npnr preface — GREGORY HARMS

PREFACE

When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.

—THOMAS PAINE, Rights of Man

A foreigner does, it is true, sometimes meet Americans who are not strict slaves of slogans ... often they even go as far as to point out the defects which are changing the national character and suggest means by which this tendency could be corrected, but no one, except yourself, listens to them, and you, to whom they confide these secret thoughts, are only a stranger and will pass on. To you they will disclose truths that have no use to you, but when they do down into the marketplace they use quite different language.

—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war [the Mexican-American War], who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing....

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, "Civil Disobedience"

[F]or I fear that it may even be impious to have breath in one’s body and the ability to speak and yet to stand idly by and not defend justice when it is being prosecuted.

—PLATO, Republic, Book II

[T]he weaker are always asking for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none of these things.

—ARISTOTLE, Politics, Book VI

No politics, no religion. A common refrain. Yet, I maintain that these are the topics we should be talking about, and that talking about them can lead to greater accord among us. There is far more agreement out there than we tend to realize, which makes sense. We are all the same species with roughly the same wants and needs. Accordingly, this book examines what we are as a species—we need to know what we’re dealing with—and considers who we are in terms of culture. The book then shifts its focus to consider religion and politics. When we do this, we see that we are a cooperative species possessing a biologically driven sense of right and wrong. What we share as humans then gets expressed culturally. So, it makes sense that we should tend to agree politically, which we do. The topics of politics and religion therefore offer a path to greater agreement and as a result a potentially richer democracy.

This mantra of “no politics, no religion,” can be understood as an informal code of cultural conduct in American life, and it is one that many Americans are all too familiar with. Aunt Charlene at the holiday dinner table will invariably lay down the law. I cannot say as I blame her. She is trying to preserve the peace and prevent your uncles from getting trapped in a bickering match across the potatoes. Because that is what is bound to happen. And they will use unhelpful language when it does. Your uncles will argue by using a vocabulary that is not their own and they are in effect wearing jerseys emblazoned with “Conservative” or “Liberal.” The topics of politics and religion, however, are not inherently destabilizing; they are not charged or low-flashpoint. I have had discussions with hundreds upon hundreds of college students who report from the front lines that politics and religion are a no-no in the home or at the dinner table. Yet, in class, we always successfully—and with civility—discuss those topics without someone blowing a gasket. The source of Aunt Charlene’s diktat is your uncles discuss these topics badly. They are bound to get into an argument because of how they are approaching the subject matter. The exchange is immediately adversarial and personal. They begin where they differ—and they are using words that have been more or less stripped of meaning, except as vehicles for partisan conflict.

The words liberal and conservative are merely placeholders, markers; the definition of one is no more than the antipode of the other. By contrast, this book seeks to begin the discussion with where we agree—which we do to a great extent.To see this correctly, we need to pull way back and take stock of where that agreement stems from. In other words, we need to examine ourselves as Homo sapiens. What kind of creatures are we? This tells us what we can expect in the realm of politics. If humans are naturally greedy or competitive or aggressive, they of course will need strict laws to keep them on the straight and narrow. And if they are genetically nasty, they should only be allowed a highly circumscribed say in how things are arranged—because they cannot be trusted. If people are bad, it stands to reason that they will need a leash. However, when we look at the relevant intellectual history, along with the anthropological and evolutionary records, we see that people are not naturally disagreeable. Far from it. Being agreeable is how we evolved into what we are. If we were naturally greedy, and so on, we would not be here.

Once we have established what we are, the character of our species, the next consideration is to look at who we are, which is to ask, what does human culture tell us? What we are, our biology, largely determines who we are, but who we are, our culture, reveals even more detail and insight into politics (or political expectations). This is where religion enters the picture. Our religious inclinations are quite instructive and disclose species-wide priorities, such as the view that people’s lives matter. The similarities among the major world faiths are no surprise as they showcase who we are at the level of cultural expression. The world religions are diverse on the outside and close to identical on the inside—much like humans. After we have examined what we are and who we are, we are ready to consider afresh what we want. Just as our world religions exhibit profound overlap (think the Golden Rule), it is to be expected that we will want about the same things. Consulting the rich, stable, and redundant public opinion record—which has indicated the consistency of American opinion for generations—offers an unsurprising story. Though it will likely be a surprise, because most of us are told the opposite of what that record has to say.

