We were in the Bay Area until yesterday afternoon, and stayed at our host’s home in San Francisco long enough to catch President Obama’s remarkable — and controversial — commencement address at Notre Dame.
I have not hesitated to be critical of the new president when I think criticism is warranted; his refusal to embrace the cause of marriage equality, and his administration’s reluctance to use its powers to protect grey wolves and polar bears have been serious disappointments. But it is in the nature of leaders to disappoint their most ardent followers, and I accept that. It is in the light of these recent disappointments that I watched Obama give his speech to the Notre Dame community, and I was as impressed as ever with his seriousness, his thoughtfulness, and his commitment to changing the tone of contemporary discourse.
The full transcript of the address is here. There is much within his talk that others are discussing, but I wanted to note my favorite bit. Referencing our long and seemingly never-ending public fights over abortion and other divisive social issues (such as same-sex marriage) the president said:
Now, understand — understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.
Bold emphasis mine.
I liked that very much, largely because most politicians on left and right (and, I confess, this blogger) tend towards a crude but honest triumphalism. We sing “We Shall Overcome”, and quote (or misquote) Dr. King’s line about the long arc of history curving towards justice. In the animal rights world, many of us are confident that we will reach a point where eating the flesh of other sentient beings is as abhorrent as eating the flesh of our own children. My pro-life friends speak constantly of a coming moral awakening; my gay activist friends expect — within their lifetimes — to see all opposition to same-sex marriage fade away. To some extent, staying involved in any kind of activism requires this faith that your cause will triumph someday. Who among us — across the political spectrum — doesn’t thrill to King’s sentiment in that final speech of his in Memphis, when he tells us he has seen the promised land from the mountaintop? Like MLK, many of us know (or fear, or suspect) that the promised land (the end of abortion, universal acceptance of gay marriage, the end of animal agriculture) will not be reached in our lifetimes. But the bittersweet sense that we, like Moses, will not live to enter what has so long been sought often gives rise to sweeping denunciations of those who are impeding the path of progress. And it was to that triumphalist worldview that President Obama so capably addressed himself yesterday.
When I am in one of my more grown-up moments, my favorite modern philosopher is the late Isaiah Berlin. Berlin, one of the great intellectual defenders of liberalism, was famous for many things — not least for his assertion that a good society must recognize that reasonable human beings will always hold irreconcilable views. The job of the state is not to advocate for a final, all-encompassing solution to any particular social woe; rather, the job of the state is to safeguard the liberty of each individual to muddle his or her way through. A very good summary of his views is found online, in Henry Hardy’s tribute:
Contrary to the Enlightenment vision of an eventual orderly and untroubled synthesis of all objectives and aspirations, Berlin insisted that there exists an indefinite number of competing and often irreconcilable ultimate values and ideals between which each of us often has to make a choice – a choice which, precisely because it cannot be given a conclusive rational justification, must not be forced on others, however committed we may be to it ourselves. ‘Life may be seen through many windows, none of them necessarily clear or opaque, less or more distorting than any of the others.’
Each individual, each culture, each nation, each historical period has its own goals and standards, and these cannot be combined, practically or theoretically, into a single coherent overarching system in which all ends are fully realised without loss, compromise or clashes. The same tension exists within each individual consciousness. More equality may mean less excellence, or less liberty; justice may obstruct mercy; honesty may exclude kindness; self-knowledge may impair creativity or happiness, efficiency inhibit spontaneity. But these are not temporary local difficulties: they are general, indelible and sometimes tragic features of the moral landscape; tragedy, indeed, far from being the result of avoidable error, is an endemic feature of the human condition. Instead of a splendid synthesis there must be a permanent, at times painful, piecemeal process of untidy trade-offs and careful balancings of contradictory claims.
