Like it or not, we have a two-party political system and those two parties are the Democrats and the Republicans. Now keep in mind that much of the platforms of the respective parties has changed considerably over the years, to the point that they are almost reversed in some areas. This was put into focus by ex-Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter who (despite bungling the press pretty badly) quite legitimately and admirably switched sides when he realized that the Republican party had moved so far right that his steadily-held values were no longer represented by the Grand Old Party.
That being said, I’ve boiled it down to the one most fundamental difference that underlies the views and positions of the parties in their current incarnations. I know, I know, there are SCADS of policy differences and party line variations, but they all really come down to one tiny kernel of Big Bang importance: worth. Or, I suppose, more accurately: worthiness. The principle underlying the GOP platform focuses on who Republicans deem worthy. The Democratic platform begins with the assumption that everyone is equally worthy. And before you start, I know full well that there are precious few actual, live politicians who fully embrace either platform if they think it will play badly in the press or cost them votes back home. Truth be told, I doubt there are very many who have even considered this particular value in the Parade of Political Values. I know this. But the insight (or lack thereof) of individual humans doesn’t negate the foundational principles of the parties they represent (and consequently the policies they embrace).
So to begin this discussion, allow me to identify two very different Republican factions. There are money Republicans and there are social Republicans. Money Republicans are the Koch Brothers, the Bushes, the Daddy Warbuckses and the Trumps who have oodles of dough and spend more on their dogs than an increasing number of Americans make in a year. And they want to keep it. The system is working for them, and (understandably) they like it that way. They pull the strings, control the rules, and continue raking in the bucks and the power. These are the folks who by and large (despite the manufactured and exaggerated ‘hardships’ of their contracted-to-be-bestsellers memoires) came from positions of advantage and were raised to believe that they earned everything that was specially-made and handed to them literally on silver platters. The artificial bootstrap story. The “I made it big all by myself” tales that ignore or minimize the truckloads of leg-ups they had in life. Of course there are a few exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions. For the most part, even in America, the rich and powerful don’t come from the gutter. They come at worst from the middle class, the majority, and the inner-workings of a system designed to be as unseen as the real world was to Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. It is a mythology drafted and meticulously carried out to convince the privileged that they deserve everything they have. And I do not claim that these folks didn’t work for their successes – I truly appreciate the effort and hours and stress that Trump and Hilton and others put into their businesses. I simply say – you had the opportunity to be successful built up under you, so despite the fact that you do work for your returns, you most assuredly did not climb out of the gutter by the sheer sweat of your own brow.
The money Republicans believe this mythology, and it tells them that if they can do it, anyone can do it if they work hard enough. Therefore, the story goes, if you aren’t successful, it’s just because you’re not working hard enough. Therefore, you are unworthy. If only you were as industrious as they, you could be just as successful. This leads to judgments about who is deserving, and unfortunately becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prediction. If you were worthy, you would be successful. Because you are not successful, you are not worthy. No way out.
The social Republicans, on the other hand, tend to be the sort of bubble-wrapped suburban conformists who carry a view of what the “right” way of doing things is. These folks are self-congratulatory and slightly deluded in the same way as the money Republicans, but since they can’t generally feel financially superior, they define success as propriety by their own standards in order to be morally or socially superior. This line of thinking says that you marry someone of the opposite sex, produce children, buy a house and furniture and a couple of cars, drive and spend, have picnics, play baseball, and have a nice, respectable job with a nice respectable benefits package, mow your lawn, and go to church on Sunday, that’s The American Dream and you are therefore contributing to the betterment of society. For many, this is fine and leads to nothing worse than being boring dinner guests, but for a growing segment of the population, this becomes a line of demarcation like the edge of a demilitarized zone. Everything outside becomes bad, threatening, and destructive to the very fabric of society. Fear of a thing is almost universally worse than the thing itself, and when people cocoon themselves in a cozy little suburb and shut out the world, the world seems to become terrifying and must be controlled at all costs. I often wonder how many people who take this view do so simply because they cannot convince their souls that their lives are as satisfying as they think they have to believe they are, and just need everyone else to espouse the same values in order to maintain them. But I digress. Social Republicans are becoming cornered-dog-like in a rising passion of resistance to everything on the other side of that line. Muslims, gays, teen mothers, the poor, the mentally ill, immigrants, and whatever enemy has yet to be named. And they are jealously guarding their turf against any legitimation of views other than their own. Understandably, because those other views threaten to expose the painted dome they’ve enclosed themselves in.
