My recent reflections toward a theological account of society have quite a bit to say about the recent Brexit vote.
I don't imagine most of my American neighbors understand the gravity of the vote -- why it was not only that Britain voted to leave the EU, but also why that was a Very Bad Idea. (Though it really shouldn't be surprising to anyone -- which I'll lay out here.)
For months, Britain has been in the throes of a debate over whether or not to leave the European Union. To my mind, this had the potential of being one of the most morally consequent public deliberations my UK friends had seen in many years, precisely because it goes right to the heart of the nature of political identity, the basis of political agency and the extent of transnational obligation. This referendum shares much in common with the same debates that currently embroil the Republican party in the US. But that's hardly a surprise to those of us who pay attention to the skirmishes that go into creating the Culture Wars.
There were in fact early attempts -- on both sides -- to ennoble and elevate the national conversation, with some in the 'Leave' campaign urging a more expansive, radically democratic vision of sovereign "Britain," and some in the 'Remain' campaign proposing a revitalized form of pan-European civic solidarity.
But as this week's referendum drew near, the debate steadily devolved into its starkest, most debased terms. With the media duly playing its banalizing, slobbering role -- predictably pandering to the most extreme, least nuanced combatants at either end -- it was inevitable that the referendum would be billed as a contest between anti-immigrant nativism, anti-market protectionism and anti-establishment populism, on one side, versus free-market capitalism, technocratic legalism and liberal cosmopolitanism, on the other. (Again, the Culture Wars want nothing more than to make us believe it's as simple as that.)
In that respect, well, the Brexit referendum was unremarkable. It simply laid bare the fault lines that already exist in every corner of the West -- this us vs. them nasty coin-toss social vision.
But, for anyone who paid attention to the deeper conversations taking place in the UK, it's been rather remarkable that the 'Leave' campaign managed to assemble a kind of ideological menagerie of those disparate groups who are disenchanted with the EU, ranging from neo-Marxists right through to white supremacists. That's hardly a surprise, though. Modern geo-state politics has been played by actors who otherwise feel rejected from the body politic, and find themselves able to band together in a kind of "negative democracy". If you're on the outside of that body politic, it's become easier and easier (at least since the 60s) to put together a reactive political majority. (In the US, think the Moral Majority.)
Thing is, the sheer political heat generated by those negative democracies -- the passion they share in creating a national mythos that drives them -- makes them brutally effective in burning off everything they despise about the larger body politic. It happened in the US and the UK in the 80s and 90s, and we're seeing the fruit of all that destructive passion 20-30 years later. (Again, not a surprise, since it takes a generation for the intelligensia to influence the populace.)
Those of us who read our Aristotle in school, though, know that anger just isn't a good way to conduct democracy. That kind of anti-political activism sterilizes everything in its path. For example, it's a whole lot easier just to get rid of a tax than it is to create economic justice. Negative democracies will always be non-generative. They can't be organized to create anything good, true, or beautiful. There is no "common good" to these folks, because they have no vision of anything approaching a "common good" toward which to work. All they want to do is piss away the System they deem to have rejected them.
The grubby nativism that we find in the US and the UK at the moment pretty well encapsulates that negative democracy. We may be worried about the hordes of immigrants that want to flood our respective shores, but in the process we'll find that that fear only creates other negative democractic parties. Trust me, this cycle will never end until we recapture a vision of a society that isn't driven by sheer passion.
So I'm hardly surprised that Trump has gained a popularity in the US, or that the 'Remain' folks couldn't generate an appeal beyond an economic self-interest. The question for both the US and the UK going forward is fairly simple: What political principle (in Hannah Arendt's strong, teleological sense) might prove compelling enough, winsome enough, to reconstitute a sense of common identity and purpose once the euphoric nihilism of the referendum result gives way to the civic chaos of competing, incommensurable claims?
The challenge for the UK now -- and for the US going forward -- is how to recapture an educated debate. That's a substantial challenge that neither party in their respective countries seems all that willing to rise to. The populist rhetoric encouraged by the mainstream media is mostly corrosive -- it only encourages the deep divisions that this negative democracy creates. And, most importantly, the class and regional divides that were originally promoted at the earliest days of the modern nation-state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have remained because of that corrosive rhetoric, and enliven the negative democracy thereby.
