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At My Wits’ End in the Culture War
I’ve never had great difficulty in getting along with my liberal friends. It is a skill I likely learned growing up with conservative instincts in the state of New Jersey. Most of life can be enjoyed with others without our political differences getting in the way. At the margins however, there are always issues. Some ideas permeate the culture so thoroughly, that a friend will often state what they believe to be an innocuous statement of truth in passing, working under the assumption that all good-hearted people will agree with it. Since I do not share many of their beliefs, the obvious implication is that I am not a good person.
It has always been a character flaw of mine that I cannot allow these remarks to pass without challenging them. Close friends know me well enough to either engage me in a friendly debate on the point, or concede that they probably shouldn’t have thrown the statement out like that. Casual friends and acquaintances are generally caught off guard by my challenges. Issues of taxation can be laughed off, along with any number of others in regards to the size and scope of government. It is only in the culture wars that friendships are lost.
Culture would seem an easy issue for one with strong libertarian leanings, such as myself, to deal with. I don’t care how you live your life, or who you share it with, provided you not encroach upon the rights of others. My world view is inherently easy to get along with. I am supportive of same-sex marriage and disapprove of institutionalized discrimination. These facts buy me nothing though when I challenge media lies about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Some friends know me well enough that when I defend the law by pointing out that RFRA laws have existed for greater than 20 years without a single instance of them being used to allow discrimination, that I probably know what I’m talking about. Others become convinced I am a gay-bashing bigot who they would no longer like to know.
While a friend and I were discussing the nerdiest of all nerd activities (conventions), I mentioned that I was likely going to GenCon this year. She asked where it was held (Indianapolis), then proceeded to drop her innocuous statement of truth. “Well, I won’t be going to Indiana anytime soon.”
Such a simple phrase to let slide. She was signaling to me that she supports same-sex marriage and gay rights. She is no legal scholar. Did it really matter if she had the wrong impression of the RFRA? Maybe not to others, but it did to me. She had unwittingly cast the people of Indiana as villains, and based entirely on a false media narrative. Those that disagree with her are not evil, and they are not bigots. Maybe if she were to know that I support the RFRA, knowing what she does about my character, she might see her opponents in a different light.
Or maybe, as may have happened, I’d lose a friend. Her disposition toward me rapidly changed. She had sent me a signal to prove I was a good person. That test was my position on the RFRA. I failed. That the test was faulty did not matter. I am now a bad person in her mind, or at least, not a virtuous one. She may never see me the same way again.
Having friendships that span across the political spectrum is a great boon to a free society. It keeps us from casting our opposition as caricatures, but rather real, honest people who have honest disagreements without animus. Increasingly, it is difficult to maintain such relationships.
The most likely outcome is that my more liberal friends will self-select themselves into friendships with only those who share their world view, or who at least will never challenge them on these points of contention. I will be forced to into a similar position. Without these bonds of friendship bridging the gaps between us, our positions will grow increasingly intolerant of each other, until one day, we find ourselves enemies.
It’s a damn waste.
Published in Culture
I used to work for a firm with large numbers of co-workers on both coasts, and they reflected the politics of the newspapers they read. When they asked me what it was like to work for Republicans, the question was almost anthropological, as if they were asking me what it was like to have lived in a primitive culture.
I considered it my job to be the kind of person who would stretch their stereotypes about conservatives. I wasn’t out to change their minds, but simply to be a winsome example of a good guy with political views that didn’t match theirs.
I think we need to reject the sexual revolution in toto. This is because people are largely coming to believe that sexual freedom trumps any other kind of freedom, including freedom of religion.
Maggie Gallagher did an interview with Chai Feldblum nine years ago, who made some shocking remarks about sexual liberty:
An interesting thing happened when I searched for that quote. I couldn’t remember it verbatim, so I started typing “sexual liberty is more…” and this is what Google showed me:
There are enough people out there typing these phrases into Google to make Google suggest it to me.
This is the mindset we are up against. It’s not going away anytime soon. The best way to combat it is for each of us to forsake any participation in so-called sexual liberty and to encourage others to do the same.
Recent conversation over family dinner:
European-born relative whom I love dearly says that in America, you die on the street if you don’t have money for medical care.
Sister-in-law, who is a nurse, and married to a hospital administrator (who is also at the table): our hospital is giving a bone-marrow transplant to an illegal resident.
Brother-in-law, who is an OBGYN: I can’t tell you how many babies I’ve delivered for people who have no money.
