| Viewing Single Post From: R-E-S-P-E-C-T Revisited | |
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| Duke parent 2004 | Aug 5 2008, 11:17 PM |
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Lately we’ve seen on this board some exchanges that test the limits of civility. With three months of the presidential campaign looming before us, perhaps a few words of caution are in order if we are to entertain one another without cheering on the lions. In arguing politics for more than forty years, I can say with nary a blush that I’ve never converted anyone over age thirty to my (correct) view of things. And for at least the past thirty years, none of my disputants, whether friend or foe, has dislodged me from even one of my ingenious (though occasionally wacky) prejudices. I suspect many other posters here would also, if pressed, admit to routinely pinning their own obduracy meters. The obvious question presents itself: Should anyone be surprised at this outcome? In 1987 Thomas Sowell published his Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Although a very capable polemicist, Sowell concluded that the two principal political visions of the modern era are probably incommensurable. Perhaps this is why grown-up liberals rarely convert grown-up conservatives--and vice versa. Most of us end up reinforcing the viewpoints of those already sympathetic to our own visions and prejudices. When someone undergoes a sea change in his political beliefs, we tend not to frown on such a conversion only when the convert is still young--i.e., when we are willing to accept the notion that that person is "still in the making." Imagine by contrast what we would think if anything said on this board were to transform a graying liberal into no more than a closet conservative or an arthritic conservative into no more than a reluctant liberal. Wouldn't we wonder about the integrity of someone of years who could be so swayed by such exchanges? I for one would not swell up at converting any of you to my own hyper-conservative views. Before congratulating myself I'd more likely conclude that you had gone through life in Brownian motion—or had not yet kissed age thirty good-bye. The angst verging on loneliness often experienced by later-in-life converts attests to the natural wariness with which they are approached by their newfound confrères—and the outright hostility directed at them by their former compadres, who can’t help feeling embarrassed and betrayed for having once held close to their breasts such “inauthentic” persons. Perhaps the mere passing of the years also contributes to a salubrious modulation of the political juices. At least it has for me and for those of my contemporaries I most admire. I much prefer the company of a liberal who can put politics in its rightful place to that of a conservative who can’t play poker without preaching the virtues of Ayn Rand’s John Galt. My longstanding liberal friends, by the way, concede that their own liberalisms are less pugnacious and more nuanced than the fighting creeds to which they once subscribed. Perhaps we have over the years adopted a more literary (i.e, more sensible) view of the world—one, I think, that prefers attainable small victories to unlikely large ones, and that tolerates the imperfect not because our energies have waned but rather because we can no longer deny the marvelous (and sometimes terrible) unpredictability of the human soul. In short, anyone who can smile at Auden’s “Thou shalt not sit with statisticians, nor commit a social science” is welcome at my table. I am advocating neither quiescence nor indifference. I am advocating the civility that is the precondition of any conversation worth having. I am advocating putting the stronger rather than the weaker interpretation on the ruminations of our fellow posters. I am advocating our remembering that the delight we’ve taken in dredging up the disreputable words of the hoax enablers can also be the delight of our foes should we provide them an arsenal stocked with our own intemperate or ill-considered speech. Above all, I am advocating a modesty of bearing and presentation consonant with a mature understanding of our limitations and a seasoned understanding of the intractability of the world. Of our great writers, none better captured this understanding of the world, and our need to be humble before it, than did Henry James in this passage: Life is a battle. On this point optimists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in very great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. . . . In this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to understand.  Edited by Duke parent 2004, Aug 16 2008, 08:52 AM.
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| R-E-S-P-E-C-T Revisited · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers | |
5:53 AM Nov 30
