knewbike wrote:
Where is our liberal Republican or conservative Democrat savior who is for personal freedom and fiscal responsibility?
Where?
It's what a lot of people say they want. Are they lying? Not vocal enough?
I don't want America to blow up like a family on welfare living off credit cards and Funyuns.
To understand that you have to understand why Trump was elected or why the yellow jackets are protesting so strongly in France. I suggest reading Patrick Deenan's book, "Why Liberalism Failed" This is not an indictment of the left. It is an explanation of why liberalism which is the operating assumption of the left and right on how best to organize our politics has failed.
Liberalism is the idea that the two chief jobs of gov't and society are to maximize personal freedom and equality. To understand why it is failing IMHO involves some heavy thinking. Partly because the operating assumptions are so deeply ingrained in us after at least several hundred years of being involved in this project.
Freedom is now understand primarily as the ability to do what you want and be who you want to be. The right sees the market as the mechanism to achieve that. How is that working out for unemployed auto workers? The left sees gov't as the guarantor of these things. How is that working out for gov't wage slaves in countries with high taxes? How good is gov't in sorting out the multiplicity of competing rights? Neither is correct. We have come to understand freedom as being liberated from responsibility. Freedom used to be at least in part as being a state in which you had mastered your desires and thus had character and could live well.
There is a kind of political schizophrenia in operation I think. The majority don't want to be involved in politics. Too much work it would detract from ability to follow one's own priorities. Politics is hard work. The people who do want to be involved are very passionate and see it as a struggle that is more important than most everything else.
The formation of character and the socialization of individuals used to take place in community. Our sense of belonging used to be formed around community. But those communities are being atomized. Family has been broken down. Look what has happened to black and minority families in America. In the 1940s illegitimacy in black families was 15 percent despite over 200 years of discrimination and the legacy of slavery. In the 1960s along comes gov't who is going to help via the welfare state and civil rights. The incidence of children without fathers skyrockets. Divorce or "shacking up" becomes more acceptable A similar trend albeit delayed occurs among whites with the most devastating effects in the low income groups. Labor unions which formed a sort of community for factory workers are largely gone. At least as a political force. Fewer and fewer people belong to churches. Heck as recently as 75 years ago in rural Canada simple folk used to organize and run the schools largely themselves. If people can't learn to get along in the smallest of communities how can be get along as countries?
They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot