How to achieve those results would seem to pose us two challenges:
The challenge concerning the right is this: how can the power of that destructive force be drained away? We know what the ultimate source of that power is. In our still-democratic polity, that power depends on the support of millions of our fellow citizens, as expressed at the polls. As powerful as Big Money is, that power still has to translate into votes. (A generation from now, that might not still be the case.) The way to drain the power away, therefore, is to pry enough of the supporters of that force away from it.
That task might be hopeless if all those supporters fully understood the nature of what they are supporting. My observation and experience indicates to me that a substantial number of Republican voters are basically good, decent people who have no idea that the force they are supporting is neither good nor decent. Thus, in a nation like ours the only way a force like this can gain power is by deceiving large numbers of people into believing that it is something that it is not.
Now, as for the challenge of strengthening the other, liberal force in our pathologically divided body politic, the first question that must be asked is: what is the source of the weakness shown in these times by Liberal America, and how can it be addressed?
Among the answers that might be given, the one I think lies at the core of that weakness is the inability of Liberal America to perceive, and thus to respond to, that dimension of human affairs that might be called "the realm of the spirit."
I would say that what is winning in America is not so much those specific destructive things like greed, rage, lies, the lust for power, and the spirit of conflict, but rather that force -- or, one might call it, "spirit" -- that fosters and works through all of those.
(NOTE: One might also cite, as an explanation of the weakness of Liberal America, the factor of intimidation. One can certainly see, in the relationship between the right and the left, the dynamic of a relationship between the bully and the bullied. But while that is certainly present, I would assert that the same disconnection from that dimension of "the spirit" underlies Liberal America's vulnerability to intimidation. Those who are "inspired" (Latin: inspirare "inspire, inflame, blow into") find a strength that makes them less subject to fear and intimidation.)
Many liberals might recoil from such language, assuming that talk of "the power of the spirit" takes us out of the naturalistic world that we come to understand through reason and evidence. But that is not the case here. What I mean by spirit is something that is in some essential ways akin to how the term has traditionally been used, but is also a phenomenon that can be understood in naturalistic terms.
So what do I mean by spirit? Let me make a couple of quick points.
1) There are forces at work that we cannot see directly, but that we infer from the way the things we do see move. It's like with the wind: we do not see the wind, but looking through our windows we know there's a wind from the swaying of the trees. Such has long been one of the properties of what we mean by spirit ("Team spirit," "The Spirit of "76"). Our world cannot be properly understood in rational and empirical terms without reference to such invisible forces. One cannot "see" love or rage or panic, but they move things in the world. One cannot see patriotism or "Christian ethics" or the spirit of hope in the crowd in Grant Park on Election Night, 2009. But we can see that things in the world move differently under their influence. Sometimes such forces show coherence over time in their web of causes and effects.
2) Some of the forces of this kind relate quite directly to those values that are built into the core of our being, in that they consistently either serve and enhance life or degrade and destroy it. When we behold such spirits "animating" the way things are moving in our world, our sense of the "spirit" of the thing moves us in profound ways. The perception evokes our own "spirit," calling forth deep energies that might be called "spiritual" passions.
(NOTE: Think of how we, as an audience, feel upon witnessing the contrast, in It's a Wonderful Life, between two scenarios for our characters' society: one called Pottersville, shaped by the spirit of selfish greed; and one, called Bedford Falls, shaped by an altruistic caring for others. Think of what the "Spirit of '76" long meant to Americans. Think of the words in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- "as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free" -- with which Union soldiers in the war that ended slavery went off to battle.)
If there were such forces -- that are not directly "visible" but that can be inferred from the way things move - operating in our world, a failure to see them would be important.
This failure to recognize the potential "power of the spirit" was at the heart of the the previous discussion of the belief by many dedicated liberal/Democratic activists that there was no way President Obama could have combatted effectively the disgraceful conduct of the Republican opposition he encountered when he became president.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
2
