We are reaping of the evil seeds we have sown

"Politics is a Team Sport" has now fully flowered - and it's a poison

I think we can all agree that “it just got real.”

AP News / Evan Vucci - Fair Use Claimed

I think we can all agree that we really need to walk away to a calm place and ask ourselves: How did we get here? A former president and candidate for “re-election” - even if disjointed by Joe Biden’s 2020 win - escapes assassination by inches, and otherwise “ordinary” neighbors are on social media griping that the shooter missed. I asked my mid-twenties son what people his age were saying:

“[Trump] is horrible. But this isn’t the way we deal with that,” he said.

My neighbors on the Left

I want to start this next paragraph with: “My neighbors on the Left...” But, honestly, I am not deaf. I can hear readers muttering “F**k your neighbors on the left.”

Again, How did we get to the point where an attempt at reason is met with an F-bomb? And yes, there is a moral equivalence here: “F**k your neighbors on the Left” is just a waypoint to complaining about a failed assassination attempt on the opposing candidate. Let’s stop it now before we end up like them.

It is massively immodest of me to say so, but I know exactly how we got here. But you’re going to have to tolerate me starting my next paragraph the way I do.

My neighbors on the Left... They share a common belief with us on the Right. Do you want proof? Try suggesting we set aside the First Amendment... No, not THAT part - the part about religion. Suggest we should allow the majority - it is “our democracy," after all - to prescribe a State religion and then go about as the English once did - knocking on doors to demand an explanation why the resident wasn't in church on Sunday. Watch how quickly our neighbors on the Left “get religion” on the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion.

We agree. Just stop. Turn the damn phone off for a second. Find a calm place and ponder those two words. We agree.

We agree that the power of government must be limited. It’s when we start talking about where the limits are to be drawn that we argue.

Our Democracy

Let’s make a simple but essential distinction. Liberal Democracy is our principle of government, and a Constitutional Republic is our form of government. The basic idea—ostensibly the foundation of Western civilization—is that the human dignity of each person leads us to conclude that there must be some boundaries that the power of a legitimate government cannot cross.

Where are those boundaries? When we try to answer this question, we reveal our perspective on government. Our neighbors on the Left—who likely identify as “Liberal”—will want these boundaries drawn expansively to allow the government to act in furtherance of the common good. We on the Right identify as “Conservative” and will draw these lines tightly in defense of individual liberty.

I learned conservatism at the dinner table. And this was from a family with deep roots in Wisconsin Democrat politics and Organized Labor. My father used to say, “The role of government is to do those things for us that we cannot do for ourselves and to otherwise leave us alone.”

What are those things? What are “public goods?” As neighbors, these are the questions we have debated among ourselves for almost 250 years.

Politics is a Clock - Not a Spectrum

Consider the clock (the analog one, kids...) Let's call 12 o’clock “Liberal Democracy.” Let's call 9 o’clock, which would be moving left, or counter-clockwise, classical Liberalism. 3 o’clock - moving right - is classical Conservatism. Our debate is supposed to be a give-and-take among neighbors between 9 and 3. On some issues, we might land more toward 9 (left of center); on others, we might end up more toward 3 (right of center).

This is what “politics” is supposed to be. It is imperative that we own this and refuse to be entertained with false pieties about “putting politics aside.” We should be able to put partisanship aside. But politics is baked into human nature. We must also refuse the false piety of “no labels.” The problem is not with labels like “Liberal” and “Conservative.” The problem is our dishonesty. And this dishonesty starts with another false piety - that politics is a “team sport.”

I grew up listening to a pastor who was fond of reminding us that when we pointed a finger, we should not miss the fact that we have three other fingers on our own hand—which were pointed back at us. So, let’s start at home.

We have neighbors with us on the Right who are blinded by some very peculiar ideas about who we, as Christians, ought to be in this world. There is a flavor of Evangelical Protestantism unique to the United States called Dominion Theology. They actually believe Christians are to assume political power to “hasten” the Second Coming. While this is painting with a broad brush, the larger point is how they push well past 3 o’clock as they move to the Right. They end up at 6 o’clock when they fuse their version of spiritual and biblical authority with political power to create a governing philosophy.

Now for my question to my neighbors on the Left. Do you see in your own midst those who would push right past 9 o’clock as they move to the Left? This will likely be just as broad a brush, but there are those who apparently believe the state has the right to dictate to parents how their children should be raised. Dishonest appeals to the “common good” of public education mask a Marxist effort to psychologically divorce children from their parents. Posing as “anti-racists” and as “LGBTQ activists,” they exploit otherwise legitimate grievances in an effort to seize control of public education. They fuse the economic power of organized labor with the political power of government to push their governing philosophy.

