May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by Brendan Ruberry
When Bernard-Henri Lévy was traveling the country for his 2005 "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville" series of articles in The Atlantic, he came to Dallas, where I was then living and, at the request of The Atlantic, I spent some time taking him to see some of the city's famous shopping. (The Container Store proved of significantly more interest than Neiman Marcus, which wasn't going to impress a Parisian.) What I remember most was passing Southern Methodist University, where my Jewish atheist husband was on the faculty, along with Muslims, Hindus, etc., etc., etc. "Why would the Methodists do that?" he asked, utterly bewildered. Rather than resorting to the usual stereotypes about guns, he should have followed that question. But he didn't. He's no Tocqueville.
I really admire the arguments in this article. Freedom, pluralism, civility go together. Civic pluralism is in line with civic and constitutional patriotism, and universal values. Relations between people are important and at the local level are crucial for community creation. America is after all an idea of constant plurality, change and openness.
Understand your points and thoughts here. However, wars as against Iraq and "global war on drugs" have only made things worse not only for USA but also for democracy, freedom, cooperation etc. One important solution is that USA cooperates and integrates with other democracies as the EU, Canada, India in order to establish a League of Democracies and a World Parliament elected by citizens. Thereby establishing global democratic governance in representative meaning
Understand your points. NATO is very technocratic, plus problems as with Turkey, and despite the majority of NATO nations being democracies. I could tell you more about the World Parliament idea and liquid democracy over a Zoom call. You can write to me via vladlau89@gmail.com
I sit in the backyard with my dog and play my iTunes on shuffle. As soon as I opened this essay, my iPhone started playing the theme to the Thames Television documentary, The World at War. How apropos! I see the balkanization here in my town; Richmond, Virginia. A few months ago, on my way to the allergist in the suburbs, I saw two cars. While still in the urban corridor, I saw an electric vehicle plastered with Leftist bumperstickers, one of which said, “Fear No Art!” I may be going out on a limb, but I’m pretty sure the driver who “fears no art” supported the vandalism and removal of Confederate monuments created by world-renowned sculptors in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Further along the way, after I was well into the suburbs, I saw an SUV with multiple admonitions to “Pray!,” and one sticker claiming “My Dog Bites Democrats!” I don’t really know where we go from there. When you have iconoclastic art advocates conflating mass-produced statuary installed by the Klan with true treasures by major artists, and self-identifying Christians bragging that their dogs attack folks with whom they disagree politically, we’re heading for dark times. I’m a center-right guy who appreciates what y’all are doing here at Persuasion, but at some point the center-right and center-left have to coalesce around a practical agenda with broad support amongst independents and ignore these fringe ideologues. I don’t see that happening any time soon.
We need a practical third party. It would only need to get 10-15% of the vote to do deals with the two major parties - with whichever one is more reasonable on a particular issue.
I think this may be the most divided this country has been since the Civil War. Yet, when I watch day to day interactions between people of different races/ethnicities in my local communities, I see no evidence of malice toward each other. I think our politicians and media are driving huge wedges between us, and the current president is not uniting the country.
We’ve had a couple of presidents in a row who thought there was more value in dividing than uniting. Meanwhile, interracial marriage is skyrocketing, and everywhere I go, I see African-American, white, Hispanic, and mixed families socializing and getting along. I wish the Democrats would give the US the credit it deserves for going from slavery and REAL Jim Crow to being one of the least racist societies in the world, and the Republicans to expel the Alt Right anti-Semites and white supremacists from their ranks. But I’ve been “non-partisanly” redistricted into a Congressional district owned lock, stock, and barrel by a corrupt African-American who grew up affluent, attending the most elite private school in town, whose whole schtick is race-baiting, and the GOP is holding a convention to nominate one of four Alt Right white nationalists to challenge him. I guess I’m staying home in November for the first time in my life. Both major parties are dysfunctional. Sorry for the rant. We have an eight week old baby in the house, and as the “bottle whisperer,” dad isn’t getting much sleep.
My sense of it is that most people in this country are centrists who drift slightly to the left or right of middle on most issues. Our government is set up to prevent those radical factions on either side from seizing and exploiting too much power, resulting in a far-right or far-left society. When the pendulum swings too far one way, another faction pops up to swing it the other way, sometimes with disastrous consequences. I consider myself a very reasonable and tolerant person, but we see our society inundated with in-your-face tactics used by some of these fringe groups which precipitates a more forceful counteraction, as we have seen with parental resistance to CRT and Sexual Orientation in schools.
