so generally, i try to avoid political discussions if at all possible, due to the simple fact that unfortunately in today's day and age opinions/emotions and reason/fact are indistinguishable. this is largely due to the bastardization of the western education and socialization system which has switched from an emphasis of preparing people to handle the world to an emphasis of making people feel good about themselves via wishy-washy mumbo jumbo, accomodations for those that are unable to succeed under traditional techniques and the hogwash mantras: "there are no stupid questions", "multiculturalism", and generally, the viewpoint that an opinion based on nothing more than emotion or intuition is worth as much as a carefully reasoned argument built on knowledge, experience, research, reason and fact. i personally find it interesting that the same people (see: liberal multiculturalists) that destroyed the american education system by switching the emphasis to inclusion rather than achievement are currently the ones complaining about the "failure of the american education system" and advocating for the federal government to overhaul the educational system. just a thought, maybe if your ideology hadn't ruined what was once the pinnacle of world education systems, we wouldn't be in this situation today. heres the real problem. 1.) the social welfare net has removed all consequences from self-destructive decisions. 2.) so therefore, there is no incentive for people to care about school. unless you have a solid familial base behind you, which sadly, many people do not, given the effects of liberalization on the american family, you simply are not likely to achieve in school. and why would you? what child wants to do schoolwork on their own initiative? school-age children are immature, plain and simple, couple this fact with the culture of acceptance, inclusion and acceptance so pervasive in american schools and you're setting many people up for failure. unfortunately the real world isn't as wishy-washy as today's classroom. sadly, this holds especially true for the poor. for a significant portion of the american population (maybe 10% or more), their existence is defined by a life of substance abuse, petty crime, promiscuous sex, general ignorance, and, of course reproducing.. this all happens on the state and federal government's tab. if anyone coming from such an environment succeeds, its a miracle on a truly biblical scale. and liberals blame the educational system. blaming the schools for the poor performance of poor students is treating the symptoms, not the disease. the american dream once was that this was a nation where anyone could achieve anything through a little hard work, entrepeneurship and ingenuity. remember "ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country"? can you imagine a democratic politician saying that today? they'd get booed off the stage. have you listened to one of obama's speeches? he sounds like he's a high school kid running for class president making outlandish claims that he knows can't possibly be fulfilled: "if you elect me class president, i'll get us couches in the locker bay, new pop machines in the cafeteria, and extra study halls and half days on fridays". he's talking about how he's going to fix education, health care, the economy, foreign policy, the trade imbalance, the loss of blue collar jobs, and every other problem facing the country today. look, there's a reason why these problems persist, and that's that contrary to what people may believe, there are no simple solutions to complex problems. the founding fathers realized that, and people realized that for millenia until somewhere around 1960 liberal leaning politicians throughout the united states decided that they were enlightened enough to overhaul millenia of human experience and revolutionize the way everyone lives their life. while the coincidental rise in technology has allowed the west to prosper, society lies in shambles, with violence, imprisonment and addiction all rampant, broken families the norm and a culture of fear, blame and discontent pervading not only the united states, but much of the west. today, due to the culture of victimization so pervasive on the left, nothing is ever anyone's fault. if someone commits a crime, it's because they were poor and had no choice, a comical statement which completely ignores the fact that 99% of the poor do not commit such crimes.
but i digress. all of that was basically an aside, i'd like to present my theory on what separates, fundamentally, the "conservatives" and "liberals" in the west, which makes up the basic dichotomy of pretty much every western political sphere. if no other reason than to simply annunciate my views, for my own benefit more than anyone else's. i'm going to focus on the united states and the development/evolution of the ideologies which i believe fundamentally motivate both "parties" as it were, as that is the region everyone that's reading this is most familiar with. (an aside: while typically i align most closely with the republican party, i recognize that in truth, we basically live in 1984 and there is little difference between the two parties. i am truly an unabashed libertarian. however, the fact that unlike basically every congressman i was an economics major means that i am largely a fiscal conservative, and given that in truth, what the government does with your money is its most important function, i feel that i am forced to align with the republicans, if only to maintain some sense sanity.)
