Why the Shift to the Right?
January 20, 2007
Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time have probably detected a shift in my political thinking. I was raised to be very liberal, and I have held very liberal views throughout much of my life. But over the past few years, I’ve become more thoughtful. I’ve come to some new conclusions about the place of government in our society. I think I’m a better person for these changes and I’d like to explain them a bit more to you.
I am a conservative in the mold of Andrew Sullivan, whose book The Conservative Soul has changed how I think about a lot of things. For example, I no longer believe that we can socially engineer a near-perfect society with government policies designed to alleviate poverty.
That’s not to say I don’t think some social programs are necessary and warranted. But we shouldn’t consider them to be a one-size-fits-all solution to a complicated problem. As local communities, we need to take the issues of poverty, homelessness and drug abuse into our own hands and not leave them up to the Federal government to solve. We must also understand and accept the sad fact that no effort, no matter how gargantuan or well-intentioned, will ever be able to lift every human being out of misery and into the light of day. We live in a flawed world, and flawed solutions are all we have.
More broadly, I am prepared to listen to different perspectives in the political debate and synthesize reasonable compromises based on what I am hearing. I have come to believe that the practical truth of things can be reasonably determined through an adversarial process. The best tool we have for improving our society as a whole is respectful, reasonable debate.
To go all Star Trek on you for a moment, consider this statement by Captain Picard: “The courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product.” I believe that this holds true for the political process as well. As a moderate, thoughtful conservative I am better equipped to engage and understand that respectful, reasonable debate than I ever was as a knee-jerk liberal.
I hope that going into the 2008 election season, we can all take a step back from our habitual knee-jerk political reactions and have real, thoughtful, open-minded conversations about the future of our great nation. If we all walk away from the table with ideas that we had never considered before, then we will know we have succeeded.
Categories are convenient but often inaccurate and polarizing. However, liberals aren’t necessarily “knee-jerk” thinkers and conservatives aren’t necessarily “open-minded”. I believe that in general, in fact, the opposite is usually the case.
It is not going to be easy to disassociate local issues and their solutions from the impact of federal policies, many of which sap local government finances and limit what local governments can do.
While I myself consider myself a centrist as a fiscal conservative, yet social liberal, I believe one of the main roles of government is to help society, ensure people have health care, a means to pick themselves up and make a good life for themselves, and the physical and political infrastructure needed for society to function and do so in harmony. Leaving that up to market forces that are driven by profit, as is the wont of many conservative leaders, is naive and a failing strategy at best, and criminal at worst.
It will be interesting to read your views and how they differ from Andy’s. Hopefully you can demonstrate in your own relationship how civility in politics can work!
Daniel: When I call myself a conservative, I use the term the way that Andrew Sullivan uses it. It’s more of an approach to politics than a particular ideology. The conservative approach revolves around a person’s ability to acknowledge the inherent and unchangeable imperfection in herself, her fellow humans, and the institutions we create.
My ideologies are still very liberal for the most part. I support legal equality for gays and lesbians. I support the legalization of marijuana. I oppose the Iraq War and I find this administration distinctly distasteful precisely because it is not thoughtful, considerate or open to new arguments. And just as I know that the government cannot solve all our problems, I do not think that open markets are a one-size-fits all solution to our problems.
The best answer lies in the respectful and civil meeting of traditionally conservative and liberal ideas. For example, I see tremendous potential in emerging business models that are simultaneously socially responsible and profitable. I think that a new generation of entrepreneurs whose consciences require that they pay attention to a “triple bottom line” of profits, social responsibility and environmental conscientiousness will go a long way toward bridging the gap between the skill sets of the government and private industry.
I suppose when you get right down to it, the best way to describe myself would be socially liberal, fiscally moderate, and intellectually conservative.
I hope that clarifies things somewhat. I consider Andy a conservative too, since he is always thinking and considering. We do tend to have a good sense of civility in our relationship and I do hope that it’s a good example to other people.
