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A Liberal Culture “Stuck to the Metaphor” of its Own Virtues

For Joseph Campbell a frequent impediment to human understanding was the tendency for people to get “stuck to their metaphors.” As a scholar of the manifestations of the divine across cultures, Campbell had a great respect for the role of transcendent forces in peoples’ lives and a keen understanding that all efforts to give them palpable representation were, and are, necessarily metaphorical. In this context, a person who gets stuck on his or her metaphors is one who comes to confuse the local, culturally-constructed representation(s) of godliness with God itself.

Though we don’t often think of it, there are a number of other important “realities” in our daily lives that are much more metaphorical in nature than they at first might appear. For example, “civilization” “culture” and yes, even “science” are all representational constructs that we, in effect, “lay over” the vastness of creation to render it more manageable and comprehensible to our necessarily finite scope(s) of consciousness.

Our political culture also operates through the use of such metaphors. And as in the above-mentioned cases, we generally work within these systems of interpretation with little or no consciousness of their presence, or their relation to foundational ideas. In times of relative stability this “pragmatic” approach can yield much good for many people.

But in times of great change, when new life options are forcefully presenting themselves as alternatives to the long-dominant (and thus largely invisible) paradigms of our social organization, this refusal to get “unstuck from the metaphor” and ponder the much broader and messier expanse of our social life can greatly undermine our ability to face urgent challenges.

For most Americans today, liberalism is basically understood as the opposite of conservatism, which is to say as mere voting preference within our two-party system. Largely forgotten is its history as a radically transforming social and philosophical movement without which the present governmental system of the United States could not have been conceived, never mind put into practice.

Viewed in this latter context, it is no exaggeration to say that all Americans, no matter what they currently label themselves in our political debates, are spiritual descendants of liberalism in that they operate within a system whose very architecture (except—and it is no small exception—for its historically horrendous disregard for Africans and their descendants) is predicated on the internalization of that historical project’s core values.

Let me correct that. All Americans are spiritual liberals until they aren’t anymore.

What happens then? What happens when large parts of a citizenry, acting out of either clear-eyed volition or apathy, adopt attitudes that are fundamentally incompatible the underlying ground rules of the political system in which they operate?

What happens then is what is happening now in our society.

Among the core principles of liberalism was the idea that people of good will (which liberalism viewed as most of us) can, through the unbridled circulation of ideas and reasoned, fact-based dialogue create a society with a greatly enhanced level of abundance and liberty for all. It also forcefully rejected the practice, which had been previously been seen as quite normal, that the supernatural can and should be invoked to justify political decisions in our earthly realm. Original liberals also took an extremely dim view of the practice of invading and otherwise enslaving other peoples through the use of force.

From the very outset of the Republic (think of Adams’ attempt to promulgate the Alien and Sedition Acts), these postulates were challenged by people possessing a much more fear-based and authoritarian view of the world. But more often than not people of a more generous and expansive disposition rose up to challenge the authoritarian fear-mongers and re-center the national discussion within recognizably liberal parameters.

Today, we are once again faced with a tide of illiberal thought. Make no mistake about it, there is nothing liberal (in the historical-structural sense) about today’s so-called conservatives. Their view of the human condition is a dark Hobbesian one which, in a complete reversal of liberal precepts, views fellow men and women not as good-faith partners within a community of good will, but forces to be feared, suspected and exploited, and when deemed necessary, stifled or killed. They regularly invoke the supernatural to decide earthly matters and work assiduously to limit and/or distort information regarding the results of their chosen policies.

But as I suggested earlier, there is nothing new here.

But what is new is the impotent “response” of the great majority those who describe themselves as liberals in our society. Outside of sporadic bursts of outrage, they have proven to be absolutely incapable of mounting a sustained counterattack on the well-laid plans of the illiberal right.

Why?

Because they have lived so long and so comfortably within the metaphor of American liberalism—and the moral superiority they believe it bestows upon them—they are unable, or unwilling to admit, just how far today’s packaged representation of liberal values has strayed from liberalism itself.

This erosion of liberal values has many sources. But the most important of these was the decision of the Democratic Party, and with it, the then powerful labor unions of the country, to sign up as dutiful supporters of the idea of a “benevolent” American Empire at the end of World War II.

No one who truly understands the original promise and appeal of liberalism could ever assent to such a thing in good conscience. And yet this was precisely what the hegemonic party of the American “Left” under the guidance of Harry Truman did in those years.

It was this wholly unsustainable contradiction that led to the fratricidal battles within the party during the 60s and 70s. And it was the decision of the party elites to cynically “resolve” those battles in the 80s and 90s by purging the remaining consequentially liberal (i.e. anti-militarist and anti-imperialist) voices from its upper ranks that delivered the party to its current condition as a parody on parade.

Barack Obama is the perfect representation of his party. He is a man who fully accepts all of the illiberal precepts of Empire (and the inevitable process through which they are “blown back” into the very center of our body politic) who simultaneously seeks, through the calculated deployment of his supposed reasonableness and condition as a man from an historically maltreated minority, to imbue this same-old, same-old system of predation with an air of moral redemption.

And guess what?

Most people on the so-called liberal wing of the party still lap this stuff up. They have lived so long within the metaphor or simulacrum of liberalism that they no longer have much, if any, understanding of the bracing imperatives of the real thing.

This is why they spend so much time talking about Bush, Palin and McCain and so little time talking in policy-specific terms (the only proven way to hold politicians to account) about ways to change the world we will be handing on to our children.

It will remain this way until enough of them become intimately reacquainted with the concepts that gave birth to this country and begin to admit to themselves just how absolutely incompatible they are with, for example, any person or entity that regularly (and apparently shamelessly) incinerates innocent Pakistanis from unarmed drones or thinks it is all right invade and bomb other countries and kill their leaders at will.

21 April 2011