Topic: Political Parties
The Liberal Case For Ron Paul-- Or, What I Learned In High School Contemplating the ill-adaption of the two party federal system.by Scott from Oregon
(Libertarian)
Friday, December 7, 2007
It's been over 25 years since my high school days, but who can forget them? You walk down the hallways trying not to forget where your locker is, trying to keep your books tucked in so they don't knock into anyone, your eyes scanning the passing groups of people checking for familiar faces.
Sometimes you pass a group you know you fit in with, sometimes a group you would never be seen with. The cliques are maddening, and yet, you too organize who you talk to and where you make eye contact, by your relationship to these cliques.
High school seems to be the Petri dish where young men and women learn about fitting in. In many ways it is cruel and vicious. Those with odd noses or weird names and pimples are elbowed out into the fringes.
High school is the place where it is most profoundly obvious that class and status are REAL phenomenon, even in seemingly homogenous neighborhoods. Diversity becomes painfully magnified by the insecurities of the teenage years, making it as memorable and harsh as we'd all like to forget.
The one thing that can be taken from all of this high school angst is the following-- when thrown together, people will tend to coalesce into small and varied groups. It isn't a polar grouping, as in magnetism, but clotted, like oil floating on water.
So what I wonder then, is why only two political parties? How can it be suggested that humans, once they leave high school and storm the world, become binary? How does it happen that the seemingly unreal number of social groupings found on display in a high school micro-world, gets gathered into just two ways to see governance?
And yet, here we find ourselves, presented with two parties. Here we find ourselves, attempting to group ourselves into less than ideal groupings in order to choose those we would ask to lead our nation.
I lean liberal, but I am in reality a centrist. I believe that no one has the right to tell an Oklahoma farm boy he can't have guns, but I also believe that cities like New York City have a right to outlaw guns within their limits. I believe in gun control in the same way I believe in speed limits. There are rational laws that we, as a society, can agree upon that better society and still allow for personal protection and hunting and sports shooting and whatnot. In other words, I take the middle road.
I believe in social welfare. But I believe there needs to be a threshold met by recipients that many hard core Socialists might find cruel. I do believe in pooling money to alleviate hunger and suffering, sure. Absolutely. But I think we've gone too far with it. We remove incentive and make lazy people lazier. In other words, I take the middle road. I believe in a safety net, but I don't believe in making it the easiest path.
And I could go right down the list, "issue" after "issue".
But I won't.
My political stances are lukewarm like stale bathwater. Here in the middle, I find myself screaming at the ideologues on both ends. I scream just because they scream.
But I digress.
Ive been reading the Constitution lately. I've been following along with all of the debates. I've had some time to look through the arguments people are waging both for and against a Ron Paul presidency. Google Ron Paul like the sign suggests, and you will see what I mean.
Liberals going at it. Conservatives going at it (and an occasional Libertarian). What I saw were oil-on-water groupings trying to fit into two political molds. High school cliques in written form- the realistic level of groupings one first became familiar with in high school, now in national debate form. All the subtleties remain. People nodding to like-minded thinkers, shunning those not like them, or worse, finding not-so-friendly things to say about the interlopers and their ideas.
I tried to imagine how all of these wide ranging and disparate opinions could possibly find resolution within the framework of a Federal one-size-fits-all regulatory entity. I tried to see it in two-party format and I just couldn't. I couldn't see how it was rationally or logically possible to take the diversity and make it binary. There was no way that one central government could possibly please any more than slightly more than half of the population, and that on only a handful of issues. That was the great "government by the people" scenario played out in our modern idea of Washington. No wonder so many are discouraged and disappointed! There is no way the math was going to allow for otherwise!
But IF the power for governance is shifted BACK to the states, then regional diversity is accounted for. So are regional mindsets. Regional Environmental concerns. Regional welfare needs. Regional health service needs. There is a far greater chance of pleasing a far greater percentage of people if regionalism mattered. State run health care. State run welfare. State run public services. Paid for and administered by state taxes, that never get sent to the one-size-fits-all Federal slush fund.
Ron Paul is right. Diversification of most issues and applying regional accord principles will produce better "self-governance" by "We The People". Just as the founding framers said it would.
