Anger And Politics

IF POLITICS is civil war by other means, then it must have a lot to do with anger. Ares was the Greek god of war, and also courage, fear, civil defense, civil order, and anger. It was anger that kept Achilles in his tent before the walls of Troy, and for all that anger is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, it is embodied in the human brain’s amygdala for a reason.

But we live in an age that imagines itself beyond rage. Liberals deprecate hate speech, passive aggression, the warrior culture, and the cycle of violence. Conservatives dwell in the sunny uplands of the rule of law, oblivious of the life-and-death struggle for dominance in the deserts below.

Why then are we surprised by the anger of the Islamicists? Liberals love their foul-mouthed “peaceful protestors” and their thoughtful disquisitions on Bush and Hitler, and we conservatives love our ranting conservative radio talk-show hosts. The only thing remarkable about Islamic rage is its choice of tactics. The truth is that anger and violence are as human as love and sex, and just as important. Mammals use anger in fighting and dominance. Humans are just the same.

If money is the mother’s milk of politics, then anger is its meat and drink, and our quadrennial national party conventions are its bacchanalia. Even now, attenuated as they are from the political brawls of yesteryear, they present a quadrennial ritual of political emotion that defines the election campaign to follow. Ninety percent of the spectacle may be just about showing up, but it’s the other ten percent that makes the difference between a dead-cat bounce and a ten-point surge in the opinion polls.

Our therapeutic culture says you’ve no right to be angry, at least not if you support the political party of the dead white male. Anger is OK for the traditionally marginalized; they have a right to be angry. But how can you be angry if you have had the whip hand since time immemorial?

Of course, evil Republicans don’t agree. We have a list of grievances as long as any marginalized client group living at taxpayer expense on the liberal plantation. But liberals have managed over the last half-century to anathematize non-liberal anger as McCarthyism or “hate speech.” When Joe McCarthy expressed the rage of ordinary Americans at the “no enemies on the left” culture of the Democratic Party, he was slapped down. When Spiro Agnew championed the “silent majority” against the Sixties counter-culture he was forced to plead nolo contendere. When Pat Buchanan rallied the troops on the conservative side of the culture war he was roundly denounced. And woe betide anyone that cocks a snook at any liberal interest group! Only Ronald Reagan had the political skills to mobilize the anger on the right without provoking the liberal bulls on anger patrol.

No wonder that liberals pundits were fainting all over the ballroom like aging dowagers after watching the rage of Senator Zell Miller at the Republican National Convention last week. Why, they’d never seen anything like it. They thought that Republicans had finally learned their lesson and could be trusted to act properly in polite society.

What hypocrites these liberals be! Just as conservatives that praise the rule of law over the law of the streets forget that the benign rule of law was instituted by force, liberals forget that their movement for peace and justice—and sweetness and light—is built upon rage. It was the rage that kept immigrant hope alive in Five Points during the nineteenth century, rage that sustained the labor movement in the Homestead strike and the organizing battles of the 1930s, and rage that sustained the civil rights movement through the dark years of Jim Crow. Liberals know all about rage—when it suits them.

Conservatives are angry too. We’re angry that liberal activist judges are trying to destroy traditional marriage. We’re angry that Islamicist terrorists want to destroy the United States. We’re angry that liberals want to control our children’s education, our health care, our savings, the food we eat, the cars we drive, and the houses we live in. And we are angry that liberals always want to Blame America First.

So when Democratic Senator Zell Miller expresses our anger for us, we hoot and holler and stomp our feet. And when he challenges Hardball host Chris Matthews to a duel moments later, we like that too.

Anger is a tool; men are full of it. In the words of President Kennedy: “Don’t get mad, get even.” Anger is an engine starter; it gets you out of bed in the morning to defend yourself against a cruel world.

As philosopher Al Davis puts it: Just Win Baby—on November 2nd.

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

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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

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

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Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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