How many ways can there be to say that something's either good for us or bad for us? I know that some issues arouse a lot of passion, but eventually reading dozens of rants about the same subject gets dull and passion wanes. This isn't necessarily a good thing. Some topics need to be kept hot, simply to keep pressure on the opposition.
But if the only people who are reading your rants are of a like mind, what good are they? Perhaps they serve as moral support, but somehow I think that sort of ranting might be more of a way to feel as though you're contributing something of meaning to the dialog, despite the fact that everyone you vent to already knows the things that you have to say. Or maybe it's a way to get validation for your ideas from the like minded.
Maybe, that's why some of us have the perception that the political dialog in our country is becoming more and more polarized over time. The left has its echo chamber with its strident voices, and the right does too. If you only pay attention to the voices from one side or the other, your views can become more extreme over time. Sure, this might arouse your passions for a while, but if all you hear is your own voice repeated over and over you aren't learning anything.
I wasn't always a conservative. I started life with a fairly conservative upbringing. My dad's pretty conservative. My mom on the other hand is more of a moderate with liberal leanings, but compared to today's liberals she was a staunch right winger when I was growing up. In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it and my own cantankerous nature I was an anarchist at thirteen.
I was in full rebellion against the principles I was raised with. Not long after that, largely due to the influence of my “friends” in my own little teen-age “underground” which was mild compared to the attitudes I see in some of today's youth. In college I was attracted to the “romanticism” of the counter-culture — wishing for a protest akin to the foolishness of the sixties. I even ended up supporting (with my time and money) some rather dubious causes, like the “student” effort to depose the Shah of Iran.
As I got older, and after I moved out to the Seattle area I became a fairly committed liberal. This probably had more to do with the people I was exposed to and the release of restraints upon my behavior than anything else. Even through this though, I remembered a few basic things that I believed in. But, I wasn't really able to resist a good argument, and people like Dave Ross spreading his “drive-by wisdom to the masses, one listener at a time” kept me snowed and thinking like a liberal.
And then, one day I started listening to “the other side.” I caught the Rush Limbaugh show one morning on my drive to work. After a few minutes I started yelling at the radio and turned it off in disgust. For some reason I tuned my radio in to Rush again a couple of days later, with the same result. Rush seemed to me to be an arrogant, self-centered, self-aggrandizing moron. Still, I couldn't stop listening, and listening made me think about his arguments.
I'd like to say that I did my own research and changed my mind about liberalism, but that's not what happened. Gradually, listening to Rush I was swayed by his common sense about conservatism, and his criticism of not just Democrats but of liberal Republicans as well. It wasn't until some time later that I really started analyzing what it was I believed in and why. Believe it or not, it was a liberal that convinced me to start doing detailed research. Karl (by no means a liberal) over at Leaning Straight Up and NW Bloggers is right. “Iron sharpens iron.” For some time on NW Bloggers there was a regular blogger that went by the moniker “Playin' Possum” who offered a couple of challenges to the other bloggers there. Taking him up on those challenges required the extra research, and it was worth it. It changed the basic nature of my blogging.
When it comes down to it, the underlying principles of conservatism are pretty simple. Limited government intrudes upon individual lives less than a massive government run by central planners. Morality matters. People work for a reason, and it's not just so they can have weekends. Personal responsibility is a way to attain peace and harmony both within oneself and at home. Rewarding success and punishing failure is nature's own way of selecting for behaviors that work. Rewarding failure and punishing success leads to weakness and decay. Helping others when they are in need by offering a hand up helps us all, but a hand out ends up being wasted (or getting the beggar wasted on more booze). Recreational pharmaceuticals may seem like fun, but they impair your ability to compete or to enjoy anything else when you get hooked.
Liberalism on the other hand seems to me to be all about feeling good. Helping others by giving them a hand-out, looking down on them all the while. Feeling guilty about what you've earned and so needing to displace that guilt onto people who've earned more. Preaching tolerance while quashing dissent and having no tolerance for those that believe in and support your own culture.
Thinking on these things, I believe that I'm a conservative and will always (from this point onward) be one. I like talking to conservatives. I like reading the things that conservatives have to say. I like listening to them on the radio. At the same time, I have come full circle and pretty much loath much of the drivel that I hear coming out of the mouths and the keyboards of liberals. To some extent, I've exchanged the liberal echo chamber for the conservative echo chamber.
That's not quite what I want. I'm not looking to convince other conservatives to be even more conservative. I'm not really looking to get personal affirmation by having people praise me for holding the same ideas that they do (although I do enjoy personal affirmation). The pithy “me too” isn't dialog, it's just another echo.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about conservatism. I've spent a lot of time reading and re-reading our founding documents. I've written a lot about my own understanding of what's in them. I've gotten a lot of echoes as well as some very insightful commentary from people on this side of the aisle.
I think it's time to start taking the message across the aisle. I've got accounts on some left wing sites. Perhaps its time to start posting some of this there. I doubt that I'll get very many echoes there. Now where did I put that fire retardant suit? I'm not really looking for a flame war after all, just a dialog.
If we want to convert other people to our viewpoint we can't just stay in the echo chamber. We've got to talk to the people that we disagree with. Of course, doing so will take a lot of time and effort. I think I know myself. I wonder if I'm up to it.
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