Willing to Exist

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As a dyed-in-the-wool progressive myself, I have often wondered about individuals belonging to minority groups discriminated on by republicans, who hold conservative positions on issues such as social welfare. Famous examples are black republicans and conservative gays. I was watching The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan on Real Time with Bill Maher when I was struck by a thought. Could it be that there is a common underlying thread connecting these issues, a thread that progressives are tuned into and people like Andrew Sullivan are not? Specifically, is an apriori belief in contra-causal free-will leading some people to see things differently from most progressives?

Andrew is a gay conservative (although he has jumped off the GOP ship) who argues as vehemently for free-markets as he does for equal rights for gays. On this particular show, he states with conviction his belief in the power of the market and free-enterprise; in his belief in the fairness of a system that rewards those who work hard and punishes those who don’t. He chides the stupid American people who were to blame for the economic crisis because of their irresponsible fiscal behavior, and claims that those like himself who had made intelligent investments were also going to suffer (unfairly) along with the idiots, as the economy spiraled downward.

Let’s look at his positions on gay rights. Andrew Sullivan believes strongly that people are born gay or straight.

But the reality, of course, is that gay people are born everywhere. It's a remarkable fact of this minority that it is absolutely endemic to the society and, in fact, endemic to every society that has ever existed. Gay people come from and live in and grow up in heterosexual families. Unlike any other minority, they are absolutely integrated into the broader society from the minute that they are born.”

So it’s obvious that he understands what it means to be born gay. When it comes to his sexual behavior, Andrew Sullivan knows that the free-will that Christians preach about is an illusion. This is easy for him. After all, he IS gay. But Andrew is not many of the other things he despises.

The central theme of his argument last Friday was that individuals need to practice fiscal responsibility. He then takes this position to its extreme form, in the process disregarding the fact that most of society’s functioning workers don’t have the mental capacity and/or the education to make the informed choices that he can. Therein lays the reason why he does not see it essential to have regulatory mechanisms in place to help guide the public and keep corporations in check- what most people would say are the basic responsibilities of government.

Let’s say Andrew does not have the mental acuity that he is so known for

and that he has to depend on the system in different ways, as many do in our class-divided society. Would he still feel the way he does now about abolishing government regulation of corporations put in place to protect the public? Somehow, I doubt it. This man who argues for us to accept gays as born different and separate by nature, needs to put himself in the shoes of a small town handy-man or the guy who cleans the grease traps at the NYC soup kitchens, to understand that there are cards other than homosexuality that the deck of life can deal you.

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People like Andrew Sullivan show a surprising lack of empathy as well as a high level of cognitive dissonance for someone so intelligent. It goes to show that people can partition their beliefs about free-will and selectively use a conception of it that is advantageous to them. A more naturalistic perspective is all Sullivan needs to completely alter his positions on socio-economic policy. I hope you read this, Andrew.