I incline toward the view that voluntary segregation, in conjunction with a return to federalism, might be a way to ease tensions and prevent conflict in a country increasingly riven by deep-going differences. We need to face the fact that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues. Among these are abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, legal and illegal immigration, taxation, the need for fiscal responsibility in government, the legitimacy of public-sector unions, wealth redistribution, the role of the federal government in education, the purpose of government, the limits, if any, on governmental power, and numerous others.
We need also to face the fact that we will never agree on them. These are not merely 'academic' issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people. And they are not easily resolved because they are deeply rooted in fundamental worldview differences, in a "conflict of visions," to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.
We ought also to realize that calls for civility and comity and social cohesion are just so much empty talk. Comity (social harmony) in whose terms? On what common ground? Peace is always possible if one side just gives in. Such a peace, however, is not worth wanting. If conservatives all converted to leftism, or vice versa, then harmony would reign. But to think such a thing will happen is just silly, as silly as the silly hope that leftists such Obama and Biden could 'bring us together.' We can come together only on common ground, or, to invert the metaphor, only under the umbrella of shared principles. And what would these be?
There are no longer any widely shared principles and there is no point in papering over our irreconcilable differences.
Consider religion. Is it a value or not? Conservatives, even those who are atheistic and irreligious, tend to view religion as a value, as a good thing, as conducive to human flourishing, as pragmatically useful whether or not metaphysically true. So-called liberals and leftists, not to mention ‘woke’ globalists' tend to view it as a disvalue, as something that impedes human flourishing. Some go so far as to consider it "the greatest social evil." The question of social and political interest is not whether religion, or rather some particular religion, is true. Nor is the question whether religion, or some particular religion, is rationally defensible. The question of social and political interest is whether the teaching and learning and practice of a religion contributes to our well-being, not just as individuals, but in our relations with others. For example, would we be better off as a society if every vestige of religion were removed from our public and private lives? Does religion tend to make us better people?
The conservative will answer no and yes respectively and will feel sure that he is right. For example, as a conservative, I find it absurd that there was any fight at all over the Mojave cross. The ACLU shysters who brought the original lawsuit deserve contempt. Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse the initial clause of the First Amendment, to wit, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." But it is hate-America leftist extremism on stilts to think that the presence of that very old memorial cross on a hill in the middle nowhere does anything to establish Christianity as the state religion. I consider anyone who believes that to be intellectually obtuse and morally repellent. Christians memorialize their dead with crosses. Atheists and members and members other religions do not. To each his own memorial method. And if you wish not to honor your dead with monuments and memorials but to consign them to oblivion? That too is permitted by the high value of religious liberty. A classically liberal society will tolerate a multiplicity of modes of memorialization. Just don’t ask me to affirm, let alone celebrate, what I tolerate.
As for whether religion makes us individually and collectively better than we would have been without it, isn't that obvious? And this despite the crimes committed by religious people and their clerical representatives. (Or do the crimes committed by medical doctors argue against the practice of medicine?) Will you be so bold as to maintain that someone who has taken to heart the Ten Commandments will not have been improved thereby? If you do maintain this, then you are precisely the sort of person contact with whom would be pointless or worse, precisely the sort of person right thinking people need to segregate themselves from, for the sake of peace.
Peaceful coexistence is possible but only with borders, boundaries, and divisions. As folk wisdom has it, “Tall fences make good neighbors.” This saying illustrates how division supports unity. We are one as neighbors but this unity is protected and enhanced by the separation or segregation enforced by the tall fences. But not only does division support unity, it also supports the diversity which most of us value. Diverse groups kept apart by tall fences and their political equivalents can maintain their diversity. An obvious example: keeping biological males out of women’s locker rooms lets women be themselves in peace and freedom. And vice versa, mutatis mutandis.
The leftist will give opposite answers to my two questions — would we be better off without religion? Or does religion make us better people? — with equal confidence. There is no possibility of mediation here. That is a fact that can't be blinked. Let’s hear no more of the squishy, bien-pensant, feel-good rhetoric of 'coming together.' Again, on what common ground? Under the aegis of which set of shared principles? There can be no 'coming together' with those whose views one believes are pernicious. John Lennon take note.
If we want peace, therefore, we need to give each other space by adopting federalism, limiting government interference in our lives, and by voluntary segregation: by simply having nothing to do with people with whom there is no point in interacting given unbridgeable differences.
Unfortunately, the Left, with its characteristic totalitarian tendency, will not allow federalism. But we still have the right of free association and voluntary segregation. At least for the time being.
No doubt there are disadvantages to segregation but they are outweighed by the positive. Exclusive association with the like-minded increases polarization and fosters extremism. See here. The linked piece ends with the following suggestion:
Bishop cites research suggesting that, contrary to the standard goo-goo exhortations, the surer route to political comity may be less civic engagement, less passionate conviction. So let’s hear it for the indifferent and unsure, whose passivity may provide the national glue we need.
Now that is the sort of misunderstanding one expects from The New York Times. Civic engagement is good, I insist, but only on the terra firma of shared principles, values, and assumptions. The reason there is more uncivil civic engagement and more contention is because there is more government interference! (‘Uncivil civic engagement’ is an oxymoron that falls short of being a contradictio in adiecto.) The solution is less government. As I have said more than once, the bigger the government, the more to fight over. The solution is for government to back off, not for the citizenry to acquiesce like sheep in the curtailment of their liberties.
We need only as much civic engagement as is needed to get to the point where we don't need to engage civically with people we find repellent. (This point needs nuancing: distinguish local, state, and national civic engagement.)
So I have given you the solution: less centralized government with ‘tall fences,’ i.e., border control which includes a stoppage of illegal immigration and a reform of the immigration system. But what concrete steps can individuals take to achieve this solution? Nothing that is likely to make any difference. The paltry proposals I have made (vote with your wallet, etc.) don’t amount to much.
I fear the republic is doomed. But we fight on, in the part-time, non-totalitarian way of the conservative, until death does part us from the fray. The wisest among us, however, aware that this life is a vanishing quantity, look beyond it, pinning our hopes not on Man, a mere abstraction, but on the living God.