I will be presenting, not necessarily in numerical order, some of the reasons why I decided to become a Utah Democrat this year. Reason #1: I'm tired of oversimplified, vitriolic politics.
Everywhere you turn these days, you have people talking about how awful the other side of the debate is. I am told variously that this is not new, with various political periods explained as analogies--the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, when Jefferson was lashing out at Adams and co., or in the 1840s with slavery, or the 1960s with civil rights.
I have two problems with these comparisons. The first: what's our excuse for such rancor? The 1840s had slavery and the 1960s had its remnants to deal with, but what great injustice are we supposed to be arguing about now? On the vast majority of issues, Americans have largely been lined up into two camps of strange bedfellows--market libertarians and social conservatives on one hand, social libertarians and progressives on the other--whose coalitions appear to only be solid as long as the other camp has been thoroughly vilified.
The insistence that the other party's adherents are actually evil is dangerous, I believe, because it makes us lose sight of the most important issue--that we're all Americans, and that the vast majority of these issues could be resolved if we would learn to compromise a little. Instead, people seem to get played against their own and the country's best interest because of ideological positions that don't necessarily make any logical or emotional sense beyond an "Us vs. Them" mentality. This sort of attitude unnecessarily drives us apart and leads to a situation where Congress hasn't passed a budget in three years.
My second issue is that when we've had people try to spark a little compromise, ideological doctrines stand in the way. For example, two years ago here in Utah, Mike Lee supporters chased Bob Bennett out of the Senate on ideological grounds. That's fine with me--Republicans can do what they like--but I was suddenly aware that I wouldn't really be welcomed in the Utah Republican party if I didn't believe with fanatical furor the same things as Tea Party Republicans. (This year has been a little different, with Hatch looking like he might keep his seat.) Apparently, Bennett's conservative record wasn't enough for the newly-ascendant anarchist libertarian wing of the party--which means, of course, that someone like me who believes that government has a role to play in helping regulate the market and prevent its failures would be chased out with torches and pitchforks.
But to further illustrate the problem, Senator Lee has taken up an oath to oppose any appointment Mr. Obama makes for the rest of his term, including judges he likes, like the Honorable David Nuffer, who was actually confirmed by the Senate last week by 98 votes. And yet Senator Lee's fanatical opposition to Obama is only the best example of many Republicans in the Senate holding up dozens of judicial appointments despite great need to fill federal benches. (Ironically, the inflexibility of the Senate has in recent years been caused by the excessive exercise of the Senate's rules, which were originally designed to give flexibility to the body.)
We also had every Republican presidential candidate raise their hand to promise that they wouldn't raise taxes $1 for every $10 of cuts, sadly including Jon Huntsman, who seems still to be one of the few lonely voices for (more) reason left in the Republican party. Here in Utah, we had Senator Jenkins (R) oppose (virulently) a $1 increase in average household taxes to help deployed soldiers keep their homes in this difficult mortgage climate.
That's the mentality I get most strongly from the right in general and Republicans in particular these days: we hate X either because it has anything to do with Democrats (as in Lee and Judge Nuffer) or because we have discovered the only possible political truth, and any wavering from it would be apostasy. Frankly, that kind of rigid ideology should be frightening to any American, and moderate Utahns need to show their displeasure by lining up with the party (or parties) that are still interested in seeking pragmatic, practical solutions and including every American in our most important political decisions, instead of making out our fellow-citizens as pariahs, or worse, sinners simply because they disagree about politics.
Reason #1 I'm a Utah Democrat: they're committed to being reasonable in a time when unreasonableness is in vogue.
Everywhere you turn these days, you have people talking about how awful the other side of the debate is. I am told variously that this is not new, with various political periods explained as analogies--the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, when Jefferson was lashing out at Adams and co., or in the 1840s with slavery, or the 1960s with civil rights.
I have two problems with these comparisons. The first: what's our excuse for such rancor? The 1840s had slavery and the 1960s had its remnants to deal with, but what great injustice are we supposed to be arguing about now? On the vast majority of issues, Americans have largely been lined up into two camps of strange bedfellows--market libertarians and social conservatives on one hand, social libertarians and progressives on the other--whose coalitions appear to only be solid as long as the other camp has been thoroughly vilified.
The insistence that the other party's adherents are actually evil is dangerous, I believe, because it makes us lose sight of the most important issue--that we're all Americans, and that the vast majority of these issues could be resolved if we would learn to compromise a little. Instead, people seem to get played against their own and the country's best interest because of ideological positions that don't necessarily make any logical or emotional sense beyond an "Us vs. Them" mentality. This sort of attitude unnecessarily drives us apart and leads to a situation where Congress hasn't passed a budget in three years.
My second issue is that when we've had people try to spark a little compromise, ideological doctrines stand in the way. For example, two years ago here in Utah, Mike Lee supporters chased Bob Bennett out of the Senate on ideological grounds. That's fine with me--Republicans can do what they like--but I was suddenly aware that I wouldn't really be welcomed in the Utah Republican party if I didn't believe with fanatical furor the same things as Tea Party Republicans. (This year has been a little different, with Hatch looking like he might keep his seat.) Apparently, Bennett's conservative record wasn't enough for the newly-ascendant anarchist libertarian wing of the party--which means, of course, that someone like me who believes that government has a role to play in helping regulate the market and prevent its failures would be chased out with torches and pitchforks.
But to further illustrate the problem, Senator Lee has taken up an oath to oppose any appointment Mr. Obama makes for the rest of his term, including judges he likes, like the Honorable David Nuffer, who was actually confirmed by the Senate last week by 98 votes. And yet Senator Lee's fanatical opposition to Obama is only the best example of many Republicans in the Senate holding up dozens of judicial appointments despite great need to fill federal benches. (Ironically, the inflexibility of the Senate has in recent years been caused by the excessive exercise of the Senate's rules, which were originally designed to give flexibility to the body.)
We also had every Republican presidential candidate raise their hand to promise that they wouldn't raise taxes $1 for every $10 of cuts, sadly including Jon Huntsman, who seems still to be one of the few lonely voices for (more) reason left in the Republican party. Here in Utah, we had Senator Jenkins (R) oppose (virulently) a $1 increase in average household taxes to help deployed soldiers keep their homes in this difficult mortgage climate.
That's the mentality I get most strongly from the right in general and Republicans in particular these days: we hate X either because it has anything to do with Democrats (as in Lee and Judge Nuffer) or because we have discovered the only possible political truth, and any wavering from it would be apostasy. Frankly, that kind of rigid ideology should be frightening to any American, and moderate Utahns need to show their displeasure by lining up with the party (or parties) that are still interested in seeking pragmatic, practical solutions and including every American in our most important political decisions, instead of making out our fellow-citizens as pariahs, or worse, sinners simply because they disagree about politics.
Reason #1 I'm a Utah Democrat: they're committed to being reasonable in a time when unreasonableness is in vogue.
