Letters: The Left and Liberalism, Part II

Eric Leroy and George M Brenckle continue their conversation...  (Follow the hyperlink to read their first letters).

Hi Eric:

I read through your letter a couple of times. At first, I did not understand why Jen paired us together, but then I began to see that we do have a great deal in common. I am not sure whether we agree with each other regarding any issue or policy, but I am sure that we both feel caught between the two extremes — and are sure that the answers to our problems will only come from reasoned dialogue, not from shouting each other down or marching and demonstrating.

There are a number of “yardsticks” we use to measure our positions. You address one of the key ones: liberal vs. conservative. There is that old saw that liberals want to rush headlong into making new mistakes while conservatives want to be cautious and keep making the same mistakes. I believe that you and I both are what could be considered “classical liberals” in that we believe in individualism, consent, the rule of law, the government as trustee, and the significance of religious toleration. The key point here is individualism, that rights and responsibilities belong to each of us as individuals. I sense your frustration in have any interaction between two individuals must immediately be judge in terms of an interaction between two identity groups: white vs. black, male vs. female, Christian vs. Muslim.

I noticed that our two letters amounted to over 25 minutes of reading. That may have been a mistake. I can be long winded. While it’s hard to dig into these issues and keep it short, I will try and do that. I’ve got two ideas I would like to bring out.

One is the work of Jonathan Haidt and his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”(1). In it he develops a model of our moral foundations and identifies six pillars of morality: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Respect, Sanctity, and Liberty. He found that the difference between people who identify themselves, as liberal, libertarian, or conservative was they placed different weights on each of these six pillars.The left tended to place the overwhelming weight on the Care pillar, while the right tended to weigh all of the pillars. These differences can be misinterpreted. For example an extremely left-leaning individual who places weight solely on the Care (vs. Harm) pillar to the exclusion of the others will tend to interpret an attempt to balance across the other pillars as a sign of not having any compassion and therefore being evil. It seems to me that the better we understand the foundation of our own moral code and seek to understand the moral code of others before judging their political positions, the better off we will be working together to decide on policy and to solve problems.

My second idea revolves around the idea of individualism vs. collectivism. I think this “yardstick” is more important than the traditional liberal vs. conservative framework. Both the far right and the far left tend to be collectivist and authoritarian in their approach. I am a strong believer in the concept that we as human beings are endowed with rights. These rights belong to the individual. Likewise responsibilities toward society in general belong to the individual.

Having said this, I recognize that humans are social animals by nature and that forming and interacting in groups is incredibly important. Individuals do not have completely unfettered rights to do as they please in all situations. But, the collective rights of the group arise from and are driven by the rights of the individuals that belong to that group.

What scares me more than anything for our future is the collectivist view that rights belong to the group (however that group is defined), that the rights of the individual are completely subservient to the group, and that the state is justified in using compulsion in any situation. To quote Rousseau:

Whoever refuses to obey the general will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free (2).

Furthermore, Rousseau wrote:

Whoever wishes to preserve his life at the expense of others should also give it up for them when necessary. For the citizen is no longer judge of the peril to which the law wishes he be exposed, and when the prince has said to him, ‘it is expedient for the state that you should die,’ he should die.(3)

This is what leads to concentration camps and to gulags. There is almost no difference in the collectivism of the extreme left or the extreme right. In 1930’s Germany, “the differences between National Socialism and Communism boiled down to a choice between the dictatorship of the Volk, and the dictatorship of the proletariat”(4). In either case, collectivism resulted in the deaths of an unimaginable magnitude in the 20th century.

I do not mean to imply that we have traveled far down this road — yet. However, the concepts of identity politics are a step in the direction of collectivism, and some of the pronouncements from the extreme left and the extreme right are there. When we cease to see other people as an individuals, with their own unique perspectives and own unique thoughts, if we see others only as a representative of whatever group we choose to place them in, having the same ideas and same thoughts as attributed to that group, we are in trouble.

George

(1) Jonathan Haidt, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, 2012, Random House, ISBN-13: 978–0307377906

(2) Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Daniel Cress, “On The Social Contract”, 1987, Hackett Publishing, ISBN-13: 978–0872200685, Chapter VII

(3) Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Daniel Cress, “On The Social Contract”, 1987, Hackett Publishing, ISBN-13: 978–0872200685, Chapter V

(4) Stephen R. C. Hicks, “Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialismfrom Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition), Kindle Edition, (ISBN 1592476465), Chapter 4: The Climate of Collectivism

Dear George,

I have read and reread both your letter. You are clearly well-informed and well-schooled.

