Ideology

This post may be a bit disjointed. I started writing this in March but I had yet to publish this. The only reason I trot it out because in the last post I got blindsided by a comment referring to yours truly as a "neo-con sneering about a police state he supports". My response to this person is to ask how he decided that.

So I thought about publishing this post even with the much older info I had written in tact. It's in keeping with the idea I hope to convey. The idea being that sometimes ideology can be poison. Especially if you label a person before you really see the breadth of their convictions.

To be honest I've seen this many times before in fact we all have. It could be the Republicans who might use say gay marriage as a means to get people to vote for them. Or let me clarify, this is how Republicans might get the more social/religious conservatives into the column.

The Democrats will use the issues of health care, welfare, and education to their advantages. One time many years ago I had this teacher in grammar school and he didn't mind telling us during class time how Republicans were going to hurt the public school. Perhaps with the idea that we'd tell our parents and our parents would vote Democrat.

Of course I'm citing only two examples among many out there today. The fact is it does exist and it works. When people don't go beyond the sound bites, this doesn't exactly translate into the best choices a voter might make. Indeed one should seek more information than the simple Republicans are going to destroy public education or the Democrats don't support family values.

I suppose to a point, propaganda is healthy. Both parties or factions in politics have to be able to differentiate themselves from their rivals. It's a problem when people are inflexible and dogmatic about this.

What I can respect the most is a politician with a clue. Those that can somehow adjust their ideas to reality. This is why I can respect Mayor Daley of Chicago or perhaps even President Bush or even former President Clinton. They were pragmatic.

As much as I could state my preference I would rather a person who could get beyond their own personal ideology and prove themselves to be capable of navigating politics and government. Of course if they were in some ways inflexible in how they navigated politics and government, then that is a problem. The process can't be stymied because you may not agree with all the parties (or actors if you prefer) involved.

Let me just say that there was a time I would have been dogmatic about ideology. I'm still of the opinion that it's OK to be conservative. At this stage of my life it makes the most sense. I could even conclude that the base values are based on logic, while liberalism is based on feelings and emotion. The question one just has to ask is what makes the most sense.

That is only for an intelligent, thoughtful, or even a feeling person to determine. Because you're to the right of me or the left of me or even the center shouldn't allow me to belittle you. If anything we should have a great discussion and hopefully we can agree on what the problems are if not how to solve the problems. The main thing though is to solve problems.

Unfortunate some people find it easier to just throw around labels. Not listen to what one side or another has to say about an issue, but effectively blog it off because they don't agree with it. Just as the recent commenter has shown.

I can show you examples where people may do this in real life too. At the same time let's look at the internet. This was where I was going with this post originally.

I've been around on the internet. Debating at political webforums for years. It certainly can get very raucus.

You might have a "circle jerk" of say a group of Libertarians who are dogmatic about their views. Maybe a "circle jerk" of conservatives (or perhaps the social conservatives) who are dogmatic about their views. You may have a "circle jerk" of left wingers who are dogmatic about their views.

If all you do is bouce ideas off of people who mostly believe as you do, that can turn into a bad thing. If you can't reason an issue through and through fully, that's a problem. One has to accept that while one idea is certainly more practical it's not the absolute solution and these ideas need an adjustment.

Still I'll stay away from doing what that other guy did which was to just make a hit and run post. Assigning someone a label without actually reading almost two years worth of posts to see where I might stand on this issues. This kind of comments does absolutely no good. That can be in person, in real life, or using the anonymity of the internet.