Caught in the Middle

Caught in the Middle by Wendell Berry

“Caught in the Middle” argues that modern politics falsely demands allegiance to either liberalism or conservatism, though both sides have helped destroy the families and communities that once provided moral authority and mutual responsibility. In their place, both increasingly call on government to regulate private conduct while ignoring the power of corporations and an economy that damages people, communities, and the land. The author defends an uncomfortable middle position: government cannot effectively perform the work of families, communities, or personal conscience, and political absolutes evade the tragic difficulty of real moral choices. The essay examines abortion as an example of private life turned into an irresolvable public contest. The author rejects the simplifications of both proabortion and antiabortion rhetoric. He believes abortion is the killing of a human being and remains opposed to it except when necessary to save the mother’s life, yet he recognizes the desperate circumstances that may lead a woman to seek one and can imagine helping her. He argues that decisions about pregnancy involve mystery, suffering, incomplete knowledge, and consequences that cannot be fully foreseen. Neither side admits sufficiently the reality of a woman facing two heartbreaking alternatives. He considers four legislative possibilities: absolute prohibition, prohibition with exceptions, permission with exceptions, and unrestricted permission. Absolute prohibition is harsh and likely harmful; laws with exceptions require intrusive official scrutiny and vague judgments about life, health, viability, privacy, and personhood. Because legal regulation cannot resolve these uncertainties without expanding police power and creating further confusion, he concludes that abortion should have no law specifically for or against it, but should be addressed by the pregnant woman, those close to her, and her doctor. He presents this as a revisable judgment, since having a mind requires willingness to change it. On homosexual marriage, the author argues that government neither creates marriage nor has an inherent right to decide who may marry. Rights precede government, which exists to protect them rather than dispense them selectively. Denying homosexuals the same legal treatment given heterosexuals makes them a special, disfavored category and conflicts with equal protection. He rejects religious and political arguments that label homosexuality uniquely perverse, diseased, unnatural, or threatening to heterosexual marriage. Scripture condemns many other forms of wrongdoing, including neglect of the poor, destruction of the earth, and warfare, while Christians who hate their neighbors violate the mercy and love they profess. Marriage, he says, is not a wedding license or ceremony but the daily effort to fulfill vows of love and fidelity. Neither government nor church can make a marriage or prevent committed people from making one. Conjugal love depends on inward virtues such as faithfulness, humility, patience, and willingness. A homosexual couple seeking such a union should place faith in Christ’s mercy rather than in the judgment of Christians. The essay finally opposes categorical condemnation, which turns groups of people into abstractions and enables mob hatred. It invokes Jesus’s response to the woman accused of adultery as an example of kindness overcoming righteous punishment. Kindness, related to kinship and nature, should extend not only among humans but through an interdependent creation of living and nonliving beings. The author warns that contempt for others divides people from this larger fellowship and from the joy it can offer.

By Wendell Berry · First published 2019 · Genre: Essay, Political Philosophy, Ethical Philosophy · 6,449 words

First lines

IN THE PRESENT political atmosphere it is assumed that everybody must be on one of only two sides, liberal or conservative. It doesn't matter that neither of these labels signifies much in the way of intellectual responsibility or that both are paralyzed in the face of the overpowering issue of our time: the destruction of land and people, of life itself, by means either economic or military. What does matter is that a person should choose one side or the other, accept the "thinking" and the "positions" of that side and its institutions and be so identified forevermore. How you vote is who you are.

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agriculture · farming · rural life · economy · sustainability · corporate agriculture · environmental · class conflict · American society · agricultural policy · sustainable farming · economic hardship

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