If 12 o’clock is Liberal Democracy, 6 o’clock is Fascism

The whole point behind looking at politics as a clock and not a spectrum is to see that we can end up at fascism either way—blowing past 3 as we move right or blowing past 9 as we move Left. Those among our neighbors on the Left who blindly blow past 9 o’clock pose as mainstream among us on the Left. They are the Left’s version of the Bolsheviks of a century ago.

But do not for one moment think we on the Right are immune to this. Dominion Theology among fundamentalists blows right past 3 o’clock, claiming all along to be mainstream “Conservative.” The truth is they are a small fringe. But they adamantly claim the title “Conservative” and want to paint those who oppose their governing philosophy as “Libertarians.” They are just as much a new form of the Bolsheviks among us.

This is a very clever, elegant form of propaganda. The word Bolshevik comes from a Russian word meaning great or many. A small fringe of Russian civilization posed as mainstream. “Dissidents” in Russia were called Mensheviks—from a word meaning light or small. In truth, the mainstream in Russia hated the Bolsheviks. The dissidents carried the ideals of the mainstream in Russian society.

We are facing exactly the same propaganda today. From the Left, Bolsheviks masquerade as Progressives. From the Right, they masquerade as Conservatives.

From the Left, it is an elegant play on the common sense in which people see themselves as “progressive.” (Note the lowercase 'p'.) As a governing philosophy, Progressivism shares a common history with Fascism. It especially shares a common focus on bundling the perceived authority of “The Science” together with economic and political power. In the minds of the real mainstream, “progressive” means roughly what Liberal has classically meant. It is less important that we delve into the philosophies and more important that we see the neo-Bolshevism from the Left for what it is - a fringe posing as mainstream that uses the classical sense of the term Liberal as equivalent to neo-Menshevik.

From the Right, Bolsheviks pose as Conservative and bundle their “spiritual authority” with political authority. They identify as Conservatives and label those who dissent from their authoritarianism as "Libertarians" in an identical effort to tag their mainstream opponents as neo-Mensheviks. The appeal to the authority of their peculiar interpretation of the Bible reeks of the same false piety of the pre-Reformation clergy who once wielded a monopoly over how we came to know what is true - until the Black Death disabused the whole world of their false claims.

Where do we go from here? Five thoughts

It just got real. So, what now?

1) We must call B.S. on the partisan piety that says “politics is a team sport.”

No, it isn’t.

The last words of the First Amendment guarantee to us the right “…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Politics is how we used to do that. As neighbors. We must stop allowing “our team” to bastardize our politics into a means by which they simply monetize our grievances and set us against each other. If there is any seed we have sown that has now flowered its evil fruit, it is this view of politics as a team sport.

2) We are the mainstream. Stop buying into the Bolshevik propaganda. Don’t let anyone label you as a “dissident” because you refuse to play by the partisan playbook. Together, we must reclaim the word “Liberal” to first be how we describe our common principle of government: Liberal Democracy.

3) We must stop paying attention to the loudest voices. Stop watching their programming. Unfollow them. Those posing as mainstream are, in fact, a fringe minority. This is true of the Progressives on the Left and of the Fundamentalists on the Right. Both are running the same plays from the Bolsheviks of 20th-century Russia. Tune them out. Tune in your neighbors. Find someone opposite you politically, have a beer together, and ask them: “What do you see happening in our country? What do you think we should do about it?” And if they say something that upsets you, take another sip of your beer and say: “Tell me more.”

4) We must start paying attention to how media affects us emotionally. Political consultants and media executives have discovered the same about social media and other tech platform products. It allows for the creation of an “emotional dossier” on you. (The fancy word for this is psychographics.) If they discover how to keep you angry and afraid of your Political Other, they can keep you engaged in their programming or with their candidate.

5) Lastly, remember this basic truth about Liberal Democracy: The authority to govern arises from the consent of the governed. This means it does not arise from our church pulpits. Neither is it conferred at the hooding ceremony when an academic gets their Ph.D. Science is descriptive, a method we use to formally investigate and describe cause and effect in nature. Public policy is prescriptive; it is how we move forward as neighbors seeking to preserve the common good. Governing should be informed by science. But the authority to govern does not come from “The Science.” It comes from us as neighbors - on the Left, Right, and everything in between.