Al's Opinions

My Conservative friends H, M, and R have charged me with having opinions that are not based on fact but are as firmly held as those of a devout follower of one of the great religions of the world. They quote Ann Coulter, who wrote something along that line about Democrats. Conservatives, or at least my three friends H, M, and R, believe that Liberal Democrats are so wrong about nearly everything that they must be members of some religion.

My first reaction to this charge was that it was just the usual prejudiced nonsense that Conservatives like to write and say about Liberals. Actually, it is Conservatives that seem to have opinions that are not supported by facts but instead are based on their ideas of what a just and fair society should be and how it should treat its members.

I thought some more. Then I realized that both Liberals and Conservatives base their ideas of a just, fair, and proper society on a set of moral and ethical values. Both Conservatives and Liberals have values. Values are moral ideas or ideals that don’t seem to be based on considerations of cost, efficiency, and proper allocation of scarce resources. They are based on tradition and on our notions of history. Some people assert that they are given to us by God.

Without going into a long discourse on the subject, I believe that morality and the ideas of how people in a society, whether it be a nation, a tribe, a family, or a working group, treat each other are very ancient and were firmly fixed in the minds of our distant ancestors before they decided to unite morality with religion. The most widely recognized moral or ethical rule is called the “golden rule:” Treat others as you wish to be treated. This rule covers a wide spread of moral rules, such as abstaining from stealing, murder, impregnating another man’s wife, and coveting. Liberals and Conservatives alike believe in this rule and try to follow it most of the time.

There is another moral rule that is a bit controversial. This rule states that the society, tribe, or group has to take care of its members. An injured member must not be abandoned. (Actually, this rule can be thought of as an example of the Golden Rule: if you are injured or in trouble, you would like the group to help you.) The controversy arises when this rule is extended to members of society who are poor, old, or disabled. Especially if the society exists in a region of scarcity, it is important that every member of the society pull his or her weight in the effort to provide food, shelter, clothing, and other necessities for everyone. Such a society may decide collectively that it can’t support those who can not work. Non-productive individuals are abandoned.

I think the application of this second rule forms part of the divide between Conservatives and Liberals. Liberals like me argue in favor of universal health care for all members of society. We argue that society should and can provide good medical care for everyone. Conservatives argue that the ideal of universal health care is unattainable. If medical care is freely available at no cost to the individual, many individuals will overuse it and the whole system will break down. Besides, individuals should learn to take care of themselves and live lives in which they avoid medical problems. Self-discipline to retain good health rather than free medical care for the sick is their approach.

So, back to the original charge: am I, a Liberal, following a set of beliefs like those of a religion or am I following logic, reason, and proven facts? Well, yes, I am. I believe in a society that nurtures and takes care of all its members. A certain amount of competition is good for people, but excessive competition leads to a rather ugly society in which a few winners dominate everyone else. At least that’s what I believe. Conservatives believe that too much nurturing, too much taking care of everyone leads to dependence and weakness. A society should be strong and its strength must come from strong, self-reliant members.

In my calmer moments, that’s how I see the difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Both have beliefs that they cling to. Both Liberalism and Conservatism are somewhat like religions.

Labels: Conservatism, golden rule, Liberalism, nurturing society, tough love

Too many of our public policies seem to be based on vengeance rather than reason. Some examples:

• Our economy needs workers who are willing to take on jobs that involve low pay and manual labor, such as harvesting crops, cleaning hotel rooms and making beds, and various types of day labor. However, instead of adjusting our immigration quotas to accommodate the number of laborers needed, we force these willing immigrants to enter the country illegally. We now (at least some of us) express anger at these workers who have broken the law and advocate a policy of vengeance, such as denying them even emergency medical care, education for their children, and the like.
  
• We have a broken drug policy. Persons who are caught with small amounts of “controlled substances” are sentenced to long terms in prison, whether or not they are addicts. This is a policy of vindictiveness, not reason.
  
• Our whole criminal justice system seems to be based as much on vengeance as on rehabilitation or protecting the public. Our tender concern for the victims or the relatives of victims of violent crime validates the desire for revenge rather than a reasoned policy of encouraging the criminals to change their ways and repay society in useful ways for their misdeeds.

Religious leaders and teachers tell us that God does not approve of humans taking revenge on each other. Some quotes that come to mind are “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” and “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We are taught that giving up vengeance is a religious obligation. The implication is that if there were no God, it would be all right to take vengeance whenever we please. Perhaps humans were prone to vindictiveness during the millions of years before they discovered God, or before God revealed Himself to them.

I don’t think so. I think that, as human society developed and evolved, thoughtful people noticed that vengeance tends to be self-destructive. Vengeance leads to blood feuds between families. Vengeance is often a waste of precious resources. Society functions better if people practice forgiveness rather than vengeance. This is a lesson learned from thousands of years of experience in living together in groups larger than a single nuclear family. I think it was only much later in human experience that such lessons in practical morality, such as foreswearing vengeance and following the golden rule, were given a religious sanction. Religion, or the belief in a protective God, came from such sources as ancestor worship and from attempts to explain inexplicable and unpredictable events, such as earthquakes, eclipses, and floods. The dead ancestor was the protector of the tribe or family. Different gods produced different events of importance to people engaged in either hunting and gathering or agriculture.

Today science has brought explanations for many of the events that were once attributed to angry gods who needed to be placated. We no longer believe in a god of rain, a god that produces earthquakes, a god that causes famine, and the like. We understand how these things come to pass and we no longer need a belief in the supernatural to explain them. We are becoming more and more secular. But we need to retain our moral values. The golden rule is just as applicable in an atheistic society as in a theistic one. Abjuring vengeance is just as important without a personal God as with one.

I’m getting to a point; really, I am. My point is that people who make public policy should carefully examine these policies to make sure they are based on cool-headed logical reasoning and not on hot-headed desires for vengeance. We should not sentence convicted criminals to very long sentences just because some members of the voting public think they should be punished and punished and made to suffer for what they’ve done, etc. Vengeance in this case requires the construction of additional prisons and the hiring of more prison guards. Many of these criminals could be just as effectively be punished by putting them on probation. On probation they would be encouraged to learn how to live in our society without committing additional crimes.

Another point is that our drug policy is wrongly based on taking vengeance against the users. We hate and despise drug addicts. We believe they are monsters who rob widows and orphans. We believe they are hopelessly depraved and deserve the worst possible punishment. We thirst for vengeance against those who use drugs in spite of our well-meaning laws to forbid such use.

We must learn to give up the desire for vengeance.

Labels: drug addicts, drug policy, excessive sentences, God, golden rule, humanism, prisons, religion, vengeance