The Conservative within

The schizoid ideology of the left and right leave me confused. The right believes in individual responsibility, but wants keys to my bedroom door. The left believes in personal freedom but wants to mitigate consequences for every bad decision I make.

Unfortunately for the left, without consequences there are no rational incentives. Even worse for the left, they will have to watch as a few generations are wasted, because it takes that long for consequences to take root and modify behavior.

Unfortunately for the right, bad things happen to good people. Even worse for the right, there is benefit for the entire society if together we provide opportunity for individuals, and not doing so guarantees decline for the very society that provides for their wealth.

I ran across three articles in rapid succession today in the New York Times. The first was a mild little piece on free will. The second was a Krugman opinion on opportunity. The third was about what the right gets right ("That ought to be a short one," snort my snotty leftist friends).

That they snort is part of the problem. Because the right snorts back, the argument becomes one of finger pointing and probing for vulnerability. If neither side is willing to listen, we have a shout down, no progress and everybody goes to bed angry.

One place where idealogues might find common ground, albeit a long way from where each sits, is around the concept of opportunity: America has some, used to have more, and needs as much as she can get.

Opportunity is the life force, opportunity is the dream that creates the energy, opportunity is the engine that pulls the train to a higher standard of living.

I believe the left and the right have a vested interest in creating opportunity. This starts with education in America, which has fallen to an abysmal state. The right blames the left for polluting the classroom with polemic and letting it become a sinecure for mediocrity. The left blames the right, for shunting education onto a side street in pursuit of the perfect consumer.

To fix this, the left has to quit trying to be everything for everybody and accept that there are consequences, often nasty ones, for certain behaviors, including failure by students as well as teachers in the classroom.

The right has to give up the idea that they have no stake in what happens to others, accept that a world of gated communities of the spirit will ruin the environment for everybody. We have to fund more than just police and fire departments.

I don't want to talk about income inequality in and of itself. I don't find inequality by itself to be a sin, nor do I hate other people's money as so many on the left seem to do. But if inequality perpetuates itself through an inheritocracy, it damages opportunity. We need to do what we need to do so that a farm boy in Idaho can share the same dream as a street kid in Buffalo. Then we might see a reversal of America's decline.

We spend more per capita on education than any other nation and we do so poorly. We spend more than any nation on health care and it is pretty lousy. So money, by itself, is not the answer here, and everyone has to accept there are limits to what we can spend.

But it is unAmerican to accept that this is the best we can do, and accept the status quo. If we continue this path, and if "We the People" do not believe there is opportunity, if not for themselves but for their children, they will get angry and will want to take it back, by ballot or by bullet.

Liberty and Liberals

"Single" seems to thrive on feelings he denies. In this case, feelings about "liberals." He sets up a "straw man" and then crows about knocking him down. (http://eyeonoregon.blogspot.com/2007/01/protect-and-serve.html)

Let's try this in language more plain: We did NOT say cops should not do anything when they feel threatened.

What we did say was that there needs to be greater scrutiny of the "I felt threatened!" defense, better training, possibly a change of culture in the union hall and squad room. Because there seems to be a pattern of behavior.

The other difference between bad cops and good liberals, “Single,” is that a bad cop carries a gun and a badge that allows him/her to victimize others with impunity. And those that do so damage all those good cops, the vast majority, we agree, as well as the rest of our social fabric.

That’s what we said.

The idea that "Single" may favor a society that, without much concern, allows police to batter a man because he didn't do "what the cops ask," even though the man was autistic and barely able to speak and follow directions, is a repugnant but possibly accurate representation of his whole philosophy.

There, a straw man of my very own.

We LIKE it when "Single" takes the opportunity to prove his "conservative manliness" over the "weak liberal" writer by saying there are only a few bad cops and a few good liberals.

It tugs at our “Wobblie” heart strings when “conservatives” do that sort of thing. Gives us a glow right from the 1940s and 1950s, not only a time of “Leave It to Beaver and “Father Knows Best,” but of Eric Hoffer and Alan Ginsberg and Jack Keouac and a vibrant left that was made up of working men and women who fought for these liberties on the battlefield and in the steel yard and ship yard and in the forests. Who bought bonds and made guns and sent their own children off to war.

Liberals are not “weak” by definition. They just misplaced their vitality, a few vital organs, too. Many of them from the past would not even be considered "liberal" today, but great confusion occurred after the 60s, with the boomers ascendant. It was the mushrooms, I just know it.

The left is ignorant about many things, like the effects of global free trade, and that all teachers are of value and should have equal access to the minds of our children, that good intentions are the equivalent of good action. The left can be quite confused about the difference between “equal opportunity” and “equal quality (equality) of life.”

But the left is not inherently weak, unless they choose not to fight.

And the best thing to fight for is liberty, and against those who think that a “police state” is a liberty-enhancing, safer place to live.

Democracy is a funny thing. It is not the bed of liberty, as many suppose. In fact, one of the most important warnings we’ve been given about democracy are the dangers inherent in “Tyranny of the Majority.” And if the last two presidential elections didn't convince you, nothing will.

Which is why we have a Bill of Rights, which is why our founding fathers designed a government that was INTENDED to be slow and awkward and noisy and inefficient.

"Single" my friend, "warm and fuzzy?" The only thing fuzzy here is your thinking. Like you, many of those today who believe they are "conservative" are not, they are actually statists, corporatists, Fascists or theocrats, or some foul amalgam of all of those. Like Cheney’s puppet in the “W”hite House.