My Burkean Take

For centuries, the word humanity has either led people to the many great and inspiring virtues of the human condition, or the incredibly evil actions that have been carried out through the hands of mankind. The more I talk with people, the more tweets I read, and the more I consume media, I realize how truly flawed humanity is-including myself, which is not a particularly palatable thing to be pondering.

The fact of the matter is that we are, indeed, flawed. Think of the people you most revere in life, because aside from religious figures, we tend to try to place these ideal people in our minds on pedestals, singing the praises of the work they have accomplished, in some cases suggesting the work they have accomplished outweighs anything else.

But why is it that when we speak of flaw, we see it as such a negative, damning thing? If you are looking for a political leader without flaw, for example, I wish you well in your journey, for you will never cease in wasting your time either trying to find that person, or endlessly trying to justify how you've found that person. Flaw does not equate to failure, and it does not lead to the cancellation of the person. Quite the contrary, flaw is something we share as humans-a quintessential piece of the human condition.

When I am contemplating the very flawed world in which we live, I often am carried back to my childhood mind, at least as I recall it; that mind that is moreover innocent and unaware of the complexities that this world operates with.

I'll never forget this story for the warm funny memory it is, but also for a broader understanding of the world around me.

I must have been 6 or 7 years old, and on the staircase in the living room, my two older sisters were arguing. What the context of their squabble was is not important, but what was important was the power that my Mother vested in me.

She was in the kitchen, washing dishes, and I was lamenting my two sisters arguing. I'll never forget my Mom getting annoyed with their argument, and telling me "You go tell them to shut the hell up." Now, I was an angelic and innocent child, and I am not exaggerating that in the slightest. I actually asked my Mom "you want me to tell them that?"

She confirmed, and with glee, I promptly ran into the living room, shouted to interrupt my sisters, and told them "Mom said for me to say this, so its ok, she said shut the hell up."

Now...why was I filled with glee? Was it that I was charged with the authority to shut my sisters up from an annoying squabble? Was it the fact that I was given permission to use a bad word? Or was it the fact that in this singular scenario, even if it would normally be bad in my mind, it was ok this time?

That may seem like a silly scenario to pose to you, but put yourself in 6 or 7-year-old blinky light up shoes you. Telling someone to shut the hell up was probably wrong, even if the adults around you may have done it and gave you the "do as I say not as I do" routine. So reflecting on this scenario, I often have to ask myself, did I enjoy it because it was bad in my head but I was free of consequence-that I would be allowed, but surely if my sisters did it back they would be in trouble?

That's the human flaw. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that to my sisters; perhaps my Mom shouldn't have given me the power to do such a thing (don't worry Mom...my potty mouth is far and removed from this scenario), but the reality is that none of that makes us (myself or my Mom) truly bad people. Not in the least.

However, if we honestly analyze things, are enough of us taking a step back and realizing that nobody is perfect? That nobody gracing God's green earth is without flaw, and that having flaw is not some sort of disqualifier of their personhood?

This brings me to how I opened a few paragraphs ago. We all have people we revere, and when I say revere, I really want you to think of the definition. Some of us have people we revere-that is, in fact, to feel a deep respect or admiration for. We should ever strive to be careful not to conflate revering with worship.

This past week, I had the opportunity to talk with Larry Sharpe, a former Libertarian candidate for Governor of New York, an activist, an entrepreneur, and a podcaster as well. When I initially set up the show, I knew I really liked Larry, and I knew the conversation could have taken dozens of possible routes depending on what came up. I don't ever prep rigorous outlines or bullet points to follow in my interviews, because ultimately, they are conversations, and conversations have a mind of their own.

One of the things that came up is something that I increasingly have to reinforce in my thinking, and I think a lot of us need to adopt and adapt.

That thing is this: When it comes to working together with someone, you don't have to agree on everything.

I actually take it a step further, and say, you absolutely should not agree 100% on everything. I say this because we live in an incredibly large, complex, diverse world and it is foolhardy for me to think that perhaps I am always right, every time. It becomes rather easy to take this feeling and build up echo chambers, and with the advent of social media and personal controls people can use, you can literally silence out every other belief, viewpoint, counter-argument and challenge to your beliefs, effectively reinforcing your own notions of the world and how you believe people think.

When you start developing your own associative purity tests, you really start staining your thinking. Just another reverberating wall that goes up around you.

It reminds me of a song by Rush called Subdivisions; Everyone sort of falls into place with their particular cliques, and to associate with the clique, you have to fit in, and to fit in, you can't associate with others from other cliques.

What is worse goes far beyond just association. As these cliques become hardened with sharp lines of division, the lines of acceptable rhetoric, information and discourse become extremely blurred.

I began to notice this after the events of January 6th and the storming of the Capitol building. To put it quite simply, and bluntly, your view of January 6th probably falls evenly right along your political ideology; If you're a Republican, you've mostly been waving the MAGA Banner, and you think despite a few hostilities, overall the Capitol RIots are exaggerated, and you still vehemently believe the election was stolen.

Flip to the Democrat coin, and the view becomes that it was the pinnacle of Trump authoritarianism, that he called in his armed wing to try to overthrow the constitutional processes for that day, and that everyone that attended the rally was out for blood.

In reality, however, those of us who analyze it from our own perspectives because this isn't a "team" issue, see it quite differently. For every right wing viewpoint I saw downplaying the severity, I saw a left wing viewpoint countering with things like "the cops just let them in," completely failing to acknowledge the situation with the lack of National Guard response--and ignoring hundreds of other videos that disproved the narrative.

If you deviate from either, chances are some in your circle probably ostracized you for not completely aligning with a narrative.

With Trump came the extreme, over bloated media reactions. It didn't start with him, as Bill Maher even admitted that the Left media treated candidates like Mitt Romney far too harshly, which he believes lead to the real bad guy: Trump.

We've seen how this plays out. We now see this as part of a grandiose play known as Political Theater. Rhetoric and storylines for the cameras. It is legitimately Pro-Wrestling, just over "policy". There are good guys (faces) and bad guys (heels). But just like in real life, some people see the faces as annoying and shoved down our throats, and cheer the heels just because we love a good bad guy or to be contrary.

Now, I'm not offering an end-all solution to that problem by running Libertarian programming. On the contrary, you don't know infighting until you've seen Libertarians debate truly trivial aspects of our ideology, like how someones policy plan would eliminate the Federal Reserve in 10 years versus 5 years; how ending federal income tax isn't going far enough; How the Department of Education should be eliminated and school choice should become a standard; and so on.

What I am offering, I suppose, is that everyone maybe read a little less of the extreme side of their echo chamber's literature, and read a little more Edmund Burke.