Liberals and Conservatives

When I was young and much more naïve I thought of myself as an intellectual liberal (a description, not a label).
I didn’t really consider all the unintended baggage that would attend such a description. To my way of thinking while label-ignorant, an Intellectual Liberal was a thinking person who would consider the entire spectrum of possibilities before taking a position or making a stand.

A Conservative on the other hand was a person who wished to be thought of as a thinking person but who denied the existence of a spectrum having already decided what should be.

Labeling is easier than thinking and demonstrates an absence of rational thought. Just tell me what you THINK. Leave the labeling to the grocery store clerk.


        “If by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,
         someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions,   
         someone who cares about the welfare of the people
        -their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights
         and their civil liberties
        -someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions
         that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal‘,
         then I'm proud to say I'm a ‘Liberal.’”

                                                                                    —John F. Kennedy
                                                                                                    Profiles in Courage
                    

Politics

I have become critical, cynical and apolitical after a lifetime of witnessing the costly machinations public office wannabes perform in their pursuit of an office. It has been said that, in America, anyone can become president. The missing ingredient in that Pollyanna aphorism is that wealth - personal, family, or acquired - is necessary. We have become instead of a Democracy (actually a Democratic Republic), an Oligarchy.

The Oligarchs treat us as their minions instead of as their employers. We’ve become little more than feudal serfs gifted with the illusion that voting will allow us to have some influence over how they do things. Hogwash!

The verbal sparring between Democrats and Republicans or Liberals and Conservatives serves only to dilute whatever wise thinking might otherwise be brought to an issue, any issue. The fervent use of labels as epithets seems to confirm Emerson’s philosophy that, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” Labels obviate the need for thinking.

Intelligence and statesmanship seem no longer prerequisites for viability as a candidate for President of the United States. I’ve grown weary and disgusted at having to choose the lesser of evils rather than for the one who is eminently qualified.

Alfred E. Neuman (What, Me Worry?) seems of like mind. Perhaps I shall write him in.

"How come we choose from just two people for President, and fifty for Miss America?"
— Alfred E. Neuman, MAD magazine mascot