The Life of an Oxymoron (an essay)

[Davidium]

The Life of an Oxymoron

Min. David Pyle

29 October 2004



(The Davidium Disclaimer: Sermons of the minister are products of his slightly deranged mind, a mind that even the holder does not entirely understand. As such, all such sermons are not Dogma, and are only the, possibly temporary, opinion of Minister David at the time he set pen to paper, so to speak. In other words, read these sermons not looking for dictates, but hoping that they will inspire thought in you.)



Tonight, as I often do, I turned off the lights and lay in bed, thinking of my day. In this time of political strife and turmoil (2004 election being just days away) my thoughts quickly turned to politics. Specifically, I began to ponder my political ideas…



What I quickly began to realize was that, to many in our society my views would seem to be, if not contradictory, then at the very least quite odd. Both in my workplace, in my Deist and Unitarian Fellowships, and even among my friends my views often cause them to pose the question “how can you think that way?”



When I was in the military, I became a close intimate of that age old joke, “Military Intelligence is an oxymoron”. It crops up from time to time still, even among those who do not know that in my past I was a member of the Military Intelligence Corps. I remember thinking back then that those who laughed at that joke just showed that they had no idea what they were talking about…



But in truth, the problem was that they simply did not understand the context. They were confusing the Labels with what they were supposed to represent.



A few weeks ago, a member of the Unitarian Fellowship I belong to (which is mostly populated by members of the liberal bent) came up to me and said “You know David, I have always thought that all conservatives were fascists… but you are a conservative, and you are not a fascist.” He seemed quite taken by the thought… and I will admit that it has taken me some time to digest it as well.



You see, I hold many liberal positions for quite conservative reasons. I also hold many conservative positions for quite liberal reasons… by the way I use the labels “Liberal” and “Conservative”.



Perhaps it is best if I explain this concept by showing how it has shaped some of my political views. Let us first take a topic of this current election cycle, same-sex marriage.



I believe strongly that government should “make no establishment of religion”. Now, this does not mean that government should “ban” religion, but rather that it should always act from a secular base, while allowing religion the freedom to “go where it will”.



To me, marriage is a religious institution. It is only in recent human history that anyone besides ordained priests could “sanctify” the “bonds of holy matrimony”. It is considered a “sacrament”, and it is made “before God”. When it was given a secular component (tax differences, visitation, governmental recognition) that is when marriage was re-defined…. Not now.



What I would propose is that we revert to the earlier concept of Marriage… that it is made before God. Marriage would once again become a purely religious ceremony. If your religion says that you can be married, then have a clergy member perform the ceremony and you are married.



But this ceremony has absolutely no legal standing whatsoever in the eyes of secular government.



If you wish to then have all of the civil benefits that we now associate with “marriage”, then you must also get a civil union. This is a contract between two people, under restrictions and qualifications set by the government, combining the personal and financial assets of two people into a recognized legal partnership. You do not have to be married to be civil partners, nor do you have to be civil partners to be married.



What this does is neatly divorce the secular legal issues from the religious authority. Each church can “marry” who they wish, and deny who they wish. But the government decides who gets the civil union benefits, and the government can then be required to apply civil unions in a fair and equitable manner, for all citizens… no matter what their plumbing is. This also removes the questionable practice of having a religious authority institute a civil legal contract.



The end result is that both Gay marriage and Gay civil unions would become the norm. I know several religious institutions (including the UUA) that would gladly perform the religious marriage ceremony for Gays, while the government would then be required to enforce the civil union laws equally among the citizens.



You see, a conservative belief (separation of church and state) led me to what some consider a liberal position.
(end of part 1)

 

[Davidium]

(part 2)

I will take another “hot button” issue and apply the same process to it. In fact, I came to the following position while I was still (if only barely) an evangelical Christian. When I annunciated this position back then, I was nearly thrown out of a Sunday school class.



You see, I am pro-choice, and I arrived at this liberal position based upon a conservative belief.



I believe that God has given mankind free-will. Though reason has verified this for me, I came to my original belief in free-will based upon the Garden of Eden parable in the Bible. If it were not to prove that mankind has free-will, then there would have been no reason to place the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge” in the Garden of Eden.



I believe that we, as humans, must have the freedom to make our own choices. We must have the freedom to choose that which others believe to be wrong. If we legislate everything, then that is just man denying free-will to his fellow man, and as God did not do that, neither should we.



Now, this freedom is not unlimited. When the overwhelming majority of society has decided that a certain behavior is wrong and destructive to society (such as rape and murder) then we are justified in passing legal restrictions against such action. In such cases we are not even forbidding the action, just setting the pricetag high enough that those who might be tempted to commit such action will be dissuaded from doing so.



