Liberty Exposé: A Redeemer Nation - The Moral Cause Conservatives Need
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For an aspiring democratic society that embraces freedom of expression, boisterous debate, and vigorous protest as cardinal civic tenets, the charges of incivility, polarization, and chaotic spectacle may not initially appear all that worrisome. To embark on democratic governance is to accept the inherent chaos of a free society, not as an occasional bug of the system, but as an inherent feature conducive to its steady evolution. What more peaceable personalities might view as signs of systemic breakdown may in fact be indications that the nation’s public enterprises are working precisely as they ought to be.
Unfortunately, American democracy’s current tumult seems more indicative of eutrophic stagnation than genuine vitality. For starters, a vibrant democracy’s policy-making process should be just as, and ideally much more, receptive to the influence of average citizens as it is to particular group interests. However, evidence suggests that average citizens “have little or no independent influence” on government policy, whereas economic elites and organized business interests “have substantial independent impacts.” If this hypothesis holds, then it remains doubtful that American democracy properly activates the bottom-up feedback that should enliven and balance out its deliberative process.
The second indicator of stagnation has to do with the oft-cited reality of political polarization. America has become affectively polarized to the point that members of opposing parties increasingly view each other with distrust and contempt, making them less willing to interact with one another. While this kind of antagonism is not entirely new, nor by any means unique to the U.S., American polarization may prove particularly difficult to heal because of the way it pulls “ideology, race, and religion” into the partisan dynamic. When multiple identities get consolidated in this way, the knot of tribalism becomes harder to unravel.
Neither the un-democratic character of national politics nor the persistence of partisanship fail to leave a mark on the sentiments of the people. Gallup polls indicate that Americans have little confidence in the competence of the government and report diminishing feelings of national pride. Furthermore, Pew research suggests that Americans experience a considerable gulf between the ideals they believe are important to the U.S. and those they see actually manifested, with 61% supporting the view that “significant changes are needed” to address “the fundamental design and structure of American government.”
The crises of 2020 have made the reality of these standing issues impossible to ignore. In the legislative gridlock that we have witnessed during the 2020 Covid pandemic, we see a degree of dysfunction that shatters even the most cynical expectations. Such unresponsiveness exceeds all bounds of justifiability and violates the mandate of representative leadership, steely and callous as it is to the plight of millions.
Proper resolution of these standing issues will ultimately require the reclamation of a workable political consensus and a coherent national program that integrates both sides of the aisle in a productive, though conflictual, interplay. However, there is little reason to believe that cooperation of this sort will emerge without democratic reforms that bolster the agency of citizens and break the insular feedback loop between elite interests and government inaction; and these reforms will in turn lack the necessary political support as long as polarization remains unaddressed and politically expedient.
Healing Polarization: Start With Your Own Team First
In order to gain new leverage on the issue of political polarization, it helps to have a conceptualization of the way polarities work in general. According to Steve McIntosh, there is a distinction between “positive-negative” and “positive-positive” polarities. The former involves a dichotomy that calls for a solution (e.g. prosperity vs. poverty), whereas the latter acts like a dynamic interplay of mutually-dependent opposites that develop each other through conflict (e.g. femininity vs. masculinity). In a positive-positive polarity, which characterizes the recurrent tension between Left and Right in politics, the opposites challenge one another, but also evolve by incorporating each other’s wisdom.
In America, the enduring Left-Right polarity has devolved from a “generative polarity” that leverages tension to forge new solutions, to a “stuck polarity” that cannot achieve proper resolution. In other words, partisanship has become so entrenched that we can no longer benefit from the mutual antagonism of our political identities, which under healthy circumstances would bring issues to speedier resolution through “cooperation and competition.” Each side should “allow for the moderating influence of the other, rather than resisting such moderation at every turn,” and by coming to “value and ‘own’ at least some essential elements of the wisdom of the other side,” render a truer, stronger version of itself.
However, the same polarity between a left (progressive) pole and a right (conservative) pole exists within both of the major Parties. Each side contains its own progressive-leaning and conservative-leaning pole, and the rejuvenation of a true generative polarity will first require each side to evolve themselves internally by reaching a “deliberative polar alliance” between their own internal camps and reinterpreting the principles that animate both sides. Neither the Right nor the Left will be in a position to acknowledge the value of their beloved adversary until they have evolved their own internal values and achieved a clearer understanding of themselves.
