A Few Thoughts On The Left, The Right, and The Jena Six - updated

It should be abundantly clear to anyone reading this site that I’m a conservative. In spite of what many on the left seem to believe, that doesn’t prevent me from seeing racism and poverty, although it does affect what I think about it and how I think those problems should be solved. Unlike most people classified as poor, I’ve experienced what most Americans consider real poverty. As in, frequently not having enough to eat, living seven months with no electricity, a year without a telephone, and being evicted for failure to pay rent. As in receiving health care through the charity system, and finally being approved for welfare and medicaid which was a huge step up in my lifestyle. I know what poverty is, and I know how to get out of it. Maureen Dowd might say I have absolute moral authority on this issue. People on both the left and the right agree that poverty is a problem. We differ on the scope of the problem, and the solutions. That doesn’t make one side stupid and the other mean.

With the Jena Six, I heard about the story somewhere, immediately perceived the injustice, and have posted on it repeatedly. I’ve gone to a lot of effort to get the word out on this story. That doesn’t make me sympathetic to the concept of “hate crimes” which seem quite Orwellian to me, and it doesn’t make me think we need additional legislation. We already have laws to deal with the problem of racism. They need to be enforced. That’s the short term solution - the real solution is that people’s hearts need to change. We can use the law to make people modify their behavior, and eventually either their hearts will change with regard to racism, or they’ll die. The next generation is statistically sure to be less racist. But as long as people behave themselves, I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to change their minds. Think what you want, but make sure your actions comply with the law.

Although I support the Jena 6, I don’t subscribe to every truism out there about them. Everything doesn’t always come down to racism. For example, the selection of the white jury for Mychal Bell’s trial was not racist. Of 150 people called, only 50 showed up, and they were all white. Why is that? For one thing, the town is 85% white. Why didn’t Bell’s lawyer (who is black) object to such a small jury pool? Why didn’t he request a change of venue? Why did he permit a friend of the DA, the mother of one of the prosecution witnesses, and a good friend of the victim’s mother to populate half of the six person jury? Is he racist? The problem wasn’t that the jury was white - it was that there was no reasonable expectation that they would be fair, given their personal connections to the case. Details of the case have been hyped and dramatized. Why? The plain truth is more than bad enough. Again, people on the right and the left will agree that racism is a problem. And again, we disagree on the scope and the solution to the problem. And we all point fingers at the racists and race baiters, the fascist Demonrats and the Bushco Rethuglicans.

I don’t have a solution for these things. I wish everybody would step back and take a hard look at themselves and the tone they use when they communicate. I think it would help.

Since I started blogging on the Jena Six, I’ve lost some respect for the left. I already disagreed with them on political matters, but I have always left the door open and assumed good will and good motives as much as possible. In fact, that was one of the concepts that Henry Neufeld and I agreed on when we came up with Philophronos blogging. With the exception of a recent post by Blue Collar Muse, nobody on the right has picked this story up. I believe that is mostly because they haven’t heard of it, partly because some people don’t want their assumptions challenged, and partly because even though they might agree, they don’t want to get involved or align with the left on any topic. And the latter reason is absolutely true of many bloggers on the left.

I have linked to bloggers and sites whose views I detest and have spent most of my adult life fighting against, because I want to promote every scrap of information about this story. The same is not true of nearly all of the other side posting on Jena. Because they disagree with me on other issues, people steal entire posts and don’t link back. Sinestrospheric bloggers often come here to post their links in comments (which I approve every time), and don’t return the favor. It’s aggravating and discourteous. I’m not bothered by the fact that my blog is not being promoted - I’m getting 8-10k visitors a month at this point which shocks the heck out of me to begin with. A link from these blogs and message boards isn’t exactly an Instalanche, so if my goal was to gain traffic, that would certainly be the wrong way to go about it. And that kind of traffic isn’t going to lead to long-term readers anyway. No, what bothers me is that I’d hoped that this at least was an area where we could come together. I’d hoped that even though we don’t agree on many issues, this one would be a starting point.

My brother and I were estranged for many years. In fact I had known my husband for nearly ten years, actually lived with my husband’s family on and off for part of that decade, and he and I had been married for over a year before he knew I even had a brother. I never spoke of him. Not once. We still have a difficult relationship. When we finally started talking again, for the most part we talked about Star Trek. It was something we could agree on. Gradually, carefully, we branched out into other areas, but the starting point was the one TV show that we both watched. We still disagree - vehemently - on politics. My instinct is always to argue because I like to argue politics, but where he is concerned, I back down every time, and usually quite quickly. Now he condescends to me - although I doubt he realizes it - and says he’s “proud” of me for championing this cause. Evidently his opinion of me is quite low, if he is proud of me for simply doing the right thing. (sigh) At the end of the day, my relationship with him is far more important than scoring a political point, so I back down, respond mildly, or don’t respond at all.* It was a little goodwill between us, and that’s something for which I’m grateful. That example is just within the family, but I had hoped that promoting the Jena 6 case - aside from the obvious fact that justice needs to be done here, and so far that is not happening - might spread some goodwill around the blogosphere in the same way. We don’t have to be enemies. There are points we can agree on. And making any kind of connection, however small, has the potential to lead to more.

At least, I continue to hope it does. Howard Zinn said “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

Thomas Jefferson disagrees -

“Political dissension 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 it’s 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 it’s intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may well be doubted.” TJ to Thomas Pinckney, 29 May 1797

*Update: I want to be clear, if it wasn’t already - he quite possibly feels that he’s bending over backwards in order to get along with me. My point is just that in my family is a microcosm of the political divide in the country. This is on a much smaller scale, of course, but I do wonder if this isn’t how families were in the buildup to the Civil War.

Update: Deleted an update about another blog that was unnecessarily bitchy that I regretted. If you’re just dying to read it, doubtless Google cached it.