Which Side Are You On?

    As we watch singers and actors taking sides in the presidential election, we may wonder what connects art and politics.
      I am not here thinking of the art that has always paid attention to certain kinds of public affairs -- songs of protest, for example, or novels that treat social injustice.  Rather I have in mind entertainers who trade on their celebrity to magnify mere partisan allegiance.
    This is not a major matter.  Just a straw in the wind. But straws do show which way the wind is blowing. Celebrity feeds and is fed by popular culture. Celebrity politics suggest an assumption that side-taking is safely consistent with cultural norms. And indeed it is.  In America nowadays, the question in the air is not, How can we best live together? but Which side are you on?
    The skirmish lines of our culture war often run through religious territory. At one extreme a faction of Christian conservatives pushes the rest of us to accept a dog's breakfast of religious doctrine and bully-boy politics. Their ardor for religious values includes an ironic disrespect for religious values -- other people's, that is. Failing by moral persuasion to induce other people to abandon their values, these self-appointed Christian soldiers resort to force. They want the government to mandate their chosen interpretation of Christian scripture through civil law. This is of course dangerous both to religion and to a principled rule of law.
    An attitude at the other extreme is not so sharply focused or militant. But it is consequential. It rises from a muddled extrapolation on principles of church/state separation.  The concept of freedom of religion has morphed into a cultural expectation of freedom from religion.  A lot of us feel we have a right to live beyond sight or sound of any manifestation of faith.
     The attitude reaches far beyond issues of nativity scenes on courthouse lawns. It reaches into private spheres. Ask a person of faith what kind of looks may be directed at a murmur of prayer over a restaurant meal.  Or consider common social etiquette:  Tell an off-color story at a dinner party and you may be judged merely daring or naughty. But venture a serious consideration of God and you may be charged with a truly significant breach of manners.
   And consider again the weathervane of celebrity.  Our popular culture is so ripe for anti-religious attitudes that to the pantheon of celebrity liberals and celebrity conservatives we have now added celebrity atheists.
    On either side of the religious skirmish line, groups of us scorn other people's beliefs.  On either side of political skirmish lines, groups of us disdain questions of balancing ends and means.
    The United States Congress will suffice as exhibit A.  Once known as the world's greatest deliberative body, it has lost capacity for true deliberation because it has lost respect for the very idea.  Moderates are seen as weaklings and treated accordingly.  Compromise is equated with failure. Congress wars over trifles and trifles with fundamentals.  The nation's business is conducted with the dignity of a soccer riot. The default on sworn duty is especially sharp in the House of Representatives, where a Republican faction is so besotted with ideology that it values nothing else.
    All of which brings us back to the weathervane of the presidential election.  Here there is no real contest of ideas, not much at all beyond gestures of contempt.  Both sides have favored epithet over substance. The Republican ticket has adulterated even this sorry mix with a campaign of audacious falsehood.
    And if disdain for the truth is shoddy,  Republican strategy contains another element that is downright alarming. The Romney/Ryan ticket plainly intends to reveal as little as possible about specifics of the policies they would take to Washington.
    Only two readings are possible here:
    -- The Republican candidates believe the American people have no right to know what they can expect from their government.
    -- The candidates know the people have that right but mean to scorn it in hopes of gliding to election on glossy platitudes.  They mean to gain the White House by tricking the electorate.
    The tenor of this campaign is a spectacular disgrace. We must hope that we are not soon again asked to endure the like of it.
    But the campaign is in part the work of party strategists and their hired-gun consultants.  Something else is at work in the tenor of our larger national discourse. There, the much-lamented failure of civility is only a symptom.  The root failure is one of tolerance.  We are surrendering to a notion that different values are illegitimate by virtue of being different.
    This is civic laziness. Or perhaps it is only civic weariness. Hard times take a toll.