I’m not a conservative. Conservative are miserly tree-killers and rober-barons who wish to rob us true Americans of our of god-given right to smoke weed half-naked in downtown Seattle while playing the guitar and getting fatty government checks and medical marijuana.
Perhaps I spoke too soon!
ROBBER-BARON! GIVE ME BACK MY GUITAR!
Good article. Conservative Soul is a major sourse of my own personal thinking.
Good luck on an open, free and constructive debate in ‘08.
I used to believe in political change, the debate of ideas, and rallying behind candidates you really believe in. I even got involved in local political issues because I believed that people could really make a difference.
I’ve seen that politics is very ugly. Both sides believe that the ends justify the means. Even if you destroy a few people in the process, it’s okay because the end goal is so awful important it doesn’t matter.
One of the reasons I read your blog Teresa is because of your idealism. I probably see a little bit of myself at a younger age.
But for now, I’ll focus my energies on the good that comes with empowering people to publish what they are passionate about. By doing so, hopefully both I and the people I help will be contributing to the greater good.are passionate about and to do so in a way that contributes to the greater good.
Jeremy: I’d love to hear more about how the book has influenced your thinking.
Kevin:
I think that’s the first time anyone has ever called me an idealist for moving more to the right, but I guess I understand what you’re saying. Politics is an ugly, ugly business in many ways. But sometimes you can actually get stuff done that benfits people and society, and I think that makes it worth being involved with. At least right now.
Idealist in the sense you have great faith you can get thigs done - beyond what others may believe possible. Whether to to the right, to the left or in a business setting, you exude this sort of idealism.
Kevin: Ahh, yes, that! Thanks for noticing.
well it’s true, more is accomplished through private donations and volunteer work than government programs, which tend to be more of a hand out instead of a hand up. not to mention the money sucking black hole nature of government bureaucracies. i think that’s probably the biggest thing i have against dems: the government can’t fix everything, and even if it could, it’s incredibly inefficient at executing and delivering any valuable service.
Deb: I tend to agree, although I would love to see some statistics to back up that idea. Do you know of any?
efficiency and accountability are reasons why i donate privately. a lot of tax dollars that go to government programs get wasted on overhead expenses and a lot of time (and money in wages) gets wasted because of extraneous regulatory red tape. because ngo’s/charities in essence work like a business, soliciting donations, if they fail to do their mission, donors can easily pull out their money and the organization no longer exists (see the ‘charity navigator’ and the ‘about gov’t and charity’ links; the latter is about gov’t grants to ngo’s affecting their soliciting behavior). people who work in the ngo sector very well know that their jobs depend on the continuing of their ngo and fundraising, unlike gov’t workers who have large marketing teams and budgets (from tax payer dollars) to solicit the gov’t and voters to ensure that they keep their jobs, even though they provide very little service per dollar. gov’t bureaucracies also have no incentive to be efficient. if a dept is given $100 to fight aids and they are able to do it with $95, then the next year they would get $95 (which is why you always have to take ‘xyz cuts budget by $1 million’ with a grain of salt). that means less money for the dept, which might want to use that extra $5 on cheese doodles in the break room, so instead they always site that they need more, which is why bureaucracies can get so out of hand. ok, enough of the rant…
type in ‘private giving government’ into google and you will see a number of articles discussing this. here are a few from the top (the last few are from other searches):
from the state dept
from the tsunami
truthout.org
interesting article about givers/non-givers
about government and charity
anecdotal from resist the herd
acton.org
CAGW
cambridge journal
the charity navigator helps keep charities accountable
omg i just left a really long response with about ten links and two long honkin’ paragraphs. i clicked ’submit comment’ and it’s not showing up. anyway, just type into google “private giving government” and you’ll find some stuff, one big one from the state dept. also, i argued that charities are more accountable than gov’t, charitynavigator.org tracks charities. anyway, this is really pissing me off. i want 30 min of my life back!!!
Deb: See above! You put tons of links in your comment, so the system flagged it as spam. I rescued it from Akismet :-).
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