You are discovering one of the truths. The press give all the coverage to the 10% on the far left and the 10% on the far right. There is no voice for the 80 that are really moderate. Colin Powell said he thought most Americans are financially conservative (unlike all of congress) somewhat liberal on social issues. I think he was right.
Thus my comments about classical liberal and Hayekian spontaneous order. As your post indicates, our political vocabulary is impoverished, and absurdly gives the same false label to people like me and neanderthal Bible thumpers like Jerry Falwell.
I didn't read the whole thing, but I take it this long-assed article is just this guy saying that he now regards the issues independently and doesn't follow some blanket maximum of this or that particular group?
Yeah, all those black folk marching for equal rights and facing down fire hoses and dogs, and getting lynched because they were trying to send their kids to white schools--stupid! They should have just let the Jim Crowe laws stand. I'm so embarassed when I see films of Civil Rights marchers being blasted by firehoses and bitten by dogs. They really could have avoided all that. And all those women demanding equal pay and equal treatment with men! Incredibly silly. I mean wanting to get the same pay for the same work? What were they thinking? I wish they'd left well enough alone. And, oh, let's not forget the gays! Stonewall there where they demanded that they be treated as human beings and have the right to have sex without being thrown in jail or lobotomized. Sooooo embarrassingly stupid! Gosh. Thinking about it, there really was a lot of stupidity we could have done with out. Like the Beatles, and Martin Luther King, jr., and Mohammad Ali, and Lord of the Rings.
If not for the 60's, you wouldn't be legally able to be here writing and reading these stories. The first step in getting us here started in that "stupid" decade with that Free Speech movement and the people who went to jail for our right to say dirty word, tell dirty jokes, and read dirty stories without being arrested.
No more than Brain Dead Conservative.
By "camp" you presumably mean political party or candidate. Like most of us you probably don't "line up" with any candidate, but choose the lesser of two evils, meaning the one that tramples the least upon the principles which follow from your worldview, or ideology, which is generally a function of your view of human nature.
Many vote on the basis of disconnected biases and conflicting desires, unguided by any notion of what government should and should not be asked to do and provide. The cognitive dissonance is often stunning: "I want the government make people use less energy, and also to force the electric company to lower my rates."
Since you take some pretty ungentle shots at me, I'll return the favor: Your post is filled with non-sequitors, errors in fact, and other flaws that politeness prevents me from giving the term for. I'll cite just one:By "camp" I mean the "public string of political beliefs" that help label someone. Even if I don't always agree with you, Rox (not sure I do very often, since I have lots of anti-libertarian leanings in that I find the belief set incredibly irresponsible and unrealistic, and much of what you posit takes that form), I always enjoy how you "converse." You are well-spoken (and when you aren't, you always act to remedy that) and polite as possible, even when you are stubbornly wrong.
I know you did not ask me about the essay, but since I posted this gem, I'd like to respond since so few are.
In general, he gets several things completely wrong, or he makes erroneous generalizations. Of course, most of politics does this, as it's trying to address the entire picture (which is a serious challenge). Lumping people into camps by their tragic or utopian roots is false, and tends to leave out people like me, who are both idealists and cynics. There are many types of people who would not fit this, and since it's pretty much his philosophical basis, the rest of his conclusions are off.
Another general comment is that I am certain he wrote this entire piece to advertise his new play--clever, but disingenuous, and it leads him to be more wild/combative in his claims (and he spends far too much time tooting his own horn in laying the foundation of the meat of the piece). I can make this point: that he has incentive to deal further in absolutes than is wise/realistic.
He said: "...a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention."
Comparing "reason" and "faith" to the political ideologies is the first cheap shot in this piece, and it shows his bias, which taints the second half of this quote. The blanket assumption that free markets and individualism are better than governments is about as unreasonable as you can get. The view ignores the nature of people (biology) and very pointed histories of several cultures. Biology dictates that "might makes right." You see this in most lower life forms, including humans.
For example, the new third world area created by Katrina had entire sections where gangs were taking over. They were creating warlords and beginning to expand, threatening businesses and shooting a few people. The people cried for help from their government, and the bigger bullies came in and wiped out some of the gang members to calm their ambitions. I doubt the people who still wanted to live in modern society were unhappy about that government intervention.*
Anyway, human history has been about people banding together for protection, and much of the ugliness/abuse came from this biological nastiness (and the power abuse, which is just a flavor of might-makes-right). It wasn't until philosophers became lawmakers (in the first instance by coalescing the concept of law) that things changed for the better. In most instances, these upholders-of-law (governments) were far better than the anarchistic alternatives; even at their worst, they seemed no worse (ie, they did the same thing--abuse the common people).
I contend that no one can be a student of history and reason and be able to claim that "the less government, the better." In those cases, paranoia/dysfunction trumps reason.
He said: "As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart."
He had the first two views right, and was illogical in his third. It makes no sense that if people are generally good, their representatives would all be sleazeballs by poor luck, and that the wealthy would be the only scum. Many of the wealthy started as a "common" person, as did many of the elected. So, basically, this slow learner basically learned that people are mostly self-interested bastards. But at the same time, he seems to conveniently forget that businesses are top-heavy with the wealthy, self-interested bastards. Both of those types are also dangerously shortsighted, and only when one starts dwelling on the common welfare does one have the chance to drop that shortsighted failing.
For much of this, he's only unlearning his social religion, but that's pretty irrelevent when discussing government styles. (Much of his "jumping to conclusions" sounds like a knee-jerk reaction, but he's probably doing it for the reasons I stated: to stir up shit and hype his play.)
He said: "I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances..."
What Sherlock is noticing here is called "culture." We don't "get from day to day" because we have a tragic or idealistic view, but because of our survival instinct (silly biology again) and the mesh of our culture (religious beliefs, historical examples, environment, etc--a seriously complex beast).
He said: "...individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it."
Amen. Except that it no longer works as intended. Oops. Lifetime politicians were never intended--they were supposed be forced away from their real job for long enough to serve their country (similar to the military service concept), then go back to their real jobs. One of the first "don't do's" of the Constitution is that there will be no royalty--wtf do you think a lifetime politician is? Make no mistake: Hillary wants to be your queen.
Also, our valued checks and balances don't work as advertised (I wonder if they ever did). They were put in place to counter-balance each other, not share power. Much of the antagonism we see now is for show. As the US has grown, much of the idealism has been squeezed out of the government, and neither dominating party is foolish enough to be anything but self-interested.
He said: "...but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered."
Note this doesn't mean the contemporary isn't a monster, just that this guy is learning more reality about those lifelong politicians. His comparisons between the two (Bush and JFK) are very amusing.
His last major point that proves he's still brain-dead: "What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
"But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
"I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience."
Wow, this guy has all the answers from his narrow experience that "things just seem to work themselves out" as to why the government should just stay out of people's way. How profound. In the process, he does not compare his life to one with no government, and he completely takes for granted everything that historic governments have worked on our culture.
Writing comedic plays may be his forte, but writing about politics isn't. However, it was amusing, all the same.
*I doubt you will find any news on this, as it was pretty much local, appreciated, and off-record. I know someone who heard several locals talk about it while visiting relatives and friends.
