I was reading the cover article of the onion (here), which I found quite amusing. As I read deeper though, I started thinking more, and it made me realize a fundamental flaw in certain aspects of liberal logic.
Implicit in the article, and so much political commentary, is the assumption that any truly rational person would vote solely in their economic interest. This is absolutely asinine. Just for starters, plenty of wealthy people vote democrat, because they beleive in the values of the party, even if they hurt them on the immediate level. Are those who are not wealthy somehow incapable of making the identical decision from the opposite perspective? Of course, the wealthy democrats will argue that it is ultimately in their financial interest to support liberal economic policies. But then again, a poor conservative can make the same assertion about conservative economic policies. Either way, do people who wonder at why people don't vote democrat when it is in their economic interest vote democrat themselves only when it is in their economic interest?
On a broader level, if everyone votes purely in their economic interest, democracy is irrelevant. If everyone voted in their economic interest, then the program would be one of radical digging, AKA Communism. And Marxism is ultimately what the broader values behind this viewpoint devolve to anyway. Marx was the first (and along with his heirs, only) philosopher to directly link economics with morality, and to effectively make them inextricable (no, the utilitarians did not do this). Only in a marxist worldview is arguing that people should vote for a certain candidate out of economic interest only even comprehensible.
Thus, I supppose the sum and substance is, I wish democrats would stop assuming poor republicans are idiots. Finis
My loyal readers will know that my major problem with the Kerry campaign was that it lacked substance. I'm beginning to see now that it's not so simple...the republicans slipped the ideological rug out from under the democrats, and the democrats are now essentially rudderless in an ideological minefield.
The roots of this problem of course stretch far further back. While up until WW2 the Republicans were the heirs to the know-nothings and isolationists, the experience of being repeatedly beaten by FDR and the horror of WW2 and appeasement, along with America's new superpower role, forced the republicans into the opposite position. Although the democrats were behind both major foreign interventions of the cold war, support from the Republican end was to the hawkish end, not isolationist end, of that issue.
The Clinton era was an unmitigated disaster from a foreign policy point of view. Clinton's myopic focus on the iron pyrite that was the PLO to find middle eastern peace ignored the forces gathering in the middle east, and the results of the failure of Oslo actually intensified the strength of Al Qaeda. Although it may be fashionable to blame the Bush administration for reading a story about a goat on 9/11, the attacks were an ineveitability before Bush even hit office.
An even worse disaster though, for humanity and (of course this is lesser consequence) the democratic party was Rwanda. With the blood of 800,000 running through the streets of Kigali, the Clinton administration plead ignorance. To this day they claim they didn't really know what was going on. I was a 12-year old reading the New York Times while waiting for a 7th grade bus in 1993. I knew exactly what was going on.
With Rwanda, with Clinton administration, and by extension the modern democratic party, resigned the moral high ground. The party that had criticized human rights abuses abroad ad nauseum suddenly didn't care about them. The country went pleasantly along with the economic boom, and nothing happened for about 8 years.
Now, in the most recent election, the Republicans exploited this unresolved problem in the Democratic worldview. John Kerry was powerless to criticize the Iraq war, as any criticism of it would lead to the accusation of "you want Saddam and his human rights abuses still in power." Meanwhile, the Bush administration's ignoring of Darfur likewise could not be commented on, as the Clinton Administration's ignoring Rwanda would likewise be brought into play. The democrats were left with no foreign policy plan beyond "Bush only helps people who have oil and aren't black", a line which only preaches to the converted.
My mind has been going like wildfire lately...perhaps in response to the murder of Theo van Gogh. However, most thoughts require more space than I can offer now, so here is a bon mot.
Those who know me (which comprises much of my loyal readership) know that the book of Quohelet (Ecclesiastes), along with Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) are my favorite books in the bible. The two last passages (which comprise "so the end of the matter is this...beleive in god"), which have always been confusing to many in context, have always made near-perfect sense to me in context. While most argue that they were added substantially later to the main text, I always disagreed.
I changed my mind today...as a result of a broader re-understanding of the book. The book was originally written not as a Jewish co-option of the epicurean philosophy, but as a direct response to it. At the time, the two last sentences would be unnecessary, as the impact of the document, along with it's presentation would be obvious. As the document was canonized, and the context faded from the sands of memory, the last two sentences were added, to preserve the context which made them implicit throughout the whole work.
Now, you might ask why someone who often uses Carl Sagan's metaphor of an invisible undetectable dragon to describe god is talking about this. Honestly, I have little clue.
From the New York Times winter movie preview:
From Thailand, the true story of Nong Toom, a professional kick boxer who fought to raise money for his sex-change operation. Ekachai Uekrongtham directed.
John Kerry has lost this election. How?
He was fighting a president who started, Ex Nihilo, a war which could lead to a permanent foreign entanglement, with ties to radical Xtian groups and policies to match. And that is why the democrats lost...by never looking beyond that. They ran a bland candidate whose avocation is ambition, eschewing candidates with something genuine to say. The democrats will say that Bush hoodwinked the people, and he may have. But the democrats forgot to say anything for themselves.