The nuance itself
Areader wrote to me the other day to say that it was great to see that a person “of the right,” could be for gun control. Of the right?
Yes, I get that if you do not think the president of the United States is necessarily, or consistently, evil incarnate, you are, in the current political climate, dubbed “of the right.”
But there is so much wrong with such generalizations and classifications that it’s hard to know where to begin.
I am a conservative (in the Burkean sense) in many respects. And libertarian (in a Buckley, Goldwater, or Rand Paul tradition) on some issues. That hardly constitutes being “of the right.”
To be conservative, in the true sense, is to have much in common with the craft of journalism: It is a mode of tentative awareness. It is to be skeptical, to test propositions, and to never, never trust the mob — even when it calls itself a “movement.”
To be conservative is to want to preserve the best that has been thought and said; the best of human history and memory; the best of the arts.
The classical music conductor and choral master Robert Shaw said that the true music of the people is the music that has lasted centuries. Hence, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. He said the people think so little of what is called popular music that they discard it in favor of the next new thing in weeks, or hours.
An American conservative ought to be committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (public and private) for all. And to a government that is both limited and protective — keep us safe in our homes and on our shores and pave the streets. Forget “social justice.” Make kids secure in their schools.
It seems to me essentially conservative to want to protect the innocent from mad men armed
with weapons of war.
Just as it is essentially conservative to protect clean water, clear air and natural beauty in open spaces.
It seems to me essentially conservative to expect collective reason and action in the face of any common problem or enemy, but especially acts of domestic terror.
It is quintessentially conservative to question conventional wisdom and break through stereotypes and group think.
And, again, this is a common cause with journalism.
The right is a tribe. The left is a tribe. Serious journalists do not join tribes.
But tribalism is the new normal in America. And many, many people are in the grip of tribal thinking, which is to say that they are unable to think at all.
Another reader wrote to me to say that I could not be for modest gun control because I am not of the leftist tribe. It would be impossible to have such views without the necessary affiliation. He explained that though I might think I favor gun control, and my words seem to say so, my intentions could not be accepted literally, or as sincere.
A conviction that stands in contradiction to an assigned political identity cannot have its own reality.
This is the way many Americans are processing reality, and each other, today: A posture equals a thought; a person equals a symbol.
And this is why the leftist tribe has no more to do with liberalism than the rightist tribe has to do with conservatism.
The left is all about exclusion and the things we are not allowed to talk about — all the third rails, like race, the #MeToo movement, the biases of much of the national media, or the fragility of blue lives.
As the actor Sean Penn, speaking specifically of #MeToo, said “… even when people try to discuss it in a nuanced way, the nuance itself is attacked.”
But nuance, the nuance itself, is essential to thought and essential to conversation between equal and independent citizens.
There are three attributes that, to me, are fundamental to American conservatism:
• Individual responsibility.
• The wish to set people free to follow their own dreams, and
destinies, as opposed to the destinies defined by others.
• And resistance to tyranny, both of the mob and the state.
There are three fundamental aspects to American liberalism:
• Belief in, and the practice of, tolerance.
• Willingness to accept not only the necessity but the value of compromise.
• And the ability to change one’s mind.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., and Daniel Patrick Moynihan all changed their minds in the course of their public lives.
How does one recognize the Pharisees, someone asks “the master,” in Anthony De Mello’s book”Awakening.” “Simple,” replies the master, “they are the ones who do the classifying.”