An Open Letter to Steve Bannon on Wisdom

Meg Tufano
Aug 26, 2017 · 12 min read

Dear Mr. Bannon,

I know that you know most of what I am writing here because you are both a practicing Catholic and a person educated in political philosophy and history. Moreover, you have proven yourself powerful in the capital arena by making a personal fortune the old-fashioned way, you earned it: so you understand capital markets in practice. You showed by example, rather than just pointing it out in an essay as a likely profit center, that mixing entertainment and news (Breitbart) is extremely profitable, if not very wholesome for the body politic.

In applying the benefit of the doubt theory, my guess is that you wanted to show this news’ mixture’s tremendous power in a democratic republic by getting Trump into office, Trump being a person who would (1) quickly reveal the dangers of unbridled demagoguery (and would show how we, if we want to remain a democratic republic, need to balance political speech as we used to do in the past through equal time laws) and — at the same time — (2) Trump being his type of businessman, he would characteristically resist the corporatist agenda of most lobbying efforts (and resist the Make My Bank Account Great of most modern “mainstream” Republicans). You have gotten your point across and I, for one, am grateful that we have the opportunity to see these fault lines in our way of doing things in such a way as we cannot ignore them; and also in a way that we can remedy before experiencing the damage a (political) earthquake such as a real demagogue (who can think) would wreak upon us. In so many ways, you have brought the need for wisdom to the forefront.

My hunch is that your goal in your participation in politics was to help America see the dangers of looking at business ventures as persons (my guess is you are totally against Citizen’s United) and also I imagine you hoped to help us get back to the ideals of the pre-Nixon (pre-racist) Republican party, back to the core principles of our Constitution: all people matter, all are equal — the one certain “belief” that is shared by the Christian and the American creed.

You seem to understand (as most around you seem not to) that when we speak of extreme left and right in politics the terms conflate because political ideologies are not on a straight line but on a line that is more like a circle. The far left (I think of Mao’s communist revolution) acts more like the far right (I think of Franco’s grab for power in Spain’s civil war) when at the extremes. For “the people” the extremes look exactly the same: on either “end” — that is, at that “extreme” section on the circle — the people lose their freedoms or die violently. Thank you for showing us that when seen in three dimensions there IS no practical difference for the incredibly dangerous clowns at both extremes of political ideology.

The Barred Owl, the Symbol of Wisdom in History, Visiting Me in Appalachia on Wednesday

You have studied Plato. You understand that politics only begins when we need “condiments” (as described in The Republic). Not pickles and mustard, but when our economies develop to the point where spices and other goods not easily available by barter become necessities (I think salt and pepper — or coffee and tea), you understand that it is then we need infrastructure: coins, laws, weights and measures, roads, etc., all the starter elements of civilization.

Because you have studied history, you also know that immediately as civilizations constitute themselves to organize these infrastructures so as to achieve this distribution of goods (I think of 10,000 years ago, Mesopotamia), that something else arises besides our market access to “pickles:” immediately — simultaneously — we have slavery. Civilization and slavery occur at exactly the same time everywhere civilizations occur. That slavery has existed as long as civilized humans have existed is something Christians know well because slavery is part of our great story, Old Testament (I think of Exodus: “Let my people go!”) and New (I think of the Letter to the Ephesians), both great stories of which occur while in the background there is the worldly political acceptance of slavery over ALL of our past human history.

Besides slavery coming into existence when civilizations begin, ideas are written down, ideas (I think of Hammurabi’s Code) are carved in stone at the beginnings of human progress. As you know because of your education at Virginia Tech, writing and deep ideas in general — but discussions of political philosophy in particular — only take place when there is leisure. Before technology created efficiencies that would suffice to replace slaves (I think of the printing press, or the factory- then machine-made goods, etc.), leisure was provided by slavery.

But that’s not the whole story! To jump ahead to our times, yours and mine, ideas (some of which are Christian) literally change the world’s mind on the subject of slavery!

As the arc of history progressed, and as those who were gifted with intelligence and leisure continued to write down their observations, a kind of concluding summary of political ideas was reached in the period which we now call, “The Enlightenment.” The political encapsulation of that intellectual achievement is America herself: it is self-evident that ALL have the right to life, liberty, happiness. That is, as we progressed in our thinking over historical time, we came to recognize our fundamental flaw in our political structures prior to that realization. Paradoxically, slavery may have made it possible for us to have the leisure to observe our human condition, but we can no longer allow slavery because we recognize the self-evident truths of our human condition!

