In the style of Rocky and Bullwinkle, "or...The Case for a Third Party."
Something dawned on me today. I read lots of political writing, which puts me in a comfortable spot in my own small, narrow world. I read blogs and news that generally comes from the left or center, some straying ever-so-slightly to the right, but never beyond that. (Sometimes I read very right-wing stuff just for the righteous indignation.) And that's where the story begins--I crashed headlong into a right-winger, my roommate. I've always viewed abortion (I know, "anything but that;" but there's a point) as the issue of other people, as in, I never would do it in conscience, but if there are children unwanted by the world, maybe they're better off not in the world and I never have to think about what, exactly, that means. I read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics, which tells that there's a strong correlation between the decades-long dropping crime rates and the number of disaffected kids not here due to abortion, with a very nice natural experiment showing the opposite situation (when a ban on abortions was imposed after years of its being legal), where the coming of age of those born in the no-abortions era showed an increase in many negative social factors, such as psychiatric services, crime in general, and arrests. To me, it was cut-and-dried--pragmatically, abortions have made life safer for the rest of us and, as a teacher, I've had my fill of disaffected kids because I know what an uphill battle for happiness and prosperity they face. I didn't participate in it, I didn't care what anyone else did and nobody else should, either.
My roommate is a deeply Christian woman, and she has a different attitude about it. She once worked in a "crisis pregnancy center," a place derided by left-wing and pro-choice advocates as a place where teenagers are bullied into not having abortions, as being talked out of an abortion is the only reason these putative crisis centers exist (they don't offer any other services). My view had been that they violate the civil rights of pro-choice persons and are somewhat deceptive in advertising. But that's when the debate I foolishly charged headlong into took a turn. I had assumed that we were talking about issues of pragmatism. We were not. My roommate looked close to tears when she talked about the deaths of "all those babies." She asked how I would feel if someone murdered my daughter, such as her mother, who would have the right to do so in this situation if it only happened 8 years ago instead of today. In other words, I had underestimated the nature of "emotionally charged." It's not that reasonable people don't disagree, they do, but your stance on the nature of life matters to it quite a bit and my unemotional nature simply makes it hard for me to see the other side's view, or, at least, it did until this.
This hasn't changed my stance, but that's not the point. Here's the point: social issues have allowed conservatives to hijack reasonable people into voting against their own self-interests. There are three prongs to this point: 1) people who are not wealthy, or have used the social safety nets, would reasonably be voting against their own self-interests to vote conservative but they do so anyways, 2) plutocrats are not people, at least in the way we've come to understand them, and 3) people are required by the two-party system to pick a side and its black-and-white approach, forcing them into compromising some important principles in favor of strictly religious ones.
I'm a teacher. It's a government institution and a socialist one at that--it is a service entirely paid for by the government from tax dollars. I have colleagues who are vehemently, caustically conservative. Wouldn't a person who is caustically conservative and a teacher be forced by their conscience to work in the private sector, or at least at a for-profit private school, or a charter school (conservatives apparently love the charter schools movement though it is a mostly bipartisan issue)? Well, in the interest of non-hypocrisy, yes, they do. But they haven't. These are social conservatives. They don't like that their government paychecks are being taxed for social programs (!), even though they ARE a social program. How did that happen? Add to that the fact that teachers, while compensated reasonably, are not compensated nearly like they're educated, and you've got some lower-middle class people who are conservatives. Conservatism worships Supply-Side Jesus, a caricature of the real Jesus, the one who gave away his worldly possessions and spent his life in service to the poor and disaffected. Modern conservatism holds that by forming a society friendly to rich people, rich people in turn will take care of everyone. A teacher can't possibly believe that without seriously pondering his or her place in the world. Al Franken has stated that, in effect, a single Biblical passage, the Parable of the Talents, gives Supply-Side Jesus worshippers the rhetorical firepower to justify that merciless pursuit of money. Think of all of the evangelical truck drivers, teachers, cops, secretaries, construction workers, factory workers, etc. who want to do away with all of the government programs they either depend on or draw a paycheck from, and it's stunning how hypocritical that seems. At the same time, I don't believe that they are knowingly being hypocritical; they've been given a choice between that and the Church of Liberalism, painted as a dirty word by conservatives. So, you accept social conservatism (abortions and gay rights and such), you accept the whole pie of conservatism since there is nothing else.
I am not wealthy. Most of us are not. But when we vote for a politician (at least on the national level, but usually locally, too) we are not voting for people like us. All current members of Congress are wealthy Americans, the 1%. The many lobbies that swarm around Washington and pay to keep them power brokers have the same goal of making the American experience better for the elite, so they pay Congress to make it so. This goes nearly equally for Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, from that perspective, have to be ideologues, because by voting with Democrats, they are voting against their own interests, too. It's not nearly the stretch for Republicans, since they're voting with their own type, the wealthy elite. This is the absolute definition of a plutocracy, rule by the wealthy. So any legislative action that benefits wealthy people must be seen as disingenuous at least, open corruption at worst. Isn't conservatism by the middle- and lower-middle class masses, then, an extension of that disingenuousness? It is, but they don't have a choice. Voting against abortion rights is more important to them than economic issues, and conservatism is the only choice they have in that regard. Viewed through that lens, conservatism is a very nice racket.
Even among liberals, abortions are distasteful, are they not? So the same can be said for liberalism: there are issues that some liberals side with Democrats on, but issues they may not. Liberals age given no more choice in the matter than conservatives--they have to pick a party from the two we have. In my state, Arizona, "independent," which is what my own registration is, means "not able to participate meaningfully in the political process." I can't vote in primaries and if I vote strictly Democrat on any ticket my candidate will lose.
So, in summary, a third (or fourth, or fifth) party is needed to alleviate this problem. Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution in the mid-90s did more to alienate people from the political process than any single event in history I know of, because it forced people of conscience to side with Republicans, perhaps against their own self-interests, and set in stone the plutocracy that we currently enjoy in Washington and most states. Abortion, gay rights and issues like it have allowed cunning conservatives to make us all cheerleaders of the plutocracy.
UPDATE: Paul Krugman said the exact same thing, but 1) knows more than I do by far and 2) has studies that back up his/my claims. My work is done here: (meant both ways)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/opinion/krugman-moochers-against-welfare.html?ref=paulkrugman
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