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July 27, 2006

Generally Speaking

Left-wingers all hate America, want to eliminate personal freedom in order to impose their own egalitarian ideas, drink lattes, are atheists who want to force everyone else to be atheists as well, and are Communist-wanna-bes.

Right-wingers all hate gays, want to keep women subservient to men, worship an ignorant and bigoted God, watch NASCAR, are ignorant of history and the world beyond the United States and want to impose theocracy on the United States.

I could go on, but I figure that should annoy the majority of readers sufficiently to make my point. If your politics trend left, you read my first paragraph and probably identified about five things wrong with it. If your politics trend right, you read my second paragraph and noted about six things wrong with it. But I'll wager that many conservative readers agreed with parts of the first paragraph, and that many liberal readers agreed with parts of the second paragraph. (And let's note here that many does not equal all; if you recognized both paragraphs as pure hogwash, more power to you.)

When you're a member of a group, it's easy to see the differences that differentiate you from your fellows. Conversely, when you're opposed to a group, it's easier to note the similarities between the 'other.' Indeed, while each of the paragraphs I used to start this discussion are parodies, there are hints of truth in each. I'd wager that atheists are more likely to lean left than right, and the reverse for Christians, for example. That's what makes the stereotypes so easy to adopt; you can probably find an example of them if you look hard enough.

And stereotypes are comforting. If the guy I disagree with is a genuinely good person who wants to do the right thing, then maybe my own position isn't as solid as I think. After all, the other guy has access to the same information I do, yet he came to a different conclusion. Maybe that means that I'm wrong. That's rarely a comforting thought. It's a lot easier if the other guy's a scoundrel. He's a bad guy, his motives are base, and that's why he's come to that conclusion. Because, obviously, right-thinking people believe the way I do, right? If he doesn't, he must either be a fool or a genuinely bad person. That's a lot easier to believe, since it means I don't have to question my beliefs.

The problem is, stereotypes are rarely accurate in more than the broadest sense. While they may make it easier to understand the world around us, that understanding is flawed because it's based on a flawed belief. And if our premises are flawed, our conclusions are going to be wrong. That may seem like a blinding flash of the obvious, yet I see it all the time (and no doubt commit the same error myself without noticing it, since we're all much more able to see the mote in the other guy's eye than the log in our own). I see that Andrew Sullivan is after left-wingers at the moment for their silence on the fighting in Lebanon. One of his readers writes in to explain that the left is 'loaded with anti-Semitism,' a damning claim that Sullivan seems to endorse, at least for the antiwar left. Now I'm sure that, were I to look about the antiwar left, I could find some who hold anti-Semitic positions. But to tar the entire group with that brush is ridiculous and insulting. Yet it provides an easy way to 'understand' the other side, so on goes the pigeonholing.

We are not going to agree on everything [originally said anything, which was a typo]. No matter how long Hilzoy and I talk about it, she's unlikely to convince me that universal health care is a great idea, nor am I likely to convince her that we ought to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. But the fact we're going to disagree doesn't mean that I have the right to ascribe views to her that she doesn't hold by assuming that because she's on the left, she must hold the normal panoply of left-wing views (whatever those are). Doing so only makes it so much less likely that we'll be able to come to agreement on areas where our views are closer, and it makes politics that much more virulent and vicious. I see so many claims that this election is more important than any other, and that we can't let the other side win because of the dire consequences it will have for the republic. And so the right savaged Clinton, and the left savages Bush, and the chances for reasonable discourse are greatly reduced.

After all, if the other side really is as venal as this side's partisans claim, how could we possibly coexist with them? If they really do all the awful things ascribed to them, then how can we not do whatever it takes to defeat them, to prevent them from causing further damage? And as the rhetoric escalates, so does the willingness of a few on each side to go further than rhetoric. This is not healthy for debate and it's outright bad for republican government that ultimately depends on the consent of the governed.

Are there some bad people on the other side? I've no doubt of it; our system of government guarantees that each side is going to have some people you'd prefer not to associate with. But there is a vast difference between noting that David Duke is a Republican or Al Sharpton is a Democrat and assuming that every Republican is like David Duke and every Democrat is like Al Sharpton.

I'm not suggesting we should take Rodney King's advice. We disagree sharply on many things,  politics is where we fight those battles, and that's just fine. But just because we disagree doesn't make the other side bad people. Reasonable people disagree all the time.

To borrow from the first American, Ben Franklin, perhaps we should all doubt a little of our own infallibility when we argue, and give our opponents the benefit of the doubt.

Cross-posted at Obsidian Wings.