Political ramblings
Herndon's a good example. He gives me hope for cooperation between conservatives and liberals, helped in no small part by the fact that he's one of the only conservatives I know (okay, that's not fair: one of very few people in the world at large) who truly refuses to be a hypocrite when it comes to political stances. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he's only conservative in the classic sense, i.e. Aristotle , not Bill O'Reilly. (FYI: After meeting and speaking with Sean Hannity, Herndon refers to Hannity as a pig and a scumbag.) After class today, he was talking with a group of us about current political issues in general, and more specifically, talking about the way in which modern conservatism seems to him to have "lost its damn mind."
For instance, the fact that public 'conservative' figures applauded Bush commuting the sentences of those two agents who shot and wounded an unarmed guy running drugs on the border, and who had then tried to cover up the fact that the incident had taken place at all, including falsifying records, lying in depositions, and withholding or destroying evidence. Herndon's position was simple: those who enforce the law must obey it. It doesn't matter who they shot: they were agents of the law who lied about shooting a man and tried to cover it up. One of the basic principles of conservatism is the importance of law, a position which is obviously incompatible with the idea that those who enforce the law should somehow not be beholden to it.
Another point he made was that while it's true that Obama's budget figures are quite large even relative to the budget figures of Bush, it's for a reason: Bush never included the money being used to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in any of his budgets. Obama did. It isn't as though Obama invented these war costs. They've always been there, but they've been kept from public view so that Bush could get them funded essentially under the table. It is incredibly dishonest of Republicans to pretend that the high cost of the budget is due to some wasteful scheme on the part of Obama's administration. He's simply being more transparent than Bush about costs.
I pointed out that to me, it seems like fiscal conservatives ought to be enemies of the medical industry every bit as much as my pinko friends and I are, as operating and maintaining the awful overbloated bureaucratic apparatus that is the medical insurance industry is responsible for sixty to eighty cents of the cost of every dollar spent on medical care in this country; a system which eliminates this bureaucracy not only provides better health care to the citizenry, but saves vast amounts of money through the elimination of waste. This looks to me like it would be a win for pinkos and a win for fiscal conservatives alike. But do they ally with one another? Of course not. That would be anathema to ideologues of both sides.
This is not meant to be a gleeful bash-fest of conservatives, but rather to remind myself and those others who have a tendency to get caught up in the fighting that every human being who heeds the call of reason is an ally on a deeper level than any political divide could possibly reach. Ideologues are the enemy.
For instance, the fact that public 'conservative' figures applauded Bush commuting the sentences of those two agents who shot and wounded an unarmed guy running drugs on the border, and who had then tried to cover up the fact that the incident had taken place at all, including falsifying records, lying in depositions, and withholding or destroying evidence. Herndon's position was simple: those who enforce the law must obey it. It doesn't matter who they shot: they were agents of the law who lied about shooting a man and tried to cover it up. One of the basic principles of conservatism is the importance of law, a position which is obviously incompatible with the idea that those who enforce the law should somehow not be beholden to it.
Another point he made was that while it's true that Obama's budget figures are quite large even relative to the budget figures of Bush, it's for a reason: Bush never included the money being used to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in any of his budgets. Obama did. It isn't as though Obama invented these war costs. They've always been there, but they've been kept from public view so that Bush could get them funded essentially under the table. It is incredibly dishonest of Republicans to pretend that the high cost of the budget is due to some wasteful scheme on the part of Obama's administration. He's simply being more transparent than Bush about costs.
I pointed out that to me, it seems like fiscal conservatives ought to be enemies of the medical industry every bit as much as my pinko friends and I are, as operating and maintaining the awful overbloated bureaucratic apparatus that is the medical insurance industry is responsible for sixty to eighty cents of the cost of every dollar spent on medical care in this country; a system which eliminates this bureaucracy not only provides better health care to the citizenry, but saves vast amounts of money through the elimination of waste. This looks to me like it would be a win for pinkos and a win for fiscal conservatives alike. But do they ally with one another? Of course not. That would be anathema to ideologues of both sides.
This is not meant to be a gleeful bash-fest of conservatives, but rather to remind myself and those others who have a tendency to get caught up in the fighting that every human being who heeds the call of reason is an ally on a deeper level than any political divide could possibly reach. Ideologues are the enemy.