This post is a promised response to local GOP figure, Lester Sheilds’ attempt here to rebut a very cutting You Tube video that was the subject of the thread, Why We Should All Vote Republican. Video here.
Distinctions of “left” versus “right” to the extent that they were very useful when they originated in the 1790′s are much less useful in the waning days of the Pax Americana that has been in effect since the collapse of communism in 1989.
Their partner terms liberal and conservative have also lost much of their meaning since 1989. All serious political thinkers now acknowledge that some form of social welfare is a necessary component of modern governments. Just so, all now acknowledge that individual liberty and free markets are the best form of social organization, at least in the West. There is a lot of room for discussion and disagreements on the details within those stipulations, but to the extent that the 20th Century was one long war between democratic free markets and alternative authoritarian visions (Fascism, Communism) the argument has long since been decided in our favor.
So what’s the difference? Quibbling over details? My 10 year-old Molly who is taking after her dad with an interest in politics asked me the other night, “What is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?” Tough question when the Republican party can have people as divergent as Sam Brownback and Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats likewise Joe Lieberman and Ted Kennedy.
So, I explained in the sense that, “traditionally” Democrats approach problems from the point of view that the needs of working men and women should be primary and that government can and should try to fix inequalities in the social system and extend a helping hand to those in need; that Republicans “traditionally” take the approach that the wealth creating power of markets can best help people meet their needs and that big government programs actually get in the way of people solving their own problems and excercising freedom.
But, I said, when you look at the actual governing records of the last two presidencies, its all upside down. The Clinton Administration ran a tight budgetary ship and scaled back the reach of welfare, the Bush Administration has enlarged the government, centralized power in the executive and run monumental deficits. Remember, this is all for a 10 year-old’s understanding.
I concluded by telling her that at the end of the day, you can’t depend on labels to give you any help in figuring out politics any more. The world is changing too fast and most of the old people running the show are way, way behind the curve. The true conflict in public life is the same one that has bedeviled mankind from the beginning: the tug-of-war between those who would cheris liberty, democracy and self-determination and those who would concentrate power in the hands of the few. That is how to weigh politics and policy in 2008 and for beyond. It has always been the way, as I have mentioned before on my blog.
Liberty versus tyranny. It is the age old struggle of mankind. And in the early 21st Century, with a globalized economy with unprecedented freedom of wealth flows across borders, open-source warfare, climate change, peak oil and all the rest, everything you know about what Democrats and Republican stand for is wrong. Simply look at the record and ask yourself who you trust to maximize liberty:
- A party that dangles bright, shiny “wedge issues” like abortion and gay marriage in front of the electorate in order to distract us from the fact that they have no rational economic policies, no workable solutions to the healt-care crisis, no plausible end-game in Iraq?
- The party of small government and personal freedom that has maintained a dreumbeat of fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants, and fear of faggots, while nibbling away at the constitution, spying on its citizens, imprisoning Americans without trial, and concentrating power in the presidency more than any founding father could have imagined?
- A party whose candidate for president claims to be a “Maverick” and against the influence of lobbyists and big money in government (and in his party) but whose presidential campaign is staffed top to bottom with a Who’s Who of lobbyists for big oil, big pharma and P.R. water-carriers for some of the most despicable regimes in the world?
- A party that claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility and rectitude which has been run by such a band of crooks, thieves and outright incompetent boobs that it makes the Nixon Administration look like a Boy Scout troop?
- A party that says individual freedom is paramount… unless you excercise your freedom in ways we don’t agree with. In which case, we’ll feel free you outlaw it and invade your bedrooms, churches and doctors offices to enforce our standards of morality for you.
So, I’d say that based on the record of the last 10 years or so, even though I don’t always agree with all my colleagues in the Democratic Party, I’ll take my chances with them, thank you very much.
The Republican Party shed any sense of its real conservative values a long time ago. It is now the party of thieving, moralizing visionaries who don’t give a damn about facts, science or popular opinion because they have the one true vision of the world.
That’s tyranny. I’ll stick with liberty. As messy and flawed as it is, it is still better than the alternative.
