Swinging for the Fences — Don’t Fail for Lack of Trying

Why might an “integrative vision” accomplish now what a sentimental novel did then? Maybe, because whereas the readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin needed to feel more deeply what they already knew to be true, what Liberal America needs is to see a truth not yet recognized.

“Make something better happen.”

For more than a decade, my immodest ambition has been for the ideas just presented in the first chapter to serve as the Uncle Tom’s Cabin for this era. By that I mean that I have hoped that my message would do for the latent power of Liberal America what Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, did for the North in the first half of the 1850s.

The idea that slavery was a moral wrong had been getting an increasing foothold in the North in the decades before Harriet Beecher Stowe’s bestselling book was published. But in the political realm, the force that opposed slavery (and the Slave Power) was still being out-fought by the pro-slavery forces from the South abetted by many Northern politicians.

Then came Stowe’s book, dramatizing—or melodramatizing—the pernicious character of the institution of slavery. The book caught fire, helping stiffen the backbone of Northerners, readying them to stand up to the Slave Power.
This was during a decade in which that Slave Power (as many called it) was acting the bully in the American power system, becoming ever more persistent in its overreaching efforts not just to protect but to expand the dominion of the economic system based on human bondage.

It was because of that fire that Lincoln, upon meeting Stowe during the Civil War, is said to have declared: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!”

Here we are once again in a situation with some important parallels—with Liberal America today being much like the North in the early 1850s. Once again the side that, however imperfect, is tasked to defend Wholeness is being bullied, and is responding in a weak, ineffectual fashion.

Once again, a destructive force is dividing the country into antagonistic elements, and thereby damaging the ability of our democracy to navigate its way through our challenges in a wise and constructive way.

And so I’ve hoped that my message would rouse Liberal America to fight the same spirit against which Harriet Beecher Stowe kindled the fire with her book, the same force that, a century and a half ago, used the Slave Power to damage, and nearly destroy, this nation.

Such things happen, but very rarely. And thus far my efforts—as a blogger and as a political candidate—have failed to light a fire as Uncle Tom’s Cabin did.

[NOTE: Not much of a fire, anyway. There was a time during my congressional campaign, which was fortunately caught on a video* (“A Sick and Broken Spirit” LINK) that took off on the Internet, when that fire did quite palpably get lit.]

It might reasonably be argued that—even if the message that has driven me were as on target as I’ve believed—my aspiration was unrealistic and inappropriate. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a novel, which means it used narrative to bring its readers through a well-orchestrated set of experiences.

By contrast, my message—particularly in the form of this book—is directed to the intellectual level, presenting a coherent set of ideas to explain the meaning of the facts before us. Would Liberal America not be better kindled by something written in the mode of Stowe’s moving message?

The experiential dimension of a story (whether on the page, or in a film) has an elemental power to grab people “where they live.” Moreover, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in a sentimental and melodramatic fashion that was especially powerful, in that era, for generating an emotional impact.

The death of Little Eva, the cruelties of Simon Legree, the nobility and Christ-like self-sacrifice of Uncle Tom—all these were indelible images and they were presented in that powerful mode that mimics our lives as we live them.

By contrast, the passions are not so readily evoked when people are engaged at the intellectual level. So how could a book like this play anything like an Uncle Tom’s Cabin kind of a role?

While there’s validity to that argument, there is also an important point to be made on the other side.

At the time that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, Stowe’s readers already knew a basic truth—that slavery was an immoral and unjust system—and what was needed was for them to feel the compassion, the outrage, the yearning for justice called for by the truth that they knew.

In America in our time, the situation is different. Yes, we in Liberal America need to feel more of the outrage and more passion for fight that our situation calls for. (See* “Where’s the Moral Outrage.”)

But I believe that what underlies the lack of outrage and passion in the Liberal America of our times is an inadequate understanding of the truth of our situation.

Our weakness, I am asserting, is a function of the inability to see what’s before our eyes, and that inability in turn is a function, I am asserting, of important errors at the level of fundamental ideas.

If what we are up against is an “evil force” which has made today’s Republican Party its instrument, but people cannot see it because their ideas about the world leave no room for such a thing as an “evil force,” then the necessary response from people may require their changing their ideas about the world.

So lighting a fire in the part of America that must stand up and fight against an evil force is a different task in today’s crisis than it was in the crisis over slavery in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s day.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin led people to feel deeply a truth they already knew. What We’re Up Against attempts to get people to see a truth that they apparently do not yet recognize.

And for that task, particularly with people who think, a compelling argument about the workings of the human world might well be the right instrument.

I still hold out a hope therefore—small, but real—that something might be kindled by an intellectually coherent argument that shows that “the battle between good and evil” is a dynamic at the core of the challenge facing us.
But there is another problem. It may be that the necessary change in liberal/secular America must begin at the level of some of our fundamental ideas. But there are other problems in how, in these times, Liberal America deals with ideas.