Monday, January 9, 2012

Join together

The worst thing about the Right in America is the hypocrisy about big government: that it is fine for military adventurism, social programming efforts like the War on Drugs or abstinence-only sex ed, or corporate welfare for the richest corporations, but deplorable if one poor person gains more than is appropriate by the standards of someone not directly involved in their lives. The worst thing about the Left is the hypocrisy about egalitarianism: the push for garnering unearned self-esteem through fiat from above, the gutting of gifted and talented programs, the smarmy identity politics that values categories more than people, the romanticization of the urban poor and sheer ignorance about the rural poor or laboring poor, the commodity fetishization coupled with an ignorance about who can afford such commodities (look at what Alice Waters has to say about poor people and food, for example).

If you read the above paragraph and said to yourself, "That's not me. I'm not like that," then whether you are Left or Right, you have more in common with each other than you do with your fellow Leftists/Rightists. It is astonishing that you would side with people who fit the above description over those for whom it disgusts. Join together. There are more of us than there are of them.

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Remember the purpose of the Farewell Party. I reserve the right to delete comments I regard as excessively partisan. We are trying to build a bridge, to create a political path that intelligent and conscientious Republicans and Democrats can endorse. Cheering on one team at the expense of another does not serve that purpose.