Humans work fairly well in small groups, this being how we became what we are—organisms with a moral conscience—it is predictable that tribe-level cooperation is one of the things at which we excel. In large groups, however, the story has been more touch and go. We have not been living in what we call countries, or sovereign nation-states, for very long—only a few hundred years depending on when scholars start the clock. And only recently did democracy re-emerge (after experimentation in Ancient Greece). As of roughly just a couple centuries ago citizens of a given polity became able to participate in how the state was arranged and managed.

Disparaging views of democracy span history from antiquity to the present, frequently positing that while governance by the people might be the fairest system, this fairness comes at the expense of the system possessing a defect. In other words, letting the public have a say might be principled and just—except that the people tend to be neither principled nor correct. A dim view of the body politic also runs the course of American history. Sadly, we the people hold this same view of our fellow citizens. Americans are both unified (politically) and divided (electorally). And because we are both, it is perfectly possible to shed one of those realities.

The public is bombarded with the message that it is divided, to the point that it is now axiomatic and functions as a premise that is simply given. It is tantamount to saying circles are round. Or as a stand-up comedian I once heard put it in a monologue, “Trees are made of wood.” (I believe he was making light of Oklahoma’s state motto; I just liked the line.) We of course would not question these statements, and likewise we treat the notion of a divided America with roughly the same self-evidence. And while it is true that voting results do tend to be divided, the public is not. The recognition of this state of affairs raises certain questions, and it is those questions that will be addressed in what follows.

This book began much the same way my previous books did, namely, by questioning assumed and repeated opinions that are taken as fact but are wholly inaccurate. Most of my work has addressed such opinions in matters of US foreign policy and the Middle East, but the same misconceptions and disinformation exist with regard to domestic politics. Concerning the Middle East, examining the assumptions that “Those people have been fighting for thousands of years”—and that, naturally, the fighting revolves around religion—exposes not only gross distortions of what is taking place in that region, but also that the distortions contribute to the furtherance of the violence that is very much real. So, on the one hand, a fallacy has taken firm root in the public’s imagination, and such fallacies, especially when packed into soundbites, are very difficult to uproot. As the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates said at his trial, “it is not easy to dispel great slanders in a short time”; dispelling them requires analysis and time. And on the other hand, the fallacy or myth or slander usually serves someone’s agenda. In the Middle East, policy planners and weapons manufacturers get to operate undisturbed. In the United States, if the population believes it is divided, those on Capitol Hill (and those whose interests they serve) remain free of constraint.

Because the population believes it is divided, it frequently acts like it. Because it acts like it, discussion of politics is quite often turbulent. And as a counterintuitive irony, it is in small groups that it seems to be most so.

I have been teaching and talking about the topics in this book for years, with a mind to work on a book at some point. I have grown weary with the divided-nation thesis, and I suffer a headache when individuals proudly declare that “people are naturally greedy” or “people are naturally [insert negative thing]” and sometimes even suggest that humans have to go to war from time to time because it is a relief valve. This is as if to suggest that humans need to blow off steam by occasionally butchering one another. Of course, this is all patent nonsense. Challenging the orthodox wisdom about humanity’s presumed inherent nastiness and wickedness has become something of a preoccupation for me. My studies in political philosophy have centered on it, and my teaching (specifically ethics and political philosophy) pays special attention to it.

On countless occasions, I have witnessed groups of men (it is usually men) talking about sports. Be it in a pub or some kind of sports-themed burger joint, groups of strangers will congregate around a row of television screens and talk about the game. Now, a bunch of fellas in a pub talking about basketball might get intellectually dismissed, but my observations have been different. I am always impressed with how much they know. I would struggle to fill a thimble with what I know about sports, but these folks know a lot. Still, I can loosely follow the discussions. And the amount of information that gets exchanged is astounding. There is an endless stream of facts, dates, names, percentages, and so on. I think to myself, “How do they know all that?” This player got traded to this team and scored this many points in this game. It seems to be never-ending. And then I think to myself again, “What if the topic was not sports? What if millions of guys in pubs and burger joints were talking about the banks? Or foreign policy? Or the linkage between Washington and the corporate sector?” Look, I understand it is relaxing to unwind, drink a beer, and talk about the game. But that is not the point. The question is, What if ? What would happen if the population engaged topics that truly mattered on a regular basis and became better educated on those subjects and realized how much they agreed? There would be deep panic in boardrooms across the country. CNN and Fox News could no longer serve up the kind of substandard news product they presently do because no one would accept it. Wall Street would also be in a state of terror because now the population would be watching, which is something they do not want. It requires no greater intellectual energy to follow politics than it does to follow sports, exchanging facts, dates, names, and percentages—with strangers. And there is a perfect willingness to challenge authority. When was the last time you heard a bunch of guys talking about a football game and one of them said, “Well, he’s the ref, he knows best.” You have never heard that. And you never will. Yet, we do it in the political realm all the time.

