"Outlawing guns outlaws the
American Citizen.
Regulating guns regulates the American
Citizen.
Controlling guns... controls, the American Citizen."
The Great Divide
(with a possibly excess amount of
egotistical articulation)
Brett Venable
10/27/12
There seems
to exist a certain naïveté in the modern political climate concerning the
nature of ideological polarization. This essence has worked itself, and been
helped along, into the common social acceptance of today's society. It is
mentioned most often when wielded as a weapon by (most commonly)
Liberal-Democrats holding political office. This naïveté, or downright
misconception, is not on the existence of such a divisiveness, but the nature.
Anyone
who pays a decent amount of attention to political news has heard the
inter-political argument of polarization. One side will typically accuse the
other of inciting a conspicuous division between the parties that hinders the
otherwise smooth operation of matters of state. The misconception is that this
divisive line exists between the parties themselves. For matters of simplicity
and clarity, I will henceforth operate under the example of the American
two-party system of Republicans and Democrats.
While it may seem on the surface particularly strange, there exists no particular ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans. The reason for this is simple: These two parties are not ideological platforms, they are political. The divide that is so commonly highlighted exists between the philosophical ideologies of modern politicians, and indeed the body politic itself: Liberalism and Conservatism. Party platforms are built to attempt to represent a philosophical ideology in a political format, and it is today typically such with Republicans for Conservatism, and Democrats for Liberalism, but the nature of politics itself prevents such representation from ever being entirely accurate, at least, in any successful sense. Even modern Progressive-Liberalism is hindered from acting in its natural Socialist interests in the public view.
What is
initially striking about the existence of such a misconception is its flimsy
logical foundation. If there exists any line of moral continuity from the past
three hundred years, ranging to the time before the modern American Republican
and Democrat parties were founded, then the thinking is disproved. However, due to the intentional ignification* of
American society since the early twentieth century, and therefore the modern
political necessity, such a delusion still thrives today.
The
fact is that modern society embraces a mindset that has grown so far from its
beginnings, that the nature of the divide has been lost to those not wise
enough to know better. Imagine if you will a tall structure, shaped like a
vertically turned tuning fork. At the bottom of the structure is a crossbar
that inherently separates the two sides. The modern proletariat exists at the
top of this structure, so that they see the divide, but not the bar. They know
that something separates the
two sides, but without the wisdom to see what exists at their roots, they are
forced by their own ignorance, and the necessity of the current political
system, to believe that the space between them is forced by some higher, more
accessible, more manageable, more bendable
system. A system that, as many on the left would have you believe,
allows for flexibility in what would otherwise be clearly visible as one's
philosophical principles. Such a truth would disallow nearly all compromise in
modern policy-making, and as such has been quashed as fascistic romanticism.
So then
what is the point? Is all of this null given the aforementioned political
necessity? Well, yes and no. One must realize that politics itself is the
rendering of philosophy to an ignorant mass. If everyone in society were
perfectly and accurately appraised of the viewpoints of every public official,
the industry of politics would be unnecessary, but that's another issue. The
key bit of wisdom to take away here, is that you can't control the wisdom of
the entire political sphere, but you can control your own, and influence those
around you. I therefore encourage anyone to properly recognize the true nature of polarization as a
philosophical one, and not a political one. Try never to argue a principle in
terms of politics, but do argue politics in terms of your principles, as that's
the only thing that keeps the industry consumer-honest.
*Ignification
– This is a new word. Tell your pastor and milkman, and we will have it in
Oxford by the end of next year.
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