Tell us what you thought!
Did you catch RED STATE VOICES on Vermont Public Television? Were you suprised by anything in the film? What resonates with you from the film? Is there a question you would have asked or a subject you would have liked to probe further? Would you like to add to something that was touched on by the film? We want to hear from you and welcome you- need you to participate! Post a comment here on our blog, contact us directly or check out how you can get involved and support the film and it’s goals. Thank you.
December 23rd, 2006 at 5:21 am
I just finished watching the movie and I was very impressed. I do not know if I was suprised by anything. I would love to hear about any screenings in the Burlington/Middlebury area.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
My family thought it was interesting how the “red staters” saw the the United States. We all had heard the justifications behind many typical religious conservative’s viewpoints before, but the more general perspective on the world was new. Not taking the “easy” route and how some of them did not ecpect a perfect world or a “utopia” out of their political efforts. Our family enjoyed the film very much…
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
I watched the film last night and was very impressed. I am a native New Englander. I lived all over the country, including 10 years in the South, Georgia and South Carolina, while I was in the military. I now reside in, what would be considered by many Vermonters a Red State, New Hampshire. I am a staunch Democrat and consider myself Liberal Progressive on most issues, but not across the board. But, that is now. I had a Right to Left conversion while I lived in the South that occurred during that last few years of the Clinton administration.
I was a bit uncomfortable with the discussion on relativism as I feel it was painted with an entirely too broad brush. I think the Red Staters used a caricatured view of relativism based on an extreme view of the 60’s Liberal. The different aspects of Relativism were conflated into extreme truth relativism, which ostensibly rejects absolute truth.
The general areas of relativism, Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism and Cultural relativism have implications in different areas but all our based in the subjective. One of the positions that I think went unchallenged was the notion that the Red Staters have at the root of their absolutes the element of cultural relativism. Their values had been handed by those cultures from which their code was derived, particular via the Judeo Christian tradition. They now stand as absolutes.
They seemed to refuse to admit that at the core of their moral code is a subjective acceptance and that their view of public morality is a reflection of their social or cultural convention. I see the values code in my life as the result of the Nietzschean journey.
Many Red Staters are surprised to find that I call myself a moral relativist and hold many of the same values as they do. They are also surprised when I tell them that I do hold judgment as to other values, but that judgment is based in the subjective. I suppose the difference is they don’t feel their values require or are based at all I their own acceptance, experience or understanding. I often stress that it is harder to hold moral positions when you have to own them rather than rely on external imposition.
When discussing political ideas with my Red State friends, I often found common ground in 2nd and 4th Amendment. As to gun control I would generally support the 2nd Amendment while trying to discuss the need for personal weapons. This often leads to discussions on the culture of fear and how the media propagates it in regard to minorities by painting a skewed view of the inner-city. I use the case Michael Moore makes in Bowling for Columbine, without mentioning his name of course… As to the 4th Amendment, many Red Staters are self-styled libertarians and it doesn’t take a huge leap to go from “what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home” to the corrosive effect of government interference in other personal matters and the dangers of trying to legislate morality.
Anyway, good work! If you ever do decide to do a comparative piece I would love to participate.
December 24th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Thank you all for your thoughts. To Tickledgreen, I want to say that Yes, that is a large part of the point — to see that different positions on concrete matters follow from different positions on more general principles (like anti-utopianism and thinking relativism is the “easy route.” Ray says the red staters painted relativism with too broad a brush, but I wasn’t sure why he felt that. Ray likes Nietzsche, who is as broad a relativist as they come. The question, I think, is whether all values are really “subjective” (which is just another way of sayng they are all relative, isn’t it?).
Some of those red staters would say that values come not from our subjective preferences, but from nature itself, which they think tells us things like “anorexia is bad” (not primarily because it hurts, but because natiure is obviously set up to affirm such activities as eating, sleeping and (in their view) heterosexual sexuality.) So it all seems to me to turn on whether or not it makes sense to speak of what nature “wants” To me it is interesting that the left thinks this way when it comes to ecology.
December 25th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Well, Let me be a little more clear. I think they painted the left as it applies relativism as too Nietzschean, if you will. The journey through Nietzschean thought can help one understand that which may seem absolute from a subjective(relative) viewpoint. It is not, as was portrayed, there is no truth so we can do whatever we want. Likewise it is disingenuous to use relativism as an excuse to cause harm to others.
Casting Anorexia as bad because we are designed to eat at some level relies on the observation of the impact of not eating. Once we have observed that have we not made a subjective judgement on the impact of not eating? Can that judgement then not be held as a value as strong as an absolute given by nature? We arrive at the same place by different route and hold the value equally as strong.
Does the “left” blindly apply ecological absolutes? I don’t think you can make that case. We may have values that we hold as strongly as any absolute in regard to the ecology, but are they not derived from an observation of ecological impact or some sort of science?
I also don’t think the red staters represented their absolutes in terms of nature, but rather in their view of God’s view of nature. At that point are they not casting their absolutes in someone else’s subjective since we don’t know what god thinks?
I really think it boils down to acceptance vs. questioning. The discussion you had with the black guy from VMI was very telling. Being a free thinker is cast as easy, reckless, and irresponsible. Of course taken to an extreme that is true. But taken to the other extreme I believe blindly following can be equally easy, reckless, and irresponsible. Did you challenge him on the notion that his premise was based in the extreme? It sounded like you started to but he dismissed you.
I think it would be interesting to have this discussion without talking about abortion and gay marriage. I think those issues are contrived wedges used by both sides to energize the extremes, the vocal.
Cheers and Happy Holidays!
December 28th, 2006 at 2:46 am
We could get into a long and possibly not very profitable discussion about relativism, science, ecology, sexuality and so forth. I’m not sure what the red straters would say because I didn’t ask about this. But to me the ecology movement and the conservative view on sexuality seem about equally scientific and/or relativistic.
But maybe its better to think about just the emotional or attitudinal consequences of relativism/absolutism and let go for a while on which is correct. The conservatives think relativism gives permission for everything, and the liberals think absolutism gives permission for almost nothing except whatever the speaker happens to agree with. And both are right in the most extreme cases. But any sane person, I think, can see that we need a right balance of tolerance and judgement. The real question is how and where to draw the line through a field of grey, and whether it is more important at this moment to stress tolerance or judgement.
You are quite right to bring up the sixties, I think. Contemporary liberal rhetoric seems to me an echo of the sixties, and it is because liberals tend to say sixtish things (even though they often do not really believe them, literally) that conservatives are so afraid of them.
How then to create dialogue? Avoid slogans, I think, and be willing to think in shades of grey. And I agree that it would be good leave aside the hot-button issues for a while.
Also, I think many conservatives say “God” when they mean “nature.”
In the film Martika Parsons made that explicit.
A Good New Year to you!
January 29th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Hi,
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day
March 6th, 2007 at 3:55 am
This is typical N.O.W. Here is trying ostensively to spark dialogue, but what he is really up to is trying to convince the relativists that they should let him articulate a moral world view that they should follow. He is a closet religious apologist for neoconservatism. He studied with Leo Strauss.
Please! How many innocent Iraqi’s need to die in order to further the agendas of those who believe that the truth shall set them free?
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