i believe, at a truest, most fundamental level, that what separates the two ideologies is, simply, answers. this is, of course, an oversimplification, but i believe it nicely frames the fundamental disagreement between the two parties. those on the left believe that they are in possession of answers that are capable of changing both human nature and human society. those on the right recognize that human nature is relatively rigid, and therefore acts/initiatives which contravene this recognition will invariably do more harm than good. however, herein lies the fundamental problem. the group that is "pro" anything immediately gains the upper hand in any argument, and in this case, the left has highjacked the language of the discussion in order to make it appear as though disagreement with their worldview is due to ignorance, bigotry or outright hate, and that everyone would agree with their supposedly enlightened views if only they gave the issues a little thought. the liberal worldview has become an issue of dogma wherein certain fundamental truths are necessary in order to embrace the ideology. this dogma has permeated every facet of our society to the extent that for the most part, you wouldn't know that these things were open to debate. how did this happen you ask? its relatively simple really... modern "liberalism" as we now know it, aka the welfare state, was created at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th as a natural continuation of the enlightenment movement which led to revolution and social upheaval throughout the western world as the systems which had governed the continent of europe since the nation-states began to coalesce around 1000 AD disappeared one by one, sometimes with bloodshed, sometimes not. (the american was one of the first, and undoubtedly one of the most benign) the liberal viewpoint became more and more radicalized until ultimately, violent socialist/communist revolutions broke out in many nations, most famously russia of course, which ultimately discredited liberalism in those nations that did not embrace socialism (most notably the united states - much of continental europe attempted socialism at one time or another). early liberals in the united states were ostracized and marginalized from the halls of power early on, largely due to the dominant ideology in the united states at the time, we know this as the "american dream". liberals and its adherents, those who believed they were in possession of certain truths which could change the way people lived, realized that if they were to make any headway in the united states and other nations who had rejected their proferred "improvements", they would need to fundamentally overhaul the way people thought in these nations. hence, they retreated to academia, where more theoretical work could be done an a relatively small number could have an impact well in excess of their relatively small number. hence we see the rise of various liberal doctrines like historical revisionism, victimization, multiculturalism (ask the Balkans how multiculturalism is going for them) and the touting of the benefits of social welfare programs in academia. then, of course, comes the great depression and one mr. franklin delano roosevelt. he began implementing wholesale various (probably unconstitutional - given the fact that the court only aquiesed to his programs after he threatened to increase the size of the court and stack it with his own appointees) social welfare programs akin (on a lower level, of course) to those found in communist russia, which liberal academia was busy touting the merits of to anyone whom would listen. of course, after World War 2, liberal academia chose to credit FDR's programs for america's economic recovery, rather than the much more logical fact that america was the only industrialized nation that survived WW2 with its infastructure intact. if everyone else's factories are bombed into dust, and you're the only country with factories left who is busy selling materiel to nations from communist russia to britain to china, doesn't it make sense that the war which resulted in this situation is responsible for your posterity as opposed to social systems which alleviated some suffering but largely had no effect on the macro-economic picture? however, now the precedent of widespread social programs was in place, which leads us to the 1960s, easily the most disastrous postwar decade in american history. LBJ's "guns and butter" programs, i.e., fighting the Vietnam war (btw, anyone who compares Iraq II to Vietnam probably was a theater major and has no idea about anything whatsoever. in order to back this statement up, i give you 2 numbers. 59,000+ and 4,000+.) while massively expanding social programs bankrupted the american economy and led to the widespread upheaval of the 1970's (stagflation, et al.). however, herein lies the true evil of social programs. once they're implemented, they're basically impossible to remove. if you've talked half of congress into the idea that people are starving, so they need help, you can hardly turn around and take that away if you ever want anyone to vote for you again, can you? ergo, the united states is stuck with social programs that do more harm than good due to experimentation based on scholarly arguments and misguided socialist ideologies that were ultimately discredited in the biggest way possible when within the span of 10 years the world's two largest communist nations collapsed (ussr), and went capitalist (china) in turn. what is forgotten is that the ideology that led to our social programs was derived from the supposed successes of stalinist russia. it's pretty easy to look good when you're controlling all information that gets out of your country, but hey, who are liberal professors going to believe? naysaying capitalists or their radicalized ideological progeny in russia? i thought so. however, a funny thing happened along the way. the liberal academics who retreated to the ivory tower early in the 20th century succeeded in the goal to supplant the american dream as the dominant ideology and managed to fundamentally alter the way americans thought about themselves, the world, and government. this is obvious by the way that the 1960s played out, a legacy that we are still dealing with today. voltaire and rousseau didn't have any evidence for the things that they wrote and believed, it was just philosophizing. and while they were an influence on the american constitution, their influence was far outweighed by the practical lessons learned by the experiment with the articles of confederation and the influence of the english constitution. likewise, their ideological progeny who also believed that they were in possession of answers to questions that had long troubled leaders and thinkers wrote and prophesized based on either speculation, incomplete information, intuition or downright wishful thinking and treated the conclusions based on such "research" as dogmatic truth rather than what it was in fact: just one way among many of looking at a complex situation. when this is coupled with the fact that the language of truth was highjacked by the left early on, and you have a situation where the discussion quickly degenerates down to absolutes. one side is right and one wrong, one good and one bad, one accepting and one "racist" or "sexist" or [insert term here]. however, anyone familiar with the social sciences, from political science and psychology to economics can tell you that there are no absolute truths in any of those subjects, they are not based upon