At my most reflective moments, I know that Berlin is right. Whatever God’s plan for Creation may be, it is preposterous to presume that any among us, no matter how well-read or well-prayed, has read the mind of the One who laid the foundations of the earth. Berlin’s cheerful pessimism about the possibility of ever achieving enduring human consensus — and his stern warning against attempting to mandate such consensus through the power of the state — sits well with my faith, as I suspect it sits well with President Obama’s. As Berlin pointed out incessantly, this is not relativism. There is a mammoth difference between saying “we will always live in a world where people hold contradictory beliefs, and the state needs to refrain as much as possible from coercing people out of their particular set of values” and saying “all of those views are equally right.” President Obama believes, as I do, that women have a right to choose abortion, which means that in some sense he believes that those who do not believe women have such a right are wrong. But rather than suggesting those who hold a different view are foolish, ill-informed, or inclined to demagoguery (some are, some aren’t), he acknowledged yesterday that yup, we’re just gonna have to keep on disagreeing civilly because passionate disagreement is part of who we are and how we live together.
The power of faith and the power of the state can only do so much, and according to Berlin, only should do so much, to work to build a unified consensus. For the pragmatic liberal, the goal of progress should always be subaltern to individual freedom. Part of that reverence for freedom, and for civilized but impassioned exchanges of views, lies in the recognition that until the final Redemption (for those of us who believe in such a thing), we will live with contradictions, choices, and trade-offs. Beware, says Berlin, of those who promise a compromise-free life; beware the Savonarolas and the Robespierres with their blood-soaked visions of earthly paradise.
Abortion isn’t going away as an issue. But we need to let go of the absurd notion that if we can only pray a little harder or reason a little more effectively we can somehow convince all (or even most of) the folks on the other side that ours is the right position. Should Jesus tarry (as we evangelicals sometimes say — and I suspect He will), my daughter’s great-grandchildren may well be quarreling about some of these same issues. If this one is resolved, they’ll have found another one. Just as gay marriage was inconceivable as a political matter fifty years ago, some new unimagined controversy will emerge by the middle of this century to occupy us all. What will matter then is what matters now: that we find a way to accept the inevitablity of civil conflict with grace, with kindness, and with a commitment to respecting both the truth of our own(well-thought-out) position and the sheer impossibility of convincing everyone of that truth.
Frank is convinced that Jews are subhuman and should be destroyed.
What’s the civil way of honoring this beautiful diversity of opinion among us?
Robert, Berlin is no relativist. This isn’t about saying “Some people like jam, others like butter; similarly, some like genocide and some like peace.” Berlin knows those aren’t analogous statements. But you point out the problem — if you (and I’m not saying you do, but if you do) regard pro-choicers as equivalent to Nazis, you’ve already proved the whole point the Notre Dame president and Barack Obama were making.
The classic red herring of the extremists is to say: “We’re all for civil dialogue with OTHER people. But how can we have civil dialogue with folks who believe X? Or Y? Their views are so abhorrent they must be destroyed.”
It’s not a red herring. It’s a fundamental moral question that your approach to these questions attempts to elide.
But it’s not elidable. (Is that a word?) There ARE people who want to wipe out [x]. There ARE people whose views are so abhorrent that we have to react.
I agree with Robert. There are limits. I’ve had young liberal folks tell me, literally, that I, a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, am morally obligated to listen to the Nazi perspective and respect their point of view, or else I’m no better than they are. That’s basically a direct quote. Needless to say, I find that ridiculous and incredibly offensive, not to mention very obviously privileged (i.e., I seriously doubt they’d be so reluctant to declare right from wrong if had been their people, family).
I support free speech, but some ideas are simply wrong, and I feel no need to offer them or their proponents any legitimacy in the name of tolerance. This doesn’t apply to the sincerely pro-life, IMO, but does apply to a great deal of other people with whom we must share a society.
The first amendment has no exception for the occasion of giving offense.
If you insist it should, then you had better figure out how to control the levers of power indefinitely. Or something you like to say might be prohibited.
Richard, if you’re talking to me, there’s a reason I said “I believe in free speech,” and that reason is that I, uh, believe in free speech. I have no interest in banning speech I deem offensive, and would fight for the right of people to say offensive things.
But I feel no need to be personally accepting and respectful of such things, which is what Hugo is talking about in this post. Thinking something should be legal doesn’t mean thinking it’s worth my time or my courtesy.
