America the "Beautiful"

Our system of government is what makes us different from other countries. If a person thinks America is a great country, then that person respects the man who was elected by that system--regardless of who he voted for. And, even more importantly, that person respects the right of his fellow Americans to feel differently about things. How can any free country be considered great when its people treat their government and their fellow citizens like foreign enemies, just for believing something different than they do? A nation of people who antagonize their own president because he isn't the one they voted for is a nation that does not deserve to be a world power.


Before I say anything else I would just like to mention a couple things. First, I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican either. At this point I'm basically independent (small i): Although I share some of the same moral beliefs as many Republicans, I agree more with some of the policies of the Democrats, and so far have not found a party that encompasses everything I believe. So if you are now thinking, "That's easy for her to say, she did vote for Obama. She would feel different if McCain had won," then not only are you (rather unkindly) assuming the worst about me, you have completely missed the point.

The real problem here is not which side wins. The problem is that both sides are wrong--not in their principles, necessarily, but in their actions.

This morning I finished listening to Empire, by Orson Scott Card, on audiobook. (The book is fantastic, by the way, and I think absolutely everyone should read it.) At the end of the recording there was an afterword by the author, which I was hoping to be able to include here in an audio clip because it went along perfectly with this post that I was already writing. I haven't been able to find the audio online, so I hope you'll click on that link and read the text of it. It isn't very long, but in case you don't want to read the whole thing, here are the parts that stuck out to me (the bold is my addition, for the things I want most to point out).

Because we haven't had a civil war in the past fourteen decades, people think we can't have one now. Where is the geographic clarity of the Mason-Dixon line? When you look at the red-state blue-state division in the past few elections, you get a false impression. The real division is urban, academic, and high-tech counties versus suburban, rural, and conservative Christian counties. How could such widely scattered "blue" centers and such centerless "red" populations ever act in concert?
Geography aside, however, we have never been so evenly divided with such hateful rhetoric since the years leading up to the Civil War of the 1860s. Because the national media elite are so uniformly progressive, we keep hearing (in the elite media) about the rhetorical excesses of the "extreme right." To hear the same media, there is no "extreme left," just the occasional progressive who says things he or she shouldn't.
But any rational observer has to see that the Left and Right in America are screaming the most vile accusations at each other all the time. We are fully polarized -- if you accept one idea that sounds like it belongs to either the blue or the red, you are assumed -- nay, required -- to espouse the entire rest of the package, even though there is no reason why supporting the war against terrorism should imply you're in favor of banning all abortions and against restricting the availability of firearms; no reason why being in favor of keeping government-imposed limits on the free market should imply you also are in favor of giving legal status to homosexual couples and against building nuclear reactors. These issues are not remotely related, and yet if you hold any of one group's views, you are hated by the other group as if you believed them all; and if you hold most of one group's views, but not all, you are treated as if you were a traitor for deviating even slightly from the party line.
It goes deeper than this, however. A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure anyone who opposes them must either be stupid and deceived or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.
It is part of human nature to regard as sane those people who share the worldview of the majority of society. Somehow, though, we have managed to divide ourselves into two different, mutually exclusive sanities. The people in each society reinforce each other in madness, believing unsubstantiated ideas that are often contradicted not only by each other but also by whatever objective evidence exists on the subject. Instead of having an ever-adapting civilization-wide consensus reality, we have became a nation of insane people able to see the madness only in the other side.

...

So virulent are these responses -- again, from both the Left and the Right -- that I believe it is only a short step to the attempt to use the power of the state to enforce one's views. On the right we have attempts to use the government to punish flag burners and to enforce state-sponsored praying. On the left, we have a ban on free speech and peaceable public assembly in front of abortion clinics and the attempt to use the power of the state to force the acceptance of homosexual relationships as equal to marriages. Each side feels absolutely justified in compelling others to accept their views.

...

Yet we seem only able to see the negative effects of coercion caused by the other team. Progressives see the danger of allowing fanatical religions (which, by some definitions, means "all of them") to have control of government -- they need only point to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, or, in a more general and milder sense, the entire Muslim world, which is oppressed precisely to the degree that Islam is enforced as the state religion.
Conservatives, on the other hand, see the danger of allowing fanatical atheistic religions to have control of government, pointing to Nazi Germany and all Communist nations as obvious examples of political utopianism run amok.
Yet neither side can see any connection between their own fanaticism and the historical examples that might apply to them. People insisting on a Christian America simply cannot comprehend that others view them as the Taliban-in-waiting; those who insist on progressive exclusivism in America are outraged at any comparison between them and Communist totalitarianism. Even as they shun or fire or deny tenure to those who disagree with them, everybody thinks it's the other guy who would be the oppressor, while our side would simply "set things to rights."
Rarely do people set out to start a civil war. Invariably, when such wars break out both sides consider themselves to be the aggrieved ones. Right now in America, even though the Left has control of all the institutions of cultural power and prestige -- universities, movies, literary publishing, mainstream journalism-- as well as the federal courts, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by traditional religion and conservatism. And even though the Right controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, as well as having ample outlets for their views in nontraditional media and an ever-increasing dominance over American religious and economic life, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by the cultural dominance of the Left.
And they are threatened, just as they are also threatening, because nobody is willing to accept the simple idea that someone can disagree with their group and still be a decent human being worthy of respect.

In this book there is a civil war started by exactly the same issues that we struggle with in today's politics. This article illustrates how close we are to that, how easy it would be for us to find ourselves in the same situation. My point today is less about the civil war aspect and more about the principle of the way we approach politics, but I still think you should read the rest of the article because what he says is important to think about.


I have had exactly this kind of discriminatory, nonsensical hatred directed at me personally, and I expect a lot of you have as well (at least, if you've ever tried to have a conversation about politics with someone "across the aisle"). For this reason, I know a lot of people refuse to discuss politics with anyone. (For the record, I think this is wrong, because it only contributes to the divisiveness of American politics and encourages total disengagement from the political system.) In any case, this is an example of how we have become "a nation of insane people able to see the madness only in the other side." Like so many others, I have had the experience of trying to discuss different beliefs with someone who, no matter what I said, could only see what he had already decided about me.


This kind of behavior is exactly what goes on during electoral campaigns, and is exactly what Orson Scott Card is talking about. It shouldn't be happening. We are all Americans. Democrats have exactly as much right to fight for their beliefs as Republicans do, and vice versa. Our friends, family members, coworkers, roommates, neighbors, and church leaders have different beliefs from us. That is no excuse for treating them like enemies. There is no excuse for the way politicians treat each other during the campaigns--and we are all just as guilty as they are. A country that divides itself this way is just waiting to destroy itself. It has to stop.