Jacob and Esau

To the extent that we respect a basic demarcation between the public sphere and the private sphere, it’s possible for two men to agree to disagree, but still get along. They continue to go about their business.

To the extent that the public sphere swallows up the private sphere, the culture becomes increasingly polarized. In politics there are winners and losers. But the stakes are generally higher than they used to be.

Liberals have a chronic itch to change things. To “improve” things (in their estimation). Which means changing things for everyone else. They constantly tinker with social experiments. When one social program fails, they use that failure as an excuse to introduce yet another social program to fix the failed social program. It never ends. A cycle of bureaucratic failure followed by bureaucratic expansion. The solution to government gone bad is always more government.

Conservatives are more naturally content. More easily satisfied. They don’t feel a chronic need to change the status go, except when they wish to change things back to the way they were before liberal social engineers began shredding the social fabric.

As one pundit recently observed:

We used to get along by leaving each other alone. The Founders established a limited government, neutral on religion, allowing states, localities, and voluntary associations to do much of society’s work. Even that didn’t always work: We had a Civil War.

An enlarged federal government didn’t divide mid-20th-century Americans, except on civil-rights issues. Otherwise, there was general agreement about the values government should foster.

Now the two Americas disagree, sharply. Government decisions enthuse one and enrage the other. The election may be over, but the two Americas are still not on speaking terms.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/332753/two-americas-michael-barone

At this point we have two countries in one–two competing countries, like Jacob and Esau:

Two nations are in your womb,

    and two peoples from within you shall be divided;

the one shall be stronger than the other,

    the older shall serve the younger.

(Gen 25:23)