The blood feud between the left and right is reaching a crescendo, and as an unrepentant individualist one can only cringe at the direction the country is heading. While it would be presumptuous to say that political polarization in this country is unprecedented in its divisiveness (this is a country that experience one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history), one gets the sense that things could get really ugly.
How can one make this claim? Because the division now cannot be boiled down to issues like slavery or tariffs (thus opening up a possibility for compromise), but is about a fundamental clash of worldviews.
The social conservative right and the progressive left are embroiled in a battle for hearts and minds. The battlefields cannot be walked upon like the ones at Fredericksburg or Appomattox. This makes power struggles between the left and right exceedingly dangerous, tending more toward social chaos then organized conventional civil war; this is because one does not even know who the enemy is by sight or by location. Since both sides see the government as an aegis to promote its agenda, they are wont to turn the government into an instrument of oppression in a country fairly evenly divided. This is why both sides will only escalate the political polarization by creating and aggravating grievances through the misuse of government.
It is not the job of the government to promote a Christian culture. Many people think that government has to at least safeguard a Christian culture. This is wrong. The government's job is to make it safe for there to be a Christian culture by defending individual rights. By consistently applying the rule of law, cultures not consistent with individual rights are prevented from arising or getting a foothold due to the operation of a vigorous justice system with a clear mandate.
Currently, the schools and universities are using taxpayer funds to promote other cultures under the guise of "multiculturalism." This is not about fairness or diversity at all, it is about eroding mainstream (a marxist might say bourgeois) culture and especially Christian culture. In this sense, the social conservative right feels threatened by the progressive agenda and wants government to defend Christian values. But two wrongs do not make a right. Neither Christians nor anti-Christians (not referring to atheists but more to anti-theists, to coin a term) should use government to defend religion or anti-religion, since both are matters of faith.
What the government can do in this world is defend individual rights, including freedom of conscience. This should be non-negotiable. That is why hate crimes legislation is so dangerous. It purports that a crime can be rooted in thoughts and not actions. This sets a dangerous precedent. The point of law is that it is universally applicable. When law becomes arbitrary in any sense, it is no longer law but fiat (not saying that judges and magistrates are dispensable in interpreting the law; obviously, reality is complex and ethical and moral issues require interpretation).
Law cannot be controlled by the citizenry in a constitutional republic if it is made to serve supernatural or collectivist agendas. Rules and evidence can only be consistently and thus justly applied to the law in an order predicated on the assumption of objective reality.
A consistent, stable and political order is needed in order for there to be personal freedom and the ability for individuals to adapt to their environments. People should be allowed to flourish or fail according to their own actions, while allowing for for the role of chance. One of the greatest mistakes of the progressive is in believing he can unnaturally control the anomalies of human life without unleashing unforeseen consequences in the spontaneous social and political order (in the Aristotelian vision these are one and the same; yet this is possible modernly only at the Jeffersonian level of the polity).
The political order should not be founded on promoting the public good or national greatness; this is the fatal philosophical error of the progressive and the social conservative, respectively. The just government is the one that uses coercion to protect individuals; not to force them to sacrifice on others' behalf.
Coerced altruism is one of the deadliest evil of our time, and one that is responsible for hundreds of millions of violent deaths throughout history. From the French Revolution to the Great Leap Forward, nationalism, socialism, and by extension, communism, are the political orders of systematic martyrdom for the greater good. When by the force of these systems' perverse internal logic things go awry, unimaginable chaos, ensuing oppression, and implosion are the inevitable results.
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