Real American Jesus

According to a recent YouGov survey, a mere 28 percent of registered Republicans (versus 68 percent of Democrats) believe that Jesus would support tightening the nation’s gun laws.

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/bpuzgpfb2b/tabs_OPI_wwjd_20140702.pdf 

Really?

Of course!

Meet Real American Jesus, who hates fags and war protestors and love guns and free enterprise. Meet Real American Jesus, who pulls himself up by his bootstraps and never relies on the “nanny state.”

This is not the historical Jesus who loved tenderness and compassion. This Jesus bears no relation to the Jesus who animated American activists such as Angela Grimké, Washington Gladden, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King. Real American Jesus has nothing to do with the Jesus who informs and inspires Christian pacifism and social activism in our own time.

Real American Jesus is the emblem embraced by those citizens who pride themselves and their friends on being purer, more rugged, less spoiled, and less decadent than the rest of us.

Real Americanism has been around for quite a while. It is claimed by that portion of the American population—white, Christian, predominantly rural—that has historically pointed to itself as the nation’s genuine solid core, the mytho-spiritual essence of what America is really all about. This is a mythos that lauds self-reliance and personal honor. It loathes government assistance programs. It is “manly.” It owns guns. It tends to be conveyed through a gut-level, anti-intellectualism—an “I know what I believe and I don’t need to debate it” certainty. And it animates much (although not all) of present-day American conservatism.

Gun-owners demonstrate their sense of themselves as America’s true essence in a recent Pew study. There, adults living in a home with a gun owner identified themselves “a typical American” more than did adults in non-gun households (72 percent versus 62 percent). Adults in gun households claimed “honor and duty are my core values” more than did those in non-gun homes (59 percent versus 48 percent). And gun householders reported that they “feel proud to be American” more than those in non-gun homes (64 percent versus 51 percent).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/ 

Real Americans refuse to complicate gut-level traditional ideas. This was sympathetically noted by historian Eugene Genovese. Genovese identified a manner in which conservatives generally speak to one another: a rhetorical mode of discourse, in which custom is embraced and defended rather than debunked. Genovese distinguished this from the dialectical mode of discourse, through which liberals debate and dissect ideas instead of defending them as received.  [The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (1994).]

Typical of the former was George W. Bush, the Decider, who often bragged that he didn’t need to think too hard to distinguish right from wrong. He simply relied on his gut, which surely didn’t deceive him. He advanced traditional American verities without subjecting them to much scrutiny.

Anti-intellectualism and expressive certainty colored the Republican 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, especially by those claiming that Real Americans mistrusted Obama and opposed his election. Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin led the self-certain charge against “anti-Americanism.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJIQm_7YAUI&feature=related.

During that election we met “Joe the Plumber,” who embodied the Real American mythical ideal—a work-with-his-hands kind of guy who probably could have used economic assistance but would never have stooped that low. Joe the Plumber was the kind of regular guy who hated effete men such as Obama. Joe the Plumber was a rugged individualist. Joe knew wrong from right. He didn’t need no fancy thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL97vWgSp7U. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgEVwcHas0&feature=related. 

For Real Americans, Jesus serves as their symbolic ideal. It comes as little surprise that only 9 percent of registered Republicans surveyed by YouGov respond that Jesus would support same-sex marriage, or that only 18 percent of Republicans imagine that Jesus would support high taxes on the wealthy, or that only 23 percent think that he would support universal health care, or that only 31 percent think he would support reductions in carbon emissions, or that only 28 percent believe that he would support stricter gun laws.

Real Americans may not comprise the popular majority of U.S. citizens. But Real Americans celebrate themselves as the nation’s true, uncorrupted mythic core. And they would affirm, with a Palinesque “you betcha!,” that a twentieth-century Jesus would surely have dwelled among their ranks.

Gridlock and Culture Wars

In June, the Pew Research Center released the findings from its largest ever study of Americans’ political attitudes. Those findings won’t shock any observer of society and government. They reveal a polity in which increasing numbers of citizens identify as either “consistently liberal” or “consistently conservative,” with fewer people describing themselves as ideologically “mixed.”

The Pew study finds deepening “ideological silos,” in which more and more Americans dislike and/or avoid people ideologically unlike themselves. Significant numbers of consistent conservatives (63 percent) and consistent liberals (49 percent) report that their close friends share their political orientation. Increasing numbers choose to live in areas where their neighbors are likely to share their views. Many say they would be unhappy if a family member married someone affiliated with the opposite party.

These findings reinforce what social scientists have known for years: that differences in policy preferences and political behaviors correlate with a wide range of other cultural tendencies. This was the thesis of James Davison Hunter’s 1991 Culture Wars, which posited that much of the American population falls into opposing camps with respective “orthodox” and “progressive” worldviews that shape their political and social behavior.

