Critical Thinking: Liberty Restored

One thing writers can do to heal divisions in America

Today is the 158th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Although the shooting war ended, secured by pensions paid by the North to veterans of both the Confederacy and the Union, the divisions have never entirely gone away. The United States of America has always been two nations with vastly different economies, interests, and ways of thinking. We even had two foundings (Jamestown and Plymouth).

But writers can do a lot to bridge the difference and promote a rational way forward.

In The Matterhorn, Dr. Waller asked how engaged we should be with the other [political] side? This is my take. I welcome your own comments and suggestions for how people can rise above the emotional fray to better steer this ship with eyes unclouded.

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Now that we can easily block people on our phones and computers, I guess people think they can block others from anything and everything on a whim, as if we weren’t fellow citizens at all, sharing one nation under God. And perhaps we will not long be, if this keeps up.

It’s important to listen to both and all sides. Otherwise how can one be informed? But people have become very contentious, ready to support or censure based on knee-jerk reactions to key words without looking into the nuance of an issue.

At root it's the wholesale rejection of information.

Classical liberals have traditionally been highly educated, but after 2008 a new brand of liberal began to appear. Utterly uninformed, and putting blind faith (seemingly) in government. That's never a good start.

A Whispered Truth: The Left & Right Work Together

The one most powerful thing writers can do, whether in fiction or non-fiction, is to remember that, as with a bird, the left and right wings always work together, whether they know it or not. Reading the LBJ biographies helped me to see how true this is. No doubt, he intentionally used the Left (the party in power) in the short-run to build the coffers of his investor buddies for the Right in the long-run, raking in million as contractors for government programs. But it happens unintentionally as well. Politics.

On a personal level, if you look at the issues of disagreement, there's a willingness on the Left to look away from reality to withdraw into "more categorizable, group-friendly" narratives, exactly as Substacker David Lynn who writes Audio Issues wrote. But doing this requires ignoring much of the lived reality of our fellow human beings. Usually, both sides have valid points.

And conservatives err in the opposite direction, throwing babies out with the bathwater. Their positions also can cause more problems than they solve, as with abortion. A truly pro-life stance would have to think the issue through to its logical end, doing everything possible to safe-guard not just life, but liberty.

Yet, under alternating Democratic and Republican rule, modern slavery has become the fastest growing industry in our post-capitalist world, so of course hidden powers want to both move Right and Left at the same time to outlaw abortion and welcome in migrants—this is their “product”!

Not Again?

The same thing occurred with Prohibition: good Christian people tried to outlaw “vice,” and inadvertently created an unprecedented boon for organized crime that the US has not recovered from to this day. (The same Boston ladies’ sewing circles that started the push for Prohibition, also ignited the call for Abolition.)

But truly solving the spike in alcoholism at the time would have required remaking the industrial revolution. It was the unnaturally long boring hours doing mechanized work that drove men to drink as never before.

People prefer to support or censure, rather than take the time to really understand all that is required to solve an issue. But we must if we hope to end the real harm that is sanctioned by certain narratives under the radar. (Humans are all different with different life paths and purposes, as are the generations, so positive progress requires great knowledge, patience, wisdom, understanding.)

The real question is who has been setting the agenda for the new lazy liberal, and for what purpose?

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.