No one is excluded
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said he thinks Democrats expect him to fight. Maybe so. But if leaders in both parties engage in verbal fights using stereotypes and derogatory language, everyone will be hurt. No one will be excluded from the harm continuing to be done to our country.
Dean characterized the GOP recently as “a white, Christian party.” Statistically, that may be true, but the language stirs up race and religious fears and divisions. How does that help? Then he claimed that Republicans “never made an honest living in their lives.” That’s so blatantly inflammatory, and obviously false, that even his Democratic audience was shocked. Some people in both parties are no doubt heirs to family fortunes, and some in both parties have made their livings in ways that might seem “easy” to other people. But as a stereotypical remark, it helps no one.
On an NBC interview, Dean said that the Republican party now has “the agenda of the conservative Christians." I happen to agree that many prominent and powerful Republican leaders do agree with the agenda of a specific group of radically conservative Christians, but moving from that thought to stereotyping the whole party as “white Christians” stirs up animosity and accomplishes nothing. And even speaking of “the agenda of the conservative Christians” is such a broad statement that it is meaningless. Conservative Christians are not all one large, homogeneous group either. Many of them have no political agenda. There are some powerful, popular religious leaders who are conservative Christians who have a political as well as a religious “agenda,” but it is important to be more specific when we begin to talk about what is real and not just stereotypical.
No one is excluded when war comes to a nation. People’s homes are destroyed and lives are lost because bombing strikes can never be so precise that they avoid collateral damage. The same is true in our current culture wars and political and religious battles. Verbal bombings that take out whole neighborhoods only serve to feed the destructiveness of the battle and the hatred engendered by the conflict. We can do better than that. We must do better for the sake of our world and our children.
