A frequently used adage says that one’s freedom ends where somebody else’s freedom starts. And by freedom we usually mean one’s human and individual rights. The problem is that each one and, by extension, each group of us wants to draw the line deeper into somebody else’s territory of rights. This drawing of the lines becomes extremely difficult in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religion country like America. The tension and friction that comes with any attempt to broaden or redraw the rights of people is not, though, confined to this country. We see it around the world. As different groups try to escape miserable and dangerous places, or poverty, or political disenfranchisement, or social injustice they are met with resistance.
As the last post showed, the expansion of human and individual rights to oppressed segments of the population in America has been a series of some steps forward and some steps backward. The march to this day has been one of both progress and tremendous political friction. After the emancipation of slaves, women won the right to vote, and then over the past thirty years one’s choice of sexual/gender orientation has become much less subject to an unequal enjoyment of rights. But at each juncture the pursuit of such rights has brought dangerous political polarization. We are in the midst of such polarization right now. According to a survey, today’s Americans are more unhappy if a relative marries a person from the opposite party than a person of different race or religion!
One reason for the polarization we periodically see is because each of the two dominant parties in America stakes opposite positions with regard to this or that right. Thus, it was the newly founded Republican Party that fought to end slavery and restore the political rights of black people. The Democratic Party opposed that and after regaining power in the South it succeeded in reversing the political and civil liberties of blacks. Even the women’s suffrage movement found more support within the Republican than the Democratic Party. But then, at the start of the 20th century, a strange thing happened and the Republican Party started to adopt the racial biases of Southern Democrats while the Democratic Party gradually started to move toward a less racially and gender biased stance. By 1964 when Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act and a year later the Voting Rights Act, it was the Democrats working on the project of “A more perfect union” and the Republicans trying to block it.
Since the 1960’s the two parties have evolved to attract under their respective umbrellas different constituents. The Democrats have adopted policies that appeal to an electorate that is more racially and ethnically diversified, more liberal in connection to sexual/gender rights, less religious, and more likely to be better educated and to live in more globally integrated cities. On the other hand, Republicans have embraced an electorate that is overwhelmingly white, more Christian and traditional in its values, and more representative of working-class people.
In a new book, “The Age of Entitlement: America since the Sixties,” the conservative writer Christopher Caldwell aptly recognizes this parting of ways when he writes that Republicans adhere to a view of America more in line with the pre-1964 era whereas the Democrats adhere to a post-1964 view of expanded rights. As a result, one half of today’s Democrats are liberal but three fourths of Republicans are conservative. Therefore, I would say that the emergence of a politician, like Donald Trump, with a pre-1964 vision of America is not an anomaly within the GOP.
Like Caldwell, Yoni Applebaum (How America Ends, The Atlantic, Dec. 2019) attributes the party polarization to the fear of previously dominant groups that their control is eroding. But whereas, Caldwell would place the blame on the legislative priorities of Democrats, Applebaum attributes that to demographic forces, of which none other is more powerful than the constant inflow of immigrants in a country whose white population is on a declining trajectory due to below-replacement birth rates. It is fair to say that both, attention to the rights and advancement of the identity groups favoring the Democrats plus the prospect of diminished control in the medium-term have pushed the more traditional, value-wise, working-class white Americans to the GOP.
For many decades after the Reconstruction, Democratic politicians in the South were loath to abandoning their pro-racial stance for fear they would lose elections. Because of that, civil rights suffered and not only in the South. I am afraid Republicans find themselves in a similar conundrum today. The voting blocks that cling to the Republican Party espouse political, cultural and religious views that are not necessarily open to the interests of people of color, or women’s reproductive rights, or the rights of the GLBTQ community and immigrants. As a result, any overture of the Republican Party towards those latter groups would put the loyalty of their traditional base at jeopardy.
This has two unfortunate consequences. One is that the road toward a more perfect union, that is, more equal rights, is less likely to become a bipartisan agenda. The second is that political survival has rendered the GOP more depedent on institutions and tactics that appear less and less democratic. These are the Electoral College, the disproportionate representation of small states in the Senate, partisan gerrymandering, and vote suppression. But this is not a sustainable course for the GOP in the long run and more critically it is not good for democracy.
But blame also falls on the Democrats. The attention they place on groups that deserve protection of their rights is often perceived that comes at the expense of working-class Americans. Championing for human and individual rights should not necessarily drive Democrats away from the less fortunate whites of Middle America. Instead the cause of rights would be better served if Democrats convinced Middle America that in the long spectrum of rights, the rights to education, decent jobs, access to quality health care and freedom from opioids and other social ills stand side-by-side with the right to be free of racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and gender/sexual bias. A more balanced attention by both parties to the interests of the diverse segments of Americans would go a long way in ameliorating the current polarization.
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