So what's a Christian to do in that kind of environment?
Firstly, support ever-closer union with our neighbors. Tragically, the Reformation, Roundhead, nonconformist, puritan, whig, capitalist, liberal version has triumphed over our deep ancient character which is Catholic or Anglican, Cavalier, Jacobite, High Tory or Socialist. The Brixit vote was nearly 50-50. Just watch: The American vote in November will be only a divisive as the British one. That's no surprise, and it's tragic for Christians.
In short, the Brexit decision was a disaster -- just like the US presidential campaign currently underway is tragic. We're creating more problems than we're solving. What we need in the US and the UK is a body politic that will lead, not leave.
But here's the thing: Rather than building a consensus in which we learn to love our neighbors, Christians have been implicated in the social split. Basically, we're saying to one another that we have no need for our neighbor simply because they're different from us -- whether that's economically, socially, sexually, or whatever. That mentality ignores nearly everything in the Scriptures about strangers and neighbors. You can't be Christian and read the parable of the Good Samaritan and turn around to support the negative democracies.
It's not just one union that's broken. It's unity itself. Which is why Scotland will now have a referendum to leave the UK. Ireland will be plunged back into a north-south war because the border will be reinstated and the Good Friday Agreement will be crucified.
All this division will take at least a generation to heal. And the longer we Christians wait to engage in that reconciliatory healing, well, the more judgment will be heaped upon our heads.
Secondly, here's what will happen next. The Conservative MPs will elect a new leader, and therefore Prime Minister, by the end of September. He (or she) will secure their mandate by calling an election, which the Labour Party will lose spectacularly. The new PM (pro-Brexit and riding the populist wave) will govern virtually without an opposition. Cameron's technocratic liberal conservatism will be replaced by a populist, anti-corporate conservatism, a petit-bourgeois nationalism perfectly in tune with the reduced role on the world stage that England -- by then dismembered from both the European Union and the UK -- comes to occupy.
You can expect a parallel in the US, regardless of which candidate is elected in November.
I hope I'm wrong. But given the trajectories of our negative democracy these days, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
Again, that's a Very Bad Thing in which Christians might engage. Because it ignores the vision of society that is at the heart of our own Christian tradition.
I don't imagine most of my American neighbors understand the gravity of the vote -- why it was not only that Britain voted to leave the EU, but also why that was a Very Bad Idea. (Though it really shouldn't be surprising to anyone -- which I'll lay out here.)
For months, Britain has been in the throes of a debate over whether or not to leave the European Union. To my mind, this had the potential of being one of the most morally consequent public deliberations my UK friends had seen in many years, precisely because it goes right to the heart of the nature of political identity, the basis of political agency and the extent of transnational obligation. This referendum shares much in common with the same debates that currently embroil the Republican party in the US. But that's hardly a surprise to those of us who pay attention to the skirmishes that go into creating the Culture Wars.
There were in fact early attempts -- on both sides -- to ennoble and elevate the national conversation, with some in the 'Leave' campaign urging a more expansive, radically democratic vision of sovereign "Britain," and some in the 'Remain' campaign proposing a revitalized form of pan-European civic solidarity.
But as this week's referendum drew near, the debate steadily devolved into its starkest, most debased terms. With the media duly playing its banalizing, slobbering role -- predictably pandering to the most extreme, least nuanced combatants at either end -- it was inevitable that the referendum would be billed as a contest between anti-immigrant nativism, anti-market protectionism and anti-establishment populism, on one side, versus free-market capitalism, technocratic legalism and liberal cosmopolitanism, on the other. (Again, the Culture Wars want nothing more than to make us believe it's as simple as that.)
In that respect, well, the Brexit referendum was unremarkable. It simply laid bare the fault lines that already exist in every corner of the West -- this us vs. them nasty coin-toss social vision.
But, for anyone who paid attention to the deeper conversations taking place in the UK, it's been rather remarkable that the 'Leave' campaign managed to assemble a kind of ideological menagerie of those disparate groups who are disenchanted with the EU, ranging from neo-Marxists right through to white supremacists. That's hardly a surprise, though. Modern geo-state politics has been played by actors who otherwise feel rejected from the body politic, and find themselves able to band together in a kind of "negative democracy". If you're on the outside of that body politic, it's become easier and easier (at least since the 60s) to put together a reactive political majority. (In the US, think the Moral Majority.)
