A Facebook friend posted a comment about Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain headquartered in Oklahoma. Like Chik-fil-A, the chain makes much of its Christian values, closing on Sundays and, most recently, suing the Obama Administration over the mandate to include contraceptive coverage as part of the health insurance offered to employees.
“Next time you hear someone defend Hobby Lobby’s extremist stance on birth control and health insurance law, try this little thought exercise. Go to a Hobby Lobby and make a small inventory of every item they sell that’s made in China. Yes, the same China that has MANDATORY FORCED ABORTIONS. Then ask a salesperson why Hobby Lobby’s commitment to Christianity extends to how their employees live their lives but not to where they get their inventory from.”
Yesterday’s blog included a “you aren’t one of us” moment, and it got me thinking about the nature of membership and exclusion.
We all value membership–in a club, a society, a community, a polis. Political thinkers suggest that one of the stabilizing elements of a liberal democratic society is the widespread phenomenon of “cross-cutting” memberships; that is, the fact that we are all members of multiple, different communities. In my case, I’m a member of the Jewish community, the academic community, the downtown community, the legal community, etc. etc. At any given times, some of those ties are stronger or weaker, but the net effect is to embed me into a number of different (i.e. “cross-cutting”) groups. If that were not the case–if each of us belonged only to a single group–the liklihood of competition for power and comparative advantage between groups would cause constant conflict.
The bottom line to this theory is that the more groups in which we claim membership, the wider our perspective and the more inclusive our definition of “we.”
The problem is, in order to define membership, we have to be able to distinguish between those who belong and those who don’t. And therein lies an apparently inescapable problem.
If you think about it, human progress–or at least American progress–has been defined by extending social membership to people who were previously identified as “other.” The Irish, Catholics, Jews…and more recently and incompletely, Asians, Latinos and GLBT folks. Even women.
When people are “other,” when they are not members, not one of “us,” it becomes easy–and acceptable–to generalize about them and to demonize them. The Irish are all drunks, Catholics do the Pope’s bidding, Jews are shifty businesspeople, women are too emotional…Membership definitely has its privileges, and the most significant of those is acceptance into the group and the right to be judged on ones own merits, as an individual.
This all leads to a conundrum. With membership we also have exclusion and its negative consequences. Without membership, however, we lose cohesion. With no “we,” society becomes atomized, a collection of self-serving “I’s.” Exclusively nationalistic “we’s” can lead to fascism (defined as the identification of the individual with the state) or authoritarianism.
The trick is to find the proper balance–enough community within enough communities to give us comfort and generate mutual support, enough individualism to facilitate the exploration of our human distinctiveness. The Greeks called it “The Golden Mean.”
My best friend called me yesterday, fuming about a solicitation call she’d just received.
The woman caller identified herself as a volunteer for the Republican Party. She began by thanking my friend for her past, generous support of the GOP–and indeed, my friend was an active Republican voter and donor for many years. Her husband served two terms in the General Assembly as a Republican State Senator. However, like so many of my friends and family, she no longer supports the party, and when the woman at the other end of the phone asked whether she would consider a contribution, she said so.
“I’m a Democrat now,” she informed the volunteer. The volunteer (predictably) asked if she would share why she had left the GOP; my friend responded that she strongly disagreed with the party’s positions on social issues, especially abortion and homosexuality. It is not government’s job to decide whether you procreate, or who you love; the party used to understand that “limited” government meant limited to matters that are properly the province of the state.
There was a pause. The woman on the phone then asked “Don’t you think we should consider the will of god? Shouldn’t the government have a role in ensuring that we live by what’s written in the bible?” to which my friend responded “Whose bible? Whose god?” Another pause, then the question: “are you a Christian?” When my friend said she was not, the woman evidently had an “ah ha” moment, because she ended the conversation by saying “Oh, that explains it.” According to my friend, she might just as well have said, “Now I understand–you are not one of us.”
The conversation made it quite clear that, to this volunteer (and presumably others like her), the Republican party is no longer a political enterprise. It’s a religious movement, a party by and for Christians. Not just any Christian, either–it’s the party for what they call “bible-believing” Christians, the party of Rick Santorum and Mike Pence. If there are still those in the party who take a more traditional approach, who understand the purpose of politics to be participation in secular governance and political outreach to be the building of a bigger, more inclusive tent, they presumably hadn’t communicated that to this particular foot soldier.
The conversation simply confirmed the reality of today’s Republican party–a party consisting of what has been described as “a shrinking base of aging, ethnically monolithic, and geographically isolated voters.” Christian voters. Perhaps we could achieve more clarity in our political discourse if the GOP stopped trying to be coy, and just renamed itself the Christian Party. In its current iteration, it certainly isn’t the Republican Party that my friend and I used to support. That party disappeared a long time ago.
The volunteer on the other end of line simply confirmed its transformation.
A couple of weeks ago, NYTimes columnist Gail Collins cited a poll in which ten percent of Americans self-reported a favorable view of communism, while only nine percent had a favorable view of Congress.
When people have a higher opinion of head lice than they do to our elected Representatives, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve reached a high (or low) water mark of sorts. What was that theory about electoral politics and accountability?
Lock up the silver and hide the children’s eyes–the Indiana General Assembly is back in session.
The motley crew we citizens elect to what the late Harrison Ullmann used to call The World’s Worst Legislature is already hard at work on measures ranging from treatment of wild hogs to mandating the teaching of cursive writing. I’m sure their attention to these world-shattering issues reassures us all.
Most of the trivial, unwise and the just plain wacky proposals will eventually die in committee. I just hope that one bill in particular lands in that graveyard: the proposal to allow students to carry guns on campus.
This is the second time this proposal has surfaced, and it mystifies me. What problem, exactly, is this misguided measure intended to correct? What is the purpose of encouraging an armed student body? Has anyone considered the consequences of adding firearms to venues occupied by large groups of stressed-out college students, many still adolescent and hormonal?
I once was sued in Small Claims Court by a student to whom I had given a grade of B-. When he had exhausted the (extensive) campus appeal process without convincing anyone of the great indignity of that assessment, he brought suit. (In light of the stupidity thus displayed, I am convinced that the B- was a gift–but I digress.) Arm this unhinged young man, or others not unlike him, and he might well have skipped the lawsuit and just blown me away.
I’m one of those who would like to see some reasonable limits placed on access to guns. Like most people who advocate for more control, I have no illusions that we can rid American society of the millions of guns already out there, and frankly I have no great passion to confiscate them. But I get impatient, to say the least, with the utter paranoia of the gun fringe, with the NRA’s ridiculous belief–rebutted by all credible research–that the way to ensure public safety is to arm everyone.
I’ll tell you one thing that will happen if students are allowed to pack heat on campus. There will be a lot fewer professors willing to teach. Maybe that’s the real motive?