So what does all this mean politically for the GOP? It means that there are symbiotic value judgments on both sides. The money Republicans judge the needy as generally unworthy of help, and the social Republicans judge the different as unworthy of tolerance. In some ways I think the social Republicans are more dangerous to civilized society both because there are more of them than the moneys, but also because their position isn’t just about help or support, but the very existence of the Others. Of the moneys, I fully acknowledge their due for charitable giving. I would never claim that no wealthy Republican ever gave to a non-self-serving cause, but mention that the help could be more productive and make a bigger difference with government intervention and they will be apoplectic before you can say Rockefeller.
Even in help to the needy, the money Republican view is that help should be a personal decision so that the person doing the helping can decide for themselves who is deserving and who is not. Social Republicans do the same thing. Help for the elderly and the injured soldier – of course! No problem, they’re deserving. Help for the drug-addicted, poverty-stricken, or uneducated? Mmmmm …. Not so much. Maybe if we can tailor the help to only help the ones who were completely faultless in their circumstances. Helping poor children? Maybe – how many are there? Is it the mother’s fault they’re poor? Have they ever done bad things? What’s their immigration status? We’ll have to see about that. The uneducated? Well, is it their own fault or are they victims of someone else? Is that someone else a parent who’s illegally here? Did they drop out of school? Get pregnant at the Prom? Then no. Otherwise, maybe. We’ll have to decide if they deserve it; if we think they’ll make good enough use of the help. Chances are, probably not.
I also harbor no particular delusions about the puppies-and-rainbows version of the Democratic view of worth. Yes, it may start with the premise that everyone is worthy, but this also diverges into two problems. The first is that this view implies that if everyone has equal opportunity, then everyone can achieve equally. The second is that this view easily slides into an extreme-left social view that is as potentially destructive as the extreme-right; when too many social resources are allocated to lower-achievers, then social motivation crumbles.
I’m sure I’ve engendered a good bit of anger here, but this is my blog. Don’t like it? There’s a comment function. The first problem with the Democratic view is this equal-opportunity-means-equal-achievement idea. Which sounds very noble and very American and is fundamentally a good place to start. People should not be held back in our society simply because they weren’t born into white, middle class, educated, propertied families. But the basic idea that all achievement differentials can be traced to opportunity is overly simplistic and can – perversely – be very disempowering and dehumanizing to some. The fact is that not everyone can achieve by the same standards, and not everyone wants to. People have different values. And that’s a beautiful thing. Society doesn’t need all doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. We need janitors, baristas, mechanics, hair stylists, lifeguards, the guy who holds the “Stop/Slow” signs at construction sites. And many people don’t have either the intellectual capacity or the desire to devote themselves to years of education and training. I address this is the “BBQs” post from June, so I won’t go further with it here.
I will, however, note that many self-described liberals accept that capitalism and inherited wealth, and personal responsibility are all fine and valuable things and do not want the fully socialist government that conservatives seem to think we all want. Most of us want balance. We want government to work for all people, not just the powerful. We think that people deserve to be housed, fed, and cared for in times of need regardless of their position in society. We do not want our lives, or anyone else’s lives, consumed by the government. Nor do we want our lives to rise or fall on whether it’s profitable. There is a wide swath of operable society between the right-wing ‘pay for it yourself or die in the street’ mentality and the left-wing ‘government should provide everything and make everyone share nice’ view. Neither is functional and neither is complete. Capitalism is not the enemy. UNREGULATED capitalism is. Socialism is not the enemy. UNCONSTRAINED socialism is.
But to return to my fundamental point – human worth. It may be a part of the political party system that neither side really wants to talk about, but let’s face it – it’s really the Republicans who will have a harder time admitting that their policies boil down to judgments of worth. And I suspect that – ironically – it is the social Republicans who will have the most trouble with this analysis. The money Republicans seem less apologetic about their value judgments because the underlying thought process equates money with effort. Therefore in the mind of a money Republican, there’s nothing immoral about denigrating those who have less money because they have put forth less effort.
The social Republicans, though, face a different sort of resistance. Their value judgment is rooted in Christian morality and the social order. This makes it infinitely more problematic for a social Republican to admit that they are doing some very unchristian things. But not impossible. After all, who is better at judging others unworthy without quite admitting it than Christians?
