Last week Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBSNews.com wrote this piece where he discussed the fact that both political parties seem to feel they know what’s good for you and will shove it down your throats if they have to.
Now, he expands on that theme in this thought provoking essay titled “E Pluralism Unum.”
Once again, the original column must be read completely. In fact, we don’t want to quote from it at all since it would take it out of context. But we’ll try to gingerly give you a taste of it, so you can then click on the link to read it all.
Last week I tried to unravel what is so toxic about the political impulse that says, “I know what’s best for you.” It is an impulse, Berlin argues in his famous essay, most prevalent among those who believe in the big, sweeping worldviews and systems. Their belief enhances their confidence that they know what’s best for you.
Belief in a good, powerful fancy theory also provides plenty of ammo to argue that certain human values – freedom, authenticity, self-knowledge, for example – can only be attained in the ways The Big Theory prescribes.
Berlin associates this temperament or intellection predilection with “positive liberty” – the notion that liberty is empty unless it includes a positive capability to do something specific – e.g., work without exploitation, or, get an education, just to name two random examples.
Negative liberty is simpler; it is being free “from” things; it is being left alone, having a zone of individual liberty.
I got a ton of e-mail about this. Many objected that I argued that Democrats today are more susceptible to the attitudes associated with positive liberty than Republicans. Others thought I was arguing that positive liberty was the Daddy philosophy, a posture of paternalism.
What I clearly failed to do was describe the attitude, the sensibility of negative liberty. That attitude happens to be, for my money, the perfect antidote to the intolerant, ceaseless, Mars/Venus quality of political argument today.
He then expands on it. And then writes:
Pluralism, tolerance and skepticism are the intellectual and attitudinal virtues that nourish an appreciation of Berlin’s negative liberty deep enough to vanquish the need for consistent answers to life’s odd quandaries with a Big Theory.
Pluralism: the recognition that individuals and communities generate, embrace and discover an incredible variety of values and passions, and that process is The Essential Human Activity.
Tolerance: an acceptance that other fine and smart people have values and passions not only different than yours, but essentially incommensurable with yours, where there isn’t even a common vocabulary to balance and compare.
Skepticism: the strength to reject those who have moral certainty and all the answers – a quality stemming from the idealism inherent in the value of pluralism.
I find no abundance of these civic virtues in either party, on political infotainment, or in the political blogosphere.
Read it in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.