The Wisdom of Moral Politics
by Anthony Arnold
May 2021
For people who know me, it will come as no surprise that I am concerned about the moral arc of our country. For years now, I’ve been posting as much on my social media accounts; and I’ve had numerous private conversations across many years. For some time, I’ve had a sense that we are somehow deficient -- that the basic goodness of the nation was not what it should be -- or even could be.
But I lacked the language to put those feelings into words. I lacked the understanding and knowledge that I needed to articulate how I felt.
Some of that was my fault. As a youth, I grew up regularly attending Sunday school and church, and I went to a Catholic high school. But, like most young people, I was dismissive of received wisdom. I was convinced that my generation was going to discover something special and unique about the largest questions of humanity; and that when we did so, we would be able to leave behind the foolish beliefs of those who had come before.
During the 90’s, when I really started to come of age, the President of the United States had an affair; and he lied about it, under oath. While that may seem to be a trivial thing, especially in comparison to the more egregious sins that we’ve seen as of late, it wasn’t nothing. Though, even the simple act of acknowledging that a moral failing had occurred was strangely difficult for many.
There were other incidents as well. The beating of Rodney King. The murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. Each event was run through a distortion field of sorts. Instead of being judged purely on the merits of right and wrong, people’s perceptions were shaped based on their various allegiances. So, it seemed normal to me to approach the world this way.
When I went to college it only became worse. I graduated in 2003, and the Bush years were a time when people’s basic allegiances started to harden, especially in politics. With everything running through the distortion of politics, it became more difficult to judge an action without considering the political implications of doing so.
I wasn’t immune to this. I had started taking my politics more seriously right before the election of Barack Obama, and for a while I was convinced that he could do no wrong. My partisan blinders were so strong that it made me oblivious to the ways in which he too was falling short.
Not because he was a bad man, but because he was human. And while I believe humans are fundamentally moral creatures, I know now we are all fundamentally flawed. We all have fallen short, and will fall short, again, in the future. While I had started to suspect that very thing by the end of his second term, I still lacked something necessary to express it.
Then, Donald Trump came along. If Clinton and Bush and Obama were windows into the flawed nature of humanity, then Donald Trump was a barn door. His flaws, deficiencies, and basic immorality were and are so clear. But, there again is that distortion field.
By the time candidate Trump became President Trump, any hope of judging a person based solely on character alone had long since gone. Instead, we were left with a public square incapable of doing that. Quite literally everything was being shoved, forced, and jammed through the lens of political loyalties and partisan identity, a lens that was wholly incapable of handling the enormous weight that it was now carrying.
So, it buckled, when he became the Republican nominee. Then it broke when he was elevated to the most prestigious job in the world. And while the pieces of our politics, now tied intimately to our morality, lay there on the ground, I began to feel the tremors of the coming earthquake.
Newton’s Third Law states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Donald Trump was, and still is, an enormous force acting upon our society. But nothing happens in a vacuum, and so there was a response. The response was not to take stock of the ways in which our culture and society had failed to stop him. It was to pick up the pieces of our politics, put them back together, and use it as a weapon. Because for many people, that was the only weapon they believed existed.
And it was at this point, a little over a year ago, that something snapped in me. I still didn’t have the language necessary to define why I felt that way, though.
So, I began searching. At first, I searched out answers on my side, because that was the only side I had known for so long. But, I came up short.
For reasons I still don’t understand, the left has largely given discussing issues in terms of morality. It’s more about focusing on power dynamics, now. While there’s a time and place for that, it doesn’t provide much for people like me, who are searching for a way to answer questions about spirituality, and maybe even religion.
Then, I did the only thing left to do at that point. I went to where the questions were being asked and answered; which means I went to the right.
I didn’t go to the insane right -- the right that parades around on Fox News every night, screaming about cancel-culture, tan suits, and President Biden’s dogs. Not the right that seems unable to acknowledge an attack on the Capitol building, or then President Trump’s role in causing it.
And not the never Trump right, either. They, too, are consumed by politics, and their actions and utterances oftentimes only reflect a desire to acquire power, instead of a genuine desire to lead the country to a better path.
