What We Think Matters

I’ll continue on the political ideology discussion begun in yesterday’s blog.

There are three camps evident in today’s political discussion.

First are those who are anti-government; they believe government should be as small as possible so it doesn’t get in the way of people living their lives. These folk also don’t trust government. They fear it will remove wealth, power and freedom from the people. They distrust the machinery of democracy as too oriented toward compromise, which by definition, is a muddling or lessening of the purity of two opposing principles.

Second are those who believe in government and support its authority to manage key areas of public life to ensure quality of life for the common good. They generally do not fear government authority, nor are they likely to clearly see government size as a threat to their freedom.

The third camp is the moderates between the other two camps. This group borrows from the other camps in order to build a working mechanism through which the public’s work gets done. They seek compromise; they see this as a basis of daily operations which allows needed work to be done.

If any of these three camps are left to operate without limits, government and social policy making would become unwieldy, impossible to manage. Some would argue that condition already exists and I would agree with that. Do we ignore the condition or do something about it? I argue we should do something about it so we can get back to work.

We currently have gridlock in federal and state seats of government. Key decisions are not made or delayed at length until crisis forms. Lurching from one problem to the next creates more chaos that only exacerbates the difficulty to govern in the first place.

The public has work needing to be done for it. That is the role of government. So we need to find the means to respectfully disagree with one another but still get the work done. That requires compromise. Whether for the long term or short, we must be willing to give a little to gain a lot.

We have established that government has a legitimate role to fulfill. What we haven’t established are the limits to that role. I propose we develop a working agreement on those limits for the short term so that we can continue the work of government. Contemporaneous with that agreement and on-going work, the discussions pertaining to purer matters of political science should also continue but in a setting of serious study, academic grounding, and documentation. These two areas of activity serve both the intellectual needs as well as the practical operating objectives, without losing sight of each other.

Our nation’s founding fathers were able to do this work under very stressful circumstances. We should be able to weather the stress better than they and do just as good a job. It will take patience, civility and interpersonal trust.

It also requires leaders who are selfless and rooted in fact.

I believe healthy discussions build strong nations. Such discourse sincerely seeks understanding of all points of view on the table. It also seeks to build trusting relationships among conversants. As the methodology of the discussions progress ideology will unfold with proper fact and logic. Delineating key points of each ideology should allow ability to apply the ideology in a manner which allows other ideologies to co-exist. The struggle among the ideologies is healthy as long as it does not block others to exist or accomplish the public’s work.

The political process in America has become brutal. Demeaning. Dishonest. Misrepresentative of facts. It has become power seeking and power blocking. Who gains from these antics is unclear. Sound bites tell us one thing. Actions tell us something different. And results show wealth gathering by many who seek the power.

Something is terribly wrong and needs repair. If those who have been entrusted, elected to do this work and cannot do it, then they need to be replaced. Those of us doing the electing, however, must have faith and trust that the newly elected will accomplish what we sent them to do: find a way to work together and get the basic tasks of government accomplished. With that success we can work on the other issues that divide us, and then move on from there.

Although I am disgusted at the current state of affairs, I have not given up hope that we can fix this. We can. Actually, we must. There is no choice. But complaining about it endlessly does not accomplish anything. We need doers to do the work. We need open minds among them to allow disagreement while doing the work anyway.

Are we willing to let this happen or are we doggedly refusing to give an inch?

I refuse to believe we are doomed. We have come too far at very high cost to throw in the towel.

Bigotry and pigheadedness is not an American ideal. Civility and compromise is. Let’s get to it!

January 13, 2012