Zogby Poll: Republicans Lean Authoritarian

I sometimes try to engage "conservatives" in an attempt to understand where they come from. One of them is my step-father, a Vietnam vet. In conversation, he says he endorses the use of toture- I'm guessing his sentiment is based on personal experience. He argues along these lines- if the information the suspect holds could save people's lives, squeezing it out of him by unsightly means is a small compromise. I respond along these lines- our Constitution establishes a moral framework that cannot include the use of torture against anyone, and the Constitution is what soldiers fight for. He responds by shrugging his shoulders- "Oh, well".

There is a pervasive attitude among Reds that the Constitution is a flexible rulebook, and that rules are meant to be broken.

It is not the Constitution they hold dear- it is American state power. It is not the open, living experiment in freedom in they cherish- they cherish the symbols of American nationalism. It seems like a dialectical conflict between a power-oriented and a justice-oriented national identity.

If that seems to dismiss "consevative" sentiment for the Constitution maybe I should say it another way.

Progressives appreciate American power while it serves justice. Conservatives appeciate justice while it serves American power.

It feels impossible to help anyone who subscribes to the nationalist agenda to problematize this issue, though I know it must not be.

In a sense this is Hamilton versus Jefferson, and therefore it is fair to understand it as an enduring, essential tension in the American public heart.

However, slavery posed a similar quandry- at the founding and for all of slavery's lifetime in America. It was resolved by force of arms American vs American. I am scared the question of the primacy of justice or power will end in the same way. And it will not be the scales that conspire to destroy the spear. Our current bearing will soon crush justice on the rocks.

We must engage a new project- soon and with rigid intent- to culturally assess the autocratic values at work in American landscapes, with an eye to problematizing them for those people whose autocratic values are not a willed and immoral refusal to hear justice, but a simple, and subtle, disparity in the foci of our political lenses. The former mind is impossible to change, the latter is not. All methods of education are means of accomplishing it.

I believe current Reds can be brought to new faith in justice and temperance in policy. However, I have no idea how.

Psychologists? Linguists? Historians? Maybe even teachers?

Some kind of story-teller, somewhere in America, possesses the solution.

Help us find them, George.