Political Labels = Bad
I wandered smack-dab into another good blog: Less Idiots. I take my hat off to him for his latest post: In a nutshell, he eschews labels like “liberal” and “conservative” and judges each issue individually. I couldn’t agree more. The primary reason I stopped working for the Leadership Institute in DC (and sold out to Corporate America) was that I found myself surrounded by people whose only goals in life were (a) to be ideologically-correct Conservatives, (b) to beat the Liberals, and (c) to find other ideologically-correct Conservatives and sleep with them.
Most everyone (including me) acted like we were engaged in a massive spectator sport between Good and Evil. Everything “Right” was good, and the “Left” was assumed to be a cross between the Oakland Raiders, the Communist Party, and The Empire.
Never mind that Right and Left had far more in common than, say, Left and Commie, or that most of the people we were fighting were people just like us who wanted the best for America.
At least I hope that’s what we wanted. Nobody actually “discussed” what was good for America. That had already been established. Conservative was Good. All that was left to be determined was the correct Conservative stance on any particular issue, so that we could make sure we agreed and know who our enemies were.
I have no doubt that it was the same for the other side. People are people, and this appears to be what we do.
I wish that our politics really were about figuring out the best way to solve our shared problems. Until then, I’m grateful to live under a system of government that allows us to go about fighting our ideological wars without killing each other.
November 18th, 2005 at 12:32 am
I’m not so sure it is the same on the other side, at least not most of the time. That’s why the Democrats seem to have been caught so flat-footed. Liberals, to an extent anyway, are (more or less) all about making room for everybody. The person who’s motives they are least likely to question is themselves (in more ways than one; see: arrogance in humility). So when they met an opponent who implacably and unquestioningly painted them as evil incarnate, they just kind of stood there, confused, until the bus smacked into them at speed, and they got glass in their hair and whole lot flatter.
I’m sure they’ll learn though.
Too bad.
November 18th, 2005 at 10:24 am
The finding what’s best to solve our shared problems gets lost. It gets lost to things like people not putting their noses into the private lives of other individuals. It gets lost to picking on the nitty gritty details of our individual lives that the big picture can’t be seen. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface and I’m not able to put into words exactly everything I should. I too am glad we have a system where - for the most part - I feel we can go about fighting those “wars”. FYI, I have much more of a libertarian way of thinking.
November 22nd, 2005 at 8:16 am
Great post! I actually got here from reading the comments at Less Idiots. Kudos to you for seeing through the tripe to what was really important and actually selling out to Corporate America (sorry, very tongue-in-cheek). You expressed about as well as Rev. Gisher the sheer enormity of the problem of labeling yourself simply because its easier than examining every issue with all the facts and logical reasoning. You may be right-leaning (I don’t know, I haven’t read enough posts yet), but your still getting blog-rolled.
Daveawayfromhome: I couldn’t agree with you more. The Dems used to be a savvy bunch who wouldn’t get trapped so easily when they were forced to go on the defensive. And hopefully they will learn… but that still remains to be seen.
I wish I could tell you which way I lean, but I’m still trying to figure it out. Bleading-Heart Conservative, maybe? Totally depends on the day, the issue, and the price of eggs in China. Read a great quote in William Gibson’s book, Pattern Recognition: “Everything Lenin told us about Communism was false, and everything he told us about Capitalism was true.” I think the weakness of the Left is that it often fails to understand what motivates people and why they do the things they do. The weakness of the Right is that it often uses realism to justify selfishness. Or so I think. I hope I’m wrong on both counts. I appreciate the props, and the blogrolling, and will check out your site. –SF