First things first: I believe that you dealt handsomely with the sign containing/proclaiming the five ‘societal bulls’ (‘bulls’ in the Martin Luther, not the Zodiac, sense), so much embraced by your young relative. I admire the patience of your painstaking thought, careful elaboration, and almost limitless diplomacy, though I doubt that, had I been you, I would have exhausted as much effort in trying to reconcile my (your) comparative maturity with the corresponding immaturity of your headstrong ‘young relative.’ My guess is (how depressing) that he/she will either (1) not even bother with any of it; or (2) dismiss out of hand your well-constructed arguments as representing the bland, stale mental meanderings of an old fool (representing an Old Guard) who just doesn’t get it.

And No, I haven’t forgotten what it was like to be that age and Yeah, I probably was once just as callow, just as bellicose. As long as they are willing to stay put on university campuses and not bother the rest of us too much, I am content simply to let the youth stay young until they decide to grow up — or until the passage of time ‘grows them up’ a bit in spite of themselves. And, it is NOT that their impulses are wrong — I agree with you there — it is merely that in their all-sweeping, doctrinaire, windbag pronouncements, they indicate no grasp at all of how thoroughly they defeat their own purposes. They do not understand the word irony. In so doing, at least in their pompous blathering, they out-fascist the fascists.

George, you are too nice. But OK, enough on the ‘sign’.

I support your position totally when you speak of “identity politics” and just as passionately agree with your take on individualism vs. collectivism. With me, I honestly feel blessed now (I did not always think that way, I assure you) that I seem to be a person who has never really, truly felt comfortable anywhere, or in any group. I wasn’t like a character out of a circus or someone who foamed at the mouth, but I just never seemed to fit the mold. Somehow, I kind of left people just shaking their heads. Oh well.

But getting that learned (or ‘learnt’ as the Brits say) has helped me. It means that I don’t take sides automatically. I never feel the obligation to vote a straight ticket. I have never been a ‘joiner’, nor a wearer of the ‘correct’ hats, badges, and uniforms. Therefore, though my leanings have always been liberal, I appear to have cultivated (maybe also being a writer helps) what Ernest Hemingway called a good “Shit Detector” — by which he meant the ability to tell gold from dross, no matter what you want to believe.

Maybe this is a bad example, but when O.J. Simpson went on trial for murder, I noticed that almost all black people REFUSED to entertain the possibility that he was guilty. Having been subjected to the racist abuses of the American legal and “correctional” system for generations, they no longer could be objective. They chose to believe the shrunken glove exhibit (“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” — Johnny Cochrane) over the DNA evidence — the nursery rhyme over the science. This was, it seemed to me, because they were thinking collectively. Don’t get me wrong: Simpson had been a hero to me. I DESIRED him to be innocent. But the overwhelming majority of the evidence pointed to his guilt. Nevertheless — if you thought that he was guilty, to most black people it was a clear signal that you were racist. It startled me, disappointed me and, frankly, right or wrong, it caused me to think less of black people. If you said O.J. might be guilty, you were talking to a brick wall AND you ignited hostility.

I have gradually developed the same feeling toward the Left. For years and years, I thought they were the good guys. The ‘bad’ guys, the ignoramuses, the bigots, joined the Tea Party. When conservatives complained about The “Liberal Media” (only it came out as “LiberalMedia” — as if it were one word), I thought “Oh, how unfair.” But over time, my sentiments began to change. I realized that the media no longer seeks truth but sensation and titillation. I saw more and more hate in the eyes of my erstwhile partners in liberalism. I saw that they also, instead of dissecting political considerations issue-by-issue, indeed voted a Straight Ticket. If you knew their position on “Abortion”, for instance, you knew what they would say about everything else. Of course, those on the Right were the same, but I expected that. I also expected better things from the Left. I expected fair play from liberals. I expected reason, restraint, tolerance, compassion, and, again and above all, FAIR PLAY.

The Kavanaugh thing, the hysterical hatred of Trump right from the outset, the increasing vindictiveness of the Feminist Movement, etc, have shown me that, far from representing a source of sanity, they in fact are verging more and more in the opposite direction. So I am not their boy anymore. I refuse to wear the uniform.

In closing, I wish to say Thank You George, for your stimulating input. I sense that we have different temperaments. It doesn’t matter. We are ultimately, I feel, kindred spirits. That is a blessing for which I am grateful.

Best

Eric

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