Wife, who is in charge of Government Compliance for a health care system: in Europe, do you think they would have given Dad a quadruple-bypass at his age the day he needed it?
European-born relative: shrug.
Three people with intimate, professional knowledge of the American health-care system. Feh. What do they know.
Ideological certainty is an adamantine shield against evidence.
James, the liberal only needs the emotion to be right. Clear evidence from people in the trenches and yet nothing. Remind me not to sign up for WW3 until their countries have been overrun. Did you ask him/her what other obvious facts their choose to ignore as part of their world view?
I am unwilling to let snipes go by. I have asked people to refrain from certain conversations in my presence. I fall back on asking people to be polite, since I “don’t want to get into it”.
If people choose not to do that around me, then we don’t stay friends. I am not friends with people who do not respect me.
I lost a friend because I asked him not to engage me in political arguments on facebook. He called me closed minded. Better off without his commie ways (and I mean that, he is a “COmmunism just has not been tried yet” guy)
Do people care about the law?
http://mashable.com/2015/04/02/memories-pizza-indiana/
Facts no longer matter. Words no longer matter. What matters is the grim determination to win, and they have it.
I’m actually an easy-going kind of guy. It’s easy when you’ve stopped falling for nonsense. I don’t go about seeking enemies. However, I am proud of the ones I have.
Love comes and goes. Friends come and go. Family comes and goes. Nemesis is forever.
Amen to that! Or rather, I never take them seriously on matters of intellect. They may be good parents, wives, and neighbors though. The irony of this is not lost on me.
Let me know if/when there’s a New Jersey meetup for like-minded people. (Montclair area would be great).
I feel for you, Frank. I have an older sister and brother-in-law who are like white versions of Obama and my oldest son, the artist, is not very political but of a liberal bent. I avoid talking politics with them as reason is no match for passion, because as well all know Lefties are all about feelings – not logic.
Having good friends who fall for the Progressive drivel that is our modern culture must be a huge challenge – do your best my friend.
Ah James, how you exist in the utopia of South Minneapolis I do not know…
It is also Kryptonite to those in analysis paralysis.
Frank, kudos to you for being a better friend to others than they sometimes are to you.
I am a terrible debater and “argue-er” so I tend to approach these conversation a bit sideways. My response to the wedding stories has consisted of focusing on how it is easy to agree when the situations work out in your favor, but I am concerned that if I owned a bakery and the KKK wanted me to cater their annual celebration, would this precedent here mean I would have to? I am not comfortable with that.
I don”t know that I change peoples minds but I do try to get them to see the implications of their opinions…and how it might affect them directly one day
I agree with this. Terms like “friend” and “love” get thrown around all too casually.
This insightful observation reveals one of the idolatries
of our age.
It’s not even about being a bigot. It’s about being able to live your religion in your daily life in the ordinary course of business without having to hide or compartmentalize.
More like “personal identity” as opposed to ideology. Though, there is ideology too. Especially when dealing with the less than informed, personal identity carries the day. That’s how the somewhat conservative Chicago neighborhoods (Democrat) were taken over and replaced by urban progressives (also Democrat). The traditionalists identified with the tribe more readily than wading through sometimes complex and nuanced issues. That, and the tribe was still feeding them into the 80’s. Now, we’re all scrambling to pay the bills and we see the effect of this shift, yet they still identify with the tribe. Identity runs deep when there’s nothing to counteract it.
Many people of all stripes operate more emotionally than intellectually. Sure, some of those people still reach conclusions similar to yours, but it’s not a one-sided phenomenon.
Very often, living in Blue Chicago, these liberals – many truly smart – have simply never encountered rational arguments from the right. The bubble is so thick and all-encompassing. Sometimes they will refuse the encounter, some will battle it. others will try to understand it. It’s a messy process, but there’s no other way to make inroads but to actually discuss things.
Sometimes, I also encounter rational arguments from their direction. Disagreement on these things is not necessarily evidence of low intellect or low morality.
“It has always been a character flaw of mine that I cannot allow these remarks to pass without challenging them.”
Frank, dear Frank. This is not a character flaw. I know you likely meant it ironically, but I still have to challenge it, just as you would if you disagreed.
