Reversed priorities

I was listening to a book discussion on C-SPAN yesterday (despite the fact that I'd called to disconnect cable on Friday), and someone asked the panelists what their views were on censorship. Answers varied, but one man responded that we should censor obscenity (because it gets under your skin) but not politics.

It occurred to me immediately that in New York City, and probably increasingly across the country, we have exactly the opposite situation. Our eyes and ears are barraged by obscenity daily, yet there the politics are so universally skewed to the left (this part is probably only where I live) that little constructive conversation is taking place, at least not in my hearing. This isn't censorship in fact, but it is in effect, because the assumption of agreement generates such caricature of the other side that it prevents any real discussion. This is unfortunate for both sides.

I'm not a person who keeps up with current politics for its own sake. I only read what I need to know to make decisions, though I do like to read classics that relate to government. But I think that's consistent with my position, which is that government exists to protect the community, the family, and private thought. Apparently that is a conservative position in itself. But there's a lot of room for genuine debate about the means within those parameters. If there's a party line to toe, I can't state it.

The only other thing I have to say (before we get on the train and go watch herons) is that despite being dipped into the vat of obscenity daily, at least no one in our family is tempted to romanticize it. We've seen the face of obscenity, and it's a bit pathetic, frankly. And while we don't love obscenity, we'll do our imperfect best, and that by the grace of God, to love those who are imprisoned by it.

A collective roar

No, I'm still not doing political commentary.  But sometimes when, say, the Yankees beat the Red Sox, or the lights come back on after two days of blackout, Manhattanites hear a sort of collective cheer.  Last night, beginning at 11 p.m., there was a two-hour-long collective roar.  I think it came from the whole city.  Eventually, between the shouts, chanting, car horns, and helicopters, I gave up on the idea of sleep.  I sat in the living room window and watched people walking, running, high-fiving cabbies, and kneeling to kiss a chalk drawing of Obama on Broadway.  And I couldn't see that much.  

Here, no one even asks who you're going to vote for.  The Upper West Side, so I've heard, is in the second most liberal congressional district in the United States.  I wish President-elect Obama well. 

Chesterton on Alexander Pope and politics

Alexander Pope (from Wikipedia Commons)

I have finished Chesterton's slim volume Twelves Types for a couple of weeks now, but one particular essay keeps coming back to me in relation to politics.  

No, I am not going to start posting on the Presidential election.  I vote, and I have definite opinions, and I would even take action if I thought it appropriate (more likely on a local level), but there is a whole lot of political commentary out there in the blogosphere, and I don't think it will be enhanced by my contributions.  Besides which, the whole subject just makes me tired. 

But I do think that Chesterton adds something to political discourse which we would all do well to remember.  And it is that politics that takes no consideration of the other side's virtues is a very poor kind of politics.  

"In one art which peculiarly belongs to civilization, [Pope] was supreme--the great and civilized art of satire.  And in this we have fallen away utterly..."

(Pope is the man, by the way, who invented the phrase "Damning with faint praise.")

"It is too much the custom of politics to describe a political opponent as utterly inhumane, as utterly careless of his country, as utterly cynical, which no man ever was since the beginning of the world.  This kind of invective may often have a great superficial success: it may hit the mood of the moment; it may raise excitement and applause; it may impress millions.  But there is one man among all those millions whom it does not impress...that is the man against whom it is directed...He knows that he is an ordinary man, and that he can count as many kindly memories, as many humane instincts, as many hours of decent work and responsibility as any other ordinary man.  But behind all this he has the real weaknesses, the real ironies of his soul: behind all these ordinary merits lie the mean compromises, the craven silences, the sullen vanities, the secret brutalities, the unmanly visions of revenge.  It is to these that satire should reach if it is to touch the man at whom it is aimed.  And to reach these it must pass and salute a whole army of virtues."

Notice that he says nothing so insipid as "Can't we all just get along?"  We should do everything we can to discern which actions are most likely to produce the virtuous ends we desire, and debate and vote accordingly.  But there is a patience, a magnanimity, Chesterton says, even to satire.  There's no point pretending that the other side has no good motives at all, however mistaken we may think their means, or even their worldview.  That's called setting up a straw man, and it's not even genuinely witty.  Chesterton adds:

"In current political materialism there is everywhere the assumption that, without understanding anything of his case or his merits, we can benefit a man practically. Without understanding his case and his merits, we cannot even hurt him."

Just something to think about over the next month, and during the aftermath.