At Federalist Paul Bartow enunciates “four core American principles” for revitalizing the country:
- Good Government Requires Understanding Human Nature
- Distrusted in An Energetic Federal Government
- Citizens’ Virtue Is Crucial For Survival
- The Importance Of Federalism
There is a Principle 0 he fails to mention. Those four principles require that you believe that human nature is not infinitely malleable and is not unfathomable. Today many Americans don’t believe either of those things. There is also no consensus on the meaning of “virtue”. Some believe that virtue consists in supporting the right causes. Others, like me, believe that virtue is a habit and can only be cultivated through repeated action. In my view you don’t cultivate caring by voting for candidates who support higher taxes but by helping the unfortunate personally, just as you cultivate bravery by facing danger rather than by voting for brave candidates.
I agree that those principles are part of the basis of the American consensus but we have lost that consensus. I’m skeptical that consensus can be restored and, since the United States isn’t based on ties of blood or culture or history, it’s hard for me to see what a new consensus could be based on.
“Looking out for #1” is no basis for a national consensus.
Thanks for linking that.
One of the things that greatly concerns me about where our society is the growing “ends justify the means” view of policy and politics. The importance of legitimacy in the process to reach an end is a distant second. This manifests particularly in executive actions and the reaction to them. People endorse or excuse executive actions taken by the President they like, but condemn it by the President they don’t like. Few consider the more important fundamental problems of unilateral executive action more broadly and take a consistent, principled stand on them. Immigration is a perfect example. President Obama claimed broad executive power in this area and he was supported by liberals and condemned by conservatives. Now that Trump is also claiming broad executive power the roles are reversed. What no one talks about is whether Presidents should have that kind of authority in the first place.
In point#1 in the essay, Mr. Bartow mentions institutions. It’s faith in, and the legitimacy of, those institutions that allow our democracy to function. If one looks around the world you see a lot of countries that hold elections but are not really democracies. The difference between them and us are institutions and our common, national faith in them. It’s what holds us together. Our current political culture erodes those institutions in pursuit of partisan righteousness and tactical gain. At some point, if the trend continues, factionalism will be all that remains and the country will fall apart or turn into an autocracy.
Perhaps the Trump administration will break the current downward trajectory. Maybe people will finally consider the dangers of a powerful federal government with an overpowered executive but I don’t hold much hope.
In my view you don’t cultivate caring by voting for candidates who support higher taxes but by helping the unfortunate personally, just as you cultivate bravery by facing danger rather than by voting for brave candidates.
I don’t think I’ve ever met many in my life who wouldn’t say they shared your principles. Honestly, this is the basic stuff of experience. Do people follow through on this principle? Or is their self-perception of what they really are doing accurate? Those are different matters.
IMO the surest gauge of what people actually believe as opposed to what they think they believe or what they think they should believe is what they do.
It’s like saying if you don’t follow everything Jesus said in the Gospels you are not a true Christian. If you don’t turn the other cheek, then you must not believe any of the Christian tenets. It’s an endless debate that goes nowhere.
We are all sinners, including the people who are working with Syrian refugees, helping victims of domestic violence through non-profits, rebuilding homes for the people who still haven’t been assisted after Hurricane Sandy or volunteering with their churches to work with the homeless. These are the people I happen to know and work amongst, and I wouldn’t want to gauge any of them or myself as being believers in a virtue that others who are not doing it lack. Charity as an action, unless you are an idiot, is complex. People are complicated, and they should remain so.
I agree with that. I also think that most people including myself who profess Christianity are just barely Christians in any meaningful sense. As you put it, we are all sinners.
And as G. K. Chesterton said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
MM,
I think it boils down to making an effort. Sure, we are all sinners, but I think the people who try, or at least devote some effort, are living their principles. The sense I often get (and it’s probably a misperception on my part), is that a lot of people complain but do nothing.
Andy,
I have no idea. I complain a lot but I also make an effort. Maybe there’s a ratio of kvetching to output that can quantify all of this. I hope not.
Personally, I think the majority of emotional labor in one’s life ends up being directed towards the people one loves and cares for. A person with a partner and children is not wrong to feel that there is virtue in loving and caring in a way that may also sound like self-indulgent nonsense.
One of the things that is so bizarre about America is that we really believe everyone has incompatible beliefs and values. I don’t see it. I mean, I know radicals, people who are anarchists, or think seriously about the stuff that terrifies the likes of Rod Dreher, and they are not very common. They don’t really want to be, actually.
“One of the things that is so bizarre about America is that we really believe everyone has incompatible beliefs and values. I don’t see it.”
The beliefs and values become incompatible when people try to force them on others via the power of the state. Personally, I’m a live and let live guy.
So am I and I think most Americans are. However, most activists aren’t.
Right, outside of activists, everyone in America is tolerant, cool, and laid-back. There are no snoops, no busybodies; nobody is telling other people what to do, nobody is acting out power trips as a CEO or a cop. There’s no abuse, trauma, or domestic violence. Men don’t beat the shit out of women to keep their mini-states in order. It’s all just live and let live.
I wouldn’t put it that way. I think that most people don’t care about what other people are doing so long as it doesn’t interfere with what they’re doing. Maybe it’s just the people I know.
There are always busybodies but most of them are passive. For example, I have a neighbor who’s a real Gladys Cravitz. She’s always looking out her window, observing what the neighbors are doing. If something wrong is going on, like someone she doesn’t know breaking into a car, she’ll call the cops but otherwise she just knows everybody’s business to the extent it can be observed from the outside. I’ve never known her to stick her nose in it.
With respect to domestic violence situations even with the most pessimistic statistics in 75% of households it’s never a factor. It’s as with crime more generally. There are lots of incidents but it’s the same perpetrators over and over and over.
Consider one example: soft drink consumption. I don’t think most people care if you drink soft drinks and those who do are activists.
“Live and let live. …”
I think we all have varying levels of tolerance for the moral environment in which we live (see Jonathan Haidt for interesting research on that topic.)
I wish people would acknowledge this more; I often think that we’re not honest about how difficult that can be. Whether or not someone else’s behavior affects you is often not as cut and dried as it seems. I have felt this most acutely as a parent, because the moral environment of our modern era makes it more difficult to teach my children the values that I believe in.
None of that is to say that I wish for my values to be forced on others. Traditional Christian morality has held a privileged status for a long time in the US, sometimes more than it ought to have had. Some pushback was needed, but theres been an over correction IMO. And the hostility that came about during culture wars has infected all politics, so that a schism seems inevitable.
The one interesting point here, most is I think predictable, is the necessity of virtue. I think we have depended upon that a lot over the years, and for the most part I think it largely exists amongst the populace. However, I think that it has become absent in so man of our leaders and among our wealthy. It is not only acceptable to make money by fooling people, it is acceptable to brag about it. Among our leaders, it has crossed the line from “spin” to outright lies.
Steve