Dumb politics, v. 2.0

Can I rant once more this week?

I've spent a lot of my adult life with people or in places where there is a decidedly liberal bent. I've routinely been in cultures or climates where a conservative American viewpoint is unfathomably naive and foolish. Only the uneducated, those who muscle their way past one another to quarrel on Jerry Springer or watch tractor pulls, could possibly follow such a backward worldview.

I've also spent most of my overall life living in one of two of the most conservative states in the US - Utah and Texas. This week I was in a conversation with two guys I admire a great deal and one of them expressed his opinion that the only way someone could become liberal is to simply not be fully educated in the truth.

So it is very clear to those centered in either American party that if people were simply fully educated, they would clearly see the world their way.

My impression is that the good thing about a multi-party system is that sometimes two or more truths may intersect at an issue where they become mutually exclusive so we have to choose the better of two truths, which is rarely simple unless you don't think too long about it, reduce it to sound bites and slogans, or hold one of the truths far more strongly than the other (and expect that others should as well).

A prime example of this for me is the abortion issue. For most, this is reduced to a sound bite and a slogan. For some, either choice or life is so clearly more valuable than the other that this is a non-issue. However, I think for most, when we think deeply about this, there's truly a paradox in play. Even someone who is ardently pro-life would agree that choice is important and there is a point at which choice is paramount, even if that is before conception (e.g., a woman should have a choice of who she sleeps with and when. She should not be a victim - she has choice). Even someone who is ardently pro-choice would agree that life is important and there is a point at which life is paramount, even if that is after birth (e.g., a woman should not have a choice about killing her three day old infant). So at the extremes we can agree that early on, choice prevails and later on life prevails. But when does that switch get flipped? For some it is at conception, for others it is shortly thereafter, for others at "quickening", for others during first trimester, for others at birth, etc. So we are not pro-choice or pro-life, but we are all both, with a disagreement over timing. Lawyers who are active in this debate know that the whole question is about timing - very few of the rest of us understand this, or at least acknowledge it.

My point in this is not really to debate abortion, a topic so visceral, but to make a point using a visceral topic, that politics is beautiful when it creates tension between truths and makes us stretch our minds to comprehend those tensions and make choices and trade-offs, individually and collectively.

Unfortunately, politics is rarely beautiful or philosophical. Instead of marrying a tension between two truths, it is generally a tension of two falsehoods or criticizing one another's truths. Somehow I got on Planned Parenting's mailing list and routinely get letters asking me to donate so they can fight against the "anti-choice" zealots. So you are either anti-choice or anti-life. Nice. The pro-life lobby could never have convinced me so well of their validity and usefulness as the Planned Parenthood did, though entirely unintentionally.

A Sunday School teacher I admire greatly once taught me that ethics and truth are rarely interesting when they lie along lines that are well-established. The interesting parts come about in the gaps between these truths. I would simply add that they are also interesting when they intersect and sometimes oppose one another. Perhaps my liberal and conservative friends might take solace in knowing that many times they are both right.