The Pew study suggests that consistent conservatives (CCs) and consistent liberals (CLs) possess diverging worldviews that inform their patterns of and attitudes toward everyday living. Whereas CCs prefer living in large houses a far distance apart, with schools, stores, and restaurants several miles away, CLs tend to live in smaller homes with amenities close nearby. Only 23 percent of CCs care about living near theaters and art museums, while 73 percent of liberals do. Only 20 percent of CCs value living amid racial and ethnic diversity, whereas 76 percent of CLs value living in diverse communities.

In contrast, 73 percent of CCs, but only 24 percent of CLs, would be troubled if a family member married someone who didn’t believe in God. 23 percent of CCs, but only 1 percent of CLs, say they’d be unhappy with a family member’s marriage to someone of a different race. And, not surprisingly, 49 percent of CCs, but only 5 percent of CLs, would be happy if someone in their immediate family married a gun owner.

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/ 

All of this ought to make us think twice about condemning government officials for their bitter partisanship, which simply reflects ideological divergence within the wider population. Indeed, Pew reports that “both liberals and conservatives define the optimal political outcome as one in which their side gets more of what it wants.” It seems liberal and conservative voters resemble elected officials more than they would care to admit. Most of us may dislike gridlock and applaud when government somehow manages to get things done; at the same time, many of us want our elected officials to fight to enact policies that reflect our own ideological preferences.

I suspect that most readers of this post adhere quite consistently to their political convictions. For those of us who do, how willing are we really to see our leaders compromise on matters that matter? If we were a member of Congress, would we fight to pass legislation that embodied our strong preferences, or would we prioritize building bridges with differently inclined others?  If we represented a district where a large majority was comprised of either CCs or CLs, how consistently and vehemently would we act on behalf of that majority?

If we would remain faithful to our own or our constituents’ staunch convictions, then how fair is it to blame our leaders’ tendency to do likewise?

Group Identity?

My wife and I think about sending our son to a Jewish day school. A day-school student receives, alongside secular instruction, an education in Hebrew language and in Jewish thought and practice. He is instructed as a Jew.

Even at a progressively oriented Jewish day school, students come to see themselves as belonging to a people that has historically, to one extent or another, understood itself as distinct from its surrounding culture. For me this is both the cost and the benefit of such schooling.

Ethnocentrism is of humanity’s great scourges. Nations, races, tribes, and religions wage war, in large part, because they often cannot or will not try to see through their neighbors’ eyes—indeed, because they can’t imagine that their neighbors even have real viewpoints or legitimate interests. Why, then, disconnect our children from children of other groups? At the same time, belonging to a subculture or group can sustain people in many ways. As descendants or allegiants, we get to stand on countless shoulders. Why deny ourselves such resources?

Is particularistic identity a problem or a source of strength for individuals? for humanity as a whole? Are children rooted in particular communities more or less likely to care for society? Must ethics in our own times be based on universal identity? On what sort of ground does love most fully flourish?

Finding Harmony amid Difference

What’s with the name “Conflict/Harmony”?

“Conflict/Harmony” speaks to a paradox characterizing society and polity. Human life, at its most fundamental level, is but a whole—a living, breathing reflection of the One Source, the singular essence that constitutes itself by flowing though each of us. Yet, at the phenomenological level, humanity manifest as millions upon millions of differently inclined individuals who affiliate into countless groups standing apart from, and often in tension with, countless other groups. Human beings identify themselves by marking themselves as “other than.” And otherness is more than an identity marker. Members of religions, nations, ideologies, ethnicities, and other identity groups see through eyes distinctive from their neighbors’ eyes. Otherness is a crucial dimension of experience. To realize our fundamental identity as one with our neighbor, we must honor rather than ignore or deny our differences from them.

Are humans hopelessly divided among themselves?

Certainly not. Acts of generosity, humility, and lovingkindness continuously bridge the gaps between us. On a personal, spiritual level, such acts can occur simply and instantaneously. But on the level of society and polity, conflicting groups or individuals—as we know all too well—often resist reconciliation. Although fundamental oneness runs through all human beings, it may seem inaccessible. Nor should leaders impose the singularity their constituents may sometimes desire. With good reason, liberal democracies resist treating their citizens as one. Our differences deserve recognition. Modern history has demonstrated the horrific results of societies and polities expecting their members to be as one with the nation, the religion, or the ideology. When human otherness manifests, as it inevitably does, the “general will” may seek to excise it like a cancer. However real our fundamental oneness may be, in matters of politics and society it cannot be accessed directly without profoundly harming dissenters. 

