It's hard to imagine how anything could simultaneously
be infuriatingly nasty and insufferably boring, but politics somehow
manages to satisfy this description. And it's hard to fathom how
any competent and sane person of sound character would want to get into
a field in which character assassination is the most popular activity—which probably explains why
politics tends to be dominated by
nincompoops, crackpots, and scoundrels. Just to think of it makes
my blood boil and my brain go numb!
I'd much rather discuss something pleasant and
interesting, like biking, music, philosophy, space exploration, steam
engines, biology, or even the weather. However, if we ordinary folks
are complacent and lazy, if we let
politicians get away with doing their usual thing—taking gifts (and
orders) from corporate lobbyists and swindling the voting public without
serious challenge, then we'll get just the kind and quality of
government that complacent and lazy folks deserve: ignorant,
incompetent, unrealistic, unscrupulous, scheming, abusive, beholden to the
highest bidder, and maybe more than a
trifle insane. Some might be satisfied with that, and a few might
even be overjoyed. I'm not. We've tried ignorant,
incompetent, unrealistic, and all the rest, and we've paid dearly for
those indulgences. If we'd rather have something better, then, much as we might
detest the process, we the people must get our act together, get
informed, stand up,
make a stink about what we don't like, and make a solid case for what we
would like instead. We must demand that our elected leaders fairly
represent even the poorest and humblest among us, not just the
wealthiest and most influential, and that they do so within a workable framework
of reality rather than partisan dogma—and we must replace them if they fail to
do so. Presumably, if we could manage to wrest government from the
hands of paid charlatans and preaching chuckleheads, and somehow coax a few knowledgeable and
thoughtful people of ability and good will to take charge on our behalf, we'd then be at leisure
to shed a majority of our worries and get back to the things we enjoy.
I spent my early childhood in a cocoon (metaphorically
speaking, of course), sheltered to a great extent from the woes of the
world by my doting parents and grandparents, and thus virtually ignorant of politics.
Certainly, I'd heard terms like "Iron Curtain," "Cold War," "Korea," and
"House Un-American Activities Committee" on the radio, but these held no
interest or meaning to me, still an innocent, fun-loving lad on the
tender side of ten. My father was an odd character. He was
the most ethical man I've ever met, industrious, intelligent, largely
self-educated, moderately liberal by the standards of the day, but
severely introverted and seldom communicative about his inner thoughts.
So, when my own political awareness began to germinate back in the
late Eisenhower era, I followed the conservative example of my more
gregarious mother, the
daughter of a prominent and moderately well-off Cincinnati physician. (In that
time and place, the term "conservative" meant responsibly cautious,
passably informed, and respectably thoughtful—much different from the way it's interpreted today.)
But beginning in my high school years, as my awareness expanded and I
started to assimilate information
previously unknown to me, my view shifted gradually away from
conservatism—not radically so, but beginning to see the concept of
"liberty and justice for all" less as a divine ideal we inherently possess,
and more as a human undertaking not yet fully achieved, to be striven for,
developed, and
defended.
Around 1980, the American political spectrum lurched sharply to the
right, as religious fundamentalists entered the electorate en masse
to elect charismatic Hollywood actor and TV ad man Ronald Reagan to the presidency. This left me, a moderate who'd
refused to lurch with the rest, to be identified as a "liberal," which
soon came to be treated as a bad word—despite its common root with "liberty."
Over the span of my adult life, I've continued to watch as the American
political scene swung ever further to the right. Eventually, the
new so-called centrist view had swung so far as to reflect something other than
reality, a forgetfulness of the lessons of history, and the throwing of caution to the wind by all but
a relative few "elites"—individuals who refused to fall for the
increasingly popular notion that
learning and sober thinking are obsolete or even unpatriotic.
Nowadays I think of myself, not against the arbitrarily shifting
backdrop of liberalism and conservatism, but as an advocate of what
actually works in practice—a realist. Experience has taught me
that reality doesn't change to accommodate anyone's beliefs, including
my own; so, when a
conflict arises, I must alter my beliefs to accommodate reality, even
when reality isn't as neat and pleasing as I might wish. I favor theories that are coherent and
based on verifiable evidence, as opposed to raw speculation, naïve
ideology, and popular
belief. I gravitate toward what's been demonstrated to work in the
real world, and reject what's consistently been shown not to work.
To ascertain which is which, I employ the evidence of both current events and history,
unlike others who insist something must be true or false according to
one partisan dogma or another, facts be damned.
A realist understands that even the greatest ideas have
weak points and flaws, and so can't be expected to work perfectly by
themselves, all the time, and in all situations. Thus, a
realist declines to align himself exclusively with any pure "ism,"
observing that
capitalism, though it offers far greater potential and incentive than any
other economic system yet developed, also carries risks too
severe to allow it to go unregulated; and that socialism has its place in
worthwhile projects where a profit motive either doesn't exist or tends
to work against the public interest. Thus, the ideal economic
system is neither capitalism nor socialism, but rather a practical "what
works" hybrid that employs each approach to its greatest benefit. For
example, on the one hand, capitalism works well in operations that benefit from
innovation and competition, such as manufacturing consumer goods.
On the other hand,
socialism has the advantage in unprofitable but necessary ventures such
as national defense and emergency response;
meanwhile, the funding, designing, building, and maintaining of a
standard network of roads and bridges benefits from a combined approach,
with government hiring out various parts of the work to private
contractors. Realism with respect to
wide-ranging problems requires a broad and integrated knowledge base,
which is to say a liberal education in the natural and social sciences
and history, as well as practical experience in the world of productive
work, technology, politics, and economics, to which this education can be
meaningfully linked and applied. Realism also requires a
willingness to question one's own beliefs and assumptions, and to revise,
replace, or reject any found to be at odds with observed fact and
cogent reason.
Thus, I can think of myself as either liberal or
conservative, depending on the issue at hand and the facts that bear
upon it. As a liberal, I think of personal liberty as generally a
good thing, provided it's moderated with social responsibility and
guided by reality and prudence; liberty must operate within certain
boundaries. lest its excesses lead to abuse and injustice. And as a
conservative, I observe that civilization has accomplished much that's
worthwhile and worth protecting and building upon. However, I also
observe that some of what civilization has done has victimized not only
our fellow humans, but also despoiled our planet and harmed other creatures with which we
share it, and that our own long-term well-being would be better
conserved and advanced if such immoderate or destructive practices were either
corrected or else consigned to oblivion.
All this being said, the outcome is that my long-time
view on perhaps a majority of political issues has lain somewhat to the
left of what, in a phantasmagorical, post-Reagan world, passes for
"center." I still hate politics. But it's still a favorite
playground for charlatans and chuckleheads. So, as men and women
who profess to love liberty and justice for all, we ignore it at our
peril.
=SAJ=