Unhappy People 2

It's not "excellent"... it's rather pathetic.. the first couple of sentences anyway.

His broad generalizations really miss the mark with many people... including me. I'm not really unhappy. Quite the contrary, actually. I'm very happy. I have a comfortable life that I'm sharing with the man I love... a good job that I enjoy doing.. and good relationships with my family and friends.. both old and new. I am an opinionated person, though... with strong feelings on certain issues... and I don't think that having and expressing those strong feelings makes one "unhappy".

If his descriptions of the schools-of-thought of Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, and Karl Marx are accurate, then I'd be more Jeffersonian than he'd have you believe.

I believe everyone has the right to pursue happiness through their own initiative. I don't believe the State's job is to hand out "happiness".

I think the bigger lesson here isn't one related to ideologies... but that broad generalizations are often woefully inaccurate.

I can just imagine the reaction if I were to generalize "right-wingers" as a bunch of Nazi fascists.

I know better, however... and it's a shame that Mr. Porretto doesn't.

Gee, a Leftist homosexual who doesn't share my negative views about Leftists and homosexuality. What an incredible surprise!

Thanks for the praise, Michael.

FWP: It's not about "sharing views". It's about making blanket statements that are often very inaccurate. Your assessment of leftists is far from an accurate representation of the diversity among those on the left.

I couldn't care less if you share my views or not. I do care, though, when you paint all leftists with your rhetoric.

Mark: There are exceptions to every generalization, but that doesn't make them unuseful.

I'd like to butt in with a semi-related comment... I wish all those who think Europe is a utopia compared to America (or Canada is, which I think is the lazy leftist's copout) to go move there. I'm tired of hearing people threatening to move to a different country and not following through.

Burns my biscuits, it does. I would really like to get some prime real estate in Manhattan, and I can't do that while the discontented keep their park view apartments. Some of us want to live here, you know!

As for Francis's post, one should make a distinction between long-term and short-term. Sure, everybody has happy and unhappy moments. But there are certain people who seem to have the balance more on the unhappy side more often than not, and though political ideology may be related, I think it boils down to whether a person thinks control of their life is in their own hands, or in some external power. In short, whether or not they're responsible for their own happiness, or someone else is.

I've run into a bunch of discontented people in my life, and most of them blame someone else for their troubles... when it's someone else's fault, you don't have to do anything to try to fix things. Of course, nothing gets fixed for these people.

MW: "There are exceptions to every generalization, but that doesn't make them unuseful."

Sure it does. The more exceptions, the less useful the generalization becomes.

In this particular case, I think there are quite a few exceptions. Being a leftist doesn't make one unhappy... and being unhappy doesn't make one a leftist. There are many degrees of "leftist"... and in each one there are plenty of exceptions to FWP's generalization.

Dick Cheney doesn't seem to me to be a very happy person.

When Bill Clinton was president, conservatives didn't appear to be a very happy lot.

Nevertheless, I'm not so sure these matters can be quantified apart from the bias of the persons offering the assessments. After all, several prominent psychiatrists have pronounced George Bush as mentally ill. Turns out, though, that none of the psychiatrists agrees with Bush's political views.

The unfortunate polarization of American politics in the past 30 years has brought with it an appalling disregard for civil debate and what amounts to a slow dehumanization by both sides of their opponents. Whereas left and right used to be a matter of policy disagreement, now both sides commonly think of the other's constituents as stupid, mindless followers and its leadership as evil puppet-masters. (Or, in some cases, people ascribe premeditated evil to all constituents in the other camp.)

Both sides are moralistic, dogmatic and intractable, regardless of what they may otherwise say -- it's just that their moral foundations differ. The Right tends to see its fundamental imperative as keeping vice (as usually defined by the traditional Judeo-Christian ethic) out of the public eye and the average citizen out of his neighbor's bank account. The Left sees its prime imperative as defending equality -- which usually means the concept that anyone is free to live his life however he wishes free of criticism or repercussions (usually termed discrimination, intolerance, etc), and that society should level the playing field by applying handicaps (both negative and positive) to those who were dealt better or worse hands in life. And both are equally willing and eager to legislate their morality onto the rest of the populace.

