In this post and the next one, I will talk about politics. More specifically, about political ideology, which is deeply related to both critical thinking and its joined-at-the-hip siblings, liberal education and democracy. In the second post, I’ll use that foundation to talk about the current moral crisis in America.
These posts are an attempt at reasoning, and a search for other forms of community within the democratic universe, all of which depend on the common language of reason. I’ll be speaking personally, (in case that isn’t obvious) but in ways that address our national crisis of political polarization. Bear with me as you please.
In referring to America’s moral crisis, I’m talking mostly about Trump and the national phenomenon of Trumpism. This has been the elephant in the room going back to 2016 and beyond. And I think we have not fully fathomed its scale or felt its impact. But first, we need to step back a bit and look at the big picture.
My inclination toward the big picture doesn’t always ingratiate me to those who dislike abstractions. I try to remind them that all thinking is abstraction. All thinking is generalizing: relating part to whole, like to like (and unlike), the more general to the more particular, and commuting between those various levels of thought. Looking at the big picture is part of what liberal learning is all about. It’s basic to critical thinking.
As to the specifics: I’ve been politically engaged since I was fifteen. It was 1968, the momentous year when the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy awoke my political conscience. (Of course, I was primed by my parents and social milieu; as any political scientist knows, parental politics is the primary factor correlating with a person’s political outlook.)
Since that awakening, I’ve never wandered very far across the political spectrum, and I’ve never been able to totally set aside or compartmentalize my values. That’s one reason why I migrated away from daily journalism and into writing books. And the central focus of my thinking (until Inside the Liberal Arts) has been democratic political thought, and especially the role of complexity in the left-right ideological spectrum. But come to think of it, Inside the Liberal Arts is democratic political thought. The book is nominally apolitical and should be. But it isn’t entirely apolitical, because it’s democratic.
The Trump Phenomenon poses a particular problem for discussions of ideology, for a particular reason, which I’ll get to shortly. But first let me lay out a thumbnail theory of ideological literacy. It’s based on the following web of ideas:
1) Ideology is good – and necessary.
Political ideology in a democracy is crucial for mapping and understanding differences of opinion – value differences – about what democracies are for and what they should do. The tendency to dismiss ideology as an annoyance or worse (using terms such as “partisan bickering,” “class warfare” and “gridlock”) is wrongheaded. Without those differences, we wouldn’t need democratic institutions. Rooted in our basic, even pre-conscious moral beliefs, they make us who we are, and they matter.
In the real world of politics, we can’t just solve practical problems in some politically neutral way like plumbers or engineers do; that is a fantasy – or worse, a rhetorical lie. The “Problem-solving Caucus” in Congress just doesn’t get it. Democracies aren’t machines. We can’t ignore or dismiss our ideological differences on what the problems are, how to solve them, and what kind of a society we want to live in.
2) The left-right spectrum – uniquely – makes sense of our differences.
Most of those differences are within morally acceptable boundaries, and they range across the left-right spectrum because they tend to be systematic differences over equality and freedom. We differ along that spectrum because we have different ideas regarding certain basic and related issues: the proper size and scope of the state; the degree to which our lives are, and ought to be, interconnected; and how holistic or partitional a worldview we have in general, both morally and intellectually. Even unreflective citizens, left, right, or center, tend to align along this ideological axis. They don’t have to understand it to be identifiable on it. But ideological literacy is something all citizens deserve, whatever their views.
3) Capitalism and socialism (and hence class) are at issue.
We have those differences mainly because capitalism – as the default system of economic exchange in the absence of other regulating powers or institutions – is a natural generator of inequality. We also have innate or learned differences in terms of how we see ourselves in the world. Given those predispositions, and having unequal resources, life chances, starting points, etc., we express those competing interests and worldviews politically. That’s what democratic politics is for. In other systems, it’s mostly about getting and keeping power by whatever means necessary. Take your choice.
4) Democracies are not in principle either capitalistic or socialistic.
They aren’t anchored to either extreme; well-wrought constitutions are not designed to do that. Instead, democracies drift across the left-right spectrum – and they are meant to drift. Well-ordered democracies are a continuous referendum on capitalism and socialism as organizational principles – and not either/or, but rather what blend is appropriate. The blend varies, across both time and space, along the left-right spectrum.
5) One can be an ideological agnostic as well as a believer; democratic citizens should be both. But there’s a catch.
For the reasons cited above, I consider myself both ideologically committed and an ideological agnostic. Agnosticism here doesn’t mean I don’t have fixed views (or if you prefer, consistent values); rather, that on that democratic spectrum, any view is prima facie morally acceptable. There is no higher principle that says we should be left, right, or center. We agree to disagree, and when necessary to compromise. And we almost never make, or become, converts. For the most part, democratic elections aren’t won by persuasion, but by mobilization.
But here’s the catch: the democratic ideological spectrum isn’t infinitely long or elastic. It’s a democratic spectrum precisely because it cannot tolerate certain extremes that are incompatible with democracy itself. These include 1) violence, threats of violence, or intimidation; 2) hatred or systematic bias against persons or groups; and 3) outright anti-democratic views (see: January 6th) that aimto undermine the whole business of peaceful political change. Interference with elections or voting rights, with free speech or freedom of assembly or worship – all these are anti-democratic and therefore beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse. Lying and deception are also inimical to democracy, but they aren’t exclusive to any particular band of the political spectrum –at least, not until recently.
In the next post, based on this understanding of democratic ideology, I’ll talk about what’s happened recently.