The myths and fears underlying partisanship

The United States of 2012 can be viewed as two distinct political cultures that borders on tribalism, each with its own language, myths and fears.  In the month since I've started this website, March 2012 has brought the response to a regulation mandating health insurance coverage of contraception, something that has been standard for decades among Catholic owned institutions, depicted as an assault on religion, with one young advocate called a slut, and worse, by the most prominent conservative spokesman, Rush Limbaugh.  A few weeks later this was followed by publication of the killing of a young black man by a white person whose garb, a hoodie, has become a symbol of outrage at what the left is certain is a reprise of the lynching of black youth that went unpunished in the South during  my own lifetime.

Jonathan Haidt explained it this way in an article in the N.Y. Times. 
He starts with the left's "sacred myth"

“Once upon a time, the vast majority” of people suffered in societies that were “unjust, unhealthy, repressive and oppressive.” These societies were “reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism — all of which made life very unfair, unpleasant and short. But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfare societies.” Despite our progress, “there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation and repression.” This struggle, as Smith put it, “is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving.”

This is a heroic liberation narrative. For the American left, African-Americans, women and other victimized groups are the sacred objects at the center of the story. As liberals circle around these groups, they bond together and gain a sense of righteous common purpose.

He contrasts this with conservatives':

Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way.” For example, “instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hard-working Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens.” Instead of the “traditional American values of family, fidelity and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex and the gay lifestyle” and instead of “projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform and burned our flag.” In response, “Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.”

To extend on Haidt's thesis, cultural myths are always comprehensive with heroes and villains, and clear visions of what shall befall them if the enemy prevails.  President Obama is routinely referred to as a socialist, with the connotation that only conservatives are thwarting his true goal of communism.  They visualize the bloody slaughter that did occur after such revolutions in Russia of 1917, Cuba of 1959 or the earlier incarnation in France beginning in 1789.  To allow the raising of taxes on the wealthy, no matter how small, is the beginning of confiscation of property, which once allowed in principle ends with the guillotine.  So the most erudite pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, proclaim that an Obama second term would  have  "irreversible" consequences for this country.  The probable nominee for the Republican party speaks of "taking out" the President, a word with violent connotations, only appropriate for someone who is being prevented from doing great harm.

What do liberals fear?  It's illustrated in this essay that I wrote, Fox Flag Fascism.  My particular slippery slope, as echoed by the many agreeing comments on this liberal blog, leads to Nazi Germany of 1938.  For me the hand placed over the heart at patriotic occasions is the outstretched arm of obeisance to the symbol of the state, that while never more than a social convention, obtained lethal universal enforcement.  So, I see adhering to peer pressure to stand solemnly for the national anthem as not unlike the right views the one percent increase in the tax rate for the wealthy, both a step to unspeakable societal disaster.   

Acceptance of these two comprehensive non overlapping partisan myths are not limited to the uneducated.  At this moment, the members of the Supreme Court are casting votes on which schemata, which sacred narrative,  shall be used to evaluate the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Technically they are in the process of "deliberation" but there's no evidence of this, as deliberation means consideration of others views in reaching a conclusion.  Other than perhaps a single "swing" justice, what is occurring is a polling of which ideology has a majority of the nine votes, which will determine the fate of this most important domestic policy initiative in decades.

Given that this polarization to the point of tribalism exists from the obscene slurs of talk radio to jurisprudential decisions of the highest court of the land,  is it possible that academia can rise above this.  My premise is that it not only can, but that it must. From my life experiences, and the UCSD conference that is the focus of this website, I conclude that the perspective of the liberal arts in public universities is of the left, and that this unexamined identification vitiates the capacity to productively pursue their stated academic goals.

My personal challenge is making this case without use of the language of the right, without anger or condemnation.  It's a form of non-violent expression that attempts to show rather than force a group to do what is right.  The first challenge is engagement, finding a way to get traction to reach the goals that I have the audacity to hope to achieve.