BLAME IT ON CAIN, DON'T BLAME IT ON ME

When God, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt all agree on something, it’s probably a good idea to pay attention. 

Cain and Abel were the first children of Adam and Eve.  According to the account in Genesis, Cain was the first human to be born, and Abel was the first human to die, murdered by his older brother.  When God called him out (Genesis 4:9), Cain gave a good Republican answer: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Suffice to say the Good Lord was not amused.

Centuries later, in the New Testament, the Son of God (Jesus, not Donald Trump) preached “love thy neighbor as thyself.” One of the Pharisees in his audience tried to quibble.  That’s all very well, the Pharisee said, but “Who is my neighbor?”  Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which can be found in Luke 10:25-37.  

The parable of the Good Samaritan has lost a lot of its punch over the past two thousand years, because most of us don’t know what Jews in Jesus’ time thought about Samaritans.  Long story short, to Judeans, Samaritans were the equivalent of ISIS or MS-13 – the worst people in the world, unclean heretics.  And yet, Jesus insisted that these filthy heretics were your neighbors, and told his followers not only to love them, but to love them “as thyself.”

Jesus returned to that theme in various ways throughout his earthly ministry.  In Matthew 25:40, Jesus told his followers that: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  Whether you opt to feed the hungry or to eliminate their food stamp allotment, you’re doing the same thing to Jesus himself.  Whether you opt to help strangers or to put their children in cages, you’re doing the same thing to Jesus himself. 

Needless to say, this is not a verse that is popular among Christian nationalists. 

But trying to be your brother’s keeper used to be part of the Republican tradition.  In fact, it was one of the earliest Republican traditions.  Three months after he won the presidency and three weeks before he was sworn in, our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, said this.  “I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.” 

Four score years later, Democrats finally got into the brother’s keeper business.  In his 1941 State of the Union speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt was even more specific than Lincoln.  Roosevelt spoke of Four Freedoms that everyone in the world deserves.  They were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Lincoln’s comment referred to the duty of people, both individually and collectively.  Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, on the other hand, dealt specifically with the duty of government.  Broadly speaking, Roosevelt believed that government had a responsibility both to mind its own business (the first two freedoms having the effect of limiting the government’s ability to tell its citizens what they should believe or say), but also a corresponding responsibility to protect and nurture its citizens (doing whatever necessary to insure that everyone had enough to eat and a place to live, while protecting them from domestic and foreign threats). 

Nowadays, Republicans would insist that being forced to subsidize the 3rd & 4th Freedoms infringed on their rights under the first two Freedoms.  That attitude amounts to an explicit rejection of Abraham Lincoln’s assumptions about man’s moral duty.  The Party of Lincoln has given way to the Party of Trump.  What else is new?

I think it’s safe to generalize that people on the left side of the political spectrum tend to believe that they are, in fact, their brothers’ keepers.  Sometimes they overdo it, and we get silly nanny state regulations.  But for the most part, their hearts are in the right place – that is, they’re siding with God, Jesus, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, rather than with Cain, the Pharisees, the Confederacy, and the Trump-McConnell axis of evil.  I give them credit for that, even if their tactics are often less than skillful. 

But there are minor tactical mistakes, and then there are major strategic blunders.  I’m watching people who should know better let their legitimate frustration with the 21st century American political process become less interested in making converts than in punishing heretics. 

For the past several years, I’ve called myself progressive.  I like progress.  Progress is our most important product.  But now it has come to my attention that the heretic hunters have co-opted the name “progressive.” 

Sadly, the contemporary progressive movement doesn’t have much to do with making actual progress.  Instead, in some circles, “progressive” signifies theoretical posturing that ignores the practical realities of making actual progress. 

“Progressives” would no doubt disagree.  And maybe they’re right.

But as I was exploring the taxonomy of left-of-center beliefs, I came across a comment thread on the topic that reframed the entire question for me.  A commenter named Frank Wilhoit wrote, “There’s no such thing as liberalism - or progressivism, etc.” 

He went on to say that “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Wilhoit’s point was that the foundational political/social assumptions of recorded human history are conservative. They evolved to defend the status quo – to justify the right of princes and priests to tell peasants and proles what to think and do. 

That’s a remarkably clarifying insight.  At its core, conservatism has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility or family values.  What conservatives want to conserve is simply their own privilege – white privilege generally, male privilege specifically, and wealthy white male privilege in particular.   

The rich and famous know how to game the system.  The rest of us get gamed.  Donald Trump gets away with stiffing his creditors because he can afford to tie things up in court for decades, until it’s just easier for the creditor to settle for pennies on the dollar.  Jeffrey Epstein got away with raping children for decades because money trumps justice.

If conservatism’s fundamental assumption is that a country’s laws are, or should be, designed to reward people like them, and punish (or at a minimum, restrain) everyone else, then our job is to neutralize them by insisting, in Wilhoit’s words, that “The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”

Whether it’s progressive, liberal, or “on the Left”, Wilhoit’s proposition strikes me as consistent with what God, Jesus, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were trying to tell us.  We are, in fact, our brother’s keeper.  And if loving our neighbors as ourselves seems impossible, we can opt for a reasonable Plan B, which is plain old tolerance.  Live and let live.  Tolerance isn’t a great end-state, but for folks (on both ends of the political spectrum) who are focused on excommunicating heretics, it’s a step in the right direction.

On election day in 2020, we’re going to need all the converts we can get.