Heroes of Our Own Time
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 thinking. I'm suffering increased impatience with the grotesque failures of liberal policies. Not that all liberal ideas are bad -- virtually all of them have their heart in the right place -- but when it comes to implementation, it's toilet time. And in truth, guys, most of the problems have been caused during negotiations with ridiculous right-wingers who forced compromises that watered the solution down to marginal effectiveness.
The combat is more like suicide. Consider the example offered in a Nicholas Kristof essay in The New York Times written about sweatshops in Pakistan. While well-meaning American liberals campaign against the exploitation of third-world 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 the folks here at the consumer end of the clothes train are so twisted in their outrage that they don't see that, as awful as it is, the operation is better than if the whole business was shuttered.
Until liberals deal with the facts, they kinda deal themselves outta the solution. Regrettably, the conservatives pull the same stunt. They are also mostly well-meaning, and they see the same problems, but they tend to shirk solutions, hiding behind the notion that the (market) system will fix itself. Nice idea, but again, it trades on anachronistic philosophy at the expense of the verifiable data. And while liberals tend to reach out too far for justification, the conservatives stay close to ground, wrapped all too tightly in "tink-tank" polemics to even consider a new approach.
This has caused deadlocks where solutions might be possible through cooperation. For instance, we have unions fighting with management instead of figuring out a way to work as one. And nowawdays, liberals and conservatives no longer even try to cooperate. They've given up for the most part. Oh sure, there are wonderful moments of a door being opened a crack, as when Gary Bauer of the Attila-toned Family Resource Council got together with that paragon of liberalism now-House Minority Leader 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.
Wouldn't it be marvelous if the two "sides" could get together in a spirit of finding a solution to tackle issues like forest management, gun control, and abortion, to name a resolvable hat-trick? I mean, everyone would like to prevent forest fires, murders, or abortions, so we should be able to find solutions. Yet over-the-edge enviros refuse to endorse low-brush clearing fires, gun-nuts refuse to disarm snipers, and born-agains refuse to support birth control education to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Come on, people, it's time to realize some of our potential as problem-solvers instead of intransigents. We owe it to our legacy. This ain't just another rehearsal, after all. Tina Turner is right, We don't need another hero. We need to be the heroes of our own time.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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