National security blogger John Schindler thinks its time for partisans on both ends of the political spectrum to do some soul-searching and realize how theyre hurting the country. Writing at his XX Committee blog, the scholar of military history and strategy who teaches at the U.S. Naval War College accuses true believers on the left and right of being disdainful toward any other perspectives and neglectful toward the facts making our politics dysfunctional and our country ungovernable in the process. The sensible majority of Americans, according to Schindler, get caught in the middle of this political holy war and either get taken for granted or viewed as dupes whenever they tilt toward the other side.
Its been just over two years since a pair of the countrys leading students of Congress, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, announced their conclusion that both sides are not equally to blame; Republicans are the problem. But because the plague on both houses complaint has stayed such a popular flavor of critique, we have to keep reminding ourselves of the facts of what Ornstein and Mann call asymmetric polarization.
Schindlers piece doesnt work very well as a diagnosis of our current political discourse. He does highlight some views held by some people on the left and right that are misperceptions or mischaracterizations. Yes, some left- and right-wingers get each other wrong, or distort things to puff themselves up, or make presumptuous claims to speak for the American people. If you want to claim partisan rancor is blocking us from reaching solutions to our problems, though, you have give us ideological views that are actually getting in the way of reaching, you know
Take Schindlers analysis of the debate on guns, the stakes of which have been tragically highlighted yet again by this weekends violence in Isla Vista, California. On the political right, he duly points out the denial of the very real havoc that results from a country awash in firearms. On the other side, the Left will not acknowledge that lots of law-abiding Americans have perfectly legitimately [sic] reasons to have guns. I dont know about the Left, but certainly there are Blue State city dwellers who view gun ownership as a weird fetish. Having spent the bulk of my years in the Acela-serviced Corridor and the past decade in Wisconsin, where deer season is like the high holy days, I recognize the cultural divide Schindler is talking about.
But its quite a stretch, to lump together myopic segments of the right and left and blame both sides for gun control gridlock. Trying to paint the gun debate as a standoff between two absolutist positions obscures the fact that only one side in this fight is absolutist. This isnt an all-or-nothing debate, with Democrats insisting that personal firearms be banned or confiscated. The questions on the table have been about universal background checks, the gun show loophole, and high-capacity magazines. Please tell me how Democrats share blame for blocking these sorts of practical measures.