While both moral frameworks have, nominally, the same goals -- liberty and prosperity for all -- they are fundamentally opposed at the core because of their prioritization of rights. (There are really four frameworks, and most people's ideals are a combination of two, but I'm addressing the most common pairings.) This is one reason that you can often predict a person's positions on almost all major political issues simply by hearing his position on one of them. But it also explains why both sides are slowly dehumanizing the opposition, and why lies, fraud and violence are becoming accepted tactics to some participants in the political process. Political opponents may deserve civil debate over disagreements, but a man who has convinced himself that his opponents harbor nothing but malicious intentions will treat them as wartime enemies, deserving of no mercy, and consider any tactic justified if it leads to their defeat.

I greatly fear for the Republic if this trend expands.

Cypren: I agree completely.

Would the four frameworks you're talking about be:

Conservative
Populist
Libertarian
Liberal

?

The four basic frameworks I was referring to are:

* Anarchist (no State)
* Conservative (heavy State intervention in "decency" law, minimal intervention in fiscal law)
* Liberal (heavy State intervention in fiscal law, minimal intervention in "decency" law)
* Authoritarian (absolute State control of everything)

Considering those four basic positions as opposed axes of a diamond, one can triangulate almost any political position on the map. Fascism and Communism, for example, are both forms of Authoritarianism, slightly influenced by Conservatism or Liberalism.

Realistically, almost no one holds a position at any of the four absolutes -- they're simply "anchors" for taking a bearing on one's own morals. Most modern Americans trend moderate-to-strongly either Conservative or Liberal, but only slightly Anarchist or Authoritarian -- none of them really want to either abolish the State or make it all-powerful. It's just that one side leans towards government-as-the-problem and the other leans towards government-as-the-solution.

There are also "grey areas" between the zones that most everyone agrees upon. For example, murder is a moral judgment, but it doesn't fall under what I called "decency" law -- laws having to do with communal censure or punishment of majority-agreed inappropriate behavior even if it it poses no direct, immediate harm to another individual.

Our two major American political parties both generally divide along the Conservative-Liberal axis, with Republicans occupying positions from slightly left to all the way right, and Democrats occupying positions from moderate right to extreme left, but both parties are within a fairly narrow band of the Anarchist-Authoritarian axis -- they both favor pretty heavy government intervention and spending, but on different issues.

Incidentally, the reason that I think the Democratic Party has a larger spread along the left-right axis is that they incorporate a very large segment of voters whose social views are significantly to the right of the party leadership, such as the African-American community and many union workers, but who vote Democratic for largely historical reasons. The Republicans also tend to have voters who are significantly rightward of the party leadership -- die-hard Christian fundamentalists are the prime example (and by that I mean Jerry Falwell, not President Bush) -- but most people who are significantly leftward of the Republicans' positions on just about anything have too much of a disagreement to countenance any thought of voting for them.

I've also found it to be largely true that a significant number of Democrats are essentially single-issue voters who may disagree with their own party on a number of issues, but disagree with the Republicans on one or two major issues that dominates their entire decision-making. (Andrew Sullivan is a great example of this.) Republicans as a whole tend to be much more in line with one another on a majority of political positions. (There's a sizable segment of the Democratic Party that's in lockstep with one another on most all issues as well -- that's the Howard Dean wing of the Left -- but I've generally observed that they're viewed more as a fringe among Democrats than their counterparts are among the Republicans, largely because their views are antithetical to other sizable voting blocs within the party.)

I should also note that the dual-axis triangulation model isn't my own invention by any means, just the philosophy of politics that I've found most applicable in my own examination of the field.

Well, I have to say, that such analysis... as you've done, Cypren, is what we need more of.

I've heard all of the Republican and Democratic talking points.... I've heard enough about how Bush is a go-it-alone cowboy and how Kerry is a morally bankrupt flip-flopping opportunist.

I want the truth. I don't want the Republican's take on Kerry's voting record... nor do I want the Democrat's assessment of the Bush record.

