April 25 Frustration Rant

It’s time for another rant.

I want to start out with a warning to my more liberal friends. This rant is anti-Republican, but that does NOT make me liberal. I am anti-stupidity and anti-extremism. The multi-party checks and balances of this country are out of whack at the moment, made so by our electorate. We are at our strongest when we have different parties in control of the Congress and the White House, and right now we do not have that. Right now, we are saved only by those intelligent moderates of the party of power preventing unfettered passing of the most extreme of its party’s agenda.

It is always easier for the party with the most power to push it’s more extreme agendas, while the party not in power has the freedom to point out the absurdities of the other side. It doesn’t mean that there are not absurdities in the weaker side, it simply means that THEY know that there is no way they’re going to get any of theirs passed, while the other side pushes its, figuring this is their best opportunity.

And keep in mind as you read this rant, it is neither liberal nor conservative. It is a rant against tactics, tactics which in this case were employed by the party of conservatives, but the tactics themselves could just as easily be employed by the party of liberals, and I would hate them (the tactics) just as much.

What has brought me to writing this rant is the current debate over the nomination of John Bolton to the position of Ambassador to the United Nations. I think there are some very good questions to be asked as to why this man is considered a good choice, a man who has publicly and loudly derided the U.N. in the past, a man who clearly considers the U.N. to be useless and seems to feel it should be dissolved.

I’m not commenting on any of those views. They may have merit, they may not, but… who nominates someone like that to such a group? It’d be one thing if he has strong criticisms of the group and strong feelings on how to make it BETTER, but his views (at least as far as I’ve seen them) lean not towards FIXING the institution, but doing away with it entirely. Also, like it or not, the U.N. does have some authority over the world that the U.S. does not. Perhaps not much (and this is probably a good thing), but think of it as a neighborhood watch group, sending a representative of each household to meet and discuss the issues pertaining to the neighborhood, and trying to present a unified front in combating the problems OF the neighborhood.

In such a neighborhood group, if there was an outspoken critic of the neighborhood watch group, someone who loudly and publicly stated that the group should be disbanded, that it would be no tragedy if the room in which the group met were hit by lightning killing all inside, and that his house should be free from the influence of and participation in that group, would it make sense for that family to choose THAT person as its representative to the group? How likely are the other members of the group to side with (or even listen to) anything said critic has to say, and how much more useful would it be to that household to have a representative on the group who was less openly critical and resentful of the group?

To me, this all smacks of the continued failings of foreign policy of this administration, which seems to believe that autonomy is all, might makes right, and we don’t need to be good neighbors or work with anyone. But that opinion is tending towards a philosophical bias, so let me get back to my main point.

I recently received an e-mail from an ultra-Republican family member. This e-mail was a “rally the troops” sort of e-mail, casting aspersions on those who would dare to question the wisdom of our President in nominating such a person. It spent a great deal of verbiage asserting that liberals (defined as anyone who could possibly disagree with Bolton’s nomination) didn’t like this nomination because they wanted the U.S. to be merely a state under the U.N.’s one world government.

This is the tactic that I decry, the ascribing to a whole group an opinion that the majority of that group do not hold, and then demonizing them for that opinion. It is the ultimate in “Straw Man” arguing, but apparently we’re so caught up in our “root for my team, root against the other guys” mentality that we no longer can see it, or care.

I don’t dispute that there are people in the world who believe one world government would be a good idea. There are also people who think fascism, communism, slavery and white supremacy are good ideas, it doesn’t make them right and it doesn’t mean that everyone who belongs to whatever political party to which these extremists belong agrees. It is possible to believe that being good neighbors, cooperating and sharing and building alliances is a good thing, and being openly hostile to a group whose charter is to do just that can do nothing but harm.

This is another example of the Republican rallying cry “liberals hate America”. This is patently absurd. People on both sides of the aisle love America, they got into public service in order to make America stronger. They disagree on how to go about that, that’s clear. I’ve said before, I believe the liberals have the stronger philosophy but no clear plan on how to accomplish the things which need to be accomplished, while the conservatives have a weaker philosophy, but are very efficient at pointing out inefficiencies in the system (although based on the pattern of deficit spending in the last 25 years, not particularly efficient at eliminating those inefficiencies).

But I do believe both sides love America, they just have different views of what America should be. Debating those views, and being open to hearing what each side has to say makes us stronger. Setting up such an obvious and easily knocked down straw man as “the other side hates America” just indicates the weakness in your own arguments. When you are forced to rely on such obvious fallacies (obvious to anyone who has ever taken Logic & Argument 101 in college, anyway), you are as much as admitting that you can not win the argument on the merits of your case alone.

And when we, as a society, buy into the straw man in such numbers that we’re willing to break the fundamental separation of powers that keeps this country safe and strong, we harm our great nation, and that is more harmful than any hatred of the country could ever be.

Copyright © April 25, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net