Well into my 7th decade, I do not enjoy heated arguments with so many nice people, including family members, who, except for their politics, I otherwise adore.
The desire to make the world a better place is clearly what motivates my liberal friends. Yes, there still is injustice & poverty. I went home to Asbury Park recently & it saddened me that so many of my black former teammates & friends had already died far too young. Most urban high schools continue to dump far too many unmotivated & illiterate kids out onto the streets. What could be more noble than supporting politicians who can formulate remedies for these troublesome problems?
Also, I understand that my liberal friends may think that at least they are FOR something, instead of having a politics based on being anti-government, anti anti-poverty or anti equal opportunity. In younger days, I learned about The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire & other sweatshop disasters of the 1900's. I sang near the steps of The Lincoln Memorial with Joan Baez & Bob Dylan, two of my heroes when I was 22.
SO, WHAT'S MY PROBLEM NOW, DUDE?
I do understand thet capitalism is far from perfect. Just recently, the four of us Chicago Newberry's were dumped from a commercial flight and stranded in lovely Newark, NJ, We had to rent a car and drive all the way home. We passed a place in the Pocono's called, "THE LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE" in Hope, NJ. My problem with liberal politics is that this politics is based solely on hope rather than experience. You have to live in "The Land Of Make Believe" and deny sizable chunks of reality to remain faithful to what Hillary Clinton now calls "progressive" politics.
continued...
November 21, 2009
I wrote the above plus about 10 additional pages about a year ago, thinking out loud and on paper how to understand and bridge the space between me and my liberal friends. Since then, I took a personality test, and, lo and behold, I should grow up to be a counselor of some kind, which is exactly what I was as a young man at Huckleberry House for Runaways and San Francisco Juvenile Court. I was not a very good counselor because I wanted to tell people what to do, rather than asking them the right questions to help them lead better, more satisfying lives. My mentor, the great psychiatrist and pioneering family counselor, Alan Leveton, would constantly tell me to stop the tape when I brought him tapes of my piss poor counseling sessions with families at juvie. "Why don't you just ask ....?" he would always say.
I will try to ask poignant questions from now on. Today's NYT had columnist Bob Herbert bemoaning the state of Detroit. Why can't he see that in so many ways the devastation there is the direct result of decades of liberalism brought to you in living color by the Democratic Party in perfect alignment with the United Auto Workers' Union? Doesn't the same go for Detroit's schools with something like 70% high school drop out rates, along with school systems in Atlanta, Camden, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark and Washington, DC?
Are my liberal friends bothered by the corruption and waste which is always part and parcel of almost every single large government agency from the post office to the probation department to the parks district to the DMV?
Do my liberal friends care as much about freedom as my conservative friends do? Don't they understand that we could easily loose the freedoms we enjoy with big government run amuck?
What about the freedom to fail? If we don't have the looming possibility of failure in our individual lives, how can we ever embrace the risks and challenges necessary for real success, real accomplishment? Do they really think more and more government safety nets can remove the risks from our lives, and have they considered that this would not be a good thing? Who do my liberal friends admire? Do they admire the public school teachers with their comfortable routines, decent standard of living and close to zero accountability? Wouldn't it be better if it would not be next to impossible to fire bad teachers? How does progressive idealism (equality and fairness for all) square with the inherent corruption of unions which insist on undemanding jobs with cushy benefits and cozy retirement programs? How has this kind of social engineering worked in places like Detroit? And, what of the companies like Caterpillar and John Deere which now prosper, after saying no to the same unions which have helped to destroy Detroit?
If progressive politics is part of a belief system, doesn't it make sense to routinely subject those beliefs to critical scrutiny? If it is part of so many people's identity, how on earth can the rest of us obtain a fair hearing when we have arrived at such different conclusions? Isn't it clear that we also want what's best for humanity? How can we encourage others to begin to see that the false security of collectivism is no security at all?
Isn't there a better alternative to progressivism? Isn't it better that conservative values and true humanism can not be boiled down to some simple slogans which can be shouted out from bull horns? Isn't the alternative to a false sense of security the hard reality of work, discipline and sacrifice? And, isn't this better?
