Today's Sermon

It is clear to progressives that the Republicans are blocking Obama from going forward with his policies. Everyone wants to just sort of sweep the Right out of the way - the Right themselves do not of course. But others do even as the Right have always been an important force in American affairs – so, in my view, we should come to understand our fellow Americans a little better instead of responding to our situation in the sort of way that progressives generally do.

So: Who are they? Who would be adamantly opposed to any sort of change whatsoever, even to the extent of denying that global warming exists, only to see it overwhelmingly confirmed by all our best scientists? That never makes them change at all, though --- nothing does. So, why are they so durned insistent on being who they are? --- I’ll put it like this: why insist on views so alienated from the real facts? --- from the real facts of life, in the world that has grown up around us in the past two centuries?

I would argue that like ‘em or not, lib’s shuld get that Rightists represent a reality. They are a real part of the society. They represent a real force. Progressives or liberals are not going to bring about change if they, like the Rightists themselves, do not understand what is really going on in their own society. Send the Right to Siberia and you’re going to send America to the cat house, basically.

Why do these persons exist? Which underlying social realities and human forces do they represent? What is called "modernity" is a kind of compromise always accompanied by the dissenting factions: both the Right and the Left. Today, without understanding our real situation as human beings, the actions of reformers are going to be neither successful, and, in the final analysis, not really very compassionate. Ordinary Right wing types are nice persons; I have known them. I have lived in their house. There isn’t anything wrong with those people.

So, before you supposedly sweep the Right out of the way with your activism --- why cain’t you unnerstan’ ’em a leetle bitter? It is better to understand who they are: then you become more human ---- perhaps more respectful. That is what you don’t want to do, Mr. Divisive Lib’ral Now do you understand how frustrated the Right feels?

The grassroots regular type folks, I mean. I don’t mean the “straights” – the corporate conformists. I don’t mean the rich lobbyists, the elite freaks. I just mean reg’lar folks. I thought this was a democracy. So --- wouldn’t you eventually gather some respect for the ordinary folks out in the countryside? --- if yours was a democratic method?

It is in the middle where we find the ordinary location of the democratic method: it is a middle area between the extremes. It is not acceptable, to me, to totally lack comprehension of your own people even as you "liberals" all hew to the same narrative or the same old MLK jr. embedded narrative. Boring.

What is distinct about this middle, democratic area? The distinction is that there is some sort of tolerance.

Progressives, however ... can be just as intolerant as Right-wingers.