There is an aspect of the American schism between the "right" and the "left" that has, believe it or not, not received enough attention. As we know, each side not only can not admit that there might be merit in the other side's arguments, but goes on to hold the other responsable for damaging the very fabric of American life, while seeing itself as more or less blameless.
This is partly understandable. When the right accuses the left of undermining discipline, manners, and the institutions of society, it does so with a great deal of justification. The weakness of our social fabric has much to do with social forces unleashed by the left wing of American thought. Eating habits, respect for the law, academic standards, personal behavior, family commitments - the standards for maintaining all of these have been weakened or lowered since 1960, and the left is mainly responsible.
This, however, can not excuse the very real damage that ideas from the right have also done to the American conscience. The left never tires of pointing out the harm caused by certain conservative ideas, mainly those having to do with wealth acquisition - but it would be right to do so. The perversion of capitalism that has done much to harm not only our civic but our personal lives stems from neo-liberal (alternatively known as "conservative") economic ideas.
It may be the right moment, however, to explore further how so-called "right" and "left" ideas have combined to cause much more harm to our society than perhaps we even realize, and certainly than they ever could do separately.
We can begin with the fetishization of free markets by conservative economic thinkers. One can argue over whether deregulation, lower tax rates, and so on have been good policy. What no one can defend is the social consequences of conservative economic ideas filtering down into the popular consciousness, with the influence on personal behavior that has resulted. In teaching Americans that the profit motive is always virtuous and that personal economic enrichment is an end in itself, conservatives have damaged our ethical and civic core. It used to be most important for us to be citizens; now we are consumers foremost.
We are not the first materialistic society obviously. What we are is the first successful bourgeois society to have removed social constraints from so many facets of life. We are besotted by material, and now electronic comforts (I am aware there is a class of people in our country that fancies itself untouched by American materialism; they have much more in common than their less glamorous compatriots than they realize.) There is nothing the matter with this inherently. However, with no "social inhibitors" to govern our use of our multitude of consumer goods, I am afraid sometimes we are swirling down a kind of cultural drain. (If you take a moment to read some of my earlier essays, you will see I define culture in a somewhat different way from what you might be thinking). If ever fewer families are eating together around a table, discussing topics at length and taking the trouble to enjoy one another's company, it is because we have given ourselves permission to be excused from dinner, as it were, to pursue interests that are, in large part, narcissistic (I could list what these are, but I trust that you will be able to guess). If there are ever fewer intact families to begin with, it is because, apart from the things that make living together inherently stressful, there are so few social inhibitors to hold the family structure together, combined with a generalized material longing that robs us of the forbearance that is occasionally necessary in marriage. In this case, the left is responsible for the former condition, and the right, as I have suggested, is more responsible for the latter one.
It pains me to say that to visit most public places in America is to subject oneself to a visual assault. At no time in our history has the American people been so uncaring about its physical condition and appearance. I am even convinced that, in many cases, we take a perverse pride not only in being slovenly, but in offending the strangers in our presence.
I bring this up only because the decline in our public deportment is an excellent example of where pernicious ideas from the whole spectrum of American popular thought have converged and have become magnified in force. From the left has come the notion that our right to personal expression outweighs all other considerations, with the potential revulsion on the part of one´s interlocutor held in particularly low regard. Hence our feeling that we are entitled to wear any clothing, however ill-considered, regardless of the occasion. We have also given ourself permission to eat any type of foodstuff, again with little regard to the appropriateness of the time or place. The wretched condition of our bodies, which should be a spur to personal renewal, is instead a perverse badge of honor for a disturbing number of our countrymen. The right has contributed to the problem also, just as powerfully if more subtly; it is far from blameless here. Our exaggerated self-confidence, our disinclination to question our own attitudes and conduct, our feeling that whatever we are doing in the moment is perfectly justified are aspects of the American character that have received undue encouragement from the right wing of the national discourse.
I'm sorry to say I don't think I can keep the promise I effectively made in the title to offer a solution. I am realizing that other commentators with more credentials, authority, and potential for reaching an audience have, so far, failed to affect our conduct significantly, whether in the personal domain or elsewhere. On an individual level, one could attribute this to the natural resistance we all have to suggestion. Or we could ascribe it to our disinclination as a people to engage in introspection, an aspect of our national character which historically has been to our advantage, but now poses a threat, if not to our survival then at the very least to our prosperity.
