Keeping the Faith

 

 

 

Do you like top Democrats saying Republicans are people “who cling to their guns, their religion,” “deplorables.    .   . irredeemables,” “white supremisists, racists” and now, “(semi) Fascists”? To Democrat leaders, there may still be two parties, but only one is legitimate.

Fascism's Look? Philadelphia's Independence Hall and Moscow's Kremlin

In today’s social media world, platforms like Twitter “facilitate massive collective punishment for small or imagined offenses, with real-world consequences, including innocent people losing their jobs and being shamed into suicide." This from  the liberal Jonathan Haidt, who adds today’s punishment that feels right is “not execution; it is public shaming and social death.” 

How did we get here? We are in a place, as said earlier, where indignation is more powerful than gratitude. This because 

To acknowledge that gratitude is proper is to acknowledge that there are others greater than us, which is a very difficult thing to acknowledge if you start from an ideology that says I and others who think like me have the right to reshape the world according to our ideas and our will.

It's a place, writes the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, where “anger is seen as self-justifying. Fury is its own excuse. If you’re throwing a fit, you must be right. Rage or nausea make your argument unassailable.”

To suggest answers, let's try nine questions.

1.   Is religion the source of our current division?

Religions advance humility in the face of a greater, unprovable force beyond us, while secularism makes humans the gods we have, some more god-like than others, evolving and re-positioning. The religious party shares (“clings to”?) a core of common beliefs, the secular party faces the constant fluidity of human coalitions reforming against a common enemy.

2.   Democrats hold to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.” Doesn’t that arc put history on the side of progressives?

King is saying, “The Arc of [Morality] Bends Toward Justice.” Isn’t that “The Arc of [God] Bends Toward Justice.” In King’s Arc of Justice, it’s God, not gods. King’s faith is humble, but strong in the face of a larger, unknowable force.

Francis Fukuyama proclaimed “the end of history” at the end of the cold war. It was the triumph of liberal-democratic capitalism and the nation-state. Oops. But now, he is back to say, “there is, indeed, an arc of history, with justice as its terminus.”

3.   If history moves through the Hegelian dialectic of “thesis, antithesis, synthesis,”  hasn’t America’s rising secularism (65% of Americans described themselves as Christians in 2018-19, down from 77% in 2009) delivered the “antithesis” of America as a religious country?

So it would seem, given progressive rejection of an “In God We Trust” anti-abortion, anti-LGBT+, pro-fossil fuel, pro-beef, anti-free sex, anti-recreational drugs, big family-loving state. Isn’t secularism the glue that holds the Democratic coalition together?

Or are we now moving toward synthesis? One hopes many would share Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s passion, expressed in his 1974 pronouncement, “Live not by lies. Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Fukuyama espouses competent, limited government that regulates a free-market providing basic social welfare; federalism with power as close to the people as possible; free speech; individual rights over group rights; respect for moral elements such as family and community that go beyond individual autonomy and making one’s own choices (Asian cultural influence); and moderation, which Fukuyama calls “the key to the revival of liberalism.”
 
Peter Berkowitz, ex-Yale and Harvard, now at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, attributes Donald Trump’s rising 2020 support among Black and Hispanic voters to their viewing Washington’s governing class as a distant elite unconcerned about jobs lost to overseas, open borders, and illegal immigration.

4.   Are conservatives happier than (angry) progressives?

Ross Pomeroy tells us that one of social psychology’s most fixed findings, repeatedly replicated over almost five decades, is hearing American conservatives say they are much happier than do American liberals. Conservatives report greater meaning and purpose in their lives and higher overall life satisfaction. These links are so established that modern social scientists are simply reduced to looking for explanations.

One possibility: marriage tends to make people happier, and conservatives are more likely to be married. Another links religious belief to happiness, and conservatives tend to be more religious. Progressives are depressed by inequalities in society, but conservatives are okay provided everyone has roughly the same chance to succeed. That’s a more rosy and empowering outlook than liberal determinism.

Two other studies found progressives more neurotic, defined as "a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings." And psychologists at the University of Florida and the University of Toronto conducted four studies, concluding conservatives are more "positively adjusted" than liberals. Thinking conservatives were fearful, low in self-esteem, and rationalizing away social inequality, they found instead that

Conservatives are more satisfied with their lives, in general... report better mental health and fewer mental and emotional problems (all after controlling for age, sex, income, and education), and view social justice in ways that are consistent with binding moral foundations, such as by emphasizing personal agency and equity. Liberals have become less happy over the last several decades, but this decline is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions.

