Politics
”Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21)
There were a few things I wanted in a husband. I wanted a Christian with sensible beliefs, kindness, intelligence, work ethic, and sensitivity. He had to be able to withstand gamma levels of weirdness . . . and he had to be apathetic about politics.
I’ve heard people say things like how not voting means you don’t deserve to be an American and offends everyone who made this country free, but the reality of my (our) choice is simply this: politics turn otherwise sensible people against each other, and I don’t want any part of that unless I can articulate my choices. Everyone has a political bias, everyone gives only their personal viewpoint, and I have neither the time nor motivation to sort through all the misinformation, through every news report on every station and in every newspaper to differentiate opinion from truth.
My father is republican, my husband’s friends are almost all democrat. Alex’s college roommate even grew up in France and shakes his head at America’s bemusing political rabidity — he told Alex that, in France, you have parties with truly radical differences run against each other for office (like libertarian and communist). From his perspective, republican/democrat is practically the same party.
Still, you vote for the guy (or gal) who will make your life easier. Your causes, your ideologies, your economic status — you vote for the person who seems to agree with you on the things you care about.
I may inform myself on local politics one day when we stop moving, because your vote is stronger in local politics and making a bad choice locally can be as destructive (to you) as making a bad choice on the national scale. But at the end of the day, it’s more important to me to make my own choice based on thorough research than to cast a vote just so I can say I voted, or to please someone I care about.
I’ll ask you a few questions to wrap this up. You might be able to guess where I stand, but my opinion isn’t important here. Yours is. Please feel free to respond to these in the comments section, because every teacher I’ve ever had says that thinking critically is good.
1. Can you consider a leader good at his/her job even if you don’t agree with their background or ideals?
2. Is it possible that someone can be a good leader even if they don’t do things they way you want?
3. Is the leader you want most always the leader a country needs most?
1. Can you consider a leader good at his/her job even if you don’t agree with their background or ideals?
Yes. If they are *working for short/medium-term goals* you disagree with, then you wouldn’t want them to be leaders. If they are *working for short/medium-term goals* you agree with, and they are effective, then it doesn’t matter whether they’re striving for the same goals due to completely different ideals and a completely different background — you would want them to be leaders. This is called “coalition”. In other words, if they end child poverty, it doesn’t really matter whether they do it out of Christian conviction or Muslim conviction or Marxist conviction or sheer pragmatism. But if they increase child poverty, again, it doesn’t really matter what their ideals were which led them to do this….
One of the parties in this country has been filled with candidates suffering a severe disconnection from reality in the last few years — insisting repeatedly on doing things which have the opposite effect from the effect they claim to want. This makes it really hard for them to successfully do anything good. It wasn’t like that 20 years ago; it was common to go “ah, both of these candidates have good ideas and seem basically competent”. Now the other party is nothing special, but at least they’re not all nuts.
2. Is it possible that someone can be a good leader even if they don’t do things they way you want?
“the way you want”? Yes, of course; that’s merely a question of tactics and methods. If you get into deeper questions, like, do they go for the *results* you want, then it depends what you mean by “good leader”: someone can be a very effective leader, very good at leading, and nevertheless lead people to a very bad destination. Pol Pot? Franco? The charge of the light brigade?
3. Is the leader you want most always the leader a country needs most?
Depends how wise and well-informed you are, doesn’t it? :-)
Incidentally, in France the classic “libertarians” are communists — they’re *anarchist* communists. They also have fascist parties, so they really do have radically different parties.
As for informing yourself, read foreign newspapers via the Web. British newspapers are opinionated but very excellent at distinguishing opinion from fact, which they present accurately — it can be fun reading the old British upper class, techie, financier, and socialist views on the same thing (in four different newspapers) and being able to get the same set of facts clearly from all four.
US newspapers have deteriorated massively in recent years; the New York Times is often good but has also printed outright lies; the Wall Street Journal has a record of dishonesty a mile long. The Washington Post is constistently dishonest. The local papers are usually empty of content. The *AP* routinely spreads inaccurate stories. And television news is just worthless, of course.
Comment by anon — July 7, 2009 @ 3:57 pm