\n\u201cBoy, the way Glenn Miller played
songs that made the hit parade
Guys like me we had it made
Those were the days
Didn\u2019t need no welfare state
ev\u2019rybody pulled his weight
gee our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days
And you knew who you were then
girls were girls and men were men
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again
People seemed to be content
fifty dollars paid the rent
freaks were in a circus tent
Those were the days
Take a little Sunday spin
go to watch the Dodgers win
Have yourself a dandy day
that cost you under a fin
Hair was short and skirts were long
Kate Smith really sold a song
I don\u2019t know just what went wrong
those were the days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Archie Bunker represented a now almost nonexistent demographic, blue-collar urban whites, who were typically ethnics, Italians, Greeks, Poles, who for several generations had lived in their old neighborhoods, centered around family and church, and were aghast over postwar social trends that began to displace them into the suburbs. Bunker was interestingly a white Anglo Protestant, who didn\u2019t attend or like his church very much, mocking and typically mispronouncing the name of his pastor Reverend Felcher, as \u201cReverend Fletcher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long after Archie Bunker had left the scene, grievance politics were amplified in 2020 with Black Lives Matter protests, which strove to articulate the anguish of many blacks contending against the legacy of centuries of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. But unlike the earlier Civil Rights Movement, which emerged from the black church, BLM did not embrace American Exceptionalism and offered no redemption, only condemnation. Its fruits were mainly the retreat of urban law enforcement followed by increased crime, of which urban blacks were the chief victims. Professions of chronic victimhood, even if justified, are often self-defeating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Civil Rights protests in the 1950s and 1960s rejected chronic victimhood and appealed to the American Creed that rhetorically sought one nation fair to all. Modern identity politics mostly rejects national harmony in favor of preferred interest groups centered on race, ethnicity, sexuality, or economic status. They inveigh against a perceived oppressor or abstract system with vast control, privileging itself and tormenting everybody else.<\/p>\n
Modern identity politics pit innocent victims against their supposed perpetual tormentors. It\u2019s usually unclear how these tormentors will be defeated. Instead, they are just continuously denounced as part of the grievance, almost making grievance itself the goal and central to the identity.<\/p>\n
In few societies are there ever completely innocent victims or all-powerful tormentors. Mostly there are contending interest groups pursuing what they perceive to be best for them and clashing with other interest groups. Ideally, these competing interests are mediated peacefully and not deemed existential or apocalyptic.<\/p>\n
The fallen human condition is such that every person and every group has misguided and often selfish views of what is best. Justice must be sought but with the realism that absolute earthly justice is not possible, and with the awareness that nobody is completely just.<\/p>\n
Pitting the supposed righteous in society against the wicked is politically futile and destructive. Instead, interests must be negotiated among competing factions, which are themselves in continuous flux. Many \u201crich men north of Richmond\u201d are from south or west of Richmond, from modest backgrounds, but who moved. And once great \u201crich men\u201d are now forgotten, their descendants disappear into the national fabric.<\/p>\n
America\u2019s chief founding father, George Washington, was himself literally a \u201crich man north of Richmond\u201d who like the other founders had no illusions about human nature, noting:<\/p>\n
\u201cA small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle \u2026 Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good.\u201d<\/p>\n
And more pithily: \u201cWe must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least somewhat aware of this conundrum, the recent song complains: \u201cLivin\u2019 in the new world \/ With an old soul \/ These rich men north of Richmond \/ Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.\u201d True, for the current \u201crich men\u201d and for all others who would replace them, as replaced they will be at some\u00a0point. Few willingly relinquish power, but power inevitably recedes.<\/p>\n
As the Virgin Mary promised about a divine process that never ends: \u201cHe has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Originally published at Juicy Ecumenism.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n
Mark Tooley became president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) in 2009. He joined IRD in 1994 to found its United Methodist committee (UMAction<\/em>). He is also editor of IRD\u2019s foreign policy and national security journal,\u00a0Providence<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n