In societies as diverse as the United States, the first step toward harmony often lies in people approaching other people as profoundly “not themselves,” irreducible to their own perceptions, beliefs, and preferences. We must look into the face of the person next to us, or even far away from us, and acknowledge someone we cannot reduce to ourselves. We must look and listen carefully to that person and honor what we learn from her or him, without blithely fitting it into our own pre-existing narrative of “the way things are.” We must respect that person in the deepest way possible: as legitimate in her own terms that don't necessarily square with our own.

Herein lies the paradox. By gazing openly into the face of the other, we feel his apartness from us. And, by remaining receptive rather than judgmental, we ascertain the common threads that run between us. Our shared essence, shining through, stirs us. Gazing on another who shares our humanness affects us more deeply than gazing at ourselves. Much as romantic relations with another person thrill and satisfy us in a way that self-satisfaction cannot, so recognizing our commonality with someone different from us evokes something more profound than when we identify with someone we assume to be just like us. Sensing our commonality with the other generates love. We thereby cross the chasm of human difference without obliterating it. Humbly, we respect the other who differs from us and, most likely, enjoy her reciprocation. To love is to be open when being closed might seem the natural thing to be.

Why I Study the Courts and the Constitution

America’s diverse polity sometimes obstructs orderly government. But it also fascinates many of us. How can a people so deeply divided in so many ways manage to pass, observe, and enforce universally binding laws? How do our differences not tear us further apart?

Ideological conflict sits boldly on display among the justices of the United States Supreme Court. And so does the pretension to political power. The Supreme Court and its inferior federal courts are political creatures. Rather than responding to popular sentiment, federal judges use the Constitution to mold law in accord with their own cultural, religious, social, and political visions. Whereas electoral politics tend to produce stalemate and gridlock, federal courts cut through the muck to execute political and legal change. Of course, the federal bench is far from monolithic—indeed, it is wracked by the same ideological conflicts that tear apart the rest of the polity. Much as judges might deny it, they fight the same culture wars that engulf the rest of us, except that, through that fighting, they convert their preferences into law. They are politically inclined but extra-politically empowered.

The conservative worldview of the Court’s present-day majority was on display in the recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling. That 5-4 decision evinced a handful of preferences driving the Court’s conservative majority: a deference toward traditional Christianity; an ambivalence toward women’s right to control their own bodies; a commitment to the rights of corporations to act free from governmental compulsion; and a hostility to the idea that Americans are obligated, through their government, to provide each other with basic goods such as health care.

Thirty years ago, the majority of justices adhered to a worldview different from the one that informs today’s majority. In U.S. v. Lee (1982), a unanimous Court ruled that corporations are fundamentally obligated to provide employees with benefits when dictated by law, and that the religious convictions of a corporation’s directors or shareholders do not exempt the company from meeting employees’ basic needs as required by statute. Going into business puts extra burdens on citizens—even on religiously devout citizens. “When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”  http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/455/252

Thirty years ago, the Court likely would have ruled differently from how’s today’s Court ruled in Burwell. Thirty years ago, the Court likely would not have interpreted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (the statute cited in Burwell) as permitting a corporation to deny employees health-care benefits such as contraception. That Court would probably have given greater weight to the mandates issued in the Affordable Care Act. Providing such basic goods as full medical coverage would probably have seemed important enough to warrant burdening a corporation’s free exercise of religion—if a corporation could even “exercise” this or any other freedom.  http://www.prop1.org/rainbow/rfra.htm

The majority of today’s justices found otherwise. This reveals much about the ideals that they value and those that, at best, they deprioritize.

As Ross Douthat asserts in the New York Times, the majority of today’s justices seek to protect the rights of religious conservatives, treating them as the sort of vulnerable minority group toward which the Court has long shown solicitude. But religious conservatives differ profoundly from the racial and religious minorities protected by the Court from the 1930s through the 1980s. Whom the Court seeks fervently to protect indicates where its sympathies lie.  http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/the-courts-and-the-changing-culture-war/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Matters of this nature ought to influence presidential elections much more than they do. It makes little rational sense that presidential contests rarely scrutinize what kind of federal judges a candidate would probably nominate. The fact is that judicial nominations profoundly impact a president’s legacy. Federal judges, more than any other public officials, today issue the final word on crucial issues such as the limits of campaign finance law and the definition of marriage. If some of us fret that elections are being bought by the very wealthy, or that discrimination against LGBT people may become permissible whenever “religious” convictions purportedly require it, then we would do well to elect a president who will nominate judges committed to egalitarianism and robust democracy. We all ought to study the Court.