Psychiatrist Frank Yeomans works with personality disorder clients. He argues political tribalism links to psychological proclivities—the Left is “depressive” while the Right is “paranoid-schizoid.” People on the Left view themselves as a combination of good and evil, but the Right sees people as good or bad, and mistrust the “bad.” In contrast,  psychotherapist Adam Walterbach, who works with an LGBT+ clientele, describes Yeomans’ characterizations as “simplistic” in a “complex world.”

5.    Is humility central to a religious (as opposed to a secular) outlook?

The progressive church to which I belong takes its guidance from Micah 6:8: “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” People are a step ahead when they can fit life within a larger structure, and move commitment beyond self. Life’s meaning is in our minds, something we can change over time. The philosopher Iddo Landau argues that meaning is a sense of worth which we may derive in different ways —from relationships, creativity, accomplishment in a given field, or generosity, among other possibilities.

The Chinese philosopher Laozi’s Dào is the source and ideal of all existence: it is unseen, but not transcendent, immensely powerful yet supremely humble, being the root of all things. People have desires and free will, are able to alter their own nature. Many act "unnaturally", upsetting the natural balance of the Dào. The Dàodé Jīng (The Book of the Way) helps lead students to return to their natural state, in harmony with Dào. For a life in harmony with the Dào, one who persists can succeed as a “person of purpose.”

6.    Does meritocracy help ordinary people?

For most of history, the tiny noble minority enjoyed its status linked to the divine right of kings. The current elite, our meritocracy operating within a majority-rule democracy, justifies its power using the fruits of superior education and merit-based achievement. This "right to rule" is corrupted, however, whenever "merit" winners pull up the ladder so that their less-qualified offspring remain elite at the expense of achievers attempting to rise from below.

Conservatives also make a case for meritocracy. A 2019 article by Liel Leibovitz, titled “Get Out,” argued that American universities’ hostility toward Jews comes from academia’s open rejection of two values that, during the 20th century, made universities places where Jews and other ambitious and open-minded people could thrive: 1) meritocracy;  and 2) free debate. “Everything that’s happened since [shows Leibovitz] was spot on.”

And listen to social psychologist Jaime Napier:

One of the biggest correlates with happiness in our surveys was the belief of a meritocracy, which is the belief that anybody who works hard can make it. That was the biggest predictor of happiness. That was also one of the biggest predictors of political ideology. So, the conservatives were much higher on these meritocratic beliefs than liberals were.

7.    If the unknown defies proof, why does faith bring confidence?

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.  

— Thomas Aquinas 

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness. 

— Mother Teresa 

If God is for us, who can be against us? 

— Paul the Apostle 

The New York Times’ ex-conservative David Brooks quotes contemporary Jewish sage Frederick Büchner, “Faith is less a position on and more a movement toward.” He then adds, “It is sensing a presence, not buying an argument.” Humility with confidence.

Jesse Singal in Spectator writes that “human society is too big and too complicated a machine; it effortlessly repels attempts at easy answers. .  . our ability to answer questions about what is happening has outpaced our ability to answer why it is happening.” 

Faith helps.

8.  How lost are progressives?

And is that why they become indignant name-callers?

Conservative researcher Lee Siegel finds that

In the eyes of the liberal media, which demonstrates its virtue by summoning long-settled moral struggles as if they were still living injustices, the Middle Ages beckon whenever prayer hovers near the public realm. Institutionalized religion moved to the periphery of American culture and society decades ago; it no longer has the power to harm or exclude. On the contrary: the increasing inability of atomized, lonely people to find solace and humanity in an escape from ego, ego, ego is the true American emergency.

And Jacob Howland wonders: 

How does ideology appropriate the form of religion while distorting and debasing its content? Can one produce good art if the purpose is to promote propaganda? If we are to restore our society’s political health, we must recover the capacity of speech and reinvigorate the virtues that sustain it.

9.   Is Ron DeSantis on God’s side?

Here’s a paean of praise to the Florida governor from conservative writer Jeff Reynolds:

Ron DeSantis represents what Republican voters have long sought in their elected leaders: someone who will take the fight to the opponents of liberty. Rather than the continual frustration of allowing the Democrats to dictate the terms of the debate, with public polling and media bias backing them up, DeSantis and his team have chosen which battles will bring victories in the culture wars, the fight for liberty, and electoral victory. In the process, Team DeSantis has neutralized the biggest institutional advantages enjoyed by its opponents.

I have called the Democratic Party a criminal organization, and provided facts to back that charge. My words are directed at the party’s leadership, not to its millions of followers who put their party into power. I believe in democracy, one where justice is blind. It isn’t now.