News of the Day: The Biggest Problem with Our Modern Politics

October 29th, 2019 // 2:20 pm @ Oliver DeMille

(and How to Fix It)

I just finished studying a fascinating book that really made me think: Passions & Politics by two European scholars, Paul Ginsborg and Sergio Labate. I found this a difficult book to read (dry and meandering), but it shares five very important ideas that deeply apply to all of us right now:

1. In modern politics, we are taught the importance of our political party winning elections, but not the duties and responsibilities we each have as citizens.

Concerning our duties, we are typically only taught the bare minimum: voting and jury duty. The rest is usually unspoken, and mostly ignored. Specifically, the great duties the American Founders gave to the citizens were twofold: (A) To keep a close eye on government, make sure it doesn’t step out of line (violate the constitution in any way, or exert any power not directly given by the constitution), and (B) think about what kind of nation and society we want to be, and spread this vision to everyone else. These are the two great duties of every citizen in a free nation. Yet today they are both largely forgotten.

2. The political debate today is mostly about the choice between two candidates, or two parties. It is hardly ever about what kind of society or nation we want to have. As a result, most political discussion now is dogma, not wisdom.

We seldom even think about wisdom when politics comes up. Almost everyone is a dogmatic partisan now, not a wise citizen. Passions & Politics points out that our partisan emotions usually push us toward angry utopian daydreams or blunt, angry “isms”, and both tend to be a bit shallow.

3. “…for decades the political parties were ‘modern princes’, today they are no longer up to the task.”*

If our political parties run our nation (and they do), but they aren’t “up to the task” anymore, we are in a bad situation. Something has to change. Either the parties need to come together, get their act together, and create a whole new way of working with each other, or we need a new system not mired in party hatred and party conflicts. Both of these alternatives seem unlikely, unless something drastic occurs.

4. Our politics are now stuck in, “Resentment, competition, a blind conviction that the only way to build a community is to build up some enemy to serve as the target of hate.”

This is true for both sides, the left and the right. Parties now typically spend more effort and time trying to tear down the other side than working toward any great and important goals for our nation and society. Like a very bad divorce, the full focus is on bringing each other down, not helping anyone or improving the nation in any serious way. This can only lead us in one direction—down. No matter who the voters elect, this war between the parties keeps hurting our nation, distracting our leaders and officials from their real work for the people.

5. What our politics need right now is mostly calm, useful wisdom, but we seldom listen to this voice in the modern environment of fearful, angry politics.

Our politics have become almost entirely about “our side winning”, in order to avoid the terrible results of losing to the despised “other side”. The biggest problem is that this fear is quite real. The “other” side will do things that drastically hurt us. For example, whatever side you take, the other side wants to use power to aggressively attack your wishes concerning abortion, family values and family rights, taxes, the environment, religious beliefs, guns, what our children are taught in the schools, immigration, health care, crime, jobs, and many other divided issues. It’s hard to be calm, or focus on wisdom, when the next election could mean a major loss of the freedoms you care about most. Both sides feel this way. And in the current system, both sides need to feel this way—because it’s generally true.

While Passions & Politics doesn’t outline any clear solutions, it does a good job of summarizing these serious problems of our time. To get real solutions, we’re going to have to think outside of the partisan box.

Solution: To begin with, at least a few citizens are going to have to step beyond the partisan wars and think wisely. Yes, the dangers of “the other side” will be screaming loudly in our ears every step of the way. But we need to do this anyway. We need to push partisanship aside a bit and focus on wisdom.

Both are necessary (winning the next election, and doing some serious thinking from a place of wisdom), but right now there are plenty of people engaged in the party battles. Hardly anyone is working on truly wise solutions to the current system.

Specifically, we’re never going to actually fix this overarching problem with our politics as long as we live under a system dominated by political partisanship. History is clear: party conflicts slowly get worse and worse over time, until they eventually escalate the infighting and destroy freedom. The American Founders didn’t like parties for this very reason; in Federalist 10, for example, Madison called parties the major roadblock to a free society. The Framers specifically didn’t write parties into the Constitution, and hoped this choice would get rid of them. It didn’t quite work, as we all know. Political parties are extremely tenacious.

But there is a solution. A real one. It’s not fast, but it works. The one proven way to reduce the power of parties is education—not the kind found in most schools (because political parties find too many ways to influence public education), but rather the kind of learning found in the home. Parents can drastically decrease the power of partisan influence on future voters, if they know this is needed.

Guess what?

It. Is. Needed.

Right now more than ever before in American history.

Parents have the power to solve this problem.

That’s the long-term solution.

We also need some more immediate solutions, things that will at least slow down the national decline caused by party extremism until the long-term solutions can make a difference. But whatever short-term solutions we come up with, they will all fail unless parents take on this vital project.

Please take action.

And please share this message far and wide.