I realize this is probably not going to happen anytime soon; but that does not invalidate the question of What if ? The thought experiment is a sound one, and it does not take long to think through the results—how, for example, this country would be different if the population were less distracted. Something else Socrates said during his trial: “The Olympian victor makes you think yourself happy, I make you be happy.” We are distracted, figuratively, by the Olympian victor, the athlete, or the actor or celebrity; and consequently, we enjoy less ownership of our country. It is the reason Congress is a giant clown car. The preponderance of power always resides in the population, but we are reticent to wield it.

The present work will also endeavor to supply some correctives to our political understanding. For one, it will revisit the “religion is violent” thesis that I took up in my It’s Not about Religion. That book centered on the Middle East and how the people there get blamed for the region’s intermittent spasms of violence. So of course, religion must be the culprit—Muslims and Jews just do not get along, right? In this book, I want to broaden the scope and look at religion in general in the context of violence, not focusing on any one region or people. And when we do widen our gaze, we (again) see that religion gets a bad rap, one that is unfair and historically inaccurate.

Some readers might be wondering, “Does this analysis take into account problems and tumult of a global nature?” Political problems abound on the international stage. Can considering a revised view of human nature address those issues? Is this problem of polarization and ideological division a uniquely American issue? There are problems in Kashmir. Will Harms’ book be of any use to that part of the world? (Possibly. Hard to say.) America is at present in a uniquely ideological moment. What began just after World War II—the labeling of just about all things political as “liberal” and “conservative”—has deeply taken root in American politics. There used to be conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. But now the terms have become synonymous and tightly grouped. Democrat = liberal. The polarity has become hostile. Congress has all but ceased to function.

As in a number of countries in Europe, rightwing politics is on the rise in the United States. The Capitol Building was stormed on January 6, 2021, because an election did not go as many had hoped, so the results (and the elections) were rejected. Some on the right are calling for secession and/or monarchy. The future of the country feels tenuous and uncertain. With that in mind, this book argues that acknowledging human commonality and cooperation can lead away from these destructive, aggressive energies. The problems in Kashmir are not the problems in the United States; this book centers its attention on US realities.

It is not the author’s intention to suggest that humans are exclusively cooperative. There are certainly other forces and impulses that make us who we are. We humans are after all individuals with our own hopes and dreams and resentments and disappointments. But I wish to emphasize the cooperative aspect of our nature because it so often gets squelched. We do not hear about it. Turn on CNN or Fox and one hears about how terrible the world is and how terrible we are. We are inundated with this messaging. It is crucial that we pay some attention to our whole nature. Yes, we are capable of dreadful things—I grow weary with the endless reminders of that fact—but there is more to the picture. This book aims to home in on our better angels, to give some desperately needed airtime to the good that is in us. What we share in common. This is not mere romanticism; it is analytically sound, and it should be taken quite seriously if we would prefer that there be a United States—fifty of them—twenty years from now.

I also want to look at some of the words we use in our political discourse. As mentioned, liberal and conservative will certainly be on the list. We will also look at the political spectrum and see where the so-called congressional “liberals” and “conservatives” reside.

I will also examine that historically problematic term—socialism—and hopefully determine if there is any use that can be made of it. The term has now reentered the discourse with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’s frequent use of it in his 2016 presidential campaign. Freshmen congresswomen such as New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have also adopted the term. To cut the story short, it would be better if they did not. As we will see, they are not socialists.

As mentioned, I want to begin the discussion with what we share in common and where we agree. Then the politics should—and do—just fall into place. The topics of politics and religion, as we will see, are not volatile. On the contrary, they offer a path out of the thinking that the country is divided. They offer solutions—when handled properly. It is of course true that voting results are commonly split. However, elections take place within an ideologically charged atmosphere. When opinion polls are consulted, a different America emerges, one of majoritarian agreement—oftentimes well over 60 percent—on almost all major policy issues. And yet, accord-America is eclipsed by asunder-America. The latter receives constant reinforcement in the news media and has been internalized by the body politic. The former, however, actually exists. And were Americans to engage in constructive, rational discussion of politics and religion, accord-America would emerge. In other words, politics and religion are what we need to be talking about.