Shortly after Obama won reelection, several of our citizens unwisely decided to fly their flags upside down as a sign of distress. An old college friend of mine was very upset, to the point where she used some very colorful and derogatory metaphors about them because her husband was a marine. Nevermind she was very upset that he had been forced to deploy, but that’s apophastic. When I suggested that it might be prescient to educate them rather than roast them, she proceeded to roast me too. I have never flown the American flag upside down, and now I know what the rules are.
It seems however that some people do not. I wonder if my friend was as offended by Michelle Obama’s using the flag as a dress as she was by her neighbors flying the flag in distress. You would like to think that the first lady knows proper flag etiquette; it’s possible that she does not, or that she does not care. If she knows about that, I suspect she gave the first lady a pass because she is completely transparent in her blatant support for the president. If I brought it up, I would likely become the villain once more for “casting an aspersion” which is the behavior my friend previously exhibited.
My friend doesn’t know the different between partisanship and principle. It is a matter of principle if and only if you are upset about the behavior no matter who does it especially if you find yourself doing it as well. You only really advocate a cause when it wrongly affects people you don’t know or especially that you don’t like. Why just last night, when a friend of mine posted to facebook an address allegedly linked to that editor who published the addresses of gun owners in New York, I asked her if she verified the information. I’m upset with the Journal News too, but I don’t think it makes it right to do in kind to her; an eye for an eye hurts everyone. Making special allowances for people you know or like or who are related betrays an emotional reaction that is based on connectivity rather than reason. That is partisanship.
Usually the partisans are also the people who are absolutely convinced they are principled or who talk incessantly about how principled they are. It’s sort of like suddenly realizing, “hey, I’m being humble” at which point you are no longer humble. Partisans project their behavior, and because they have the podium, it comes across loud and clear every hour on the hour. Christians and Jews are frequently critiqued for being intolerant when they are the most tolerant, almost too tolerant at times. They don’t usually blow up schools and buses when they don’t get their way. Partisan people put a crucifix in a jar of urine and call that art; you don't see Christians doing that to holy edifaces of other Faiths.
Emotion is the vehicle often of partisanship. If you listen to the president speak, he often speaks to jubilant crowds that sound more like fans at a Justin Bieber concert than journalists or legislators or serious statesmen. His voice comes from the front of his mouth which is where you talk when you are emotionally excited by something. The issues he advocates are typically ones that evoke an emotional response from people. While they can whip us into a fervor, they move quickly, before cool heads prevail and we are no longer engaged by our emotions. The partisan must create a demon, because it’s easier to drum up a mob to drive out a beast than it is to discuss an issue in the arena of ideas.
Our entire system of laws stands on the notion that some behaviors we tolerate and some we forbid, because they do not contribute to the continuity of civil society. The partisan is for expediency, and so he will sell himself to every behavior group. He teaches that if we disprove of a behavior we are also disproving of the person entire. In this way they shame us into capitulation and get us to tolerate the intolerable like during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror where any discontent with the executions of aristocrats in the plaza was assumed to make one an enemy of the republic. All that is needed is the suspicion to destroy a man. By that emotion, we are tolerating ourselves out of existence. When everything is allowed, nothing will be. When everything is free, nothing will be. We will have lost our sense of value and values, and in complete relativism, there is no point of reference. I sometimes criticize the GOP for not fighting, that some Idahoan Senator resigned for sexual misconduct while William Jefferson Clinton parades around his perversion and manages to win Father of the Year. At least the GOP Senator resigned. That was principled.
The Founding Fathers intended the legislature to be deliberative on purpose. Thomas Jefferson suggested laws wait an entire year when writing John Adams from Paris, so that people would not be swept up in emotion as they are too often now. Partisans are not thinkers, they are puppets. Partisans don’t have any accountability; they expect to be continually integrated in the present without regard for the past or weighed on intentions rather than results. How else can an impeached pervert still be the “best democrat president ever”? If he was a man of principle, he would fade into ignominity and stop getting in the way of principles. He shows up because women swoon with emotion when they see him.
Far too often, the people I know who think themselves most rational and driven by reason are the biggest partisans. They take sides on matters that are emotional and can give no substantive justifications for their positions or to support those whose platforms they espouse. Then they attack the character of people of principle without regard for the notion that men are mortal and that everyone has an Achilles heel. If they were of principle, they would either ignore them altogether or treat everyone who had the same one the same. That’s however a utopian wish and as such not founded in reason because it demands that people be principled. Thank God we imperfect people have a Messiah to save us.
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