Saturday, February 18, 2012

What If?


What do you do when there is no right answer?  It would be so much simpler if life was as black and white as the extreme left and right would have it.  When you see only the one side of an issue or a problem it is simple to know what you think should be done.  But does this really lead to good options or viable courses of action?  It seems to me whenever we attempt to fix things with such a parochial and one sided approach what we end up with is something I am hard pressed to think of as progress.
For example, if we take a pure libertarian view where government should be as small and unobtrusive as possible with very few regulations regarding commerce what do we end up with?  Are we to believe that industries and pure capitalism will govern themselves to protect the consumer?  A true libertarian would argue so, based on the capitalist system where consumers will move away from products that do not perform to expectations.  My concern with this approach is how do we deal with the individuals harmed in the process of the market correction?  This seems like a good idea unless you happen to be one of its casualties.
How about on the other end of the spectrum, with progressive communism?  Putting aside the emotional stigma the word has, on the surface it seems a great concept where the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” share in the wealth of a nation or the world to improve the lot of the “have nots.”  Karl Marx theorized:
Problems emerge when capitalists pay the working classes very low wages while keeping the profits for themselves. In this manner the rich would become richer and the poor would become poorer. This situation would lead to the working class becoming frustrated and angry, therefore rising up to “seize the means of production.” The purpose of the uprising by the workers would be to distribute the wealth in a fair manner among all members of society. This stage of historical evolution would be called “socialism.”
A socialist state would have the workers own the means of production and all would share the profits equally. The workers would be working for themselves, not for the benefit of the capitalists. All forms of government would slowly disappear, as the workers understood the benefit of working for the good of each other. Once this model state of affairs occurred, his ideal society that he called communism would exist.[1]
In Marx’s ideal state there was no government because everyone would be working for each other and for the sake of the state to which they were equal members.  Unfortunately the history since Marx has not seen the evolution of mankind to that perfect state he predicted.  What we see is a ruling class continues to exist and the workers ended up working is servitude for that class and its goals.  In today’s America the progressives that argue for this form of society inevitably view themselves as the intelligentsia destined to lead society into this perfect world where governments will somehow evaporate.  Good for them, but what about the other 99% who will serve the society to keep it producing the goods and services society needs?  If the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the example of an end-state does the average worker find him or herself better off?
Over the past forty years we, in the United States and Europe, have been involved a global struggle against an elusive and shadowy threat that is next to impossible to confront rationally.  It is a threat that secular progressives cannot understand or come to grips with, making it impossible to form a sensible and constant strategy.  Part of dilemma is they view anyone who does not agree with their worldview as irrational, and believe others outside the United States must have the same opinions as they do.  As we see with their aspersions of our fundamental Christian movements they believe religion is the cause for oppression and that once God is removed from the issue everyone should get along.  The only problem with this view is the nativity or arrogance of it.  You cannot will God out of the lives of 2.1 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, or roughly 2.2 billion other religious followers[2].  So here we are, forty years after the 1972 Munich Olympics still trying to figure out how to deal with Islamic terrorism.
So my question tonight is this, is there some middle ground  available to the world between the radical right and radical left?

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