Friday, August 18, 2006

Warning: Politics

Don't read this if you don't like political commentary that uses the L-word, but this is what I was thinking about this morning -- in the shower no less! I worry about me sometimes...

Taking into account the differing levels of ethics in individuals, it still seems clear that liberals are both more willing to cheat to win elections, and more likely to be sore losers about it. So, as I scrubbed diligently between my toes this morning (or not!) I was pondering why this seems to be the case. I think it is less a reflection on their character than on their values.

Let me explain. A conservative (at least by more modern standards, and I'm not going into the whole paleo-, neo-, classical mess) believes in less government and more freedom and responsibility of the individual. In terms of elections, this has two effects. First, conservatives want more power to rest with the people and so are more likely to accept their choice. Second, and perhaps more importantly, government is overall a less important construct to conservatives.

Now, consider liberals. Liberals believe that the answers to human problems and difficulties is best or at least most likely to be provided by governments. For governments to truly take care of people the way they need to be taken care of, governments should have more power and people must give up some of their liberties. (The Patriot Act is an interesting twist on this drama -- more comment about it at the end.)

So compared to conservatives, liberals as a whole are more prepared to take an 'end justifies the means' approach to elections because the 'end' -- the power of government -- is seen as so much more important by them. Secondly, they're less willing to accept the decisions of voters with equanimity because they have less faith in the abilities of individuals to make proper choices without the guidance of people who've devoted their lives to studying such choices.

The Patriot Act is an odd issue. The Democrats are saying it gives too much power to the goverment and the Republicans are saying the government needs to take away certain individual liberties so it can take care of us. So how do we reconcile that with what I've written above? First, I was speaking of liberals and conservatives, not Repubs and Dems. It can be argued that the two parties in Washington today consist of liberals (GOP) and hyper-liberals or socialists (Dems.) There are some conservatives who have painfully gone against their party in opposing the Patriot Act because of their principles.

However, out of the myriad of activities our government engages in, national defense is one of the few which is actually authorized by the Constitution. Therefore conservatives, who have great respect for the document as it was originally written and legally amended, are inclined to accept the exercise of governmental authority related to defense issues.

But why on earth would the Democrats oppose something that gives the government more authority? Go back to the 'sore loser' issue. They've never accepted the voters' choice to elect Bush, and therefore they've opposed him every time they thought they could get away with it.

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