Side-Splitting Stasis
My dear friends Moe and Larry are convinced that my association with them is converting me to conservatism, and the fact is that I am shedding some of my old liberal thinking. No, not all liberal ideas are bad. In fact, virtually all of them have their heart in the right place; it's their implementation that causes the problems. And in truth, guys, most of the problems were caused in negotiations with ridiculous right-wingers who forced compromises that watered down the solution to marginal effectiveness.
This comes to mind from a Nicholas Kristof essay in The New York Times written in Pakistan about sweatshops. While well-meaning souls campaign against the underpaid manual labor exploited of the peasants by American corporations through local managers, the fact is that the people who work the long hours under the sometimes-brutal conditions are grateful for the opportunity. It is their ticket out, but some people here, at the consumer end of the clothes train, are so twisted in their outrage that they don't see that the way it is working is better than if they had their way.
Until liberals deal with the facts, they kinda deal themselves outta the solution. Regrettably, the conservatives wear the same shackles. Mostly well-meaning, they see many of the same problems, but they tend to shirk new solutions because they believe that The (market) System will fix everything, given time. Nice idea, but again, it trades on an anachronistic philosophy at the expense of verifiable data. So while liberals tend to self-expiate reaching far out for answers, conservatives stay close to ground, wrapped all too tightly in "tink-tank" polemics to even consider the possibility of new directions.
This has caused deadlocks where solutions would be possible through cooperation. But like the very notion of union and management always competing, so the liberals and conservatives wouldn't know where to begin. Oh sure, there are wonderful moments of a door being opened a crack, as when Gary Bauer of the neolithic Family Resource Council got together with that paragon of liberalism House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi in opposing most favored trade status for China.
Granted they did so for their own reasons -- it was crowded under the umbrella of human rights -- but at least they got to see each other as human beings.
It would be really marvelous if the two "sides" could get together in the spirit of finding a solution and tackle issues like forest management, gun control, and abortion. I mean, no one of wants forest fires, shootings, or abortions, yet over-the-edge enviros refuse to endorse low-brush clearing fires, no one's got a new idea about disarming killers, and right-wingers refuse to support birth control education to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
When you think about it, we haven't really moved off the dime on a bunch of social issues since the Sixties, when so much fomented. We're standing still, stuck when we should be moving. We need to give up our positions and listen to principles, theirs and ours. And not continue to bang our heads against the wall. If only we stopped to collect ourselves, we'd see a door on one side and a window on the other. Wake up, guys.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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