Defending political correctness

A good post from Coates:

But watching conservatives mock liberals for being PC, is like watching the morbidly obese mock Weight Watchers for its system of points.

Read the whole thing. It's a good reminder that political correctness sometimes makes fools of people, sometimes goes too far, but in general, is far, far more beneficial than harmful. And I like his point that a failure to be political correct--or to know how to be politically correct--is really just a luxury that comes with being in the majority, where you are never forced to engage with or understand people who are different from you.

The team from my area is superior to the team from your area

Via Sullivan, a hell of a quote:

"The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man extinguished his," - Hugo St. Victor, 12th Century.

It's interesting that we would associate a practiced distance from the accidental properties of ourselves with strength, wisdom--even perfection. I think it's the right way to think about it. I don't know of any kind of wisdom that doesn't start with self-awareness, and self-awareness, I think, is the practice of distancing yourself from yourself, viewing yourself through the eyes of others. What starts as empathy leads inexorably to a kind of universalist outlook, that recognizes that the accidental differences between us are arbitrary and capricious, and so we shouldn't pay them too much heed. Indeed, according to this Hugo fellow, the perfect man shuns them entirely.

But ultimately, all of this relies on exercising the empathy muscle, and this exercise is exhausting. The brain labors to carry out all the psychic computations needed to translate the world into the viewpoint of someone else--and so, just like any kind of grueling task that is good for us, we tend not to carry it out nearly as often as we should. To do it regularly and as an ever-present feature of your thought process is like running a mental marathon. It's so much easier to relax into the cushy couch of our baser tribal tendencies, saying "fuck you" to the out-group while we congratulate each other on having been born in the United States.

That's where the idea, specifically, of strength comes in, I think: you exercise the muscle regularly, and it becomes strong.

Mike Huckabee: a decent man

Barack Obama is not the only politician willing to raise the level of discourse in America. Watch how Mike Huckabee, with simple earnestness and empathy, completely shuts down Joe Scarborough and his partisan baiting (you can skip to 3:30). It's not just anyone that can reduce a loudmouth partisan hack like Scarborough to lame Atticus Finch quotes in the space of a single response:



I found his brief description of his personal experience with segregation--and plea to "cut some slack" to those who have suffered from it--to be actually, well, touching.

It is also worthwhile to take notice of Huckabee's exceptional ear for politics and ability to maneuver in the political moment. While most conservatives respond with shrill, tone-deaf, knee-jerk reactions to Obama's speech that still just obsess over Reverend Wright's vitriol, Huckabee tacks toward conciliation--and is even able to wring a valid criticism of liberals out of it.

I don't mean this to be an accusation of cynicism on the part of Huckabee. I think this is one of those instances where being sincere just is politically savvy.

Ruling with empathy

This editorial (via Andrew Sullivan) captures a big part of the reason why I'm an Obama supporter: he demonstrates time and again in his rhetoric, positions, and personal interactions an underlying wellspring of empathy that disarms opponents and allows him to effectively lead.