Understanding the opposition
By Scott Daniel, MALS '08
Published on Tuesday, October 10, 2006
To the Editor:
Zak Moore is correct ("Elitism, Not Intellectualism," Oct. 5). Elitism has no place in politics. In his words, elitism "looks down on certain people and their positions and high-handedly labels them as culturally inferior and intellectually ignorant." Apparently, Moore is elitist.
With 500 words in The Dartmouth, Moore neither explains the merits of his ideas nor lists the failings of his opponents'. He defines away opposition by portraying ideas as the only American option. "Reverence for God and religion, love for America... are not partisan issues," he writes. "All people dedicated to what America stands for hold these truths self-evident and inalienable."
Only two organizations in the last 50 years have presumed to define "American:" the INS and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Moore even includes reverence for our Constitution and love for America in his list of "basic human values." Does "human" include Canadians?
Liberalism's problem is not, as Moore writes, that liberals "will not concede that America is the greatest country in the world." That willful omission may be the only useful thing the American left does any more.
Greatest country or not, America is imperfect. Some Americans still lack food, shelter or lifesaving medication. The Kingdom of God is not at hand. We need a vigorous public discussion, weighing ideas for their impacts on Americans' lives, to help build it. Labeling an idea un-American (or inhuman) just because it denies what we would rather believe deadens debate, trapping us with the status quo's poverty, pollution, and war.