In this house, we don’t make overly broad pre-packaged statements about our belief systems
If you’ve strolled through any left-leaning American neighborhood, you’re sure to have seen them: the black signs with multi-colored lettering headed by the statement, “In this house, we believe” followed by a list of liberal priorities and catchphrases. The standard list has shifted over the past few years, but now seems to feature Love is Love, Black Lives Matter, Science is Real, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, and No Human is Illegal, though others sometimes make a showing.
These signs always make my neck tighten. One reason is the vagueness of each phrase. What does “Women’s rights are human rights” even mean, exactly? What does someone who believes that no human is illegal think should be done to American immigration policy? We can make reasonable guesses based on our awareness of contemporary politics, but the range of possibilities is still quite large. Contrast that with signs that have recently popped up around DC demanding union jobs and a $15-an-hour minimum wage: specific actions that I can support or not, based on my understanding of their effects, regardless of my beliefs.
There is also something strange about putting all those beliefs on one sign, as if it naturally follows that someone who believes that love is love will also believe that science is real. But achieving national policy objectives usually requires building coalitions with those who may share little of your belief system, and whom you may even dislike. Insisting that support for gay marriage must be linked to fighting climate change (I’m assuming the science part refers to that and not, say, GMO crops, about which American liberals as a whole have some rather unscientific opinions) can only serve to diminish your possible room for coalition-building.
But that leads me to my final, and biggest, criticism: these signs are really more about signaling something about the sign owner rather than about achieving any meaningful action. This isn’t a cynical fantasy born of my imagination; it’s right there in the text of the sign. Why is the sign’s first line, “In this house, we believe” (and increasingly, “In this house, we know”)? That statement isn’t needed to bolster the claims that are listed below it. It serves no function but to make the sign about the person who put it up. In this light, the vagueness of each belief is not a bug but a feature — if you can’t pin down a specific policy position, you can’t disagree with the person, and so the sign does its primary job of identifying its owner as someone with the “right” values, rather than doing the more vulnerable work of advancing particular policy viewpoints and the moral trade-offs that inevitably involves.
This is what Evan Conrad recently termed “moral incompetence” — caring more about working on and being seen working on a particular problem than actually solving that problem. It’s a dominant feature of both left and right identity politics today, and it’s getting in the way of us actually implementing productive policy. So stand up for gay rights, work to fight climate change, and make this country a land of opportunity for all. But please, put up a different sign when you do it.
