Politics and Simplicity

Occasionally, we all run into people with a doctrinaire political opinion as to exactly how and why the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and what specifically should be done about it.  Sometimes this comes from a leftist perspective, but often it’s essentially a transcript of a Glenn Beck show.

I don’t disagree with many of the talking points of the right – certainly that the federal government is bloated and that people today look to government for solutions where, in our grandparents’ day, they looked to themselves and took a greater level of individual responsibility.

But I’m always amazed at people’s tendencies to oversimplify and to take things out of context that support their personal belief system. An an example, one notices from the graph here is that neither Democrats or Republicans – despite their rhetoric – have done anything at all to change the trajectory of federal spending. Doesn’t that that makes for a very short discussion about which party – in reality – is the better bet for those wishing to see smaller government?

In turn, this amplifies the notion that all this is not as simple as certain people would have you believe. That people should be held accountable does not imply that capital punishment is a necessary part of a civilized society. That people should not be expected to pay to keep the slobs who live on beer and cigarettes healthy does not imply that private, for-profit health care is a reasonable way to deal with the healthcare needs of a population. That too much government regulation becomes corrupt and abusive to private enterprise does not mean that leaving Wall Street and the Fortune 500 to their own ethical sensibilities is a good idea.

I suppose my conclusion is that people tend to like simplicity.  But in my view, we live in a world of tough realities, dealing with things for which there is no precedent.  When was the last time we had an oil spill of this magnitude?  How many times have the climate patters of the Earth changed?  To me, the right answers come more from discussion, humility, and listening than from knee-jerk reactions and force-fitting the world into a black and white frame.