I talk a lot about politics in this blog. Essentially, this site is a place for me to write about the stuff I can't really fit into stories.
But, it seems to me, that I should actually declare myself as to where my loyalties lie.
That's not as easy as you might think.
I prize clear thinking above most things. So I'm neither a fuzzy headed liberal nor a fuzzy headed conservative. People like Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich make me nauseous. Not one of them has had a new idea since 1984-- the novel, not the year in the Reagan administration. I rate Gingrich marginally higher than the others since he acknowledges the facts of evolution.
On the other hand, someone like Nancy Pelosi can get me pretty worked up as well.
I believe in clear speech. For example, remember that economics talks about "supply" and "demand" as if there were no people involved. Remember, the next time the price goes up at the gas pump because of "supply and demand" that some executive at Exxon or Mobil or other places chose to raise it. The abstraction is an illusion. Rhetoric that hides in symbols and abstraction is suspect.
I believe in what works. Reaganism, and all it stood for, didn't work. The only thing he can claim, to my mind, was being on hand when the tottering hulk of the Soviet Union began its inevitable slide towards dissolution. I will grant that he contributed by dropping a banana peel in front of the monster but the monster was lurching towards the grave before he ever took office. Take a lesson: if a country can't feed itself it's on the way to ruin.
On the other hand, political correctness doesn't work either. Limiting language is the quickest route to thought control. Insult speech is better than no speech-- at least you know where the speaker stands. Rampant liberalism, where the best idea in the room is to throw money at something, doesn't work-- that was LBJ's idea of how to handle Viet Nam. If he dumped enough money and lives into the trough, it would fill up. Didn't work. However, National Defense Student Loans, which made it possible for a number of kids to go to college (including me) did work. They got scrapped. Go figure.
I believe in paying for what you get. That means if the bridges need repairing, you pony up and pay for it. If a needle exchange program is shown to work better than thumb fingered DEA agents, then you fund needle exchange programs. They work.
I don't believe in underlying messages. If kids are going to get a bad message from condoms and needle exchange programs, so what? Managing child rearing is the job of the parents, not the state. If they didn't get good messages from their parents, the bad messages they get from safe sex and safe needles aren't going to make much difference.
I believe that I have the right to do what I want with my body and my mind. That includes marrying the person I love-- whether they be of the same or different sex from me. The government's right to intrude on my life stops at my front yard. If that hurts your idea of marriage, it's because your idea of marriage is weak. On the other hand, toleration does not equal approval. Your approval is not necessary for my behavior. Neither is my approval necessary for yours. Do what you want. If I don't like it, I'll won't stick around and applaud.
I believe that capitalism is terrific but that it is amoral. If you want moral behavior to come out of the marketplace you have to structure it into the marketplace in the first place. It won't grow there on its own.
I believe that corporate power, like capitalism, is amoral and must be regulated. If this means a government big enough to handle the problem, fine. I'll pay for it. But it's not a blank check to spend money. At the same time, if you starve a government so that it doesn't do its job, it's stupid to blame it when it is ineffectual. You get what you pay for.
I believe in public health as infrastructure. The best health system in the country isn't going to keep us safe from diseases if a fifth of the population can't get access to medical care.
I believe we should house the homeless and feed the poor. You can't expect rational and critical thought from somebody starving in the rain. There's no shame in this for them or us. It's not charity. It's good sense.
I believe in what I can observe and not much else. Goals are driven by moral choice but policy should be driven by facts and figures. That's how things get done.
What I see a lot of is policy driven by ideology and symbolism.
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(Picture from here. Comic in which it appeared is here.)
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