Politics

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, 
for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, 
which has so unfortunately divided man.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Religious dogma tries to explain why humankind exists, political dogma tries to make the best of it while on earth.  Religion has the believers and the non-believers.  Politics has the Liberals and the Conservatives.  Both sets have combatants with diametrically opposite perspectives.  History repeatedly evinces when the religious zealots ally with the political fascists the survival of humankind is put at risk.

Skeptics under the guise of secular humanists make war with religion.  Their absence from the political arena has only recently been remedied with the emergence of the "fact-checkers," such as Politi-fact and FactChecker and maybe Snopes.  However, the "official" so-called skeptical organizations have not embraced this genesis.  Accidental over-sight or self-serving decision?

Certainly the issues of the real world are more important than the issues of the imagined world.  Whatever, this website will attempt to throw a few breadcrumbs into the void.

Although numerous political organizations and movements have evolved, they all spring forth from two primary philosophies forward-thinking liberalism and backward-thinking conservatism. Both strive for the same goals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but each approach these goals in demonstrably and conflicting manners.  Liberalism emphasizes societal and organizational mandates, while Conservatism emphasizes individualism.

The Student Daily News in its Conservative vs. Liberal Beliefs (RECOMMENDED: click here to read) offers a detailed breakdown of the issues involved in American Politics.

The one aspect that most summaries of this nature leave out is the preferred manner in which Conservatives and Liberals approach problems, identified as Performance Measures and Accountability.  Conservative methods define a measurable end result and then judge levels of success based on achievement of that result. Liberal methods define policies and procedures that could provide the desired outcome and then measure success based on the implementation of those policies and procedures.

For example, a successful food for hungry would be judged a success by Conservatives if a high percentage of people needed that assistance receive it.

Liberals judge their program a success based on the number of food-stamp programs they implement.  Results-directed government programs are an oxymoron.  Conservatives tend to pursue financial cost-benefit analyses while Liberals pursue non-financial goals.

Another example from the bicycling community is the passing of the 3-foot law in many states.  Liberals applaud the law as education that promotes bicyclists' rights on a road.  Conservatives argue that it is wasted resource because can't readily be enforced.

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

1 comment:

  1. I think a lot of the problems with modern political thought can be linked to a very commonly used false paradigm.

    In reality there is no simple Left/Right scheme. Political thought has more than two facets and of the facets it has people believe differently in the proportion each facet should have.

    There are socially liberal/fiscally conservative people, socially liberal/fiscal social people, etc. Some "liberals" believe in the death penalty, not all in the "conservative right" are opposed to abortion.

    There is a different linear scale which might be worth consideration: 0 - 100
    where 100 could represent a totalitarian state or inversely a totally free state commonly termed as anarchy. Start your scale on which ever end suits you.

    So long as people continue perpetuating this poorly designed left-right take on politics then I doubt we can count on substantial change in the average discussion with regard to the US.

    One might ask what factors make up the political sphere and build a political identity from there, then moving to discussion of policies and less tendency to political dogma.

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