Conservative

Conservative!!!??

When I first jumped into this blog thing I got into political stuff every once in awhile. I waxed most emphatic during the early days of the Katrina mess, when, it seemed to me, that everyone, the local residents, the local government (particularly in Louisiana) and the federal government were dropping the ball, and trying to shove things through a clogged bureaucracy, (some what like trying to force dry pinto beans through a tea strainer). Since that time, I haven’t expressed myself very forcefully on my blog, (though I have been a little intense in the commentary on other blogs).

I know that most of the folks to whom I have given comment will never see this post, but I think it is necessary for folks to see where I’m coming from in order to get my ideas.

First: I am a conservative. I think a real conservative is one who resists radical change; someone who wants to know why we should build a bridge before the bridge is built, and that we should try to “forsee” the obvious unforeseen consequences that are likely to come from the building of the bridge. I also think that conservatism is patriotic and wants to see the ideals around which the country was built sustained.

Second: I would not want the world to be made up of “me’s”. I think stark conservatism is a recipe for stagnation. George Bernard Shaw made a definition of liberals which was often quoted by Bobby Kennedy (I have written about this before) which goes “Some people see things as they are and scream “WHY”? I see things as they ought to be and say “WHY NOT”? Without some accommodation of this attitude the world would get stagnant, but without someone to grab hold of the liberal coat-tails and scream “wait a minute, let’s think about this for a minute” that liberal attitude would corrupt society completely. The problem is that not everybody “sees things as they ought to be” the same way. I think that the greatest things in our society have come about from the dialectic between these two sides (not dialogue, not even cooperation, but dialectic, and if you don’t know the word it is time for a good dictionary, preferably the Oxford English Dictionary, but Merriam Webster and Random House will do)

Third: One of the things that concerns me most about what is happening today in our discourse. It has become shrill, filled with invective, and perfectly intelligent people have reached the stage where all they can do is scream at each other. The words “fascist”, “moonbats” ," commies", and sometimes much more forceful epithets are thrown around willy-nilly. I lived in Finland right after world war two, and I saw what fascism could do, and how it was done (Finland allied itself with Germany for a while, and then had to drive the Nazis out as they retreated with a scorched earth policy) and I watched as real Communists marched in the streets on May day, and I had a lot of interaction with them. What are called fascists in some blogs, don’t even come close, and calling Liberal a commie, well, I know commies, and those aint them. Sceaming invective is a little like masturbation. I can give you a lot of pleasure, but no one else really gets anything out of it--or wants to.

Now I don’t propose to try to influence my friends in the blogiverse , to change their patterns. I just want you to know why you won’t see invective coming from me on either side. The problem with the language of that type is that it prevents dialectic. Those on both sides get so passionate that reasonable argument, listening to each other, using clear logic with FACTUAL evidence rather than second hand biased opinions, gets to be impossible. We get into the stuff that speech scientists and psychologists call ' the monologue or dialogue (depending on who you study) of the deaf'. It simply mean that we limit our listening to, or reading of those with whom we may disagree, to looking for points to attack, to support our previously held points of view. Liberals sometimes have good ideas, conservatives the same, and if the level of invective went down a little we might be each able to quit defending ourselves against the maddened hordes long enough to hear them.

I may be ostracized by the conservatives as a group, but I think social security was a good idea. Putting the social security funds into the general fund with a promise to pay it back was pretty stupid, but the overall concept is all right, and I get really ticked with Limbaugh when he goes on his rant that social security is welfare, because I keep track, and it will be at least five more years before I receive one more dime than I have paid into the FICA pot. Figured for inflation, it will be longer than that, and frankly I don’t expect to live much beyond that date. When I say that, some of my conservative friends nearly froth at the mouth, but I believe it, just as I believe that if we don’t do what Bush has proposed in a partial privatization that social security will nearly bankrupt the nation fairly soon.

Any way, if you see me commenting on your blog, for you, or against you, it will be because I believe in both dialectic and dialogue, but I will be critical of poor evidence, I will blast you on lousy logic and argumentation, and I will love you for the stuff that, if listened to and analyzed might solve some of our social, national, political, and even interpersonal problems. I even hope to read that stuff a few times before I die. If I go off on a tear it will be after I have done some serious thinking, and about something that seems outrageous to me.

Well, now you know (as if you even cared).