"What President-Elect Obama Needs to Know -- & Maybe Us Too"

The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, December 7, 2008

The week before Eric and I got married, my older sister made plans to take us out to dinner, since she was going to have to miss the wedding. The 3 of us met for a wonderful meal at a trendy restaurant in Old City Philadelphia, and after we placed our orders, my sister leaned across the table towards Eric, her face alight with interest and curiosity. “Mimi tells me you’re a Republican,” she began, “I can’t wait to talk to you, because I don’t think I’ve ever had an in-depth conversation with a Republican before.”

A recent book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, posits that while in the past, voting patterns showed that people who voted differently lived right next to each other, modern-day elections prove something quite different – in general, blue people and red people tend to cluster together. Whole neighborhoods and precincts and even districts vote mainly the same way. The result, say authors Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing, is that many people, like my sister, don’t even know people who think and vote differently than they do.

During the election season just past, I noticed that on both sides, people made assumptions about folks whose opinions differed from their own. “They’re just bitter and afraid” – “They’re dupes” -- “They’re nuts” -- “They’re selfish” – “They want the government to do everything” – “They want to destroy the social contract” and even “They’re evil.” Lacking real engage-ment and relationship, both sides just made wild characterizations of the other. Naturally, this did not make for meaningful dialogue.

President-elect Obama comes to office with a pledge to make change and to unite people across differences. These are good things, and I wish him well with it. But bringing people together who are separated by philosophy or ideology isn’t easy – it doesn’t happen just because of good intentions. There has to be an honest attempt on all sides to see another’s point of view, striving to truly understand how someone who has come to different conclusions arrived at those conclusions.

Unitarian Universalist ministers are in a good position to try to give advice on this score. Perhaps alone among American clergy, or maybe MORE than any other American clergy, we must deal with people who have widely divergent points of view. A UU congregation can consist of com-mitted atheists (I was going to say “devout atheists” but thought better of it), thoughtful agnostics, syncretic liberal Christians, born-UUs, heritage Jews, pagans of various stripes, and hyphenates too numerous to list. In one week, or even one day, a UU minister can hear requests for more, and less, spirituality, and comments that sermons are too intellectual or not intellectual enough. UU ministers have to be good at dealing with and caring for people who are different from each other and different from the minister.

Unfortunately, in politics, this is not always the case, as Bishop and Cushing point out in their book. It seems that many politicians, like many people, tend to communicate with the folks who already agree with them, and summarily dismiss or devalue the ones who disagree. If President-elect Obama is to succeed in his stated goal of “reaching across the aisle,” he will need to go deeper in listening to and striving to understand and appreciate people of many different political stripes. He will have to understand, as my grandmother used to say, “There’s good and bad in everything and everybody.”

Thomas Sowell may not be the most quoted author in UU pulpits (indeed, this may be the first time he’s been quoted favorably in a liberal worship service!), but I found his book A Conflict of Visions (first written in 1987 then updated in 2007), not only well written and chockfull of meaty quotes, but also a good way of understanding political differences without resorting to name calling. His theory is that there are 2 main ways that people see human nature, the constrained view and the unconstrained view, and that these perspectives inform everything in a person’s life. While Sowell’s conflict of visions is a neat “theory of everything” for American political life, he is careful to state that the 2 conflicting visions are really the furthest ends of a continuum, and that there are no actual people who are 100% one or the other.

But even with that caveat, I found Sowell’s theory fascinating, and it inspired me to reflect on which vision most appealed to me. Which kind of vision-holder are you? Do you see human nature as improvable, or do you think human beings have been pretty much the same throughout history? Do you think it’s possible that human beings will do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, or do you think that human nature will always need promptings or incentives in order to act altruistically, for the common good?

In general – and speaking generally about the conflicting visions is as difficult as speaking generally about Unitarian Universalists – those who hold the unconstrained vision, the opinion that humanity is “perfectible” tend to be political liberals, while those with the constrained view, who see human beings as inherently flawed, tend to be political conservatives. The unconstrained liberals aim for lofty goals, usually assuming that humanity’s better nature can be aroused. The constrained conservatives work toward acceptable trade-offs, usually assuming there will be unforeseen negative consequences of every well-intentioned decision.

While all of the above is theoretically true according to Sowell, it must be noted that it doesn’t always work out exactly like that in the real world. Sometimes, politicians calling themselves “liberal” or “conservative” will act according to the opposite vision, as when the Bush administration went into war in Iraq assuming happy outcomes and without adequate planning for negative contingencies – obvious drawbacks to the unconstrained vision. Former President Clinton angered many liberals when he enacted welfare reform, a clear product of the constrained vision.

Sowell points out that neither view is perfectly correct, that either vision taken to extremes would be disastrous. Someone who was unconstrained all the time would end up despairing and depressed, and someone who was constrained all the time would end up cynical and manipulative. Sowell, himself an avowed conservative of the constrained vision, stresses that both visions need each other for the fullest possible vision of the future. The world needs both idealists and realists. This, to me, is the most important thing I would want President-elect Obama to know: that neither political liberals or political conservatives are completely right or completely wrong, that neither the unconstrained or the constrained vision can work by itself, that what seems to be unreconcilable dichotomies are really 2 sides of the same coin, 2 ends of a long continuum.

If I were to join the children in sending a letter of advice to President-elect Obama, I would say, “Mr. President, Please remember that the people who agree with you don’t have all the answers. Please listen to the people who disagree with you, and consider their point of view. Remember that all decisions and all actions have consequences, some of them unforeseen, and that all “improvements” in public policy end up having at least a few negative outcomes. Please keep in mind that while we can always hope for improvement in human nature, we probably shouldn’t bet the country on it. And nothing’s wrong with a few incentives and rewards to get folks to act right.” And I would close the letter by quoting from the ubiquitous signs around town by the folk artist Dr. Bob: “Think that you might be wrong.” It’s way too dangerous to go around convinced you’re completely right, whether in politics or anywhere else.

Of course, this is good advice in UU church life and real life too. No one person and no one point of view is completely right. In order to get the fullest perspective, we need to listen to each other, and consider how we came to our conclusions. It’s a good idea for us, too, to think that we might be wrong, and to realize that we need each other even when we disagree.
I mentioned earlier that I thought a lot while reading A Conflict of Visions about whether I was of the constrained vision or unconstrained vision, and I realized that I had changed as I have gotten older. I used to be fully in the unconstrained camp – I thought, like the old Unitarian motto, it would be humanity “onward and upward forever.” As I’ve had more experience with life, I’ve moved more toward the constrained vision – poor human beings, I think sometimes, so flawed, so caught up in their “stuff,” pretty much the same now as during the Neolithic, only with better tools and toys. I guess you could say I have an eye in each vision. I would advise out new president to do the same.

When visions conflict, and strong emotions are aroused, let us not make “winning” our goal. Refusing to see another’s point of view makes such a “victory” meaningless. Let us be dedicated to our shared goals, and strive to honor the different paths that bring us together. May we be open to what we can learn from our diversity, and from those outside our particular congregation, group, and viewpoint. May we honor and celebrate our need for each other and our covenantal connection as we learn and grow together. AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!