Very interesting article here, from Gerard Alexander at the Washington Post, posing the question "why are liberals so condescending?" I went into it ready to eviscerate it and came out somewhat meeker on the other side. Yes, liberals are often extremely condescending, and sometimes the conservative viewpoint is the correct one, more or less by default and by definition: this will work because this has always worked. So why am I often so quick to discount most anything a conservative says?
I'd argue the condescension runs both ways. Just as many liberals dismiss conservatives as ruthless moneygrubbing ignoranuses, liberals are often called lazy pinko commies and/or threatened with eternal damnation. Speaking for both sides, it's hard to think critically and objectively when your core values are mocked as subhuman.
Can we at least agree that all of us, liberal and conservative alike, want to make the world a better place? Can we keep that at the top of our minds while we endlessly debate the word "better"? Can we maybe refrain from envisioning every liberal as a pot-smoking hippie and every conservative as a corpocratic Scrooge?
Likely not. The chasm between right and left, formerly known as "the center", is rarely mentioned anymore, even though it's where most of us live. Instead we get polarizing debates populated by entire armies of straw men on both sides. It's fair to say that most people, particularly most adults, come by their political views honestly and after at least a modicum of thought. That should be respected, and often isn't.
I do wish politics wasn't such a taboo subject in polite conversation. But that would mean that "politics" and "polite" could co-exist. You see some examples of that sort of co-existence even on the fractious Internet, but it's the exception, not the rule. To that end, I'd like to ask my readers, all three of them, a few questions that can spark some discussion.
1) How did you come by your political views?
2) Have they changed over time? Why or why not?
3) Are there any views you currently hold that are open to reinterpretation?
Hopefully we can get a roundtable going.
4 comments:
1) How did you come by your political views?
-- Raised by a centrist Democrat father and apolitical mother in Minneapolis, a very scandanavian locale that believes in 'live and let live'.
2) Have they changed over time? Why or why not?
--- I can't say it has chnaged a whole lot, maybe just the realization that both parties are run by power hungry people that have forgotten they are there to try to make our lives better, instead they focus from day one on raising money to get re-elected. We need the money to be taken out of the political system (a future post).
3) Are there any views you currently hold that are open to reinterpretation?
-- All of them, provided with evidence, logic and reason to the contrary
Rocket, you sound like me, a "what works" kind of person. So that begs the question(s)--what, in your mind, are, say, three of the biggest things NOT working right now and how can they be made to work?
(I'll have answers of my own to all of this, I'd just like to gather some others...)
“So that begs the question(s)--what, in your mind, are, say, three of the biggest things NOT working right now and how can they be made to work?”
Speaking from an American point of view off the top of my head…
1. US Political system – Get the money OUT of the system so our representatives can work for us NOT for re-election. How? Term Limits, one term and you are out. Cap on the amount of money one can use for campaigning, less commercials more debates. This will also help create a viable third party. Make the senate vote on every bill and disallow any unrelated ‘pork’ to be included.
2. Healthcare – Cover everyone, even if we need a single payer system. How? Food supply, gov. needs to stop providing corn subsidies, we are what we eat and we eat shit. High Fructose Corn syrup is in EVERYTHINIG needlessly because it is cheap. We have to reduce costs as our population of baby boomers will kill us.
3. Green Energy – We need to develop it and we need it now. If car enthusiasts can build a car that runs on water in their garage, the major auto companies can too. We need to figure it out.
4. Religious fanaticism – We need to stop the spread of religious fanatics. The ‘base’ of all religions need to stand up and snuff out the fanatical portions of their religion. 1st on the list, the religion of ‘peace’ (yeah whatever) Islam. As time goes on, nuclear weapons WILL get into their hands and with GOD on their side… god help their enemies.
Off the top of my head those are my 3, I mean 4 as I could not leave out religion as it does poison the human race tremendously.
How about you?
I hate to take the easy way out here, but your issues are mine as well (if I took an American perspective...)
#4, by definition, is a plague that has simply got to be stomped out. There's no living with fundamentalists. #3--where is it working? Well, Europe and, as Catelli mentioned in response to a post of mine, California. #2 is a difficult ideological battle for you guys, and I would suggest you *not* look to Canada as a role model, not at first. Look to Europe instead--most systems there are split more or less down the middle, public/private, and you get the best of both worlds that way.
#1--yeah, good luck with that, eh? We'd have to convince everybody that money doesn't and shouldn't equal power.
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