KEEPING VS. SHARING PT 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I offered a broad characterization of the two political philosophies, conservatism and liberalism, as overt manifestations of two deeper ethical systems, the Ethos of Keeping for the first and the Ethos of Sharing for the second. I also showed just a few historical examples of how the two systems interwove, but here I'll focus on how they played out in two historical periods, the 1960s "Civil Rights" era and the 21st-century "identity politics" era, and I'll use illustrations taken more from fiction than from history.

I commented in Part 1 that the pietistic religions strongly emphasized the Ethos of Sharing, but there were different degrees of emphasis. Early Christianity did not suggest that all slaveholders should free their slaves-- even though the Jewish custom of Jubilee at least indicated that this was a beneficial act-- but rather enjoined slaveholders to treat their slaves with charity and humanity. Thus the message to conservatives here was "You Should Share." At the same time, Christianity was founded upon the template of the Old Testament, which sometimes put forth the countervailing message, "You Must Share." One can see this illustrated by the Exodus story of Moses and the Pharaoh, in which Pharaoh's desire to "Keep" the Jews as slaves was finally overthrown by God's will that the Jews must be liberated. Pharaoh himself represents the extreme of conservatism, that of "You Must Keep" one's perceived property no matter what. Yet, going back to the slavery-rhetoric from early Christianity, some masters followed a milder version of Keeping, which I'll call the commandment "You Should Keep," unless one sees a good reason not to do so. Within this form of ethical compass, even if one decides to liberate this or that meritorious slave-- as Philemon releases Onesimus in the Epistle of Paul-- that does not mean that the slaveholder releases all his slaves, or renounces the belief that slavery is a perfectly normal societal practice.

Vaulting over centuries to the American Civil Rights era, it's possible to see these commandments on both sides of the liberal/conservatism spectrum manifesting in the political persuasions often called "meliorism" and "radicalism." The radical conservative swears by the commandment "You Must Keep," which resulted (for one example) in banning free Blacks from being educated in any way, for fear that they might have a better chance at escaping a second-class citizen status. The meliorist conservative, swearing by "You Should Keep," by contrast would be okay with allowing Black Americans to be educated in Black schools, but would still want Blacks to stay within certain boundaries. The meliorist and the radical attitudes with respect to liberals have received much more commentary. The meliorist liberal wants to work within the system, to prove that he deserves a seat at the table on the basis of merit-- again, telling conservatives "You Should Share." The radical liberal insists that, on the basis of past treatment, the whole table should be overturned so that only his people (and maybe some fellow travelers) can be seated, telling conservatives that "You Must Share," even to the extent of beggaring oneself.

I'd originally planned to address my fictional examples in this post but now it seems to me that the length of the post will become ungainly, so I'll hold the rest for a Part Three.