The Politics Of Demonization

He quotes from the e-mail of a partisan, who believes that Karl Rove has “a serious lack of ethics.” Rove is “capable, vindictive and mean-spirited... and he has run dirty campaigns...”

Leaving aside the obvious code words from the Democratic side of the divide, Cost reminds us what this is all about.

It’s all because of the necessities of politics.

Both political parties offer us a ready-made worldview, a lens through which we can look at our political environment and make sense of it... These partisan worldviews... are explicitly crafted to induce us to political action. One way that we can be induced to political action... is if we believe that our political universe contains heroes and, of course, villains. The demonization of Karl Rove (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton) is therefore part and parcel of a partisan worldview.

The easiest way to summon people to action is through hate and rage. That’s why politicians do it.

But if you try to think about the other side using a “good faith assumption,” writes Cost, then you begin to perceive politics not as a battle between good and evil but a “conflict between competing interests.”

Then we can look at the Democratic Party as a coalition of the single, the secular, and the government employee. And we can look at the Republican Party as the coalition of the religious, married with children who work in the private sector.

And we can see that each party’s goals and interests are sensibly aligned with the interests of its partisan supporters.

And obviously the actions of the other party’s political actors in blocking our own party’s agenda is unethical and mean-spirited. Or worse.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Nancy Coppock on 08/23/07 1:14pm

Interesting how Cost believes our world view is set by political parties and not the other way 'round. That says a truckload. Silly me, I thought and decided the Republican Party better aligned with my decisions and values. But if a political scientist declares values come from the Party down to the person, then maybe he is talking about a party other than mine. Does this mean that the Democratic Party is the party of mind-numbed robots receiving marching orders from party headquarters?

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

mysql close 0