The pundits and commentators add to the division with broad proclamations about the recent shootings being the result of right wing indoctrination when in fact most of these killings (by both races) are the result of mentally deranged individuals. And yet the violence in Black communities against each other continues with little commentary, and the law goes unenforced, and innocent people suffer.
I am hoping that the next couple of elections will bring back some sensible centrist individuals who can develop policies to make all Americans feel more secure both financially and physically, and avoid promoting continual fractionization of our society.
Balkanization is a much better word than tribalism. This loose use of the word tribe limits a broad understanding of what tribes are and how they operate in a society. Tribes are linked through clans with families as the base. The US inability to understand tribes lead to their disastrous policies in the tribal societies of the Middle East.
One can easily see the balkanization of the US. To some extent interregional balkanization is with us today. The alarm bell is ringing. We all need to respond.
Dear God, please give us, the pious and faithful, strength to grow beyond our intolerant, destructive and dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors on the topic of sex. Please help us realize that this, more than anything, is why so many of your flock has turned away from the church and God, and why darkness and evil seem to be enveloping all of humanity. If only we conservative Christians shed our medieval sex mythology while also starting to admit that our flock is guilty of all the sins of sex that we claim to abhor. Maybe then we will see a renewed interest in the church and God, and we will see light overtake the darkness.
In general I'm all for civic pluralism and religious tolerance. But when it comes to making a hero of a (yes, this is extreme language, but it's warranted) scumbag who took a knife to his child, that's where I draw the line.
Obviously we differ on both our ideas of "moral character" and our tolerance for tying up a child and threatening him with a knife. So be it. As you've acknowledged, one of the great things about Persuasion is that we're both free to speak our minds.
The assumption of those who deny the evil of this story is that if Isaac was spared at the last minute he could just walk away, no harm done, no trauma. Do I really have to explain that that's not how it works? How in denial do you have to be not to see that?
When Bernard-Henri Lévy was traveling the country for his 2005 "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville" series of articles in The Atlantic, he came to Dallas, where I was then living and, at the request of The Atlantic, I spent some time taking him to see some of the city's famous shopping. (The Container Store proved of significantly more interest than Neiman Marcus, which wasn't going to impress a Parisian.) What I remember most was passing Southern Methodist University, where my Jewish atheist husband was on the faculty, along with Muslims, Hindus, etc., etc., etc. "Why would the Methodists do that?" he asked, utterly bewildered. Rather than resorting to the usual stereotypes about guns, he should have followed that question. But he didn't. He's no Tocqueville.
I was amazed at how ignorant Piketty was about the US in the latest podcast. Kudos to Yascha for trying to push back.
I really admire the arguments in this article. Freedom, pluralism, civility go together. Civic pluralism is in line with civic and constitutional patriotism, and universal values. Relations between people are important and at the local level are crucial for community creation. America is after all an idea of constant plurality, change and openness.
Understand your points and thoughts here. However, wars as against Iraq and "global war on drugs" have only made things worse not only for USA but also for democracy, freedom, cooperation etc. One important solution is that USA cooperates and integrates with other democracies as the EU, Canada, India in order to establish a League of Democracies and a World Parliament elected by citizens. Thereby establishing global democratic governance in representative meaning
Understand your points. NATO is very technocratic, plus problems as with Turkey, and despite the majority of NATO nations being democracies. I could tell you more about the World Parliament idea and liquid democracy over a Zoom call. You can write to me via vladlau89@gmail.com
I sit in the backyard with my dog and play my iTunes on shuffle. As soon as I opened this essay, my iPhone started playing the theme to the Thames Television documentary, The World at War. How apropos! I see the balkanization here in my town; Richmond, Virginia. A few months ago, on my way to the allergist in the suburbs, I saw two cars. While still in the urban corridor, I saw an electric vehicle plastered with Leftist bumperstickers, one of which said, “Fear No Art!” I may be going out on a limb, but I’m pretty sure the driver who “fears no art” supported the vandalism and removal of Confederate monuments created by world-renowned sculptors in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Further along the way, after I was well into the suburbs, I saw an SUV with multiple admonitions to “Pray!,” and one sticker claiming “My Dog Bites Democrats!” I don’t really know where we go from there. When you have iconoclastic art advocates conflating mass-produced statuary installed by the Klan with true treasures by major artists, and self-identifying Christians bragging that their dogs attack folks with whom they disagree politically, we’re heading for dark times. I’m a center-right guy who appreciates what y’all are doing here at Persuasion, but at some point the center-right and center-left have to coalesce around a practical agenda with broad support amongst independents and ignore these fringe ideologues. I don’t see that happening any time soon.
