Sunday May 29, 2022
Yet another school shooting in the U.S. Nineteen children and two teachers dead -- plus the shooter himself.
As I write this column, authorities are still trying to fathom the teenaged shooter’s motives. Was he influenced by extremist ideologies? By prejudice? By social media?
I suggest that the terms we use, in examining motives, are themselves part of the problem. Traditional interpretations of “right” and “left,” liberal and conservative, get in the way of understanding.
We need to start again.
Try these definitions on for size. The right worships the individual. The left worships the group.
Please don’t quote dictionary definitions at me. Dictionaries are outdated as soon as their words hit paper. They can only tell you what a word has meant in the past. But language is fluid, constantly changing. So is the world. Old labels cannot adequately describe new contexts -- economic, political, religious, social…
So I say, the right believes in individual action. It endorses free enterprise. Personal initiative. It distrusts regulations, or anything organized -- other than for a short-term goal like running rustlers out of town.
Worship of the individual
American evangelists -- white or black -- exemplify this worship of the individual. Their goal is individual salvation. You, and you alone, get put right with Jesus, so that you and you alone can get into heaven.
No, you can’t take a buddy with you.
No evangelist has ever told a kneeling penitent, “I can’t save you until this whole social order is saved.”
Likewise, white supremacists do not form a committee to examine the demographic implications of immigration. They get a gun and do something about it.
Like the shooter in Buffalo, just ten days before the Uvalde massacre.
Leftists, by contrast, want to work with committees. They want to build systems and structures to coordinate efforts for a common goal.
Leftists thrive on talking; rightists thrive on doing. Even if what they’re doing is just an outburst of anger, frustration, and alienation.
It does little good to ask whether a particular shooter was influenced by Karl Marx or Ayn Rand. If he uses a gun to settle grudges, he has bought into right-wing thinking.
Every act of terror since the assassination of President Kennedy -- from Timothy McVeigh to Orlando, from Sandy Hook to Uvalde -- boils down to one person deciding to take matters into his own hands.
Conversely, if someone gathers a study group, or even a subversive cell dedicated to overthrowing a racist and sexist social order, they’re leftists.
The closest thing the U.S. has had to a leftist attack in this century was Sept. 11’s simultaneous hijacking of four airliners.
Consider -- that attack required extensive preparations; secrecy; external planning; precisely coordinated group activities.
It fits my leftist model precisely.
But note -- not one of those hijackers, or its behind-the-scenes planners, was American.
Indeed, Americans are so obsessed with Wyatt Earp individualism that they don’t know how to be leftist.
Democrats are not a left-wing party. They are merely not as far right as Republicans.
New labels needed
In politics, “right” is usually paired with conservative; “left,” with liberal, radical, or progressive.
Those labels imply that the right wants to “conserve” a golden age that has already passed. The left, on the other hand, wants to move forward into a new and unproven world.
In that scenario, conservatives have all the advantages. Supporters can imagine the kind of past the right wants to conserve -- they even kid themselves they’ve lived in it.
But American voters apparently cannot imagine a new system, a new society, that they have never experienced. Even if it has been tried and proven elsewhere -- like medicare in Canada.
Because they try to drag us in reverse, therefore, the right is always wrong.
And because they want to plunge us into an unpredictable future, the left is rarely right.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably trying to categorize me. I’m neither left nor right, I would argue, although I do try to stay far away from the far right.
If you must have a label, try somewhere between libertarian and anarchist. I resist anyone’s attempt to tell me what to do, how to think, what to believe. And I believe that true leadership arises out of chaos.
Perhaps I should be a hermit, perched in a canyon high above a rushing river, meditating on how humans rush into self-delusions.
We need new understandings to make sense of an unprecedented world. Off-the-shelf labels merely distract from what people are actually doing.
Let’s clear the mental clutter and call things as they are.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Lat week’s column, on abortion and choice, was a tough one to write, and no doubt a tough one to read. Before Joan’s death, I would have consulted with her before publishing that column; now she’s gone, I have to take the chances myself. I’m grateful to those who responded, by personal word or email, to opening myself up again, 40 years later.
As Sandy Warren wrote, “Thank you for telling your very moving personal story. It conveys eloquently how complex an issue abortion is, and why it must remain available as a choice.”
Tom Watson, too: “A very touching, and heart-rending article! Abortion isn't something to be taken lightly, but I believe it's something between a woman and a doctor, and therefore not mine as a male to decide. When others pass laws banning abortions, the decisions are about power.”
Ruth Buzzard: “Excellent article on abortion; I couldn’t agree with you more. The question of abortion does not hinge on when life begins or up to what week an abortion can be legal. It hinges on a woman’s decision to have a baby or not, and the only men who have a right to an opinion should be her doctor and her husband.
“I am personally anti-abortion, but that is my choice. I believe that every woman has the right to make her own choice. A bunch of old white guys shouldn’t have the right to prevent her making that decision.”
Ray Shaver focused on the situation south of the border: “My main annoyance with decisions in the USA, where it looks like abortions will be prohibited again, is that the political and so-called religious decisions are made predominately by men. The choice needs always to be made by the pregnant women involved. And for those who argue that the ‘sanctity of life’ rejects any notion of abortions, we need to realize that illegal, or not, abortions will continue either under proper medical conditions if allowed, or under back-alley conditions if disallowed. There never has been ‘sanctity of life’ for pregnant women in back-alley abortions.
“I wonder what male politicians would decide regarding abortions if it were men who were the ones who became pregnant whether married, unmarried, or raped, or suffered incest? I repeat: Men, (and, yes, women) let pregnant women decide all matters pertaining to their bodies.”
Further to Ray’s theme, I found this paragraph in the Minnesota Star-Tribune: “Overturning Roe requires another law be passed that ensures men bear equal responsibility for pregnancies. Using DNA as a verification, paternity for every embryo should be established and the male responsible obliged by law to support the woman and the child through the child's majority, including medical costs, living costs, education—all the costs a father normally assumes for his child. In addition, the child should have a full share of the father's estate when the father dies. If women cannot decide whether or not carry a child, fathers should not be able to decide whether or not to support the woman and the child. It's about time men assumed responsibility for the consequences of their pleasure.”
I expected Steve Roney to disagree with me. He did: “I cannot agree with you that abortion should be a woman’s decision alone. She is not the person most directly involved. That would be the child. As the child is defenceless and without a voice, the state must protect its interests, as it should always protect the weak against the strong. This is why the state exists.”
“Sometimes I think those ancient Hebrews knew a thing or two; in this case, the fruit of the tree of knowledge not being an altogether good thing,” Isabel Gibson began. “Our knowledge (learning, technology) now allows us to do things that confound our moral sense: abortion and MAID/euthanasia among them.
“Just as we hate to sit with uncertainty, so do we hate to sit with moral ambiguity. It's so much nicer to be right. I'm leery of any argument that reduces this hairball to one thing/slogan, whether that's ‘the right to do what we want with our own bodies’, or ‘the right to life.’
“I think the best we can do is land somewhere, understand why we're where we are, and keep feeling the discomfort. For what it's worth, I end where you do.”
Ted Wilson pretty well summed it up: “Abortion, like divorce, is just the best option to a bad situation. Nobody likes it but in too many instances the alternatives are worse. Those trying to force others to accept their own solutions need to walk a mile in the victims’ shoes.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns