hitler.
I was always torn by the French Revolution. It was the first true social revolution. It was a popular uprising against an unjust system where the aristocracy had everything and the peasants nothing. Yet in the end the revolution failed, and France returned to monarchy. Why? Because instead of being about Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, the revolution was subsumed to revenge on the Aristos, Them.
I saw Jan Bell, an Englishwoman living in America, on Friday. She talked about traveling in Indiana and how the people she knew lived amidst Trump supporters and got along with them. They were their neighbors. That’s the insight I wish would spread. They, no matter who They is, are people, not fiends. They don’t view themselves as evil. While there are exceptions, they don’t view themselves as haters. They are no more monsters than the immigrants they fear. The vast majority are not the people that marched in Charlotte.
The way I like to put it is that they are not the enemy, they are the battlefield. We don’t have to convince all of them, or even most of them. Get 5% of the people who voted for Trump to change their minds and the country is transformed. We aren’t going to do that by speaking of them the way the hard-core talks about immigrants or gays or liberals. People stop listening when you insult them.
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. Love thy neighbor. Turn the other cheek. All good advice. All liberal ideals. Peace, love, and understanding, should be our liberty, equality, and fraternity.
OK. I’ve pontificated enough. It’s now 12:05 and time to eat. I’ll try and be kind and generous. When I don’t succeed I’ll forgive myself. Sounds like a good way to live my life.
Wise Madness 