I have to respectfully disagree with Andrew Brown's comment about
churchgoing, belonging to communities, and contributing to the
Left. As an expatriate Canadian living in the States--with
exquisite timing, I moved to Boston from Toronto shortly after Bush
Jr took office--I identified with Neil Gaiman's comment. One of the
few cultural differences between Canada and the States is that the
latter is far more secular, both at the personal and the political
level; regardless, politics is far more community-oriented in
Canada than in the States. Maybe this is just what's seen through
the eyes of a cynical, atheist Canadian, but it's hard not to feel
that the contribution of church-based 'moral communities' to
American politics is pretty much the opposite of social justice for
all Americans. It's not clear to me that participation in smaller
communities (whether religious or secular) is associated with
participation in larger, civil communities.
Having said that, I have no idea how to engender (or regenerate)
the sense that American society as a whole is also a moral
community. I agree that this is *the* hard issue faced by the Left
(and the Democrats, for that matter). I recently committed to
staying in the United States (I accepted a faculty position at a
small engineering college outside Boston) so I plan to get my US
citizenship and think about this issue a lot in the future...
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