I went to the parts of the right where questions about goodness and morality are being discussed. Where the answer to my question of “What does it mean to live a good life?” are being discussed in ways that not only try to avoid politics, but recognize the ways in which our politics have corrupted our ability to seek the answer, at all.
It was there, in this place, so very far away from my intellectual home, that I began to find answers. I began to find solace and comfort. I began to fill the hole inside of me.
The effects of this were profound. For starters, it immediately opened my eyes to the basic reality that there were people, who probably would disagree with me on many things, who still had enormous guidance to offer me. It showed me that people, who I had probably misjudged or characterized unfairly, weren’t the monsters or fools that I had made them out to be.
It also showed me that there is value in being exposed to things far outside of your comfort zone. While I may have started out strictly reading those on the right, I’ve now branched out further beyond that in my quest to find something approaching spiritual enlightenment.
I’ve read sermons by Dr. King, not just the ones you hear once or twice a year. I’ve grappled with ideas bold, old and new; rejecting my previous belief that ‘received wisdom has no value’.
I’ve grown, and not just internally. I’ve worked hard to take these new beliefs and incorporate them into my personal life. I have tried, as best I can, to put into practice the things I’m reading and learning.
This has not come at the expense of my politics. Instead of making me withdraw from politics, or forcing me to change my mind about my basic assumption, I’ve been able to see the ways in which politics has a greater impact than we often realize. I’ve grounded myself in something beyond politics, and it has only allowed me to explore the furthest reaches of politics.
My newfound anchor has tethered me to something real. Something that doesn’t shift every two or four years. With that anchor firmly in place, I’m comfortable exposing myself to people and ideas that would have seemed insane, before. Because I know that however the political winds shift, and whatever I read, I have a place to which to return.
Because I’m a politics person, and not a spiritual guide, I can’t help but think of the ways in which my journey is reflected in that sphere, too.
Somewhere around 75% of the country identifies as religious. While that number has been dropping, that still represents somewhere around 230 million people. Obviously, not all of those people are equal in terms of dedication, but the fact that they identify themselves that way surely tells us something meaningful. For a lot of people basic questions about right and wrong and morality really are important.
While this is happening, though, we are increasingly seeing the main way in which those questions are answered, which is religion, being pushed to the side. And while I may personally identify as non-denominational, I do believe that our politics has to have an element of spirituality in it.
I believe that it has to be something our public figures are comfortable embracing. Right now, the only time we ever hear such things being discussed is when it’s about intolerance or how it’s warping Republican politics.
For instance, how many people know that Hilary Clinton is, by all accounts, deeply Methodist? That her faith is actually one of the guideposts for her life. Instead of embracing this, and showing Americans who she really was, she mostly hid it.
And how is it that the role of faith, which has been so central in securing people’s rights in this country, has come to solely be the property of the most conservative among us? It really just doesn’t make any sense.
John Adams, our second President, said that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
We shouldn’t read that as an instruction that we all must attend church, every Sunday. But I think we absolutely should read it as a declaration that our public square, which is where our politics happens, has to include discussions about morality. That instead of trying to pull these things apart, we need to recognize that they both have an appropriate place in the functioning of a society.
The restructuring of American society that we are living through is raising some profound questions. As years of injustice are beginning to go addressed, power is shifting, and people who once found themselves elevated above others are finding out that the journey down isn’t so pleasant. And there’s nothing inappropriate about that. It’s healthy and necessary for a society to refresh itself, periodically.
But what about forgiveness? What about reconciliation? What about providing those who have sinned a path back towards the rest of us?
Such questions have historically been the domain of religion. But even if we have decided to reduce the role of formal religion, then we still have to grapple with those questions. Because the answers to them will help shape our politics, our policies, and our day to day interactions with the people around us.
Ultimately, that’s what this journey has been about for me. A well-ordered life is one in which things have balance and proportion, one in which politics has a role, but that role is appropriately sized. For so long now, we have been allowing our politics to grow and consume; and I now fear we are on the cusp of letting it consume everything.
But maybe, just maybe, we can slowly begin reintroducing other things back into our diet. And in doing so we might manage to save not just ourselves, but our politics as well.