[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Just randomly surfed in but I’ll give this a shot.
For one thing, the issue is not left wing vs. right wing the way most people say it is. Ask anyone and they are all over the map on this.
The issue is authoritarian vs. liberal (in the original sense).
Authoritarian thinking is mostly manifested today in a bureaucratic mentality, where there is no appeal, no transparency and not much anyone can do about bad decisions short of just sabotaging the system or avoiding it.
It is immaterial if the underlying political theory is right or left leaning. Rule by decree does not work and I suspect it will work even less so as technology makes communication easier.
Liberal thinking – and we are back to “classical Liberalism” does not forbid governmental control, far from it. It does prohibit it the way it is being done now. For instance, my gripe with the bailout was not the bailout itself, but that the way each supporter essentially agreed to vote in favor of it if s/he got their own pork barrel project included.
Nobody had any idea what the full scope of it would be and there was nothing even remotely like a good public understanding. A more palatable way to do this would have been to have the Fed buy stock in the affected companies and with a controlling share, steered the companies in a better direction. (I’m not saying this is the only solution, just giving an example of a different way to do it.)
In other words, a more devolved, modular approach that would allow for public re-assessment. Said another way, private citizens and organizations should be permitted to do what they can. Public institutions may intervene only as needed and in a distributed way (so the way powers are distributed in the US between Fed, State, city, county &c.)
No massive all power Federal institutions should be running anything without seriously considering what happens.
As for rights taken away, nothing so dramatic has happened nor is it likely to. That’s just goofy. What is apt to happen is that people will find themselves highly regulated and be left with no options.
Healthcare in the old Soviet Union was a good example of how that can go awry. Doctors were so heavily regulated that most of their patient time was spent filling out paperwork. Since their fees were restricted, a thriving black market in medical care arose and the poor got frequently awful care in practical terms.
While free and open on paper, the life expectancy was much lower then in the West. The practical results were anything but salubrious…
The elemental mistake most people make is to assume that since something ought to be done, a failure to agree on a plan of action means the country is broken and we should “fix” it. No, no and no.
This is the safeguard to prevent abuse by a minority. The scope of democracy is what we can all agree on. If we can’t agree on it, then it is probably because the decision is so complex that there is no solution that works.
As for your last few points on how were we better off in 1955 or 1700 than now, that is rubbish. In 1955 we had 50% of the world’s economy in our back pocket because, yet again, Europe decided to blow itself to bits.
The world would be very different now if, say, the EU (forced upon them by those nasty Americans in the much reviled “Pax Americana” post WW II, I might add) had come into existence in 1912. The US would not be the major world power it is and we’d still be dealing with French and British colonies all over the place.
Do you realize that the US had only something like 20,000 men at arms at the start of WW I? Nobody thought a standing army was really worth it.
In 1700 we were a backwater in the British Empire. What was so great about that? Mostly people who talk about these times in glowing terms just have a mawkish nostalgia for something that never was. What they consistently miss is that the US has managed to have a continuously functional government that has effected some remarkable social change.
We have Obama, more women than men are in the workforce now and many of the most pressing social issues, while far from solved, are not acute and have improved over the last several decades. This is in large part due to the way the system works.
Conservatism can be summed up easily in two thoughts
#1 If you think it is broken, then you must convince everyone of that before we do anything. Otherwise
#2 If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
And as always, I might just be full of shit…
– jj[/quote]
Great post. I was craving something of substance to occupy my thought for a while.
Thank you for providing it.
Please post more often.