Thing is, the sheer political heat generated by those negative democracies -- the passion they share in creating a national mythos that drives them -- makes them brutally effective in burning off everything they despise about the larger body politic. It happened in the US and the UK in the 80s and 90s, and we're seeing the fruit of all that destructive passion 20-30 years later. (Again, not a surprise, since it takes a generation for the intelligensia to influence the populace.)
Those of us who read our Aristotle in school, though, know that anger just isn't a good way to conduct democracy. That kind of anti-political activism sterilizes everything in its path. For example, it's a whole lot easier just to get rid of a tax than it is to create economic justice. Negative democracies will always be non-generative. They can't be organized to create anything good, true, or beautiful. There is no "common good" to these folks, because they have no vision of anything approaching a "common good" toward which to work. All they want to do is piss away the System they deem to have rejected them.
The grubby nativism that we find in the US and the UK at the moment pretty well encapsulates that negative democracy. We may be worried about the hordes of immigrants that want to flood our respective shores, but in the process we'll find that that fear only creates other negative democractic parties. Trust me, this cycle will never end until we recapture a vision of a society that isn't driven by sheer passion.
So I'm hardly surprised that Trump has gained a popularity in the US, or that the 'Remain' folks couldn't generate an appeal beyond an economic self-interest. The question for both the US and the UK going forward is fairly simple: What political principle (in Hannah Arendt's strong, teleological sense) might prove compelling enough, winsome enough, to reconstitute a sense of common identity and purpose once the euphoric nihilism of the referendum result gives way to the civic chaos of competing, incommensurable claims?
The challenge for the UK now -- and for the US going forward -- is how to recapture an educated debate. That's a substantial challenge that neither party in their respective countries seems all that willing to rise to. The populist rhetoric encouraged by the mainstream media is mostly corrosive -- it only encourages the deep divisions that this negative democracy creates. And, most importantly, the class and regional divides that were originally promoted at the earliest days of the modern nation-state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have remained because of that corrosive rhetoric, and enliven the negative democracy thereby.
So what's a Christian to do in that kind of environment?
Firstly, support ever-closer union with our neighbors. Tragically, the Reformation, Roundhead, nonconformist, puritan, whig, capitalist, liberal version has triumphed over our deep ancient character which is Catholic or Anglican, Cavalier, Jacobite, High Tory or Socialist. The Brixit vote was nearly 50-50. Just watch: The American vote in November will be only a divisive as the British one. That's no surprise, and it's tragic for Christians.
In short, the Brexit decision was a disaster -- just like the US presidential campaign currently underway is tragic. We're creating more problems than we're solving. What we need in the US and the UK is a body politic that will lead, not leave.
But here's the thing: Rather than building a consensus in which we learn to love our neighbors, Christians have been implicated in the social split. Basically, we're saying to one another that we have no need for our neighbor simply because they're different from us -- whether that's economically, socially, sexually, or whatever. That mentality ignores nearly everything in the Scriptures about strangers and neighbors. You can't be Christian and read the parable of the Good Samaritan and turn around to support the negative democracies.
It's not just one union that's broken. It's unity itself. Which is why Scotland will now have a referendum to leave the UK. Ireland will be plunged back into a north-south war because the border will be reinstated and the Good Friday Agreement will be crucified.
All this division will take at least a generation to heal. And the longer we Christians wait to engage in that reconciliatory healing, well, the more judgment will be heaped upon our heads.
Secondly, here's what will happen next. The Conservative MPs will elect a new leader, and therefore Prime Minister, by the end of September. He (or she) will secure their mandate by calling an election, which the Labour Party will lose spectacularly. The new PM (pro-Brexit and riding the populist wave) will govern virtually without an opposition. Cameron's technocratic liberal conservatism will be replaced by a populist, anti-corporate conservatism, a petit-bourgeois nationalism perfectly in tune with the reduced role on the world stage that England -- by then dismembered from both the European Union and the UK -- comes to occupy.
You can expect a parallel in the US, regardless of which candidate is elected in November.
I hope I'm wrong. But given the trajectories of our negative democracy these days, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
Again, that's a Very Bad Thing in which Christians might engage. Because it ignores the vision of society that is at the heart of our own Christian tradition.