We need a practical third party. It would only need to get 10-15% of the vote to do deals with the two major parties - with whichever one is more reasonable on a particular issue.
I think this may be the most divided this country has been since the Civil War. Yet, when I watch day to day interactions between people of different races/ethnicities in my local communities, I see no evidence of malice toward each other. I think our politicians and media are driving huge wedges between us, and the current president is not uniting the country.
We’ve had a couple of presidents in a row who thought there was more value in dividing than uniting. Meanwhile, interracial marriage is skyrocketing, and everywhere I go, I see African-American, white, Hispanic, and mixed families socializing and getting along. I wish the Democrats would give the US the credit it deserves for going from slavery and REAL Jim Crow to being one of the least racist societies in the world, and the Republicans to expel the Alt Right anti-Semites and white supremacists from their ranks. But I’ve been “non-partisanly” redistricted into a Congressional district owned lock, stock, and barrel by a corrupt African-American who grew up affluent, attending the most elite private school in town, whose whole schtick is race-baiting, and the GOP is holding a convention to nominate one of four Alt Right white nationalists to challenge him. I guess I’m staying home in November for the first time in my life. Both major parties are dysfunctional. Sorry for the rant. We have an eight week old baby in the house, and as the “bottle whisperer,” dad isn’t getting much sleep.
My sense of it is that most people in this country are centrists who drift slightly to the left or right of middle on most issues. Our government is set up to prevent those radical factions on either side from seizing and exploiting too much power, resulting in a far-right or far-left society. When the pendulum swings too far one way, another faction pops up to swing it the other way, sometimes with disastrous consequences. I consider myself a very reasonable and tolerant person, but we see our society inundated with in-your-face tactics used by some of these fringe groups which precipitates a more forceful counteraction, as we have seen with parental resistance to CRT and Sexual Orientation in schools.
The pundits and commentators add to the division with broad proclamations about the recent shootings being the result of right wing indoctrination when in fact most of these killings (by both races) are the result of mentally deranged individuals. And yet the violence in Black communities against each other continues with little commentary, and the law goes unenforced, and innocent people suffer.
I am hoping that the next couple of elections will bring back some sensible centrist individuals who can develop policies to make all Americans feel more secure both financially and physically, and avoid promoting continual fractionization of our society.
Balkanization is a much better word than tribalism. This loose use of the word tribe limits a broad understanding of what tribes are and how they operate in a society. Tribes are linked through clans with families as the base. The US inability to understand tribes lead to their disastrous policies in the tribal societies of the Middle East.
One can easily see the balkanization of the US. To some extent interregional balkanization is with us today. The alarm bell is ringing. We all need to respond.
Reference to Bosnia is very touching for me because I have a similar experience from there. https://vladanlausevic.medium.com/whose-bosnia-75207e4ca727
Dear God, please give us, the pious and faithful, strength to grow beyond our intolerant, destructive and dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors on the topic of sex. Please help us realize that this, more than anything, is why so many of your flock has turned away from the church and God, and why darkness and evil seem to be enveloping all of humanity. If only we conservative Christians shed our medieval sex mythology while also starting to admit that our flock is guilty of all the sins of sex that we claim to abhor. Maybe then we will see a renewed interest in the church and God, and we will see light overtake the darkness.
In general I'm all for civic pluralism and religious tolerance. But when it comes to making a hero of a (yes, this is extreme language, but it's warranted) scumbag who took a knife to his child, that's where I draw the line.
Obviously we differ on both our ideas of "moral character" and our tolerance for tying up a child and threatening him with a knife. So be it. As you've acknowledged, one of the great things about Persuasion is that we're both free to speak our minds.
The assumption of those who deny the evil of this story is that if Isaac was spared at the last minute he could just walk away, no harm done, no trauma. Do I really have to explain that that's not how it works? How in denial do you have to be not to see that?