Artificial Political Lines

Fraubudgie (must be my week to link to her!) has a good post called “Does Not A Liberal Bleed … ?” on the Great Political Chasm.

Ask me if they bleed and you’re likely to get a different answer than you did the day before. I was quite frustrated with a couple of liberal commenters both here and at Dummocrats. I decided that it just wasn’t worthwhile to continue the debate, because as much as I love debating, when it gets personal it makes me tired. And it inevitably seems to get personal. My brother is a card carrying, global warming, moving to Canada, Lieberman hating Kos Kid style liberal. I, on the other hand, am a “classical liberal” best known these days as a conservative. Here’s where I live in Politopia:

NW-You would feel most at home in the Northwest region. You advocate a large degree of economic and personal freedom. Your neighbors include folks like Ayn Rand, Jesse Ventura, Milton Friedman, and Drew Carey, and may refer to themselves as “classical liberals,” “libertarians,” “market liberals,” “old whigs,” “objectivists,” “propertarians,” “agorists,” or “anarcho-capitalist.”

My brother and I try very hard to not discuss politics. But though we are “enemies” on the political field, when Katrina drove us from our home, he took us in for two and a half weeks. That’s a LONG time for houseguests. And if and when he moves to Canada, I will make him and his wife welcome when they come back to the U.S. for medical care.

I could debate policy all day long and have a great time, but aside from personal issues - and I have also been occasionally guilty of getting personal when my frustration reaches a certain level - what makes me think it’s not worthwhile is the fact that we no longer have objective facts to work with. It’s all about “truthiness” and for every study or reference I might come up with, a my debating opponent will come up with a different one and we’re left not debating facts, but debating whose source is more credible. There’s no foundation anymore. Maybe there never was one, but it seems to me that this is a fairly recent development. But occasionally, if we’re careful, we can communicate, as Fraubudgie did with another merchant at a market. And afterwards, she said,

It also occurred to me later how both conservatives and liberals are painted with a broad brush by pundits and politicians, who don’t want us to know each other any more. Every conservative is supposed to be racist, fascist war-mongering and heartless(and I’m not). Every liberal is supposed to be a Godless, hedonist, yellow-bellied clueless hypocrit (And C. isn’t)

[...]If we as Americans start actually talking to each other, we slip out of the control that politico’s and pundits want to have over us. Who knows? We just might get ticked off enough to slip out of the daily memes … and send a tsunami over Washington.

Maybe. I can’t imagine it happening, to be honest. Thomas Jefferson said

“I fear [political difference] is inseparable from the different constitutions of the human mind and that degree of freedom which permits unrestrained expression. Political dissention is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles of society, as that political opinions shall, in its intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may be well doubted.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1797. ME 9:389

I think the key to that statement may be “it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, from social life.” In spite of the inflammatory 24 hour news cycle, everything is not politics. Life is much bigger than that, and if we focus on those things we have in common, and practice a civil social discourse with each other, we’ll find that some of the personal animosity of our political differences is lessened. Because no matter how angry or frustrated we get with the folks on the other side of the political spectrum, if you prick any of us, we do bleed. We need to remember that “the good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines.” And is anything more artificial than politics today?

Linked to Stop the ACLU’s Friday Free for All