Internal Issues on the Right
Evolution on the conservative side faces a number of difficult problems. According to McIntosh, the conservative coalition contains tensions of its own between the “liberty value complex” and the “heritage value complex,” each of which requires “ongoing refinement and management” to remain positive and avoid deviation into pathological forms. When healthy, the liberty complex champions the rights of the individual, free markets, and self-reliance, but when pathological, can disintegrate into indifferent elitism and selfish exploitation. Likewise, the heritage complex does well when it champions patriotic love, affirms a national interest, and safeguards the continuity of wisdom traditions and family values; but when deviant, it can become susceptible to authoritarian, nativist, racist, and anti-scientific modes of thinking.
On the heritage side, one sees ample evidence of persistent pathological complexes. First, Trump’s presidency has revealed an alarming proclivity towards sultanism in the Republican Party. Lacking in principle and autonomy in leadership, Republicans have largely accommodated Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and reduced their creed to the designs of his whims, opting to stay in line rather than challenge him on the basis of principle and moral consistency. Second, much of the Republican base retains an authoritarian cast of mind that contravenes democratic values. Third, and perhaps most importantly, evidence suggests that ethnic antagonism remains part of the fundamental fabric of Republican identity.
The liberty complex has also manifested pathological tendencies. This is primarily evident in the warrant laissez-faire neoliberalism has granted private interests to damage the environment, exacerbate inequality, and exclude workers from the gains in national income. It also seems apparent in the resistance many Republican-leaning citizens display towards community efforts to curb the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (e.g. mask mandates), which they view as inexcusable threats to their liberty.
A Moral Resource for Conservatives: The Idea of America as a Redeemer Nation
If the conservative team is to have any fighting chance of working through its internal contradictions, it needs to get behind big ideas that can affirm the best of our tradition while channeling its moral energies in the service of growth. Its imagination must be capable of linking the promise of freedom to the errand of improving the American political tradition and broadening its scope—of affirming a matured interpretation of national greatness that transcends the narrowness of material aggrandizement and in-group superiority, and depends on the cultivation of a humane, magnanimous people worthy of the inheritance.
The most promising moral resource for conservatives in this fight is a refined version of the old idea of American chosenness: specifically, the idea of America as a redeemer nation. Unlike other iterations of this idea (e.g. American exceptionalism), the notion of a redeemer nation best illuminates the meaning of America’s political vocation in a manner that affirms the tradition we inherit without diminishing the central importance of taking responsibility for the nation’s continual improvement, generation to generation.
From the earliest puritan articulations of this idea by John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards—to its broader moral interpretations by Thomas Jefferson, Lyman and Henry Beecher, Walt Whitman, and Abraham Lincoln—all the way through its maturations in the 20th century by Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Martin Luther King Jr.—the notion of American chosenness has continued to adapt itself to the changing landscape of American democracy. The idea has endured because of its prophetic moral power and capacity to channel the American revolutionary spirit towards the common good; yet like any idea predicated on chosenness, it has always struggled with the task of expanding the circle of its inclusion to embrace all Americans.
In its nascence, the theme took the form of a puritan errand (to be “as a city on a hill”) framed as a covenant with God to live righteously according to His mission, so that an example of true Christianity could be manifested to all the world. The Puritans saw themselves as God’s new Israel, a chosen people tasked with a religious errand. But with this opportunity came responsibility, for deviating from God’s plan would mean violating the divine covenant and risking punishment.
Over time, the theme incorporated America’s political project and a more robust moral calling. The Revolution, the Constitution, and the entire project of republican government were seen as stepping stones in a divine plan to liberate new principles of peaceful governance in the world. America’s political history was thus subsumed into prophetic history, and the scope of its errand accordingly took on global proportions. However, this broader conception of American chosenness only accommodated the ambitions of Americans with European ancestry (and at that, with limits), excluding native peoples and African slaves outright. It also proved an unlucky warrant for manifest destiny and imperial overreach.
It was only through a combination of prophetic voices both within the perceived nation (Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Reinhold Niebuhr) and outside its circle (Maria Stewart, David Walker, Martin King) that the notion of American chosenness began to mature into an ideal with in-built protections against the dangers of national exceptionalism. By rendering American destiny dependent on each generation’s efforts to direct its course towards the cause of democracy, responsible government, and peace worldwide, the redeemer nation arrived at a notion that mitigates self-righteousness and the conceits of power. To take the national inheritance for granted and deny the challenge it poses to each generation is to squander its promise.
Conservatives must take it upon themselves to serve as the guardians of this promise. Bereft of an errand to continually perfect the great experiment we have inherited, conservatism will lack the inner fortitude and moral authority to free itself from tribalism and cynical power politics. And until it recognizes that the greatness of the nation ultimately depends on redeeming our commitment to preserve the humanity, dignity, and freedom of all people, it will prove unable to free itself from reactionary fear, and rise to its proper role as a vanguard of the nation’s future.