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2007 Scott from Oregon, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, December 7, 2007
Last modified: Friday, December 7, 2007
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Even though Scott and I may have a few intellectual disagreements about politics, I know that "here is a man that I can reason with."
This is the beauty of the Constitution on which Jefferson said, "bind the government down by the chains of the Constitution." This then gives men and groups of men the ability to deal or not deal with each other as they prefer.
This, I believe is the only answer in actual political matters.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-12-07 09:52:07
Good article, Scott. You've raised some excellent questions. The focus of your article was on how the questions you raised relate to the Paul campaign, and that's good. But I'd like to take a moment to address a side issue you raised. The side issue is what you call the "petri dish" effect of high school.
There is a very specific reason why, "those with odd noses or weird names and pimples are elbowed out into the fringes." It's the same reason why, "High school is the place where it is most profoundly obvious that class and status are REAL phenomenon, even in seemingly homogenous neighborhoods."
The reason for these phenomenon is primarily government force and the political powerlessness of minors. Bear in mind that public school victims (as I like to call them, having been one myself) have very little say over their own lives. Their entire 12 year indoctrination period is established by people other than themselves. They need someone else's permission to do anything. And worst of all, the entire process opposes what I refer to as the individual's "built-in compass," while simultaneously claiming to be encouraging that exact same compass.
This phrase is undoubtedly unknown to most readers. The compass I am referring to is the inner guide that all of us were born with. Call it our intuition, or our conscience, or even our subconscrious mind, or our spiritual connection to God, or whatever else you want to call it. That guide can be trained to work against one's own best interests, and indeed this is very often the motive and result of our society's methods of training young people. But if left alone from an early age, that internal guide, that "built-in compass" will always lead the individual who possesses it to learn and develop all that he or she needs to learn or develop in order to become a happy, healthy adult.
Unhappily, our society, our schools, and our families regularly work against that compass.
In our schools, the compass is replaced by externally imposed curricula. We are separated into "classes" of the same age, thereby putting us in direct competition with our peers in order to gain approval and favor from the teacher/authority at the head of the classroom. This encourages and even requires the kind of petty jostling you referred to among peers. Heck, we aren't even permitted to go to the bathroom, one of the most personal and private experiences that an individual has, without permission from authority.
In our society, political correctness and other forms of intolerance discourage people from being who they really are. Everyone is required instead to conform to the overall societal goals, for the general good.
In our families, which are ripe with dysfunction, children are bent, twisted, and trained to behave in ways that are often contrary to their built-in compasses. The symptoms that can arise from this span the entire range of family problems.
Worse, all of these impositions made by families, schools, and society at large are made "for the good of all." We have learned to justify actions and impositions that violate who we are and what is the best in us, in exchange for false senses of security, in the mistaken belief that such bad trades are actually good for us all in the long run.
Into this cauldron of imposed rules, intolerance, and injustice that steeps us in collective thinking and threatens to obliterate our built-in compasses steps a new idea that is really an old idea. Individualism. Individual rights. Freedom. This is the model of thinking that breaks through stifling societal impulses, that challenges the omnipotence of public schools, and that shakes us right down to the core of even our familial and personal relationships.
So as you wonder why our political system is bipolar, why our schools are petri dishes, why there is so much pain and agony in our society, I urge you to ponder what would happen if more and more individualistic thinking were introduced into the mix.
Posted By: SCott from Oregon
Date: 2007-12-07 11:21:36
"But if left alone from an early age, that internal guide, that "built-in compass" will always lead the individual who possesses it to learn and develop all that he or she needs to learn or develop in order to become a happy, healthy adult."
That's a pretty heady statement, which, incidentally, is easily refuted anecdotally.
What I object to is the phrase "will always lead"...
I would argue that children,unless particularly gifted (like musically) will drift and get lost without the structure or a similar structure to shape them.
While I do think school has its social problems (and as a corollary its social lessons) I am not one personally to rail against school and education for children. I don't see the benefits of not educating children. Allowing them to "find their own way" would lead to lots illiteracy and other such social ills.
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2007 Scott from Oregon, all rights reserved.