Part of being independent entails organizing one’s life around values and propositions that are distinctly non-political. Free agents often strive for moral and personal distance from politics itself, not just independence from the two political parties.
Why? The adversarial, tribal, and often unethical values that drive contemporary politics are antithetical to living a reasoned, calm, cooperative, and meaningful life. Politics as practiced today is mostly about dominating one’s opponents, minimizing the concerns of other people, and securing power for partisan priorities and benefits. It’s rarely designed to pursue the well-being of all people and certainly not set up to enhance the positions of those who are not in a particular partisan tribe.
Contemporary partisan politics operates around the view that winning confers authority to impose a party’s preferences on others without restraint and that those who lose elections are either weak or deserving of their minority position.
If politics were a person, you definitely wouldn’t want to spend much time with that individual because they would constantly manipulate and exploit you with lies and self-interested behavior and otherwise act in annoying and dishonest ways. Or a “toxic” person “gaslighting” you, as the kids say.
In contrast to the values that shape politics, human beings desperately need other sources for how to live and act—whether religious, humanist, or experiential—that can help order their personal lives and provide some framework for evaluating the country and larger events. These alternative values work best when they challenge people to resist their worst instincts, as expressed through politics and other combative endeavors.
My favorite principle, bar none, is the basic idea that one should treat all people as equals with inherent human dignity, not as means to some other end or as props in their own psycho-political drama.
This idea that all people are equal with intrinsic human dignity comes from both religious and secular sources. Catholic teaching, for example, rests on the belief that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore have inherent value and worth. The great Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reached a similar conclusion through moral philosophy, famously arguing in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: "So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means."
The Declaration of Independence, of course, puts forth America’s extended version of these liberal ideals as the primary rationale for establishing an independent nation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Likewise, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights combines religious and secular value sources into a strong foundational vision for well-ordered societies: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Anyone who grew up Catholic knows well the Church’s insistence that we are basically nobodies in the face of the vast universe, that God loves all his children equally, and that we should therefore extend this love and respect to others. Personal humility offers a useful way to go about life, understanding that you are neither inherently better nor worse than anyone else and that other people have something to offer that is worthy of respect.
People may possess different physical strengths, intellectual abilities, social advantages, or powers of persuasion. But underneath all these differences, we remain humans and deserve equal moral consideration.
This is not a defense of moral relativism by any means. People’s actions and choices matter, and everyone should be held accountable—before God, under the law, or according to other standards of ethical conduct—for upright and lawful behavior. Treating people as equals does not mean treating all behavior as equally good.
A Catholic upbringing, in my experience, was also very helpful in getting youngsters (and adults) to understand that God was always watching and knew what they were thinking and doing. “Catholic guilt” works for a very good reason: It keeps people honest inside their heads and hearts and provides some guidance for determining personal actions. That is a lesson the Church itself could have adhered to more faithfully in its own behavior over the past several decades.
Philosophers can—and do—bicker over the rigidity of Kantian ethics and his various “imperatives.” But his model of ethical universalism offers another useful corrective to base impulses and petty motivations that lead us all astray.
In addition to directing us to treat others as ends in themselves, Kant emphasized the importance of acting from a “good will” rather than just looking for a positive outcome from a relationship or particular act. This idea is demanding, but the basic lesson is straightforward: How we treat others matters, as do the intentions behind our actions. We should not approach others in a dishonest manner or with ulterior motives designed to achieve some other goal.
Our politics sure could use some of this moral and philosophical thinking.
More personal humility. More equal treatment of others. More honest intentions. More comradely behavior. Less grandstanding. Less tribalism. Less discrimination against others. Less using others for our own purposes.
Religion, philosophy, family, friends, community, art, athletics, and leisure all provide sources of meaning and purpose outside of political conflict. In turn, those values give us standards by which to evaluate politics itself—to determine who or what is living up to higher human standards.
Being independent requires more than just refusing to join a political team. It also involves choosing a better, more self-sustaining framework for moral and political life.
Great post, and to add something your conversations with your friends should not be about politics, and if they are, that should be a minority of discussion. Don’t let whatever the scandal of the day is dominate your life. Discuss art, literature, family and God instead.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I think it identifies what's so dangerous about how many people have replaced religion with their political identity. When you start labeling anyone who disagrees with you politically a bigot, and when boycotting Thanksgiving with family becomes an act of moral righteousness, something is deeply wrong not with your politics but with your entire worldview.