Reason #3: Lazy Faire

Picking up where I left off last week, I continue my meager attempts at answering the question posed to me by a Boston radio-personality: "Why do you think this country is so divided today? Why is it that your neighbor–if you said you support the war in Iraq–why is it that your neighbor will call you a fascist or a warmongering pig?" I have already posited two reasons for consideration, the first being revenge for an alleged injustice against President Clinton; the second being the inherently fallacious and consequently divisive ideals of democracy. Today, I turn to the notion of laissez-fairism, that "policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering." (Oxford American Dictionary)

Typically, when people think or speak of laissez-faire, they usually do so in the context of economics. It is in the marketplace, in the economic engines of commerce, where the laissez-faire attitude is oft-assumed with an optimistic trust in natural market forces and a deep mistrust in human intrusion and control of those forces. "Do not meddle" might be the motto of many an economist.

Moreover, it is typical to associate laissez-faire economic policies with conservatism, with capitalists indignant of any state-controlled economies and sounding the alarms whenever socialists or some such opponents of private ownership approach a market's treasuries. For it is usually the leftists who want to control economies, redistributing property rights or ownership or production or income to the less fortunate; the proletariat. Liberals tend to oppose "multinatinonals"; they tend to oppose what appear to be monopolies of production. In short, liberals tend to distrust the laissez-faire market, convinced that money breeds greed, and a lust for power, which eventually trickles down to the lower classes, not as shared wealth, but as exploitation and alienation.

No doubt markets do need some controls placed upon them: monopolies do form and are perhaps harmful; and not all goods should be marketable, subject to mere market forces of supply, demand and competition; as there is a demand (for example) for child pornography and prostitution, though such "demand" hardly justifies the acceptability of that market.

But what is curious is that while conservatives are deemed too lenient on economic forces, and liberals too stringent, the opposite is true when it comes to, let's say, most sexual behaviors. Liberals tend to be very "hands off" when the topic of decency in art and speech and sexual mores is raised, while conservatives tend toward a fairly legalistic response to apparent licentiousness. Liberal pro-choice women shout out "Keep your hands off my body!" to any state suggestion that perhaps abortion rights have run amok; while conservatives would like to see the great monoliths of American permissiveness, from Howard Stern to Hugh Hefner, from Hollywood to Manhattan art galleries, be restrained by laws and regulations (or by cuts in federal grants) from producing alleged filth. Liberals want to control wealth, guns and conservative speech (the whole PC agenda); conservatives want to control certain sexual practices, the death penalty, and the definition of marriage. In other words, one group is no more or less laissez-faire than another. The sole difference between the liberal and conservative is over the proper objects of control.

Similarly, it is not really the case that liberals are relativists and conservatives are absolutists (though I think this is arguably true in many cases). For it is readily apparent that liberals do in fact believe in absolutes absolutely, with a tenacious dogmatism that smacks of the Inquisition. Considering homosexuality, for example, liberals are pellucid in their vision: homosexuality has always been intrinsically OK, it's just been absolutely misunderstood. Furthermore, what is absolutely and eternally wrong to a liberal is homophobia, which has never been either right or acceptable; and is anathema to a free and healthy human family. Abortion is also an absolute right of a woman's intrinsic freedom, composing the very fabric of what it means to be a mother, autonomous and independent.

In short, liberals and conservatives battle over what is inherently sinful in humanity. For both want to control behaviors. Liberals, it seems, aware of the good and bad in each person, nonetheless seem to believe that economic sins and temptations are the worst of evils; that "money is the root of all evil"; that greed and power always corrupt absolutely and are a threat to democracy. As for the good in humanity, liberals believe that self-expression, once unfettered from economic anxieties and lusts, is inherently wonderful, the guarantor of each person's glory. Conversely, it is conservatives who appear to deem self-expression, particularly that which expresses itself through carnality, as the bane of humanity; and that the production of wealth, unfettered by the state, creates "incentive" and "opportunity" for all, lifting humanity up from the state-controlled gutters and ghettoes of Stalinism and Maoism that destroy hopes and dreams. And it is the conservatives who recognize that St. Paul did not say that "money is the root of all evil," but that the"love of money" is evil's tenacious root. That is why conservatives tend to accept some market controls, combined with a healthy personal religious faith, knowing that greed is corrupt and corrupting, and an empty and deadly idol. But to the conservative, St. Paul's warnings are less dire than Jesus Christ's, who said that "It is not what goes into a man that defiles a man, but what comes out of him." In other words, unmitigated self-expression is not a good thing.

So, it appears that we can conclude that both liberals and conservatives believe humans are originally sinful; they just disagree over what are the most deadly sins, and what are the best solutions to alleviating the sufferings caused by those sins. But it would seem to me that if we could just come together and agree that both sides are right, that greed and sexual promiscuity are dangerous idols no one, apparently, wants to surrender to the fires; that economic and sexual prosperity are not anyone's salvation (more is rarely better, after all) in the cults of market and self-worship; if we could agree that we are all fallen, that all our ideas are imperfect; if we could begin to be more sentient of language and its abuse, assiduously fighting for linguistic clarity rather than derisively fighting through linguistic haziness; if we could, in short, be kind and patient one to another, guided by the power of love and reason, we might find a middle way, a via media, from whence we can move forward. Yes, perhaps the dialectic is good, where conflicts breed resolutions. But we would all have to agree that dialectic is in fact good. Sadly, we can't even agree to that.

Contratimes

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