Hypocrisy or just political sport? That is the question.
Hillary proposes a bill to make flag burning illegal and everyone is fine with it. As soon as Donald Trump suggests the same thing, everyone loses their mind! Why do we always see this? When the democrats propose something, the republicans oppose it. Years later, the republicans can propose the same thing and then the democrats oppose it. What is going on? Sports mentality, that’s what.
It seems that there is little to no interest in making a great nation with fair and just laws. Instead, what we have is an interest in seeing the party with which we identify as making fair and just laws. It’s like watching a baseball game. I don’t just want to see someone hit a home run. No, I want to see my team hit a home run. Is that hypocritical? No. It’s a tribal-like sports team mentality. When it is applied to politics, it becomes selfish and even destructive. What would be better is to see the entire nation as a team with each political party as a fighter on the same team with different strategies and strengths. That doesn’t mean that we avoid conflict with one another and sing Kumbaya all day long, but it does mean that we identify our ideals as a nation and march toward them, encouraging the people who bring us there (politicians), be they democrat or republican.
Unfortunately, such an ideal cannot happen with everything as it currently stands. Right now, our ideals as a nation have parted ways so drastically that we have virtually no common goals anymore, nor can we agree upon who or what the enemy is. While we can agree upon the most basic things, for example we all want to breathe and eat, half of us say that exhaling is toxic to the environment. That is a bit troublesome. So, basic foundational beliefs have changed and the basic purpose of government has also changed, and I believe it changed in the democratic party. Now, I’m not super-old, nor am I a historian, so when I say that the democratic party has changed, I’m comparing the ideals of the founding fathers and the image of the United States to what the democratic party is attempting to create. The nation’s origins are founded upon freedom, individual liberty, and protection of individual rights. The democratic party has adopted Marxist principles rather than traditional American principles, in an attempt to steal back that which they feel was stolen from them. They like to play the victim and act like someone owes them a payout for damages. Although they are not victims and nobody owes them anything, it is what they believe. Truly, what they are experiencing is coveting what others have and a willingness to use violence to take it. In doing this, they are abusing their own freedoms while pulling down the entire system. When one man uses his freedom to earn an income, forcefully stripping him of his pay to enrich someone else who has not used their freedom as wisely only robs the man who rightfully used his freedom. Nothing will be made equal in the process. While we all want things to be fair and equal, the choice is really between equal opportunity and equal fruit. The democratic party stands for equalizing the fruit by crying “foul” all the way whereas the republican party stands for equalizing the opportunity.
These two choices are essentially the two ways a government can operate: either with freedom as the goal or with total control as the goal. In the U.S., we have both extremes very active and very vocal and I do not believe they can coexist in peace, at least at their current intensity. In practice, there is normally a blending between the two, in other words, the actions tend toward either freedom or toward control.
While everyone’s view of government is essentially that it should shape the society that we want, the disagreement is on what that society should look like and how it should get there. Should government force the society desired or should it foster the society desired? Of course, the third option is that it does nothing at all and out of that would grow “humanity, au naturel”. Personally, I’d like to see that, but that’s not where mankind is yet.
Force or foster? That is quite a dilemma. Why? Because both are self-defeating in principle. If government forces everything (Marxist/Democratic party) then the driving force behind it is fear. They would need to threaten punishments to manipulate the population to move as the controllers desired. This would diminish personal drive, thereby stiefeling momentum and creativity, snuffing out the spirit of humanity. On the other hand, if the government fosters the desired actions (voluntaryist mentality) it would have no power because it would not apply any punishments without undermining its own ideals and crossing over to the opposing side’s tactics. So the choice is between being morally wrong and being hypocritical. Nice choice.
This is the reason why I am a voluntaryist in principle. Democratic ways and communist ways are authoritarian and destructive to mankind and I oppose them. Republican ways are better and more freedom oriented, but they can only exist hypocritically as they use force to gain freedom. Now, if your only enemy is someone who opposes freedom, then I guess it holds up. A purely libertarian government should be the goal. That is one that I could agree with. As much as I hate democratic party philosophy, at least it is consistent with its ideal of forcing everything through authoritarian measures.
Right now, people are stuck in a sports mentality, backing either Team Democrat or Team Republican. Getting back to my first question, I would say we don’t really live in a democracy. I feel forced to view it as a hypocracy.