Wednesday, October 04, 2006
The Taste Test
Why can Dems get away with corruption while Reps can't? Pure bias is part of it, but there's a deeper factor involved.
Vested interest is always and properly the main factor in voting. The framers of the Constitution planned our system to use selfishness and vested interest as its main fuel. We're not supposed to 'vote in the public interest', and anyone who tells you to vote that way is hiding an entirely different agenda.
Selfish voting creates a basic problem, though.
Parties of the Left come bearing a cornucopia of concrete gifts. Things you can see and appreciate. Subsidies, welfare, special privileges for favored races and classes.
Parties of the Right come with empty hands. At best they can offer negatives and abstractions: we will stay out of your way; we will defend the country more competently; we will lower your taxes.
Both parties are jam-packed with smelly corruption.
The Left has so much more on the table, so many pretty and rich goodies to give us, that the corruption is swamped. We don't see it or smell it.
The Right can't swamp out the nasty smell. Negatives and abstractions don't have any nice aromas or pretty colors.
And when the party of the Right fails to offer a clear and competent image of those abstractions - can't fight a war properly, can't block lawsuits, can't limit spending, won't increase energy supplies - there is absolutely nothing to hide the nasties. ¶ 11:12 AM
Why can Dems get away with corruption while Reps can't? Pure bias is part of it, but there's a deeper factor involved.
Vested interest is always and properly the main factor in voting. The framers of the Constitution planned our system to use selfishness and vested interest as its main fuel. We're not supposed to 'vote in the public interest', and anyone who tells you to vote that way is hiding an entirely different agenda.
Selfish voting creates a basic problem, though.
Parties of the Left come bearing a cornucopia of concrete gifts. Things you can see and appreciate. Subsidies, welfare, special privileges for favored races and classes.
Parties of the Right come with empty hands. At best they can offer negatives and abstractions: we will stay out of your way; we will defend the country more competently; we will lower your taxes.
Both parties are jam-packed with smelly corruption.
The Left has so much more on the table, so many pretty and rich goodies to give us, that the corruption is swamped. We don't see it or smell it.
The Right can't swamp out the nasty smell. Negatives and abstractions don't have any nice aromas or pretty colors.
And when the party of the Right fails to offer a clear and competent image of those abstractions - can't fight a war properly, can't block lawsuits, can't limit spending, won't increase energy supplies - there is absolutely nothing to hide the nasties. ¶ 11:12 AM
