Posted by
Patrick "Sarge" Murray on Saturday, October 18, 2008 5:00:00 PM
Many people, both liberal and conservative, like to believe that regardless of your ideology – save for the Communist and Green Parties – everybody wants the same thing, it’s that we take different approaches to try to reach the same end/goal. That may very well have been true in previous decades, but since the tectonic political shifts that occurred in the 1960s -- particularly during LBJ’s presidency -- two entirely different visions for America, and the world, for that matter, have sprung up in what still amounts to two major ideological camps.
Part of the reason for this is the blurring of an important line. The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ meant two different things even during John F. Kennedy’s short time in office. Democrats such as Franklin Roosevelt were certainly liberal, no question about that, and their big-government approaches to solving problems demonstrated such. But when it came time to wave the flag and put country first, they came through along with everyone else, hence FDR’s capable leadership during WWII (leadership that proved to be far more capable than his economic policies which caused the Depression to be a decade-long nightmare!).
All that changed in the 1960s, when the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘leftist’ lost their distinction from each other. For example; in earlier times, liberals were by and large almost as patriotic as conservatives (save for those who turned a blind eye to communist spies working in our government in the 1940s and early ‘50s), mainly because both celebrated American Exceptionalism. Leftists, meanwhile, have always eschewed any sort of nationalism in favor of world citizenship. Liberals today espouse the same sort of worldview, hence the liberal-left knee-jerk reaction to constantly defer to the UN for policy guidance, foreign or otherwise. But that institution is comprised of mostly third-world despots and other assorted thugs who are directly hostile to the ideas of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, the same ideas that have guided this country so nobly over the past 230+ years.
One of the most obvious areas where the right and left diverge is the role of government in our lives. Those on the right recognize that people are better at solutions than government, that all the advancements in our history – technological, artistic, political – have come from ordinary people with extraordinary ideas which can either be rewarded or rejected in a free marketplace. Contrast that with the left’s approach; to the left, everything revolves around government. The left views government as the be-all-and-end-all, for without government dictating to us what is necessary – and appropriating our money accordingly – nothing is possible. As such, while conservatives seek pragmatic solutions that work (if they don’t work, the market will reject them), liberals/leftists don’t think that way. It does not matter to them whether or not the solution works, so long as government blesses it and subsidizes it.
Behind these approaches lie entirely different mentalities. Those on the right understand that people know what is best for themselves, and that most people are capable of making their own competent decisions to suit their own respective interests. The very core impetus of leftist thought, however, is the notion that “we know what is best for you,” hence their reliance on government for every last thing. The power to govern is the power to control. This lust for control explains why it matters not if liberal solutions don’t work, so long as liberals maintain their control through government. This in turn explains the ideological state of the Democrat Party as it is composed today, and why it has ceased to be a mainstream party. With such a party with a jones to control everyone and everything, the Democrats have essentially become a larger, watered-down version of the American Communist Party, which explains why so many liberal Democrats have been in love with communists for over 60 years.
One of the most obvious areas in which right-vs-left visions compete is in education. Many people on either side of the ideological spectrum will acknowledge there are problems in our educational system, but that’s where the commonality ends. Conservatives/those on the right take a free market approach. They recognize that government has a near-monopoly on teaching our young people, and they’re not doing a very good job of it, for any number of reasons (the teachers unions not wanting to make their members work too hard being one of them). Therefore, the solution those on the right propose is to allow more private avenues of education help fill this dire need in the marketplace. Competition in the free market breeds the best products in a very Darwinian, natural-selection sort of way. In education, competition must be allowed to take place to allow the much-needed solutions to take hold.
The liberals, meanwhile, want nothing to do with competition. Their solution is the tired, worn-out, throw-money-at-it approach. When throwing money at the problem does not make said problem go away, the libs’ predictable response is that we’re not throwing enough money at it! Again, this goes back to pragmatism vs. idealism. But it also goes back to the libs’ lust for power and control. A well-educated public is vital to a healthy republic. But if the majority of the public remains chronically under-educated thanks to government incompetence, that majority will lack the critical thinking skills necessary to be able to discern the importance of American Exceptionalism, to say nothing of knowing the economic implications behind half-baked socialist government initiatives.
Indeed, the last thing that liberals want is a well-educated populace, because if enough people are armed with enough marketable skills and have the drive to make good livings with said skills, who needs liberals? Answer: nobody, which is why those on the left have a vested interest in the current dysfunctional status quo, so libs in government can keep people under-educated, dependent on government, and keep voting liberals into office so they can maintain their stranglehold of power.
Nothing could be more evident regarding the differences in worldviews than the messages I heard in the second presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. When it came to domestic issues, McCain’s approach was almost always individual-oriented. The message I was walking away with from McCain’s camp was “let people decide for themselves what is best: let them choose their own healthcare, let them keep more of their own money, etc.” Obama’s approach was polar-opposite of McCain’s. The message I got from the Obama camp was “we in the government are all-knowing, all-sensing, all-compassionate, and we’ll find solutions for you, because, after all, we know what is best.”
The properly discerning individual, if listening carefully to Obama’s own campaign message, can wade through the pretty rhetoric and recognize that Obama’s worldview and agenda are absolutely inimical to the American way of life. Factor in his far-far-left voting record, and it all adds up to a candidate who is so left-wing in his ideology, it makes the very liberal John Kerry seem downright moderate by comparison. When it comes time for us to go to the polling booths in early November, every one of us should take the stark difference between these opposing worldviews before submitting our ballots.