Something I want to bring into the discourse on my more politically orientated boards is a distinction presented by Ronald W. Dworkin in How Karl Marx Can Save American Capitalism:
Lover of Love
Lover of Justice
Lover of Temperance
and, finally,
Lover of Courage
While I’m not sure I fully agree with Dworkin’s thesis (not even sure I understand where he’s coming from), I think it a useful model for further analysis. And I want to attempt a juggling act with another model brought to my attention either through Philosophy Talk or To the Best of Our Knowledge, but which I cannot find the source of (I pissed away yesterday’s writing session attempting to do so):
Justice according to need
Justice according to equality
and Justice according to merit
And I bring these models up because they are useful models for analyzing the various political positions that we are all part of and deal with in the other. (And I would apologize to my peers north of America and across the pond for focusing mainly on the American political system as I’m fully aware that your parliamentary systems are a little more diverse and, thereby, complex. It’s what I know. But hopefully you’ll be able to apply these explorations to your own experiences.)
That said, we can see how Dworkin’s model is divided among Republicans and Democrats. Love and Justice is the domain of the Democrats while Temperance and Courage is the domain of the Republicans. But before we put too much stock in what we think we mean by these terms, or get too caught up in the romantic connotations, we need to explore each term individually and see how they actually work, which was the point of this and which will likely require several writing sessions in reference to issues I took with Dworkin’s book.
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The Lover of Love is what Gilles Deleuze referred to as the “beautiful soul” or what is also referred to as common hippies among the tightfisted right. They are (in my opinion even (the sometimes overly optimistic and idealistic –that is while ALWAYS having their hearts in the right place. And as a well left of center progressive myself (a social democrat left of Bernie even (I’ll try to get to that later (I often find myself, as a pragmatic, at odds with them in what Frost referred to as a lover’s quarrel. Frustrated even.
This becomes apparent to me as concerns the issue of immigration. Many Lovers of Love dream of a world with open borders. And, hopefully, one day we’ll be able to achieve that. But now is not the time. For now, we have to admit, with Trump’s followers, that we simply cannot afford to let anyone that wants to just walk into the country. And most people recognize that. The problem is that it was a matter of public record that more immigrants were being deported under Obama than any president before him. Yet, it was as if these people wouldn’t be happy until heavy artillery was brought into the matter.
So yeah, secure the borders. Give these fucking people the wall if that’s what it takes to get DACA, give them some sense of security, and shut them the fuck up. Let’s secure our borders. At the same time, let’s show a little humility and sympathy. These people are just trying to take care of their families. Let’s expand and streamline the guest worker program as a path to citizenship.