As you know well, and to repeat for emphasis, universal human rights are the expression of centuries of difficult thought, from Hammurabi, to Confucius, to Buddha, and all the spectrum from western to eastern intellectual attainment and back around again. But the capstone of all our shared history as human beings is that we have recognized that we are all equally respectable as persons. No one is worth more than another. No one may “own” another. Everyone “matters.” Full stop. It is not a coincidence to my mind that this is the core Christian principle too. The truth should be the truth no matter where one finds it. As a Christian, I respect all faiths, all people, because my Lord Jesus Christ tells me to. At the same time, I enjoy the gift of the principle of universal human rights being the “self-evident truth” of my (our) country’s founding documents.

We are twice blessed.

As you know, but so many do not, The United States of America is arguably the first nation in the history of history to legally outlaw slavery. It is true that righting 10,000 years of human history did not happen in April 1865, but it was BEGUN at the great idea of universal human rights that is our founding principle as a nation, and it PROGRESSED at the end of the Civil War to become written law (The Emancipation Proclamation). And the light has continued to shine on through The Civil Rights Act and through the continuation of the myriad ways we have been, and are, addressing how to live up to the phenomenally great idea that is America.

The Civil War deserves a coda here because of course most of the Confederates — though surely on the dark side of history — were NOT slave owners. But rather, just as today’s wage earners are oppressed by the one percent — at the same time — they are often caught up in defending policies that only help the very rich (I think of today’s ‘Right to Work’ laws and the economic lies inherent (but invisible to workers) in “the gig economy”). So too, back in the 1850’s many Southerners were sucked into the vortex of that war without understanding how slavery oppressed their own wages, their own self-esteem.

It is relatively easy to see how slavery oppressed Southerners economically, but allow me to turn to my personal bailiwick (depth psychology) to explain how I understand being racist oppresses the racist’s self-esteem.

Being racist devalues self-integrity. Hating any human being for any trait that is outside individual choice (I think of gender, sexual orientation, skin color, disability, national status (we do not choose where we are born), religious traditions, etc.), or inherited wealth), rationally turns back to self hatred. Why? Because racists logically end up at the mirror looking at themselves. Every one of us has traits that we did not choose that others may or may not like about us and about which we should not be pre-judged. But if we are prejudiced against others for their involuntary traits, we (inadvertently) give others the license to be prejudiced against us for our own involuntary traits. We create the conditions for the closing of minds against us, for the denial of our shared American creed, for our country’s and our own personal self-destruction.

Parenthetically, I would like to say that in my opinion the fact that General Lee surrendered so nobly at Appomattox, thereby allowing a (relatively) peaceful end to our civil war, deserves our respect for his thoughtfulness of our future as a united nation. Whether he deserves a statue to commemorate his awful position in that war (he fought to keep slavery legal and was a racist) is another matter altogether. I, personally, would not enjoy a statue to Hitler because some people thought him grand once (and may still do so) in my public commons. Too many have died defending our noble truth that all are deserving of respect to give honor to anyone who tried to stop our human progress!

I, and I think you agree with me on this, think it is time for all men to continue the progression of universal human rights: that is, not just declare them as self-evident as written in 1776, but to progress each person’s opportunity for more life (universal health coverage), progress more liberty (universal tertiary education), progress more happiness (universal access to advanced technology, etc.). The other word for my position is of course “progressive” (a la Teddy Roosevelt). And yes, as you know as well as I do, universal human rights is the core “liberal” idea; and so all Americans are — by their commitment to the Constitution — actually and philosophically liberal (and this use of the word ‘liberal’ has NOTHING to do with left or right politics but with the meaning of the Latin, ‘liber’ — free; a word which radio pundits constantly conflate with other meanings).

To repeat for emphasis, the greatest liberal idea of all is America’s Declaration and Bill of Rights. In a real sense, all Americans are — at their core — liberal (in the philosophic, not economic sense). And all Americans must be devoted to those self-evident truths, but especially those who take an oath to uphold them!

As you also know, another creed was written in 1776, “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. He points out economic truths (as, for example, “The Invisible Hand”) that the world had to play out in radical upheavals to eventually come to appreciate, namely that capital markets are the most efficient way to distribute goods and services. However, and lest it be forgotten, Smith does not say that everything is made more efficient by markets, but rather that there are five areas that markets cannot (by their nature) solve but must be solved by “social” means: national defense, health, education, infrastructure and what he called “charity,” (referring to people (especially children and the aged) who are unable to work). How does he suggest we solve these five human needs? Through the obvious “socialist” program of taxation. I have not read your opinions on this matter but that this is even an argument in modern times seems particularly obtuse to me, but then so much about the idea of eliminating taxes on the rich is rooted neither in economic theory nor political history, our country’s most wealthy decade of the 1950’s being one where the wealthy were taxed at 91% at the top marginal rate! Lowering taxes is — as so much is in the strange apres-Nixon GOP — not rooted in anything at all, but seems sui generis. (Except maybe stemming from pure greed?) I am certain you know better!