The civil way of dealing with “Frank” is to listen. It doesn’t mean you have to agree, and it doesn’t mean you have to accept, and it doesn’t mean you have to honour. If “Frank”’s actions are actually harming (not just seriously upsetting) someone, then Frank should be subject to criminal sanction.
Further, if your position is important to you, and you think it’s important than everyone agree (even if you accept that everyone won’t), then don’t you have an obligation to try to convince opponents? And isn’t that practically impossible without listening to what they have to say, and trying to understand how they ended up there?
Daisy. Everybody “believes” in free speech. But there’s always a “but” and not all of them happen to be yelling fire in a theater or broadcasting troopship sailings in time of war.
However, Hugo’s concern is with posters on a campus and campuses are some of the least free speech areas in the country. See F.I.R.E. It is mildly suprising that the demos he describes are allowed to happen. The graphic pix have been shut down in other venues.
No, Richard, not everybody believes in free speech. I, however, do.
What are you trying to say to me, exactly…? All I said is that I don’t think I’m personally obliged to respect Nazism, and I stand by that. I don’t think this is in anyway at odds with freedom of speech. What I’m bothered by is the notion that I owe every person and every idea my time and my respect, not the notion that people have the legal right to say what they wish. Everyone has the right to an opinion — that doesn’t mean we have to act like every opinion is right.
The civil way of dealing with “Frank” is to listen.
Why? Time I spend listing to “Frank” is time not available to spend listening to someone else.
I was once part of a Usenet forum for discussing Middle Eastern politics. There were a number of people on that forum - Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian, Iranian, American - with a wide variety of views, in vehement disagreement with each other, that I found worth listening to and talking to. There were also a few I had killfiled. One, let’s call him “Frank,” (a non-Arab American, FWIW), was a Holocaust denier who took every conceivable issue (not just Israeli politics, but circumcision, kosher food, and the trial of Demjanjuk) as an occasion to attack Jews and Judaism in some way. And made such posts at greater volume than most other people in the group. I killfiled him, the better to talk with the people in the group who weren’t raving anti-Semites.
Further, if your position is important to you, and you think it’s important than everyone agree
There is no position with which everyone is going to agree, so, no, actually I don’t think it’s important to persuade everyone to agree with me that the Holocaust did indeed happen, or that it was indeed awful. If enough people started to seriously believe the neo-Nazi line, then I’d consider it important to stop that tide. But as long as the overwhelming majority of people realize that, yes, millions of Jews were systematically killed, and yes, that’s a horrifying thing, my feeling is that, if I’m going to talk about the Holocaust at all, I’d rather go beyond just those basic facts.
Now, sometimes it may be worth paying enough attention to the “Franks” of the world to figure out why they ended up where they are, and what can be done to counter that. But not to the point where such listening prevents me from listening to, say, ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, who, deep though their division is, might well be brought to a lasting peace sometime before the last anti-Semite in the world repents.
I do think it’s often worth listening to people you’re not likely to agree with any time soon, and I do, like Daisy Bond, believe that even “Frank” should have the right to free speech (which is not at all the same thing as a right to demand that I personally actually read what he posts). I also think that there’s nothing uncivil about my picking and choosing which people, among the many that I disagree with, I actually care to spend my time listening to.
Daisy. Pay attention to those who interest you.
Watch for those who say “but”.
1. “Every possible perspective or view imaginable is deserving of tolerance and respect”
2. “In liberal, plural, democratic societies, there will always be some issues in which opposing sides are irreconcilable and reflective of deeeply held moral positions, and some of these may never be overcome. We must cultivate habits of citizenship and modes of discourse that allow us to live, and sometimes work, together despite this difficult state of affairs.”
Obama, Berlin, and Schwyzer are all articulating some version of #2. I don’t know why so many people want to turn this into statement #1. #1 is, frankly, stupid, which is why smart people like Obama, Berlin, and Schwyzer don’t say it. And #2 is not at all reducible to #1.