Now, in the case of abortion, I do not believe we have that “overwhelming majority” consensus necessary to justify legislating what should be a matter of choice. Someday we may, and that is a goal to work for. But until such time, defending the right to have an abortion is, to me, defending human free-will.



Once again, what I consider a conservative belief (human free-will) enshrined in the beginning of the bible has lead me to what some consider a liberal position. The same principle is why I support legalization of marijuana (though due to my personal morality I have never used the stuff and consider it a sign of personal weakness).



This dichotomy runs throughout my political beliefs. I also have liberal reasons for wanting to abolish the income tax, for wanting to require all who wish to vote or hold office perform a term of civil or military service, for reforming how we choose our presidents, and many, many more.



I even believe that, at its heart, protecting the environment is a conservative cause.



I also have a very liberal set of reasoning that has lead me to support the War on Terror, and specifically the war in Iraq. I believe that we, as Americans, have benefited more than any other people in human history from the fruits of the tree of Liberty. We have more freedoms, and a higher standard of living than any other people to have walked this Earth. As such, I think we bear a responsibility to the rest of the world. We owe the world.



What do we owe the world? We owe them Liberty. And I believe that Liberty rarely comes without conflict.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

I don’t think Thomas Jefferson was speaking just about our Liberty, American Liberty… but rather about Liberty around the world. Iraq was and is a country in need of liberty, led by a Tyrant.



Now, why is this a liberal concept to me? Because the conservative concept is that we owe the world nothing; that they should find their way on their own. I held this view for a long time, but have since realized that being born an American should not be a right, but rather a responsibility. We are the world’s police, because it is the price we pay for the freedoms we enjoy.

(End of Part 2)

 

[Davidium]

(part 3 and final)

Why do these positions seem to consist of oxymorons? Why does a “conservative gay rights activist” or a “liberal supporter of the war on terror” make people goggle eyed and question the true reasons why I support marijuana legalization?



Because we have allowed the Labels we attach to political ideas to replace the thought behind those ideas. I and my fellow Deist seekers have often discussed this trend in religious thought. It only makes sense that it would extend also into political thought.



What makes a position conservative or liberal? What makes a belief Deistic or Christian? As I have done before in discussing allowing labels to replace your religious beliefs, let us look at the dangers of applying labels to political beliefs.



Beliefs are like fingerprints… no two humans beliefs will be the exact same, at least not if they give those beliefs any thought at all. Why? Because we each have different experiences. The events that have made me who I am are unique, they occurred only to me. Therefore, the product of those experiences, my beliefs, will be just as unique.



Yet, as humans, we want to try and apply simple labels to that which is near infinitely complex. Think about the paltry number of political labels out there. Conservative, Liberal, Moderate, or Independent. Four. That is it. To describe over 293 million different sets of beliefs, we have four measly labels. And that is just in the United States. Heck, we have thousands of labels for our religious beliefs, and that is not enough! In politics, we have four.



It looks a little better if we think of it by parties, but not much. Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Green, Progressive, and Reform. Seven, and a few of those have almost no members… Parties may then actually be a worse designation, when you consider that only Republican and Democratic labels really matter.



When you try to use other labels, people just look at you in confusion. I once introduced myself as a “progressive meritocrat with libertarian tendencies in the current political paradigm”. I might as well have said that I was a Klingon.



My point is that, we have allowed the completely inadequate political labels to replace the beliefs themselves, just as many have allowed their religious labels to replace their true beliefs about God. Instead of thinking about the political issues, endeavoring to find real solutions, talking heads go on news channels and spout “talking points” garbage at each other, to a populace that either does not care, or has been made intellectually numb by the lack of substance in the discourse.



Just as religious fundamentalists spout nonsense they learned in Sunday School, political activists spout political positions that they have never thought about in depth, but rather often adopt because it is what the “other side is against”.



How I long for the days of the enlightenment, when we humans were truly asking questions, and looking for answers. How I envy those men who debated and argued in Sam Adam’s Tavern about Taxation, Liberty, and what kind of government men could thrive under.



Not all of that day were such forward thinkers. It was the political hacks that had a black man declared 3/5ths of a white man. But there were enough of the true political “free-thinkers”… and they created a nation.



In this time of political strife, when partisan hacks are saying the same thing over and over, while neither side listens to each other, let us drop the labels, drop the “conservative” and “liberal”. Hell, let us even forget about the candidates. Let us focus on the ideas, the thought, and the beliefs.



As we Deists try to do in our discussions about religion, let us ignore the application of politics and instead focus on the underlying philosophy. Let us ignore the labels and focus on the ideas. I think we will all learn from each other, and grow in the process.

Reason and Respect in all you say and do,

David Pyle