Recently I received an email from a reader who chided me for my tone in an article I wrote a few months ago about the tendency of some conservative Christians of late to vote for the ACT Party. On reflection, I realised he was right. Although the rest of the article was more measured, I said in the conclusion:
I add that the Act Party is essentially a libertarian party. Libertarianism is the philosophy of selfish and wealthy people who dislike having a welfare system because they do not want to have to pay tax. I am at a loss to understand how any Christian could believe that we do not have social obligations to our neighbours.
My interlocutor was correct: I was being intolerant
In retrospect, my tone was out of line. The wording of this paragraph veered much too far into attacking the character of Act voters, rather than criticising libertarianism as a philosophy. What I ought to have said is that libertarianism is highly individualistic and that a welfare system is necessary to help people in desperate economic circumstances, and that I intensely dislike libertarianism for this reason.
Politics does not need to get personal
However, those of us on the left need to remember that it is possible to dislike or even detest libertarianism as a philosophy without detesting libertarians as people. Why is that? Well, for one thing, although I do think that Act Party politics is motivated by (among other things) a desire to pay less tax, I do not think that most Act voters perceive this as selfishness.
There are many reasons for divergence in political views
While I cannot even hope to cover exhaustively the many reasons for differences in political opinion here, I think differences in life experiences between someone with a degree and a well paid career on the one hand and a minimum wage KFC worker in South Auckland on the other lead people to attribute different weight to factors when deciding how to vote. I try not to judge someone who thinks that after 30 years of working hard to get where she is that she deserves to earn more than someone without a higher education, even though I vehemently disagree with that mindset.
There are legitimate reservations about some forms of social welfare
I also have some sympathy with people who think that (say) the Food in Schools programme is an inefficient means of distributing welfare as it will result in a lot of leftover food and therefore wastage. I think it is important to try and find common ground with political opponents where possible.
Baby boomers have unpaid mortgages
I am also conscious that in recent times there has been a spike in the numbers of elderly people who still have unpaid mortgages. I can understand the concerns of a 74-year-old at the end of her working life who feels anxious about how to provide for herself in retirement and how that might drive someone into voting for lower taxes.
Stereotyping occurs across the political spectrum
I realise that my observations above notwithstanding there will be many on the left who will struggle to separate their dislike of libertarianism as a philosophy from libertarians as people. But for comparison, in response to my criticisms of Israel in November last year the response of many rightwingers was to label me as “woke” or some variation thereof.
The term “woke” is dehumanising
Now, there are certain limited circumstances in which that word might be appropriate. Generally however it dehumanises an entire demographic and fails to see the ideological and cultural diversity of “the left”, which is stereotyping par excellence. It is entirely possible to be critical of Israel and yet have a balanced and nuanced view (although the other side of this is that I do also believe that much criticism of Israel is not fair or balanced).
The sort of comments I made in the article above are ironically the equivalent of the right describing me as “woke”.
Conclusion
Non-judgmentalism is hard. Sometimes I get things wrong. I meant what I said as a critique of libertarianism as a philosophy, not of libertarians as people, but I ended up being much more scathing of the character of my opponents than I intended. And I apologise for that.
[Editor’s note: what can be colourly said can always be said with a bit more grey and while Lucy has every right to be contrite and resolve to amend her ways the publisher reserves the right to be a giant jerk at all times].