The Stakes

"The fierceness of the tactical dispute over the best methods by which an activist federal government should solve all social ills may," writes my man Julian Sanchez of the mutual loathing between contemporary liberals and today's big government GOP, "more than anything else, reflect the narcissism of small differences." As a former philosophy major just like Julian, let me suggest that what it actually reflects is something a philosophy major is likely to ignore -- the relative unimportance of very abstract ideas to politics.

Actual American politics -- as opposed to political theory -- is structured around the competition of various organized interests to capture the power of the federal government and use it to advance their ends. These groups, in turn, are to some extent meta-organized into two somewhat enduring competing teams aligned with the two major political parties. That these teams sort of agree that, in the abstract, "seize control of the levers of government and use them to advance our interests" is a sound political program is really neither here nor there in terms of making the differences between the teams "small." Both the gay rights movement and the gay-repression movement agree, for example, that the coercive authority of the state ought to be deployed on behalf of a given conception of homosexuality. Gay rights groups want, for example, not only to end the state's discrimination against gays and lesbians, but also want the state to force private actors to stop discriminating against gays and lesbians (via, for example, employment- and housing-discrimination laws) in their capacity as private citizens.

It would be silly, however, to describe the disagreement about whether the state should be used to actively discriminate against gays and lesbians or should be used to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians as a "small differene" or some kind of trivial quarrel. Obviously, these are directly opposed agendas, and supporters of each agenda have eminently good reasons to fear and loath the advocates of the other agenda. Simply put, the practical stakes are rather high for most people even if the disagreements exist at a relatively low level of abstraction.

Comments

Have you noticed the increasing prevalence of the "there's no difference between the two parties" rhetoric leading up to the midterms? It really takes me back.

Posted by Julie | October 2, 2006 5:04 PM

Both the gay rights movement and the gay-repression movement agree, for example, that the coercive authority of the state ought to be deployed on behalf of a given conception of homosexuality.

False dilemma. A philosophy major should know better.

Posted by Wade | October 2, 2006 5:11 PM

I commented to a libertarian-conservative friend of mine once, "What is so unfortunate to me is how necessary I think the social conservatives are to getting Republican votes. People ask politicians what they'll do for them, and it's hard to get votes when your answer is, 'Nothing,' even if that's the right thing to do."

He agreed. The reason I think it is "unfortunate" (far different from the reason he would give) is that, as a former philosophy major myself, I would love to see the debate exist more along those abstract lines. So yeah, when you point things out like this (and you are 100% right; they're not small differences at all), it depresses me.

Posted by jhupp | October 2, 2006 5:14 PM

Wade, what's wrong with what you quote? Of course there are other options. But the two actors he identifies really do generally take one of those positions. Put another way, there are lots of people who take lots of other positions, but they don't line up in either of those two movements.

Posted by Vance Maverick | October 2, 2006 5:28 PM

"Obviously, these are directly opposed agendas, and supporters of each agenda have eminently good reasons to fear and loath the advocates of the other agenda."

Not so much. Though gays and lesbians may have good cause to fear those who wish to repress them and in extreme cases would do them physical harm, those who wish to do the discriminating may have good reason to feel uncomfortable at the "gay lifestyle" (an uncomfortableness they could largely allay by ignoring the gays), but any fear and loathing they have of them springs largely from internal factors.

Posted by Stephen Green | October 2, 2006 6:03 PM

False dilemma. A philosophy major should know better.

That's not a false dilemma. A false dilemma would be to suggest that those two options are the only options, when in fact there are plenty of others. Matt Y. is simply making a statement of fact about the goals of the gay rights movement and the gay repression movement. Sure, both Human Rights Campaign and Focus on the Family could decide to join the Libertarian Party tomorrow, but that would be a spectacularly inefficient way for each of these organizations to further their goals.

Posted by Christmas | October 2, 2006 6:24 PM

That's not a false dilemma. A false dilemma would be to suggest that those two options are the only options, when in fact there are plenty of others.

I took him to mean that these are the only two options simply because Americans tend to fall into one or the other camp, his main point (at least, from what I gather) being that the extent of governmental involvement is "abstract" to the point of irrelevance.

Posted by Wade | October 2, 2006 6:38 PM

In your previous post "More Posner" - perhaps outlining the argument of your book project - you say:

"The world needs to operate along some kind of principles -- not just the whims of the American political system."

In this post, you say, correctly:

"Actual American politics -- as opposed to political theory -- is structured around the competition of various organized interests to capture the power of the federal government and use it to advance their ends."

If your characterisation of American politics as the competition of organised interests is correct and essentially unalterable, how is the world going to be organised other than through the whims of the American political system? Put another way, how is the world operating on some sort of principles to be made compatible with the organisation of American politics?

Posted by otto | October 2, 2006 7:31 PM

I would argue that the problem is that the gay "rights"* movement wants to paint any resistance to it as automatically part of the gay repression movement.

That is, when someone refuses to pass a law prohibiting discrimination, it is often likened to Jim Crow or the Nuremberg Laws, aka mandating discrimination.

*I am using scare quotes because I am referring to gays fighting for the "right" to not be discriminated against by private entities. While I do not agree with same-sex marriage, it can legitimately be thought of in terms of actual rights.

Posted by Glaivester | October 2, 2006 7:43 PM

I believe that should be former philosophy _concentrator_, Mr. Yglesias.

Posted by mysterycantab | October 2, 2006 11:43 PM

I should probably note here, for the large numbers of folks who aren't going to click through to the orignal post, that this line was a bit of deliberate hyperbole in the context of a response to someone claiming that modern Republicans were the "heirs of Goldwater" in some important sense. This was my slightly snarky way of underscoring the extent of the gap between Goldwater's conservatism and the currently ascendant big-government version. While I do think that in one sense this translates to a less dramatic difference between the worldviews of conservatives and progressives along one dimension, it wasn't really meant literally either.

Posted by Julian Sanchez | October 3, 2006 12:48 AM