Why I’m not a moderate

I think part of me thinks that political moderatism seems like a wise philosophy.  Moderatism would seem to be the safe option, safe from any extremes in ideas.

I think when it comes to social issues, I may be more moderate than many conservatives, but when it comes to economics, I’m pretty far right.  Here are a few reasons why:

1) The government, when it comes to power, doesn’t understand moderation.  The nature of government is to grab more power.  We see this throughout history, as government grows and grows.  Government understands moderation the same way a crack addict does.  And, I guess, it’s not an all-or-nothing thing; it’s not like we choose between anarchy and communism, but it’s just, when it comes to governmental power, and especially in economics, I prefer as little control as possible.  And, with libertarian ideas, it’s easy to give more clearly defined boundaries (i.e. focused on protecting people from others).

2) When it comes to moderation between government control and liberty, and things go wrong, people tend to blame the liberty side.  When it comes to governmental controls that don’t work, people typically push for more funding or more laws to make the original set of laws work.

So, I suppose many of us use moderation in our political philosophy to some degree, but I tend not to use moderation itself as my driving political philosophy.

Is there a line between passion and disillusionment?

For quite some time, I was passionate about politics.  I would spend my lunches at work reading political articles, blog about politics, and debate politics in comment sections in this blog and others.  

Over time, however, I started to disconnect myself from it.  Part of it was set in motion by political events going on all the way back to 2006.  As someone who is libertarian-minded, things are far from the ideal no matter who is in charge, but that’s been even more so the case over the past 6 and a half years.  So, I’ve paid attention to what’s going on for the most part, but I have also detached myself from it in a way.  

Part of this has been good.  I feel like I’ve actually grown spiritually; when things started not going the way I wanted on the political scene I learned to put less of my faith in politics and more in God.  It hasn’t been easy, and there are still times I worry about the world my kids will grow up in, but worrying doesn’t do anything for me.  

As far as just being less passionate about politics in general, it remains to be seen if this is good or bad, or just neutral.  I miss being passionate about issues.  I felt intellectually alive as I started to form my own opinions about things and developing an overarching political philosophy.  

But, to be passionate is to be disappointed.  To be passionate is to be angry, and I won’t want to be angry.  It’s hard to pay attention to things and emotionally invest in them and not be disillusioned.  I’ve thought several times about making comments on Facebook or Twitter about the way things are, but it wouldn’t be therapeutic.  I found a blogger today with whom I seem to agree on everything, but to follow him and read his articles is to bring back these negative emotions and questions like “why doesn’t everyone believe the way I do, the truth just seems so obvious?”

So, I will continue to, on Twitter, to follow people who make me laugh and people who talk about sports.  If I listen to talk radio, it’ll be about the Broncos Super Bowl hopes.  If I debate on the internet, it’ll be about if Oklahoma State’s defense will be any good this year or what U2’s best album is.   

So, I feel that, for me, right now, I have to choose to either be happy or to immerse myself in political issues.  It may not be a choice everyone has to make, and it may not always be the choice I have to make, but for me right now, that is my choice.