For over a century, the best response to Plato’s critique of democracy has been John Dewey’s claim that precious and fragile democratic experiments must put a premium on democratic statecraft (public accountability, protection of rights and liberties, as well as personal responsibility, embedded in a fair rule of law) and especially on democratic soulcraft (integrity, empathy, and a mature sense of history). For Plato, democratic regimes collapse owing to the slavish souls of citizens driven by hedonism and narcissism, mendacity and venality. Dewey replies that this kind of spiritual blackout can be overcome by robust democratic education and courageous exemplars grounded in the spread of critical intelligence, moral compassion, and historical humility. The 2016 election presents a dangerous question as to whether Dewey’s challenge to Plato’s critique can be met.”
Perhaps the most valuable element in this treatment is its emphasis on uniting personal virtues (long the rhetorical darling of right) with pragmatic political ones (long the aspiration of the left).
I would also like to draw your attention to a helpful commentary from Simcha Fischer writing from the single-issue voter perspective. In her Nov 7 article, “I’m a single-issue pro-lifer in a swing state, and I cannot vote for Trump” she writes mostly about simple and realistic attention to your surroundings as a priority over unrealistic attention to what you would like to believe. She addresses the actual process behind pro-life (and not so pro-life) legislation, the involvement of money in politics, Obamacare and those pesky questions about supreme court justices with refreshing realism. As with the other articles, please read all she has to say. But let me especially direct your attention to her analysis of the politic and moral ethos of Trump:
“Let’s talk about the fact that so very many pregnant women who seek abortion say they felt pressured into it. Where could that pressure possibly come from?
Maybe from men who treat them like sex objects. (This is how Donald Trump treats women, past, present, and future.)
Maybe from men who hear that their wife or girlfriend is pregnant and immediately see it as a problem. (This is how Donald Trump treated his wife.)
Maybe because they think they can’t afford to be pregnant and can’t afford to take care of a child. (Donald Trump doesn’t want poor women to have access to free healthcare.)
Maybe because they’re involved with a man who doesn’t feel any need to honor his promises. (Donald Trump is a rich man because he routinely backs out of his promises, refusing to pay contractors and declaring bankruptcy.)
Maybe because they’re living in a culture where men feel that they have a right to push their way into women’s lives, grab whatever they want from women, blame and shame women for anything that happens next, and leave whenever the relationship becomes inconvenient for him. (Donald Trump Donald Trump Donald Trump Donald Trump.)
Women end up having abortions mainly when they feel like they have no other choice: when they feel that their lives and their identities are only worthwhile if they’re more serviceable to people who have power over them.
And I have just described the world that Donald Trump builds around himself, and will continue to build as president.
Just yesterday, Baby Christian Trump said that a reporter’s accusation of sexual aggression isn’t credible because “look at her.” This is how he operates. This is how he sees women: as either pretty enough to be worthy of his sexual onslaught, or as too ugly to be worth anyone’s time.
Women seek abortion for a reason. Donald Trump, and the people who admire him and imitate him, are that reason. Trump has been telling us who he is. Pro-lifers, let’s believe him.”
The most obvious common concern of these articles is that they are all concerned with the ethos of our politics, not merely one piece or other of their content. Each assumes that is not merely one candidate, policy, or social issue or another that deserves our attention, but how these arise from and contribute to our shared moral assumptions and out standards of evaluation. I emphasize here shared, because in a climate so dominated by the desire to silence or overcome the other party – or the member of our own sub-community that thinks differently – what all sides tend to take for granted is likely to be the devilish detail. Too often in recent years it seems that the one thing all sides hold to in our politics is the importance of being on the winning side, regardless of whether or not our ideas and beliefs are in any sense correct or even half-way sane.
These three writers I highlight are united in taking a responsible stand for dealing with our political and electoral situations as they are, not as our prior commitments say they should be. It is deeply disturbing to me that over the past 20-25 years (which, as I am now in my 30s, is about as far as my personal living memory can stretch for politics and news) I have heard, read, and seen a vile trend, one which becomes more dominant each year. A trend to identify not what is said, nor why it is said and certainly not whether it is credible or true, but only who is saying it and whether it feels sufficiently loyal to one’s own imagined side or not. “X is too liberal”, “Y is a conservative shill”, “Oh, who cares about that, I only get my news from Z” – these are not the sort of declarations that arise out of an interest in truth, nor out of any kind of faithfulness to God, to Church, to family, to values, nor to anything else. Mere party loyalty divorced from reasoning and self-criticism is branding, not fidelity.
Out of Crosby, West and Fisher, the one whose viewpoint I would most identify with would probably be West. Which isn’t especially telling as, out of these pieces, West takes the broadest lens and offers the most comprehensive view. In any event, in proper philosopher’s fashion the purpose of this article is not to lead you toward embracing any of their viewpoints, nor mine – but instead to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to take full responsibility for forming your own.
(Image via Pixabay)
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