Crabs in a Barrel. Indeed.

Submitted by Executive Direc... on September 17, 2007 - 11:04pm.

Time out, guys. Time to take those deep breaths, count to ten, take a break from the computer, take a walk around the block, or the playground.

We’re all frustrated. The war has gone on too long, and it was the wrong thing to do from the gitgo. Petreus has come and gone, taking our attention away from the real White House architects of this imperial war. Congress hasn’t acted to call the troops home and it doesn’t look like they will. Bush sang his swan song Thursday night and made it clear that he’s depositing his legacy -- this war -- at the feet of the next president and Congress. We’re all hot and bothered and mad.

But let’s not beat each other up.

That’s what’s been happening in the blogosphere these past few days: the progressives – all of whom are also against the war – have regressed to playground name-calling in a blogging frenzy over Jim Wallis’ opposition to the war.

For me, it sounds like déjà vu.

It was like this when we were calling for an end to the Vietnam debacle, and when we were fighting the Reagan nuclear arms buildup. It was in the early 1980s, when I was director of an interfaith group devoting to ending the arms race, that I first heard the phrase “more lefteous than thou” an obvious take on the “more righteous than thou” tag for the insufferably good do-gooder. The litmus tests we liberals apply to one another keep us pecking at each others heels instead of creating the partnerships we need to build momentum for lasting change.

Stephen Rockwell said it well over at CrossLeft when he cautioned progressives not to act like “crabs in a barrel”: “you can throw a bunch of crabs into a barrel and not have to worry about any of them climbing out. Rather than helping one of their brothers get out, each time a crab makes progress climbing out, the other crabs pull him back in. No need for a lid, because they just limit their own progress.”

Let's help each other make some progress, for God’s sake. We don’t have to think alike or talk alike; we don’t even have to be “in the same movement” or “on the same side of the aisle”. Some of us might enjoy being “all fired up” as the blogs fly, but the real fire, the real momentum, the real energy comes when we build something up with each other, not when we tear each other down with our petty perspicuity.

We need to build partnerships between mainliners and evangelicals, between Southern Baptists and Northern Episcopalians, between movement leaders and frustrated bloggers.

This doesn’t mean we “paper over real conflict”—but let’s get it straight with whom we have the real conflict: it’s the guys who started this war in the first place.

We have a better chance of stopping the war if we can stop the fight.

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