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Proudest Enemy? Please.
During Tuesday’s debate, Democrats were asked which enemy they were most proud of making. Lincoln Chaffee claimed the coal lobby; Martin O’Malley cited the NRA; Hillary Clinton agreed with O’Malley, but added “the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians, probably the Republicans;” Senator Bernie Sanders claimed Wall Street and the pharmaceutical Industry as being “at the top of my list;” and Jim Webb said it was the man who threw a grenade that would have killed a US Marine were it not for Webb’s heroism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t48MyL5QdAc
Naturally, Webb’s answer was unwelcome in a Democratic Party that often seems ashamed of Western Civilization, and of any efforts spent defending (or worse, expanding) it. Webb is the candidate for the people whom the Democratic party left. Another good answer would have been to reject the question.
I’m not proud of any enemy I’ve made. My goal is to work with people who have different ideas, different world views, and different goals, and to try to find the areas where we agree and can work together.
Sure, there are extreme cases where you have to shun somebody — say a rapist or mass-murderer — but the coal industry? The NRA? The other party? Civil society requires recognizing that most people with whom we disagree are good people trying to do something good.
On the abortion issue, for example, we should not think of it as an argument between those who like to kill babies and those who like to dominate women. Rather, it’s an argument between those focused on a woman’s right to her own body and those focused on saving the unborn baby inside it.
If we respected the other side and understood their concerns, we’d have a better chance of influencing them, and of advancing our cause. We’ll save more babies when we acknowledge that pro-choice activists have real concerns about women being coerced to go through long and painful procedures. They’ll have a better chance of helping women when they acknowledge that you don’t have to hate them in order to want to protect unborn babies from being killed and their organs harvested and sold.
Henry Adams said that “Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” But President Obama was elected largely because he promised to move beyond partisan politics. If we hope to do the same, we should not be proud of making enemies.
Published in General
Pace, Gil. Making wartime analogies in the arenas of drugs, energy, finance, etc. is childish and shows weakness in using English.
I think righteous anger at those who minimize patriotic and difficult moral actions seethes just below the surface. Many of us just can’t wait for the imminent reversal of our fundamental societal mores.
Gil, your post is controversial, IMO, because of statements like your 3rd paragraph. I will assume you are a conservative, republican, right of center or whatever is the proper term for most of the membership. The people on the left that have different ideas and worldviews from yours are not good faith actors trying to get to similar high minded end states by different paths. Those on the left are the agents of soft tyranny that seek to crush you by robbing you of your private property and firearms.
Brent: I am relating this to the pro- life movement, which has never compromised but has nonetheless won many converts, by offering converts mercy and forgiveness. Life isn’t a stark choice between war and total surrender.
True enough. But some (and only some) of them at least think that by doing the robbing they are accomplishing a greater good, such as protecting children in schools from shooters, or protecting the environment, or (God help us) preventing climate change.
So, while we could think of them as enemies, I prefer to think of them as misguided countrymen who need to be convinced that they are wrong.
And just to be clear, there are those, like Obama and Hillary themselves, whom I see as more enemy than countryman.
MWA, I think those are fair points. I think those that do intend good end up being exploited as pawns by the likes of Hillary, Obama, et al.
JC, As it relates to the preservation of unborn children I will defer to your expertise and have no doubt you are correct. In the matters of taxation, welfare promulgation, regulation, firearms restrictions, etc. I have seen no evidence that the perpetrators are interested in anything beyond the destruction of individual liberty and self sufficiency.
This is an extreme point of view and is not true of most Democrat voters. You certainly can’t prove it. It is not that their intentions are evil. It’s just that their thinking is wrong.
I think the question speaks to the broader “mainstream” narrative about politics in America. The mainstream media see entities like the ones chosen by the candidates – the coal industry, the NRA, health insurance companies, and so on – as enemies to be overcome, as mustache-twirling villains whose dastardly plans of economic success at the expense of the public good must be foiled at every turn by the valiant knights of the Democratic party.
