On Partisan Differences

This is an edited version of a comment I made regarding my friend Kern's blog post comparing liberal and conservative ideologies.

Both parties/philosophies appeal to a range of socioeconomic classes and intellectual levels. It's a common fallacy of both sides to only notice the lowest level of the opposition's appeal. Rush Limbaugh continuously explains to his listenership why liberalism has a more basic, superficial appeal. I think most of my readers will find that Rush appeals to, in turn, an intellectual level beneath us. That's not to say his criticisms of liberalism are invalid. They are valid. He's just selecting the dumbest, most extreme targets within the liberal camp.

Taken too far, it might sound like there aren't differences between Democrats and Republicans or Liberalism and Conservatism--and there are. The media structure is a case in point. However, we mustn't forget that both parties must necessarily appeal to the lowest common denominator (and the highest) to stay afloat, albeit through different but equally reprehensible means.

Part of my generation's confusion is caused by the fact that the parties act differently depending on whether they're in or out of power. The parties are generally more hypocritical and aggressive when they're in power.

Remember that at the ideologies' cores lie different foundational assumptions about the world. Liberals assume that glitches of the free market are efficiently repaired by bureaucratic intervention. They assume people will do things whether they're illegal or not. They assume people need help to survive hardship and to rise to the top. They assume that laws reflect realities.

Conservatives assume that bureaucracy is less efficient than free market. They assume laws proceed from morals. They assume laws are effective. They assume that enabling is the greater danger to not helping. They assume people will survive hardship and that cream rises to the top.

All of those assumptions are flawed, but grounded in seeds of truth. Frequently, liberals and conservatives battle over the position of an optimization curve (ie the Laffer curve) that is poorly defined. In the absence of solid statistics pointing out the obvious answer to a dilemma, people resort to their assumptions, and this is where most political disagreements originate--from the gray areas. If it was black and white, we'd be in agreement.