WE'VE BEEN WORKING OUR WAY through Glenn Beck's "9 Principles and 12 Values" and finding them surprisingly liberal.
The final three principles share a common theme, which Beck feels is important enough to to bring up repeatedly. It's merely hinted at in principle number seven, but is sounded as a stronger note in eight, which reads:
It is not un-American for me
to disagree with authority or to share
my personal opinion.
This sentence, which Beck puts into the mouth of his conservative reader, is almost impossible to imagine in the mouth of a liberal.
The reason is not that the sentence is so conservative, but that it is so fundamentally liberal that no liberal would ever find it necessary to utter.
From a liberal perspective, this sentence is the equivalent of "It is not un-American to breathe," or "It is not un-American to sleep."
The idea that disagreeing with authority is wrong, let alone un-American, is a conservative idea.
Beck has put his finger, here, on a central point about the conservative/liberal split in America.
Among other things, the split is largely between authoritarians and anti-authoritarians.
It's a profoundly conservative stance, for example, to say that government authority ought to be allowed to overrule a woman's own moral judgment about abortion.
It's a profoundly conservative stance to say that the authority of a public school principal, or teacher, should be allowed to overrule the religious convictions of a student.
It's a profoundly conservative stance to hold that the authority of a father or mother should justify the beating of a child.
It's a profoundly conservative stance to hold that the authority of a religion should overrule scientific research in a classroom.
In each of these cases, and in others, it's the conservatives who come down against disagreeing with authority, and yet, as Beck so wisely points out by including this principle, it's also conservatives who have the deepest resentment against authority.
Virtually all of the charges of un-Americanism in this county have come from the right.
Whether the charge is against the Democrats in congress, or John Kerry, or simply implied on an "America, Love it or Leave it" sticker, it's the right wing that has time and again called those who don't agree with their authoritarian pronouncements un-American, from McCarthy to modern talk radio.
So why do they still feel as though some authority has not allowed them to speak their mind?
It's because they live within an authoritarian world view. And any human, trapped in an authoritarian world, will rebel.
If your world view doesn't allow you to rebel against your own authorities—your pastor, your parents, your favorite talk radio host—you will imagine that some other authority has muzzled you, and project your resentment there.
Beck is pointing out that no such authority exists.
Certainly not a liberal one.
The ACLU, that famous liberal institution, will fight for your right to speak your mind no matter how bizarre—or how conservative—your ideas.
You won't catch a liberal administration using the Department of Homeland Security to limit your air travel because they don't like your political position.
But conservatives, living within an authoritarian world view, find this hard to believe.
They are vaguely aware that the majority of the country disagrees with them on almost every issue:
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The majority of the country is pro-choice.
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The majority is convinced of evolution.
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The majority thinks that public schools should not be allowed to make kids pray.
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The majority disapproves of hitting children.
And they are also aware that if they were in the majority they would keep those views from being discussed: if not by force, then by labeling them as anti-American.
So they assume the other side must be doing what they would do.
And they assume that the other side, having a majority in the government, must have the authority to do that.
Beck is calling them to abandon this nonsense, to realize that this is a democracy, that there is no authority that can tell them what to say, and whether that makes them un-American.
He is calling them to think like liberals.
The idea of a democracy is a liberal idea. It's based in freedom, and that includes free speech.
We all have a responsibility to use that freedom responsibly, of course, to refrain from calling for the overthrowing of the government, from suggesting the assassination of people we don't agree with, from screaming fire in a crowded theater.
But the right to speak our minds, the right to express an opinion on the matters of the day, the absence of censorship is a fundamental principle of both liberalism and democracy.
Next time, principle #9—The government works for me.
I do not answer to them,
they answer to me.
