The Politics of Grievance

Furthering the discussion of the radicalization of the Republican party and resulting departure from its so-called conservative principles, I heartily recommend a thought-provoking post from Freddie deBoer on Wunderkammer Magazine (h/t Andrew Sullivan).

deBoer, a self-described "ultra-leftist," identifies two central insights of classical conservatism. The first ("Burkean") insight is "the impulse to keep politics in the realm of the political, and to exclude them from the world of the family, religion, and personal virtue." The current party of so-called "limited government" loses this insight in speading the political battleground from public to private issues. The second insight is "the recognition of the limits of the politics of grievance." Acknowledging that women, racial minorities, homosexuals, handicapped individuals and other groups are, in fact, aggrieved, this insight notes that "claims of oppression can come to so dominate a given minority group's intellectual and political life that there is no room left for the work of life."

To borrow a metaphor from John Updike, grievance becomes a mask that eats the face; it is not untrue to say that, at times, those within these groups come to believe in the essential truth "we are put down," and history becomes prophecy. What liberals insist, what I insist, is that there is one and only one way to transcend this dynamic, and that is removing people from their oppression. That is what both ethics and self-interest demand. All the same, the conservative message on the slow creep of grievance, the slow seeping of oppression into one's elementary makeup, has been among the best of the movement's insights. It is that message, not the child's mythologies of bootstrapping or deliverance through personal virtue, that should endure.

Instead, such a blanket condemnation of the politics of grievance has been swiftly and unceremoniously discarded, in the name of political expediency. Oh, that's not to say that the broad American right has much use for the claims of oppression from the usual suspects. I mean merely that conservatism, on the whole, has adopted the language and attitudes of the oppressed with a focus and zeal that not even the most practiced minority affinity groups could muster. Conservatism has become aggrieved, and to great effect, too. There is no message more central or insistent from the ordinary mouthpieces of movement conservatism (Fox News, talk radio) than that conservatives in America are a uniquely oppressed segment of the American populace. The existence of messages contrary to conservative sentiment is proof positive of distortion and bias; the existence of discrepancies between the numbers of liberals and conservatives in a given occupation or industry, evidence of exclusion.

The late actor Paul Newman described the current culture as unfortunately prone to escalation. Barack Obama shares this insight as he strives for a more inclusive post-partisan politics. Critics have a point that Obama may be a bit naive in seeking bipartisan votes for specific initiatives (e.g. health care reform). However, in a bigger sense, Obama is right that the costs of escalating partisanship harm our country and its system of government. Growing numbers of self-described independents seem to agree that the partisan fight isn't winnable by either side and the costs of waging it are too high. Obama's persistence in seeking common ground with political opponents and incorporating their ideas into his policies is a worthwhile tonic. Sullivan is right that this makes Obama more truly conservative than his more radical GOP critics.

--Ballard Burgher