Moderate

There’s been much talk in the last few days weeks months years about the need to compromise.  To reach out, walk the aisle and find partners in diplomacy in order to strike a deal, pass legislation. And I think, to a large degree, that such sentiments are noble and admirable.  In the end, a compromise or coming together, where both sides can walk away and succeed in front of their “bosses” is, or should be, the goal.

Much of what I do in my job is such positioning, or compromising.  There are certain jobs that have to be done, some that don’t of course, and they must be done, or sunset, by a certain group of people.  Often times, the group that SHOULD be doing the work doesn’t WANNA do the work.  Or, the converse is true as well, the organizations that own the work today don’t wanna give it up.  Either way, two divergent thoughts about how to get the thing done.  Only in rare circumstances do I advocate for a total power play.  Most often I urge an agreement that will allow both managers to succeed in front of their boss.

Politics should be no different.

However, it assumes that both players are moderates.  That they don’t have the dogma associated with the zealot.  Faced with conflicting ideas and paths toward success, they feel sure that the “other guy” has the same goal in mind.

Today, that is not the case.  We are dealing with a different kind of conflict today.  We’re debating the very essence of how our government should be organized.  We are NOT debating about how we are going to run an agreed upon government.

On one side, you have a group of people who feel as free and as open a market is best suited to bring about prosperity to a nation as a whole.  On the other, you find a group f of people who feel that by taking more and more of another’s property is the best way to bring about prosperity as a whole.

This is not a debate about a middle ground, this is a debate about which form we wanna live under.

Ayn Rand said it best:

There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender—the recognition of his right to one’s property.

I can’t compromise with today’s Democrats when it comes to their larger world view.  It has come down to what system of government we will agree to abide by.

One response to “Moderate

  1. The first real cuts in welfare programs were made by the Clinton Administration. President Obama is calling for domestic spending to be down to Eisenhower period levels, with large cuts, including entitlement reform. His tax proposals have lower tax rates on the wealthy than Reagan’s plans. The Obama administration’s main economic advisors are believers in a strong free market (this gets him criticized by many on the left). On almost all questions of policy Obama’s views are to the right of Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford. The Republican party of the 1970s is to the left of most moderate Democrats and far left of the current Republican party. The Democrats do want to see a functioning market system with regulations protecting those without wealth or power — to not allow bubble economies to eat up peoples’ retirement funds and wreck havoc on the economy. They want economic growth to be shared by workers and owners alike — the middle class and the wealthy (check out the link I posted to your other thread — it shows almost all wealth gains went to the wealthy since 1979).

    So to claim that Democrats have a different model of government is odd — again, they’re to the right of most Republicans of recent years, and certainly much to the right of European governments. The ones that seem radical are the right wingers in the GOP who don’t want to compromise at all. I can’t figure out what kind of system they want — one dominated by the wealthy, who can manipulate markets, deny democracy (like not allowing the poor to vote?), and manipulate? That’s a dangerous path, and can lead to instability, chaos, and collapse. We all want liberty. We all want to be free. No one wants an oppressive government, hardly anyone wants socialism.

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