Oh, I have no quarrel with Obama, Berlin, or Hugo; I agree that they’re articulating #2, and that #2 is just fine.
The only reason I’m complaining about #1 is that people in this thread are telling Daisy she needs to listen to Nazis. But I don’t blame Obama for that.
So, thread drift, and sorry if any of it came across as criticism of the actual post.
Bless you, djw.
Daisy,
I believe that it is occasionally warranted to take the position you describe. I have always disliked doing so, because I am inclined to do my best to communicate and find common ground with anyone I happen to meet, but I have met several people over the years who I have been unable to engage and write off entirely. In fact, in my own little manner of speaking I’ve come to call this “saying no to them” - not to their argument, but to them. And its a pretty bad feeling, because I can’t help but think I am somehow dehumanizing them in a way by not respecting their seeming “right” to be heard. In truth, there is ultimately no such right.
This has nothing to do with their legal right to say it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that people have to meet a basic standard of decency for me to consider them worthy of engagement.
The rub: I resent them for making me feel somewhat guilty for considering them unworthy of respect. I think this might be where the sensitivity you write about comes in. Nobody wants this sort of thing to happen. But it really has to occasionally.
DJW, there are some folks who can hold to position #2 without sliding into #1.
But the tendency is to slide, because the beautifully nuanced positions fall apart. There are Nazis in the world. You have to deal with them. Your liberal, plural, democracy, HAS TO DEAL WITH THEM.
So how do you deal with them?
I would suggest that, having sat through enough stone-eared anti-semitic posts to know that there was simply no talking to that person, you’d already fulfilled your obligation. I don’t think their entitlement to freedom of speech, nor (what I claim is) our obligation to try to listen means granting them an unlimited audience. It doesn’t mean you have to sit and be ranted it; it doesn’t mean you have to sit there and be insulted; it doesn’t mean you have to tell them that “it’s OK” to believe something so vile.
I would politely disagree; I think it is important to eliminate anti-semitism, and holocaust denial, even though that’s unrealistic. But that doesn’t mean it’s your job, all the time, to deal with it.
Hugo, great post. I mostly disagreed with it, no surprise, but it was a compelling argument for all that (I’m terminally allergic to Berlin, FWIW.)
Just a minor point- I don’t think Savonarola works too well as an example of “blood soaked religious extremism” and that’s not just because Savonarola- as a leader, mystic, and martyr- is something of a hero of mine, nor because he’s been an inspiration to many on the religious and even irrelgious left (see Hobsbawm on the ‘Circulos Savonarolas’ among Italian workmen). If you’re interested in citing examples of religious extremisim run amock, Cromwell would be a far better example. He had, let’s be frank, far more blood on his hands than Savonarola.
Savonarola had his share, though indeed, not as many as Cromwell. I was thinking in particular of Savonarola making sodomy a capital offence, where it had been previously punishable by a small fine.
Hugo,
While I agree that was abhorrent, it should be remembered that that law was famously unenforced. There were three executions for sodomy under Savonarola, one of them heterosexual, and Savonarola later appears to have changed his mind and calld for banishment instead. While there’s no real excuse for Savonarola _passing_ the law (and in so doing he was violating the teaching of Christ, in the Pericope Adulterae, that sexual offenses should not be capital offenses), I would argue that he needs to be viewed as a man of his time. He didn’t know what we know now about homosexual orientation: and 15th century Florence was clearly not a model of healthy sexuality, gay or straight. My source is Rocke, M. “Forbidden Friendships”, Oxford University Press: 1998.
1. Protect their speech rights. 2. Shun, marginalize, shame, and mobilize large numbers to do the same. 3. Use the coercive arm of the state to forcibly stop them when they cross the line into violence.
Is this an ideal strategy that comfortably and easily dispatches with human evil? No. But we live in a messy world, and we do the best we can.
(Lynn: I agree, I didn’t have you in mind)
djw - it’s politically useful to pretend that folks who believe some variant of #2 are really saying #1. Then, instead of having to be all tolerant and shit, you can feign outrage and ask them why they are Nazi-huggers, so they waste time defending themselves.