The Republican party is portrayed as the political wing of these nefarious forces – a conglomeration of those who wish to use power for personal advantage. We are not people who disagree about the means by which public good may be achieved – we are either a select few who know that we are selling lies about gun ownership reducing crime or government management of healthcare being inefficient, or we are the great unwashed and unlettered who are too stupid not to buy into what the Koch brothers have spoon-fed us. Oh and also we’re all secretly racist.
The Right isn’t immune to characterizing the Left in this way, either, but the Democratic candidates are explicitly saying that we’re just bad people, to raucous applause. How do you work with someone who sees you as a Saturday morning cartoon villain?
This is why it’s so important to me that we have a GOP candidate capable of “Right-splaining”, who could actually use the bully pulpit to convince, rather than denigrate for immediate gain.
As a follow-up to what I just posted, I agree with post #37. I don’t object to the Dem candidates’ comments because they cast me as the enemy and really they’re the enemy. I object because we’re supposed to be on the same team here. People in favor of stringent gun control really, really do think that they’re doing it to protect people. They think that events over the last few years show that the civilian population is too irresponsible to be allowed access to guns, for example, and that they must be taken away as one would take a pair of scissors from a child who had cut himself.
To our eyes, this is indeed soft tyranny. To them, it is akin to responsible parenting. There is no malicious intent there, and characterizing every Democrat as having some nefarious agenda to destroy all personal liberty everywhere because they’re just evil like that is an oversimplification that is just as bad as the kind that the Left uses.
That is clear, and I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise by pointing out Webb’s record. If it came off that way, I didn’t mean it to. What you said was that “another good answer would have been to reject the question,” which entails that you think, as I do, that his answer was good and appropriate. I agree with you that short of such a situation, Americans would be much better off not viewing each other as enemies, but as people they haven’t yet politely, patiently, and through hard work won around to their point of view. That will be true most of the time. I still believe most Americans are reasonable, good people.
Any intention that deprives one’s fellow man of their natural rights is evil.
Whether democrat voters intend evil or not is fair ground for debate. What I think is not available for debate is who they vote for and what they seek to do with that power. Additionally, while some voters on the left may be altruistic there is a portion, perhaps majority who are not.
When you look at intentions, you need to separate proximate consequences from ultimate ones. If a concerned mom is intent on some gun control, she is hoping that a proximate consequence is fewer mass shootings. I think we can agree that that consequence by itself does not qualify the intention as evil. However, an ultimate consequence may be the erosion of freedom, which would qualify the intention as evil. Problem is most people don’t think in ultimate terms. So it would not be right to describe their intentions as willfully evil. This is why they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They don’t say the road to hell is paved with evil intentions.
ME, if someone, the Mom in your example 43, hands someone intent on controlling me the means with which to do so, doesn’t that at least make her accessory?
The road to tyranny is paved with evil intentions.
Never ascribe to malice what can more easily be explained by ignorance.
All but one of them named other Americans as their proudest enemies. Hillary even mentioned Iran before settling on Republicans. Talk about fractured and divisive politics.
Exactly.
And she just handed us the perfect campaign meme:
I recall reading of a Holocaust survivor who was asked something like, “What lessons have you learned from all that?”
His answer was something like, “When someone says they want to kill you, believe them.”
In that spirit I suggest we should all take Hillary at her word. We are her enemies- and she’s proud of it.
This is an Important Fact. We are not her fellow citizens, her countrymen, her us.
We are a problem to be solved, like those people in Europe who were herded into rail cars to be solved.
I suggest we take her at her word, believe her- and react accordingly.
Both of the political parties need to wrest control of the debates from the media. With the Internet they don’t need the media at all to broadcast the debates to whoever really wants to look at them.
Given how much of the time is consumed with commercials, the parties are doing the media a favor by letting them broadcast them.
Sorry, I was offline for a while. Brent, I am generally in favor of compromise and cooperation. The Constitution, & the US, largely exist because of what is proudly called The Great Compromise.
Often the best way to get what you want is to work with the other side and give them some of what they need. Most of the world is not zero-sum. For example, many conservatives think that even pre-Obamacare US health care policies were an expensive and inefficient mess. And that a functioning government should have been able to come up with changes that would have reduced costs while increasing both liberty and security. Compromise and cooperation are often better than the alternatives at getting what you want.
Brent: