Getting Past the Rage and the Rhetoric
Posted by Jim at November 18th, 2004
More than anything else, people’s tendency to reduce “The Other Side” to a two dimensional caricature worries me. I’m not much bothered by electoral competition. I’m not even bothered by negative campaigning if the negative campaigning brings attention to a real problem with a candidate.
I worry, however, when people manage to remove any respect from their thoughts of “The Other Side”–whatever party that may be.
I like to think I have an appreciation for my limitations (perhaps too much). I know I’m wrong on occasion. I believe this probably true of all people and all ideologies as well.
Hence, I tend to believe that compromise and respect for “The Other Side” is a necessity. They’re going to be right when you’re wrong sometime (or perhaps you’ll both be wrong…).Contempt does no one any good.
Thus, I pass along a couple links (via Centerfield):
Perverted, God-Hating Frenchies vs. Inbred, Sex-Obsessed Yokels
Dean’s World: Good Beliefnet Piece
Both pieces are perspectives on the conservative/liberal divide and the entertaining lies we tell about each other.
The challenge issued by Religious Liberal Blog ( http://www.blogstudio.com/religiousliberal/ ) seems instructive to me.
I’m getting the impression that Stephen Waldham is a liberal, and he says both sides misunderstand each other. And Dean is a conservative, but seems to think that the conservatives understand the liberals *just fine* though they talk mean about them sometimes, but the liberals don’t understand the conservatives at all. (Though Dean’s an atheist.)
Can you take up the challenge and find a fundamentalist/evangelical Christian calling for greater understanding of and peace with liberal Christians?
Ed Heil
sorry, that should be http://religiousliberal.blogspot.com/
Ed Heil
I agree with Dean less than I agree with Waldman.
Dean does state that he thinks conservatives understand liberals better than the other way around. At the same time, he makes statements that point out that conservatives tend to be totally wrong about liberals’ moral and religious perspectives.
Responding to the challenge in the Religious Liberal Blog is a little harder because I’m pretty sure I don’t share the assumption that makes his challenge meaningful.
He seems to believe that understanding the other side is worthwhile only if the other side is willing to understand you and thereby be transformed. This makes sense if there’s only one other side that matters. If you’re willing to compromise with the other side and the other side will never compromise with you, it isn’t worth it.
But what if there is no single perspective on the other side? And what if there’s a big group of people who are on neither side, but hold views that fit partially with both sides? For that matter, what if most individuals on the other side hold a few views that don’t quite fit with their side?
In the situation that I imagine, it would be worth understanding the other side because in doing so you also understand some of the beliefs of the people in the middle (who might be open to transformation) as well as the beliefs of some people on one’s own side.
By contrast, if you don’t attempt to understand the other side, you have the potential to lose not only the middle, but also part of your own coalition.
Jim Zoetewey