The Clash Of Ironies

What America is plagued with today is war between the Immoral Right vs the Intolerant Left. This is the clash of ironies.

Btw, I hasten to add that my use of the term 'Left' is breaking one of my cardinal rules here. For I have always distinguished between Liberals and Leftists. But in the context of this discussion, the distinction does not necessarily hold.

Why is the battle between the Immoral Right and the Intolerant Left a class of ironies. It is simply because the conservatives have for a long time portrayed themselves as champions of moral values whereas the Left has portrayed itself as champions of tolerance--especially tolerance of the marginalized. And what do we see today? We see that because many conservatives have reduced the pro-life label to that of opposing abortion, it has embraced the breaking of other moral values such as the murder and theft that occurs in our wars and interventions as well as in our domestic policies that favor the wealthy over all others. And when Christians do this, they show a flagrant disregard for Church history. For in the past, when Christians, especially Christian leaders, align themselves with wealth and power, as they did just prior to the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, they brought unnecessary persecution on the Church and greatly damaged the reputation of the Gospel.

Likewise, as the Left has often portrayed itself as champions of tolerance, quite lately it has shown itself to be highly intolerant of  free speech for conservatives. Here we should note that conservatives do have a significant amount to contribute to our nation's discussions on issues. However, the Left has used specific points of conservative hypocrisy and bad history to portray conservatives as a monolithic group. 

The American Left has no excuse for the above behavior because one of its past champions is Martin Luther King Jr. And painting an opposing group as a monolith and then not allowing them to say their peace in public is not something that King would do. But then again, today's Left, is, for the most part, devoid of any disciplined study of King. And with that, the Left has joined conservatives in making any remembrance of King merely superficial, symbolic, and self-serving.

Unfortunately because the Left is correct in accusing the Right of immorality and the Right is correct in accusing the Left of intolerance, they both have an extra reason for ignoring the charges being brought against them besides the plague of tribalism. That those legitimate charges against the other has destroyed the ability of the members of each group from engaging in self-criticism.

Neither group can win this clash. For in fighting each other while denying the truth about themselves, it is the rest of us who turn out to be losers. That is because such fighting turns too many of us off from even wanting to learn about the issues promoted by each group. And because each group also has valid concerns, when we ignore the concerns of one or both group, we only ensure that we will be ignorant of our own demise until it is too late.

Of course there is one more irony. That in the land of the free and the home of the brave, that we seem to stuck in our ways to adapt to an ever changing future.