I have a feeling that, on foreign policy, Kerry is more willing to act unilaterally and Bush more willing to act multi-laterally than either of their campaigns would have me believe.

Mark: I think your feeling is probably accurate, but both sides have staked out positions to defend. Kerry is in a tougher spot because he needs to differentiate himself from the incumbent, despite the fact that, as you say, he's probably fairily close in practice. But you can't win an election by agreeing with everything your opponent does... plus, he had to veer far to the left to win the Deaniac vote in the primaries.

Bush's engagement in the NoKo arena should convince anyone that he's willing to follow the best route in any given circumstance, whether it be multi- or uni-lateral. Plus, of course, the pandering he did to the UN before the Iraq invasion.

Oh, the dynamics of the election and what the candidates have to do is not a mystery to me... it's all very obvious.

The problem I have, though, is that we NEVER hear Ed Gillespie talk about good things Kerry has done or voted for..... and we never hear Terry McAuliffe talk about the good things Bush has done.

No one in pundit-land (this blog included) takes off their partisan or ideological blinders anymore. I suppose I shouldn't expect such a thing in an election year.. but given the length of this campaign.... I think a vast majority of that vast moderate middle (myself included) are sick of it.

I think Clinton was right when he said that elections have, since the 70's, gotten far too personally vindictive. Disagreements on policy... sometimes big disagreements... are good.. but the politics of personal attacks are not.

Who fuels these heated attacks? Well, the campaigns themselves do... but far more influential and responsible for such attacks are the Ann Coulter and Michael Moore types... the bomb throwers. Whether it's Ann Coulter questioning the patriotism of anyone who doesn't think we're on the right course... or Michael Moore over-dramatizing events and blaming them on Bush.......the result is the same: polarization.

The degree to which our "moderate middle" shrinks is the degree to which we become less of a democracy and more of a totalitarian state.

Mark: Hm, didn't I just "take off my blinders" as you say? I don't think you're any more moderate or middle-of-the-road than I am. I also don't think political campaigns are particularly more dirty or personal than they've been in the past.

I think presidential campaigns of the last few years have gotten more consistently personal. The campaigns of Kennedy-Nixon, Nixon-Humphrey, Ford-Carter, Carter-Reagan and Reagan-Mondale did seem more civil to me. Not so Johnson-Goldwater, Nixon-McGovern and Bush-Clinton. It is clear that campaigns of the 1800's could be pretty nasty.

Maybe one difference is that we are exposed to the candidates and their ads and the commentary far more than we were 20-30 years ago.

If I believed everything said about either Kerry or Bush, I might want them imprisoned for the rest of their lives as a danger to the survival of all of humanity.

MW: "Hm, didn't I just "take off my blinders" as you say?"

Yes you did.

MW: "I don't think you're any more moderate or middle-of-the-road than I am."

Well, if you're basing that on the topics I've commented on here and the content of those comments, you haven't gotten a very good look at where I fall on the ideological spectrum.

As I've said before, I'm not the raging liberal you believe me to be. There are a few things on which I am liberal... and a few things on which I am conservative. Most everything else, though, I'm either indifferent to or don't have a strong opinion on. This is also how it usually is for most people...in the moderate middle.

Don't get me wrong... I don't think there's anything wrong with the label "liberal"... but I do have a problem when it's applied to people that aren't... and when it's propped up as the epitome of all evil in society.

Some things I am conservative on:

- Unions: I generally don't like or trust them

- The Environment: No need to take the alarmist position of many environmentalists. I also think that much of the recycling we do is ridiculous... when you put more resources into recycling something than normal just for the sake of recycling, something is wrong.

- Taxes/Government spending: It is the people's money.. and they have a right to decide how it's spent. I'm for a restructuring of our current tax-and-spend system. Let the people pick what they want their money spent on... not corporations and special interests.

My impression of you, Mark, from most of your comments, has been that you trend more idealistically libertarian than anything else -- correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen very many things on which you support much, if any, government intervention, either foreign or domestic.

Cypren: That's consistent with my own self-assessment.