mathematical or scientific certitude like say geometry or chemistry, but rather upon the observations of an infinitely complex organism subject to millions of variables. given such a situation, how can anyone claim to be in possession of defitinitive answers? of course, they cannot, but go ahead and tell a liberal that social welfare programs have done far more harm than good and see how long it takes them to label you as either ignorant, immoral, hateful or backward. how can this be? how did this unfortunate turn of events undermine the ideological underpinings of the greatest experiment in human history? the answer, of course, is education. when one group has highjacked the education system and the language/ideology which motivates it, they are able to manipulate society in a myriad of ways. one being, of course, turning a nation built on individualistic entrepeneurs to one of quasi-socialists. if you're reading this, chances are you're under 30. how many of your friends do you know that are unabashed liberals? it's a significant margin i'm sure. probably over 80% (unless you're religious, but that's another post for another day), and why is this? because these are the people most recently impacted by the american educational system. it isn't until people live their lives and are able to garnish their opinions from their own life experiences that many come to realize the truth: that social engineering is doomed to fail by human nature itself, that mankind is, by its very nature self-interested, greedy and short-sighted, whatever the wishful fantasies of a supposedly enlightened minority may decree. given this environment, social programs are doomed to fail. it's one of the first rules of economics: (aptly called "the dismal science") that people respond to incentives. if you pay someone to do nothing, they will continue to do nothing, especially when this individual knows no existence other than one of foodstamps, substance abuse and petty crime and when the old american ideologies of hard work and self-sufficiency have been undermined by 50-70 years of left-leaning apologist thought. couple this reality with the thing that neccessitates social programs, a raise in taxes. in effect, a raise in taxes is the equivalent of cutting wages for whoever the tax raise effects. lowering wages decreases the incentive to work. (while this may seem counterintuitive, those that make more money work more hours. see: doctors and lawyers pulling 80 hour weeks while McD's workers do not.) this explains why when taxes are cut, tax receipts in fact raise, because the incentive to avoid paying taxes is lowered. (remember the rule: people respond to incentives) therefore, an increase in social programs lowers the incentive for those receiving government benefits to work because they're paying people to not work, while correspondingly lowering the incentive of those who are working to work, due to the cut in wages which accompanies any tax raise. this is truly an indictment of the income tax, which is, of course, the chosen moneyraising method of the left, because it can be used to redistribute wealth under the principle that those who make a lot of money deserve this money less than those who do not. (yet another argument treated as dogma by a morally bankrupt ideological regime) when carried to its fullest extent, redistribution of wealth becomes what we know as communism, which, of course, was fully discredited perhaps as no ideology ever has been in world history, but the left conveniently ignores this and other glaring indiscrepencies in their beloved theories which fly in the face of millenia of human experience.
which brings me to the right. (and i am talking about true conservatives, not religious types or neocons, both of whom seek only to use the political process to achieve their own dogmatic beliefs and therefore are no different from liberals in my view) believe me, it is much less enjoyable to be on the right than it is to be on the left. you don't get to pretend that you have all the answers or that your system, if implemented, would solve all the world's ills. you don't get to pretend that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant, bitter or hateful. the only thing you get to recognize is that no one truly holds all the answers as pertains to humankind, an infinitely diverse and variable creature and correspondingly, the government should not impede on an individual's affairs and dictate the proper course to address every problem that impacts society. to someone on the left, the proper place of government is to implement programs that address the various problems facing society and force compliance among those who may not agree because these programs have an air of dogmatic truth and are not open to dispute. in contrast, to someone on the right, the proper place of government is to do as little as possible and stay relatively out of the way. the less government (with its wasteful, "pass the buck" beaurocracy and uncanny talent to accomplish less with each dollar spent than any other organization outside of the UN in the world) does, or tries to do, the better. while this may seem "heartless" or "cruel" to those individuals that believe the proper role of government is to attempt to address all societal wrongs, the conservative realizes that complex problems have no simple fix and that a program implemented under the best intentions can in fact have devastating, wide-ranging and unforeseen consequences. therefore, given such a state of affairs, no program (whether that program is welfare, social security, affirmative action or a myriad of other well-intentioned but ultimately harmful programs) is better than a misguided one.
how two polar opposite belief systems can be reconciled is another post for another day, but to me, the above post best explains why there is such violent opposition between the two parties, neither of whom is capable of accomplishing even 1/5th of what they promise in such a large, populous and diverse nation. so i guess the lesson of this post is, everyone, just fucking relax. stop acting like sarah palin is the devil or barack obama is the devil (even if he and mccain are both taking their $172,000 senate salary of your hard earned money to be professional campaigners - if you're a CEO, i'm pretty sure you go to jail for that), because really when it comes down to it, they got into politics for the same reason, to try to help people, even if their way of helping couldn't be farther apart. blame whomever you like for this state of affairs, i blame leftist scholars over the past century who had the gall and audacity to pretend that they were in possession of definitive answers capable of solving all wrongs facing the world (racism? just place unqualified members of the minority class in jobs/colleges that we envision they would have if there was never racism - yeah, that's not setting that group up for failure more often than not. poor people? use the only institution legally entitled to use violence to compel compliance with its wishes to force people to hand over money that they earned to those who did not... it's ok, we're creating an ideology where people who are rich are considered greedy too. i could go on all day), which, if you are willing to look at the situation objectively, is really pretty ridiculous. even the best intentions do not excuse such behavior. at any rate, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask. i could've written about 20 more pages on this topic, i just decided to quit so you could actually read it in one sitting.
