It’s 2013 and we’re still having partisan arguments. We need to grow up. There is evil on both “ends” of our so-called political “spectrum”. Instead of sharing Facebook links about how corrupt the GOP is or how wrong the Democrats are, we should determine what is really truly a free human being and use this as our ideal toward which to strive.
Liberals get on their high horse of compassion and emotional reaction to events, pretending to be the champions of the weak and indigent- but they don’t realize that they propose an ineffective means of taxation and redistribution which in the end does not empower these communities, but instead ensures their dependence to the state. There is a giant blind spot in liberal compassion called “debt”.
Conservatives seem to be very sure of what is right, and determined to save people from themselves (no abortion, no drugs, no foreign government who won’t do what the US says, etc.). They forget that not everyone has the same idea of what is right or good or valuable as they do, and that we are all independent, unique human beings with our own lifestyles. We should do whatever we like as long as it does not infringe upon the well-being of others. There is a giant blind spot in conservative morality called “interventionism” (on a personal level all the way to national).
But there is a growing movement of those who realize that the American political spectrum is not linear, with a left and right end. It is now more like a circle, in which the left and right have curved around to meet. They are now hardly distinguishable:
- Both Reps and Dems want to tax you to pay for centrally-planned meddling, they just disagree on the details
- Both Reps and Dems seem to be okay with endless foreign deployments and military intervention abroad, they just disagree on the details.
- Both Reps and Dems want legislation to protect corporate monopolies and eliminate true competition from the market, they just disagree on the details.
- Both Reps and Dems take huge campaign contributions from corporations that do unacceptable things every day, and use their office to protect the corps from recourse for this behavior- they just take them from different corporations (and even that is changing).
The only way the dialog in America can move forward is if we all give up clinging to our long-help political dogmas and biases, honestly admit the faults of all aspects of our government, grow up and take real ownership of our own thoughts and ideas rather than parroting a party line or political buzzword. It is a meek man who defines himself only as part of a greater collective. The political parties would like nothing more that for the country to remain dogmatically divided, and working toward a goal of “compromise”, for this compromise almost always sees you becoming less free!
We must change the whole paradigm, give up the labels, and discuss how we can prevent and mitigate societal ills without resorting to force or violence of any scale, be it imprisonment or martial law. We must have an ideal which respects each and every human being and their individual, unique “pursuit of happiness” (a phrase which was considered important enough to enshrine in the Declaration of Independence).
The Guardian broke this story on massive phone records collection by the NSA targeting citizens of the US, not only foreign suspects. Regardless of the suspects’ nationality, this kind of dragnet data surveillance has been suspected by many since the passage of the PATRIOT act in 2001, but is now confirmed by this revelation.