I see you now as entering the Glorious Third of life. You have educated yourself and accumulated capital in your first third. You have entered the public sphere and shown us an important fault in our organization of the body politic in your second third. And now? The third stage of your career I hope you will create a legacy to follow you after you die. First, a legacy of showing us the way OUT of allowing profits from the purely adventitious pleasures of mixing news and gossip which is destroying our coherence as a nation. Maybe you will do it through reassembling our equal-time laws? Or committing huge sums of money for independent fact checkers. I do not know, but I feel sure you have some ideas on that. Second, a movement to create a way OUT of letting hate reign as a formula for political power maybe through making tertiary education free for everyone? Again, I do not have the practical knowledge or the experience with political power you understand, but I feel certain you have good ideas on this. Third (but not last) I hope you will help us find a way OUT of disposing of people as “gigs” in a machine. Maybe you will be able to achieve that through labor laws that give precedence to life, liberty and happiness over profit? I hope so!

As you are a member of an important one percent (as am I) — the one percent of human beings with a college education — may I ask you to keep on the lookout for the conflation of ideologies such as “right” and “left” and clear them up as you work on your next phase of your news organization? Please require your writers to hold on to the hard-won central enlightenment of our shared humanity’s culmination of the history of ideas — the cornerstone of our American republic — that all are equal, all deserve respect as persons? I feel certain that you already are attempting to remedy the weird disrespect that our body politic (Democrat and Republican) has exhibited toward the dispossessed, the uneducated, those who are stuck in an information age without access to information, or — more accurately — without the knowledge to interpret the information enveloping them, especially in Appalachia where I live and the forgotten areas of the post-industrial manufacturing and post-coal/oil-dependent economies.

I believe if we will but focus on what really makes America great — our commitment to universal human rights — we will become the country we have been aiming for for the last 241 years. We do not need to create any more laws against hate: as you have already said, hate is self-evidently inane (“clowns”). What we need to do is to focus on what really does make us great and teach those who somehow missed that part of our Constitution and Bill of Rights to understand our hard-earned inheritance. Mr. Trump may need to be first in line, I do not know what or how he thinks, but you do know.

Finally, as you also know, tolerance is not a virtue by itself. Being tolerant would have no meaning if it just meant being laissez faire. Being American does NOT mean being tolerant of everything, of becoming like cardboard, accepting of any or every notion: tolerance does NOT tolerate intolerance from the rich or the poor. Nazis and white supremacists have no right to protection of their ideology if they are carrying guns! Any more than people who promote a dismissal of the infinite value of every human being have a right to call hate itself “American.” Yes to free speech: write a book or an essay! But speech while holding a gun? That is no longer speech, but a call to arms to destroy others! There is no American protection for that!

In the same way, being Christian does not mean being tolerant of every person either, of becoming like cardboard, accepting of any or every notion so as to be “nice.” Loving one’s neighbor does not mean, for example, accepting Sharia or Kosher law as a civic law, nor allowing those who are stronger to harm the weaker (Thess. 5:4 ff.) When such conflations of ideas occur, I hope you agree with me that those who are better educated in Scripture need to point out the error. I hope you will hire educated people to become editors of whatever new Glorious Third legacy you create for yourself and our country. And they will be able to explain why loving one’s neighbor means being respectful of other faiths, but does not mean allowing them to have physcial power over the weak.

Please help us clear up these ideas as you dive into your next pursuit. Please help our country to appreciate that as Americans we must affirm that everyone counts. No exceptions. We do not need to go to war over this issue: we already have, numerous times!

And as a fellow Christian, please help our fellow Christians appreciate that as Christians, we cannot tolerate hatred or violence toward any group of people just by virtue of their associations. We have a Bill of Rights for good reasons. Please make sure as many people as you can reach know what those great American reasons are in a reasonable way. And that they are shared reasons with Christian ones, but that one does not have to be a Christian to honor them. One need only be an American.

Our country needs you. I hope you will step up to help us out.

In Christ,

Your fellow American,

Meg Tufano

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Adjunct Professor of Critical Thinking, Antioch University > “Change your mind, change the world.”

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