Thursday, December 1, 2011

Too Much to Explain All at Once

There are times when I have things I want to post here, but there is always more to organize and say, so I wait. And then more stuff happens, or more information pours in. So I need to quote Inigo Montoya (we quote The Princess Bride often in our home): “Let me esplain. No, there is too much; let me sum up.” Today I sum up what I want to do over time, in future posts.

One point I’d like to write about concerns the political primary race for the presidency; longer answers make things clearer than shorter answers. I keep getting that reinforced, but with every reinforcement it gets more difficult to pass along. I need links to video and audio, and/or transcripts. Do I cover it by person, or by issue? I’m undecided.  

A second point I’d like to write about—and these won’t be mutually exclusive—is my concern about damage already done during this primary. I don’t think the damage is insurmountable, but it’s unfortunate.  

On the bright side, the candidates as a group are considerably more conservative than we had four years ago. Anyone we choose will be a better choice than our current president, simply because philosophically our candidates believe in constitutional government, with the limits enumerated therein.  

But in past elections—several—we have been pushed to nominate someone “electable.” In political speak that means “moderate,” assuming those swing voters in the middle are more likely to choose somebody that isn’t very ideological one way or the other, ignoring how successful elections have been when candidates (e.g. Reagan) ran with a clear conservative philosophy. This mistaken notion gave us McCain in 2008, to some extent George W. Bush in 2000 (although in some ways he just turned out to be less conservative than how he ran), Bob Dole in 1996.  

So now, everyone is so determined not to be pushed toward less conservatism that there is an innate distrust of anyone in the lead. If someone leads, it must be because the “establishment” wants that person, and we don’t want that. Or, alternatively, if someone leads, it must be that that’s who Obama wants to run against, so we can’t choose that person. So there’s a tendency to dismiss anyone who leads: we won’t be fooled into supporting Romney, so we must support someone else; and then as soon as each other-than-Romney candidate reaches a leading position, they can’t maintain it.  

Last night while we were talking about this, my son Political Sphere said, “So you know who the next anybody-but-Romney candidate of the week will be, right?” Yes, I answered: Huntsman. Because he hasn’t had a turn yet. 

Is this shuffling of leading candidates because they’re not good candidates? I don’t think so, generally. I think it’s more the distrust of anyone leading. I think there is an irrational belief that the only fair way to choose a candidate is to have every candidate rated equally by polling data and media coverage and any external factor at the time of a single primary election day, so we all get equal say. 

This isn’t going to happen. So, we can only study each candidate for ourselves, using as much real information instead of external pressure as we can find. And once we have gone through that due diligence, share what we know. 

Whichever I choose, my endorsement is not likely to sway many people. But I am going through the process, and I’m trying to do that thoroughly. So I plan to share that process over the coming weeks and months in the hopes that the reasoning might help others in doing their own reasoning. 

In general I don’t think of Spherical Model as a political blog. Politics is just a way of doing our part as citizens to maintain/regain our freedoms. But those freedoms have so eroded, and seriously so during the past few years, that our economy and civilization are threatened. So, if moving back up into the northern hemisphere (in the Spherical Model) requires spending some time on the nitty-gritty of politics, we can handle it.

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