Frank,
I have alienated some acquaintances because of similar situations to what you describe. I tend to let many statements made by Liberals slide rather than get into a debate with people that are just casual friends. With close friends and family I take the time to challenge them because I don’t want them living under false assumptions and making what I believe to be foolish statements in the future. There are some issues however that trigger a response from me in every case. Attacks on Christianity and religious freedom are at the top of that list. Support for any flavor of Marxism or Statism is number two. I cannot let those slide. I am willing to distance myself from anyone who cannot agree with me in supporting my right to be a Christian and live according to my beliefs or anyone that tries to impose Marxist or Statist values on me and my fellow Americans.
Luckily, I am able to find enough people like those on Ricochet and don’t have to live in isolation.
No matter your IQ or EQ or whatever-Q, everyone has buttons and irrational biases. That’s part of being human. Also, human beings are social creatures, we like to be in a herd. As much as we may like to think we are rugged individualists, we’re not. Ostracism has always been a very effective social tool. Even the leaders of said herds like to see large groups backing their play. That is reality and will always be so.
The current culture/media climate, combined with these human traits causes the Liberal/Left to be blind to their hot buttons and biases. Even if we are in a conservative echo chamber those of us on the right cannot avoid constant attacks on our biases and the pressing of our hot buttons. The overall culture is so political, so judgmental, and so mono-cultural we cannot get safe and secure in our biases, they are so constantly being challenged.
So what do we do? Shut up or disagree. Well, the Left’s cultural dominance did not come by them being shrinking violets. They used a panolpy of culture warriors, from the shock troops in the streets, to the quiet moles burrowing into and taking over many cultural institutions (including churches). (They are now in the midst of their assault on the last two major Western institutions that stand athwart their world view: the military and professional sports.)
That is how you direct the herd; be the sheep dog and the shepherd.
And I disagree. Consciously thinking about what you say and filtering it a basic social obligation polite people owe to others, even their friends.
It’s unkind to ask others to bear the burden of our raw, turbulent, and quite possibly obscene unfiltered thoughts. Would I be a good friend to people if I let loose with every thought that happened to pop into my head? No, I wouldn’t. My friends don’t need all my internal drama. And they certainly don’t need whatever random sexual thoughts might pop into my head at any given moment ;-)
Crucial, outstanding point.
You’re right. I did not mean to suggest that any of us should go unfiltered. I didn’t take Robert to mean all or nothing. I took him to mean that point of filtration where we are on guard even in areas where guards (or few guards) shouldn’t be necessary.
Nowadays, when I start a show with a new cast, I like to stay out of the political discussions for as long as possible (if you can call them discussions, that is, since they usually consist of one person’s insult or diatribe followed by a hearty round of “yea, verily, yea” from the rest).
Once the cast knows me – – and especially if they’ve made it clear they like me and enjoy working with me – – only then do I out myself (or cheerfully acknowledge it if a mutual acquaintance inadvertently does).
I can’t help it. I love seeing that shocked “but . . . but . . . you’re not a monster” look on their faces, followed immediately by mild panic, as they hastily scan back over our entire rehearsal process, trying to remember everything they may have said right in front of me about “me and my kind.”
I still remember one actor shaking his head in disbelief after the revelation, a few years ago. “I can’t believe you’re a Republican,” he said. “You seem so nice.”
“I know it’s weird, right?” I told him. “I can’t believe so many of my friends are Democrats. They seem so smart.”
Sure. Though sometimes we can be willing to maintain some rather absurd guards for the sake of continuing a relationship with a worthwhile but flawed (as we all are) person.
Good friends strive not to let their buttons be pushed, but also strive not to push each others’ buttons. I think most of us can relate to both Mr Lambert and to the people who have to put up with him in the “Buying a Bed” skit. Sometimes, we meet wonderful people who we just can’t say “mattress” to. But they’re worth not saying “mattress” to, so we agree not to say it, no matter how peculiar the results.
We sang the hymn they used in that skit at our wedding. Perhaps I see it as a symbol of the goodness of making rather absurd accommodations for the people you love.
Exactly. That sums up the reason for Frank Soto’s dilemma in one sentence: liberals — even the most intelligent ones — lead with their emotions, rather than their reason. If you can get them to turn the Emotional Volume knob down to something below a 5, you might be able to have a civil conversation, even if you ultimately end up agreeing to disagree.
This common overwhelming emotional response (“shrieking”, I call it) is a symptom that the shrieker subconsciously sees/fears/recognizes the intellectual weakness of his/her position, and can only react at a defensive, protective, primal level. Pastor Greg Laurie: “When you throw a rock at a pack of wolves, the one the howls is the one that got hit.”