Do you recall my remarking that I thought that cognitive dissonance was likely to prevail over any coherent policies or programs? I got a good example of that this morning. On ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, presumably without knowing it, paraphrased G. K. Chesterton’s famous remark: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed”.
What he missed is that the creed includes free exercise of religion and expansive freedom of speech as well as the acceptance of our contradictions as embodied in our history as well as a fundamental believe in our own benignity. That is incompatible with “cancel culture”, the tearing down of statues of historic figures, and the suppression of books and movies from earlier years that don’t reflect today’s values or, what’s worse, tomorrow’s.
Without bonds of blood, language, religion, culture, or that common secular creed, hypocrisy and all, I see no viable force that will hold us together.
While I am not a fan of cancel culture, we survived for many years without freedom of speech and rights for whole groups of people so expansive freedom of speech really just means free speech for certain groups. In some cases those people were barely acknowledged in our society, unless they occasionally got fed up and rioted. In one case that group made up the majority of the population. Free exercise of religion? I guess compared with most other countries, but certainly not as an absolute and we clearly had religion codified into law, which was not consistent with our creed as most people believed it.
So acceptance of our contradictions and believing they are benign are much more important in some ways. (I would have said that we aspired to free speech and religion.) In this we are mostly fortunate. Those who have been harmed consistently, with a few exceptions, ask for justice and participation as full citizens, not revenge. Compare MLK with the KKK leaders who have been memorialized at our Army bases. People in power not wanting to give it up is usually the norm, so groups like the KKK are to be expected. I think leaders like MLK (Ghandi in india) are the exception. I will be more concerned when the desire to get revenge becomes predominant.
Much more harmful than tearing down statues, which is pretty common through history, and cancel culture, is the belief that those who are not in your tribe are evil, not “real Americans”. When our leaders dont even try to appeal to or talk with the opposition that is a much bigger problem.
Steve
Tearing down statues, renaming bases, digging up Confederate bodies (ALL in Warren’s bill, ALL) means that the Civil War reconciliation is finished. Southern Whites are not Americans. They have NO obligations to the USA. They are unreconciled aliens, living under a conquering, alien regime.
But it it more extensive than that. Nobody is an American, because the USA itself no longer exists. The only remaining option is partition of the USA into several successor states with forcible, large-scale population transfers. The partition of India the Raj into India and Pakistan is the model, hopefully without killing a million or more “Americans.â€
There is also the unifying force of the sword, or the gun.
After the Roman Republic fell from dysfunction, the Roman empire arose and as a political entity, Rome survived for another 1500 years; through plagues of Antonine, plague of Justinian, Attila the Hun, Nero, the crisis of the third century..
So I don’t worry about disunity, in a way.
‘Much more harmful than tearing down statues, which is pretty common through history, and cancel culture, is the belief that those who are not in your tribe are evil, not “real Americansâ€. When our leaders dont even try to appeal to or talk with the opposition that is a much bigger problem.’
Here is John Cleese’s summary of this attitude, which does a far better job describing the problem than any number of learned philosophers and pundits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4
steve:
There are procedures for having statues removed—zoning boards and so on. Being impatient or angry grants no special dispensation from the law. If you don’t like the procedures, persuade enough other people to change them that they are changed through the ordinary democratic processes. Not having the will or ability or inclination or composure to persuade grants no special dispensation, either.
Imposing your will by force outside of any due process is tyranny and it has no greater moral standing than any other tyranny.
For the record I agree with what you say above in the sense that they should be removed by legal methods. (Were the Ukrainians tyrannical when they toppled Lenin statues?)
Steve