I count politics as being 4-sided, with ALL players having something important to say:
Libertarians -- Freedom is very important.
Liberals -- Protection of the weak is very important.
Conservatives -- Not breaking what's already good is very important.
Elites -- If we have (more) power, we can make things better.
I think that the primary problem in politics is that elites naturally colonize the political system, thus transforming the very important liberal goal (protect the weak/Equality) into the elite goal (make government stronger -- in order to protect the weak). Similarly, elites have colonized the conservative discourse, converting the very important conservative goal (don't break what good we have) into the elite goal (stay in your place). Even the libertarian position (freedom is good) was coopted by the elites (corporations are good).
My politics: Libertarians, Liberals, and Conservatives ALL have very important goals to pursue. The elites are the problem in the way of all of them.
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3 comments:
Two sided:
There are those who do politics.
And those who chatter about politics.
Interesting.
The catch is that in any real actual human society, people will have sorted themselves such that some of them are 'elite'. This is part of human nature.
In other words the first 3 of your 4 sides are theoretical and never actually obtain. In practice, the 'coopted' versions of the first 3 are all that we will or can ever encounter.
If that is so, the question then becomes, which 'elite-coopted' version of political philosophy is least damaging. The way you have stated things I would rank coopted-libertarianism as the least-damaging (and I think you're overstating the extent to which libertarians love corporations anyway), and coopted-'liberalism' (leftism) as the most-. But, others differ. The point is this is the axis along which disagreement lies.
Which would explain why political disagreement is so often indistinguishable from the simpler debate over which 'elite' should prevail, period.
Rob and rwcg,
Both very strong, very similar points.
"What does the X elite want" is simply different from "what does the X populace want"...insofar as the populace wants anything besides group identity.
My position is primarily anti-elite, with minors on the positive side of all 3 other positions. IOW, I'm largely with Hayek and Friedman I.
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