In 1972, I was the 13-year-old son of two very conservative, far-right republican Catholic parents. It was what I knew. They had a very solid stance on politics and religion. It was tradition for me, my older brother, Mom, and Dad to share dinner and conversation every night.
\nAlso, in 1972, Richard Nixon was running against McGovern, who was pushing an anti-war ticket, as the war in Vietnam was still being fought.<\/p>\n
My brother and I were as different as night and in the day. I was the short-haired, good kid who did everything I could to please my parents. My brother, on the other hand, was a long-haired, dope-smoking, hippie wannabe in the making who loved McGovern and what he represented.<\/p>\n
Every dinner during that election year seemed to end up in a shouting match. I hated every minute of it. I am sure it is one of the reasons I don’t fight today. I will stew on things for a week or two and return to it when things are calm.<\/p>\n
So, all this being said, when I saw the second chapter of “Stop Fighting and Start Arguing,” I knew it was where I needed to base this post. (Besides that, I couldn’t find any common ground here for my NPO!) I don’t recall religion being any part of the political arguments. It came up with other arguments, but that is a different post.<\/p>\n
One thing I remember is that my parents were very staunch in their beliefs. Petrusek speaks of “falsifiability”- “Falsifiability, in the scientific method, means being able to imagine an outcome in which your hypothesis could turn out to be false” [1]. I know their points of view were not scientific, but there is something to glean from Petrusek’s thinking.<\/p>\n
The idea of something they believed might be false wasn’t going to happen with my folks. I think being a product of World War II and then listening to all of the talk and worrying about communism skewed their thinking. Bottom line\u2014I think they were simply afraid. They supported the war to defeat communism. They were scared to death of Russia and what it represented. They were NOT going to back down from their beliefs – no matter what. My brother would ask the “what if you are wrong” questions in his own ways, but there was no middle ground to be found.<\/p>\n
My parents were more in line with the voluntarism philosophy. Petrusek states, “Voluntarism is “the trumping of the intellect by the will” and the view that “things are true because I want them to be true.” [2] There was no reasoning with them – they believed what they wanted to believe and closed their ears to any other thought. I smiled when I read that “voluntarism does not even feign rationality” [3] because that is how it felt, even to a young 13-year-old kid.<\/p>\n
I am using this story for a reason. There are many similarities to what is going on at today’s diner tables. Petrusek states: “Voluntarism is completely incoherent; to assert that there is no universal truth beyond an individual’s definition of truth is to embrace a universal truth.” [5] Without speaking of sides, there is a pandemic of its own in people’s definitions of political truths. The one difference between my hippie brother and McCarthy-loving parents was that, yes, there were a LOT of loud arguments and fighting, and there was never an inch of ground given in either direction. No better understanding of either side was made. BUT, it was still family. At the end of the day, they all loved each other, and they learned to live with the elephant in the room.
\nMy heart grieves at what is going on in our society today. Baron writes: “We don\u2019t have to agree on everything, but we do have to agree on something, and merely \u201cagreeing to disagree\u201d won\u2019t cut it when it comes to the constitutive laws and values of a society.”[6] Sadly I don’t see even this happening. No matter what side, there is nothing to agree upon. Family members no longer speak because of the divide; relationships are broken, and the future does not look hopeful, no matter your side. There is no toleration.<\/p>\n
Come quickly, Lord Jesus.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1] Matthew Petrusek. “Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture.” (Word on Fire Institute: Park Ridge IL) 29
\n[2] Petrusek, 32.
\n[3] Petrusek, 32.
\n[4] Petrusek, 32.
\n[5] Petrusek, 32.
\n[6] Petrusek, 34.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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