On Being Politically Homeless
We are more than our ideologies
In the complex and volatile society of the modern world, political affiliation has become an important way to claim a firm identity. We align with a party or an ideology that expresses how we see ourselves and want others to see us. More than ever before, people are preferring to associate with (through marriage, for example) those who share their political identification.
Historically, in the United States, party loyalty generally reflected class and ethnic identities and therefore, family tradition as well. For example, urban immigrants were nearly always drawn to the Democratic rather than the Whig or its successor Republican parties, fueling the reign of political machines and their powerful bosses. Political affiliation was often as much a birthright as an ideological statement.
As society and the economy became more complex in the twentieth century, the role of government expanded and policy choices became more consequential. Citizens had more reasons to choose ideological sides. At first, the differences did not fall along clear partisan lines; there were Republican as well as Democratic progressives, for example, from the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt until as late as the 1970s. (Chief Justice Earl Warren, who left office in 1969, was one of the last great Republican progressives.)
But the rise of ideological division initiated a trend toward partisan polarization that has only worsened in the decades since. Certainly, the countercultural uprising of the 1960s marked the emergence of an irreconcilable breach between diverging worldviews — the “culture wars” of our time. From then on, consequential policy decisions became emotionally, even existentially charged. The specific goals or results of some state action (or inaction) became secondary to the values and motivations — the worldview — of those promoting (or opposing) it.
More and more, in other words, ideology has become identity. And identity is fiercely protected. A Republican who dares to deviate from the party line is castigated as a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only.) Anyone who strays from the inflexible demands of social justice orthodoxy is similarly branded as an outcast. A public servant who aims to govern without a firm commitment to values is known as a “technocrat” or a nefarious member of the “deep state.”
But I think this state of affairs is dangerous for a democracy.
For most of my adult life, I have embraced a holistic worldview that resists polarization and self-reinforcing ideology. And so it is pretty much impossible for me to fashion a stable identity on any political basis. I am politically homeless. But I believe this is a good thing.
I know that the pull of ideological commitment is powerful and seductive. Earlier in my life, I identified with political movements that seemed to express my truest values, that represented my worldview being put into effect in the public arena.
In my twenties, I was on a passionate quest for personal freedom, having been inspired by Thoreau’s individualism and then intoxicated by Ayn Rand’s tirades against “collectivism.” I read libertarian writers and worked in the 1980 Libertarian Party presidential campaign. For a few years, I identified myself with this label.
However, I continued to mature intellectually, and began gaining an appreciation for the contextual setting of everything I thought I knew. This evolving holistic worldview led me to understand that the libertarian emphasis on complete personal autonomy and freedom of action, while valuable up to a point, needed to be placed in larger ecological and social contexts. There are, and need to be, reasonable limits to self-assertion. So I gave up my ideological identity as a libertarian.
Around this time, I came across a small band of countercultural idealists who were exploring what they called “new age politics.” Their position reflected the New Left’s existentialist critique of modern society (so eloquently expressed in the 1962 Port Huron Statement) as it became infused with radical environmentalism and New Age spirituality in the 1970s. This blend of postmodern ideas soon found expression in the Green parties that emerged in European and North American societies.
My studies of holistic and radical education, including the free school movement of the 1960s, deepened my appreciation for existentialist politics. The New Left radicals and educators had denounced the “managerial liberalism” and “technocracy” that they claimed stymied authentic freedom and solidarity, and I was witnessing these forces at work in the authoritarian push for educational standards that was promulgated by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alike.
I began to feel that the Green movement was my ideological tribe. It embraced a more holistic worldview as well as the “small is beautiful” ethos expressed in appropriate technology, voluntary simplicity, and decentralization of economic and political power. People who were drawn to these values were my people, and I wanted to identify with them more than with mainstream citizens.
Yet I eventually realized that even joining a holistically oriented tribe was to embrace a limited identity and did not therefore honor the principles of holism. Whether or not a Green worldview is essential for humanity’s resilience and an easier transition to a post-industrial civilization (and I still think it is), this movement remains a radical subculture, and to make it my political home is to consign myself to a boutique niche in our society. It too easily becomes a form of self-righteous alienation.
The point here is that there is a difference between holding particular views and opinions — even passionately — and staking one’s existential self-definition on them. It is so easy to slide from one to the other. It is so tempting, in our confusing and conflicted world, to grasp on to an ideological commitment for some semblance of stability and meaning.
But I believe it is a mistake to claim this island of stability as our identity and hold on to it for dear life.
Ideologies are divisive. They build impenetrable walls around us and our chosen clans. They set up a dualistic relationship in which other people are either with us or against us. They do not allow us to appreciate or learn from those outside the wall; for to admit that another political position might make sense, that it might be able to complement or augment our preferred views, is to expose possible gaps or weaknesses in the ideology that gives our lives meaning.
A healthy democracy requires a generous give-and-take between political factions. In partisan terms this means compromise, but in a larger sense, it means that citizens are willing to hear each other’s stories and learn from each other’s experiences and beliefs. We may still disagree, but our differences do not pose an existential threat.
The founding fathers lived in a far less complex world at a time when popular democracy was understood to mean mob rule. There wasn’t even yet a conception of “ideology.” But one principle upon which they established the American republic is still essential to a decent social order: They insisted that partisanship and factionalism be tempered for the sake of the common good. They demanded that political actors be disinterested — that is, willing to subordinate their personal interests and wants to the needs of the polity as a whole.
If, in a democracy, we are all political actors, then we are all called upon to practice such self-restraint, and this is not possible so long as we find identity in our political views. We become very “interested” (i.e. vested) in asserting our position and seeking its total victory. This leads to the affliction the founders feared: rule by the mob. January 6th, say, or cancel culture.
It may well be, as the founders believed, that political disinterest cannot be practiced by an entire democratic populace, especially in modern capitalist society with its structures of privilege and power, and even more especially in a society whipped into frenzies by misinformation, propaganda, and superficial, lightning-fast communication. We may need to accept that vicious partisanship is here to stay.
But we don’t have to let this arena of ideological battle define who we are.
A holistic perspective sees that any meaningful whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that the cosmos is comprised of wholes within more inclusive wholes, themselves contained within still greater wholes. When we understand our existence in this way, we can recognize that our political identity is but one part of our greater wholeness. We are not merely individual bundles of ideological interests, but neighbors and fellow citizens in a national community, and beyond that we are human beings trying to thrive in a challenging world. We are all in this together.
Political identity is partial, and identity politics are partial. They are fragments of the greater wholeness that ultimately offers deeper meaning and larger identities as neighbors and fellow sojourners on planet Earth. Religious people may expand this wholeness even further, considering us all as children of God. It is these more expansive identities that provide authentic meaning, existential nourishment, and a place to call home. Ideology is a paltry substitute.
So it is not a deficiency to be politically homeless; it actually makes my life richer. I can be a guest among libertarians and Greens, liberals and conservatives, technocrats and anarchists and socialists, because I share their human aspirations and I want them to thrive as my neighbors and compatriots. We can talk together, break bread together, dream together, even if we disagree on many issues.
This vision of camaraderie is not mine alone: Thousands of Americans are pursuing it through organizations such as Braver Angels. In this polarized culture, there is a great hunger for connection and fellowship.
The first step on this journey is to disentangle ourselves from the narrow political and ideological identities we have taken on. We need to see ourselves and each other in our wholeness instead of frantically identifying with our limited parts.
