Third installment in the anti-moderate rant. You can head to Unity08 to see what prompted me.

The issues don’t matter, ideology does.

My very first post on this blog made my stance on this quite clear:

The war isn’t about issues, it’s about definitions. Our definition of freedom is incompatible with theirs; granting the rights they wish to grant can only be achieved by constraining all men. We must attack their ideology, and not just their legislation.

It’s why I don’t do the link-quote-comment-quote-comment-rant thing. The problem today is that the very way we look at political issues is flawed.

In an email I received yesterday, a reader made the following comment:

I read your post today, and I think you are way off base when talking about Unity08. I think you need to read more about their core values, and less about what their supporters personal ideologies are…

I believe this is what Unity08 is saying: Politics is messed up because political parties are only pushing wedge issues (in order to GOTV). Therefore, no real issues are being pursued (education, social security, health care, etc etc). Unity08 believes that by nominating (and maybe electing) a viable third ticket, that the major political parties will have to cater more towards the middle, and therefore get back to the core issues that Americans want resolved (or at least talked about).

Unity08 hasn’t taken a stand on any issues (because they have not nominated any candidates) – so to say that they are anything but an organization claiming to provide Americans with a third choice come 2008, is simply wrong.

And he’s right in that this is all Unity08 claims to be. But my very problem with them stems from the fact that they are trying to divert attention toward those which ‘reasonable people’ want addressed. Yesterday’s rant about pragmatism could easily have been devoted to ‘reasonable legislation’ with nary a word changed.

While wedge issues do have the unfortunate side effect of diverting attention away from impending challenges our nation will face, they are important in that they allow for a quick and easy identification of a politician’s ideology. Michael Bloomberg has done an excellent job of painting himself as a rather libertarian-leaning Republican, but his draconian stance on gun control reveals his true colors. Without such wedge issues, many might never have known any better.

The problem isn’t right or left, the problem isn’t that we’re choosing polarizing issues to elect our leadership on, it’s not that we’re failing to focus on the ‘crucial and pressing’ issues, the problem is that we are electing people based on how they will increase the scope of government.

I’m not a big fan of the middle. While some have clearly developed and thought out their moderate stance, most take the position because they’re vaguely dissatisfied with the polarizing rhetoric of both parties, but see something wrong in society and think ’someone ought to do something’. That ’someone’ is usually government.

In my opinion the middle has taken the first step of seeing something wrong with the social limitations Republicans want to impose as well as the socialism that the Left clearly so wants to take us toward. But the fact that they fail to question whether government should get involved in a given issue at all is what makes them so dangerous.

Just because a piece of legislation is ‘reasonable’ doesn’t make it right. I’ve used the helmet law example because I currently work for the Oklahoma State Department of Health and hearing the Injury Prevention people going on about how we’re ‘backward’ for being the last state without a helmet law really gets my goat. I don’t even ride motorcycles or quads, nor do I plan to. But it’s an almost textbook case of a ‘reasonable’ law that is nevertheless completely unjust. Yes, there is a traumatic brain injury problem in Oklahoma. But why should the government be able to criminalize my doing something that can only harm myself.

Another problem with the middle is that they’re more focused on ‘doing something’ about these pressing issues than what effect government intervention will actually have. That’s the topic for tommorrow’s post so I won’t go into much detail here. But we can all think of laws that were passed and had an effect quite the opposite of what was intended.

The Founding Fathers were quite wary of government. They understood that it could be used by some citizens to oppress others. By politicans to oppress citizens. And that eventually all governments would cease to serve the interests of their constituents. It was for this reason that they were so adamant about philosophical discussions. This is why thousands upon thousands of different pamphlet titles were produced in our Nation’s formative years. This was why the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists started one of the earliest newspaper editorial wars. This is why, although similar in background, temperament, and ideology, Jefferson and Adams fought to their dying days about the implementation of their political philosophy.

What will save our country isn’t shifting attention to issues that interest the middle, but rather engaging everyone in a frank and open discussion about what the role of government should be, why they have authority, when they should interfere in the affairs of man, and how they should do so. Only if we elevate ourselves to be truly political beings can citizen participation bring anything but oppression and tyranny. A friend of mine back in high school told me that the first duty of a good jew was to question. It’s that questioning spirit and intellect that our country most needs now.