Live and Let Die?
Americans are being forced to choose between two different moral codes. The ensuing struggle will end our experiment in the freedoms of thought, speech, and practice.
I’ve always been a live-and-let-live kind of guy, particularly when it comes to the issues that define the great American culture war. Speaking as someone who’s long embraced that ethos, I’ve never been more worried about our country’s future than I am today.
Here’s a small smattering of the battles I’m losing:
I think it’s great that Evangelical mega-churches, Chasidic communities, Amish villages, and polyamorous New Age communes have all been able to flourish. Let them compete for members and supporters by showing us that their teachings bring fulfillment, caring, and happiness!
I want my gay friends to marry, adopt, and raise families if that’s what they choose to do. I also respect my friends whose convictions teach them to opt out of celebrating gay life. We should all be free to live life on our own terms. None of us should be free to insist that others validate those terms.
I think that abortion is a really hard question because bodily autonomy is critical and infanticide is an abomination. I thus think that most early abortions should be legal, most late abortions should be illegal, and I’m not sure where to draw lines or how to specify exceptions.
I’m thrilled that adults suffering from gender dysphoria can access the combination of psychotherapies, hormone treatments, and surgeries they need to function. I favor all low-cost accommodations to ease their lives. I oppose proposals that endanger women or children, or that otherwise force major societal changes.
I believe that the people running private businesses should be free to incorporate prayer, meditation, group hugs, or encounter sessions into the workday.
I believe that parents should discuss sexuality with their children—including, if they wish, sexual behavior long considered deviant. I oppose sexualizing children in schools—public or private—or through popular culture.
I favor questioning authority, no matter who that authority might be. I believe in teaching theories and beliefs as theories and beliefs. I’m fine with almost any lesson that opens “some people believe that…” I oppose presenting beliefs—even my own beliefs—as truth.
For me, none of the above represent tolerance or compromise. They describe the world and the country in which I most want to live. Let a million flowers bloom. Let them compete. It works in economics. Why not in lifestyle choices?
I’ve never deluded myself into thinking that most people share that vision. To the contrary, I’ve always assumed that those who share such views constitute a small minority. Hard experience has taught that most people— left, right, traditional, progressive, enlightened, religious, scientific, or otherwise—would impose moral judgements on others if they thought they could do so successfully.
Nevertheless, through most of America’s history, my live-and-let-live faction has remained strong because we’re almost everyone’s second choice. Nearly everyone who recognizes that any area in which you might impose your will on others today could someday play to your disadvantage discovers the procedural benefits of free choice. Live-and-let-live may weaken your hand where it’s strongest, but it also protects you where you’re weakest—making it an ideal procedural compromise.
While my live-and-let-live faction may be small, we can usually ally with whoever is playing defense on any given day to cobble together a majority. Even better, all those folks who see our way as second-best means that we’ve never had to consider our own second choices. That’s one of the reasons that so many of my left-leaning friends have challenged me as I champion today’s Christians. “Whose side are you on?” they ask. “Whichever side is playing defense,” I say.
What if that compromise consensus eroded? What if a critical mass of Americans fell prey to the thinking that has dominated much of world history: We must fight to the death to impose our morality! First choice is our dictatorship; second choice, our martyrdom!
In such an America, those of us wistfully pining for a live-and-let-live ethos would be naïve pollyannas. In such an America, the possibility of procedural compromise will evaporate, the country will devolve into factions fighting to the death, and we too will have to choose a side.
We’ve not yet reached that point—but we’re heading there fast. The extent to which Woke leftism dominates our major institutions has empowered its advocates to believe that they can impose a durable totalitarian dictatorship. Freedom of thought and of speech is far more imperiled in 2020s America than at any point since our country’s founding.
Like religious and ideological minorities throughout history, most of the contemporary American traditionalists now playing defense have embraced the procedural protections inherent in live-and-let-live. Over time, that commitment will erode. As procedural victories prove to be localized and short-lived, more and more of them will conclude that when your enemy has declared a battle to the death, your only real choices are to kill or to die.
Our country is at a precipice. Within the next few years, either the center-left will awaken to the threat of totalitarian leftism and join us beneath the live-and-let-live banner—even at the risk of strengthening objectionable parts of the authoritarian right—or my beloved live-and-let-live ethos will all but disappear. Every faction and every American will choose a side. The battle will then rage until one side wins decisively and the other is relegated to dismal subservience. 21st century America will come to resemble the 20th century Middle East or Western Europe during the Counterreformation.
I will never waver from my belief that a live-and-let-live America is the best of all possible worlds. I may soon need convincing, however, that such an America remains within the realm of the possible.
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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.