The Political Meaning of Bush v. Gore

TWENTIETH ANN IVERSARY pleasure is ours not only when we are loved but when we love another, not only when we are touched with caring but when we touch another with caring. Boys and girls will learn to value women's cont1·ibutionsthroughouthuman history, andtogive particular valueto the caring and caretaking work thatwas once devalued as "merelywomen's work:'Theywill also understand that this work is the highest calling for both women and men, that nonviolence and caretaking do not make boys "sissies," and that when girls are assertive leaderstheyare not being"unfeminine" but expressingpartoftheir human potential. Spiritual education will not be an add-on, but integral to the whole curriculum. The partnership core of allworld spiritualtraditions will betaught in practical, day-to-daysettings, inspiringyoungpeopleto live lives guided by a partnership morality ofcaring rather than a dominator moralityofcoercion. Both girls and boys will learn that they have in them the divine spirit, and thatthis was recognizedbyour earliest ancestors, who reveredpowerfulfemale deities from the North American Corn Mother and the Greek goddess Demeter, givers ofthefruits ofthe Earth, to the Indian goddess Sarasvati and the Sumerian goddess Nidaba, honored as inventors ofthe art of-writing. Inspiring stories will be told ofancient myths honoringthe Earth as sacred. Inspiring stories will also be told ofheroicwomen and men who workedfor a safer, more equitable society, and how we too can use our creativityto help build a partnership world. Above all, in this partnership school ofthe future young people will form visions ofwhat can be, and acquire the understandings and skills to make these visions come true. They will learn how to create partnership families and communities worldwide. And they will join to construct a world where chronic violence , inequality, and insensitivity will no longer be "just the way things are" but "the way things once were." JUJ,Y/AUGUST 2001IVOLl:MB16, N UMUl3ft 4 The Political Meaning ofBushv. Gore by Peter Gabel A FTER STALINISM, Mao's cultural revolution , the Khmer Rouge, and the direct experience that millions ofpeople had ofthe unsafe group dynamics that undermined the (otherwise wonderful, hopeful) 1960s, nobody could believe any longer that seizing economic and political power from private individuals on behalf ofthe coilective through some apocalyptic revolution could possibly lead to somethingbetterthan thelives we lead now, however isolated , alienated, and meaningless they often are. So by the early 1980s, the socialist idea had lost its capacity to servea$ the unifying communitarian counter-vision thathad made the Left a powerful and morally compelling force, and when the principal embodiments of "really existing socialism" vanished from the earth in 1989, the ideology ofindividualism appeared to have "won."The effect ofthis was both to give increased legitimacyto capitalism's economic, cultural, and political expansion on an increasingly global level and to greatlyweaken the abilityofthe longingfor community (alongingthatexists in everyone) to evenbe seen or heard by the other, much less to be mobilized into a movementbased on thatlongingthatcould enterpublicspace and make moral claims on behalfofa universal , transformative alternative to an apparently vindicated conservative worldview. The void left by the collapse ofsocialism as the dominant political metaphor for community intensified the ability oftheAmerican conservative legal intelligentsiato carry out its doctrinal disintegration of the constitutionally binding public morality that the progressive movements ofthe 1930s and 1960s had fought for. And, in fact, there is no better testamentto the effectiveness oftheir effortto gradually convert the Reagan Revolution into a new legal order supported by a new and widely accepted conservative "common sense" than the inability ofBill Clinton to make his long presidencystand for anything. Elected and enormously popular precisely because ofhis ability to recognize and validate our universal longing for community, a capacity that arose in significant part from the effect on him ofthe civil rights and other movements ofhis youth, Clinton was forced to rely throughout his presidency on personal charisma and polling datathat demonstrated his "private" popularity among otherwise disconnected individual voters to enablehim to survive politically in a public sphere totally dominated by his conservative opponents. Bill Clinton embodied hope, idealism, and communal aspirations-as the cliche goes, "he made you feel cared about"-but he could not speak for this ideal and aspiration in the nan1e ofa coherent moral and political vision...