Freedom of choice
Oct. 29th, 2012 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerIn a week or so the Americans will be voting for their next president. I am sure many people, like me, are hoping that the majority will vote for Barack Obama to serve a second term and continue the good work he has finally managed to begin. I'm equally sure many people are hoping for Mitt Romney to take the White House and set America back on the road to wherever Bush had it going. Freedom of choice is the corner stone of democracy; you can't express your wish as the people if you don't have a choice that embodies that wish. Some people will be voting for Gary Johnson, or any number of third-, fourth- or no-party candidates. That is their right.
But.
Consider a child. Does that child have the freedom to put its hand into a fire? No, not if its parents are sane and caring. They will prevent it from doing so, as would I, as would you, as would anyone except the most draconian exponents of they've-got-to-learn. If that child is allowed to put its hand into the fire, it may well lose some or all of that hand, and have to go through life with one hand too few, a serious impediment to appearing in a film about Richard Clayderman.
But we are not children, you say. We are adults.
Consider then an adult with a short-term memory failure. You can tell him or her not to put a hand into the fire till you're blue in the face, but s/he won't remember it five minutes later. Or consider an adult with some other kind of disability that prevents him or her from recognising the dangers of fire. You protect them, don't you?
But we are not disabled, you say. We know what we are doing.
Consider then an adult who has been made to believe that if she (I'm going to pick a gender and stick with it, sorry) does not put her hand into the fire, dire consequences will ensue. She may be aware of the danger, may value her hand and all the wonderful things it can do, but if she can she is going to put that hand into the fire, because it's required of her. Maybe her mother's wedding ring is in there. Maybe the sprinkler switch is on the wall behind the fire. Maybe if she doesn't put her hand in, queers and dykes will be able to get married, or a black man will get into the White House. She's being brave. She knows what she's doing, and she's putting that hand in unless somebody stops her.
Here's my point. Somebody has to stop her. Somebody has to tell her, eventually, that no, her mother's ring isn't in there, the sprinkler switch is over here, and it doesn't harm anyone, in any way, if people who love each other gain the right to marry. Somebody has to tell her that she doesn't have to be brave in that way--that bravery will be required of her, certainly, but not this way. Maybe, down the road a bit, somebody can explain to her that it's not just her hand she's frying but everyone's hand.
But right now, immediately, what's needed is for putting the hand in the fire not to be an option.
And because there are always the people who will try to get this good, decent, brave, strong, misinformed person to put her hand (and everybody else's) into the fire again, and again, and again, it needs never to be an option. Because it's a stupid option. It's a damaging option. It's an ultimately pointless option. Just like voting in, again and again and again, a bunch of people who care more about businesses than they care about customers, who care more about "the state" than about the citizens of that state, who care more about their super-rich friends than they do about the homeless, the jobless, the healthless, the old, and so on...and whose care, in each case, consists in facilitating the hoarding of vast amounts of wealth rather than taking a fair proportion of that wealth in taxes and spending it wisely to benefit the aforementioned groups. Voting for such people is likewise a stupid, a damaging, an ultimately pointless option. It is a misuse of individual freedom. And if we are ever to progress at all as a species, away from tribalism, selfishness and hatred, I honestly believe it is an exercise of individual freedom which should, in the interests of true freedom for all (which is the only real freedom there is), be prevented.
Conservatism can be a force for good. I honestly believe that too. But for that to happen it must radically reinvent itself (again), and till it does, I do not see a logical reason why conservatives in the current mould, or those who espouse current conservative ideals, should not be prevented from standing for public office on the grounds that they are not fit to hold it. Only when parties like our Conservative and the US's Republican Party are no longer able to gain power, either by popular vote, by fraud and chicanery, or by being handed it by a catspaw in another party (hi Nick; how are you sleeping these days?), will they be incentivised (to borrow their favourite buzzword) to re-examine their goals and their methods, and ask themselves if they are truly seeking office for the right reasons; if they are endeavouring to justify the faith put in them by good, decent, brave, strong, tragically misinformed people, or cynically using that faith to wangle themselves another four years on the gravy train.
All of which, rounded up, tied off with a bow and combined with the price of a cup of coffee, would buy you a cup of coffee. I wish all my US friends safe passage through Hurricane Sandy, and the best possible election result for America. Whichever that may happen to be.
But.
Consider a child. Does that child have the freedom to put its hand into a fire? No, not if its parents are sane and caring. They will prevent it from doing so, as would I, as would you, as would anyone except the most draconian exponents of they've-got-to-learn. If that child is allowed to put its hand into the fire, it may well lose some or all of that hand, and have to go through life with one hand too few, a serious impediment to appearing in a film about Richard Clayderman.
But we are not children, you say. We are adults.
Consider then an adult with a short-term memory failure. You can tell him or her not to put a hand into the fire till you're blue in the face, but s/he won't remember it five minutes later. Or consider an adult with some other kind of disability that prevents him or her from recognising the dangers of fire. You protect them, don't you?
But we are not disabled, you say. We know what we are doing.
Consider then an adult who has been made to believe that if she (I'm going to pick a gender and stick with it, sorry) does not put her hand into the fire, dire consequences will ensue. She may be aware of the danger, may value her hand and all the wonderful things it can do, but if she can she is going to put that hand into the fire, because it's required of her. Maybe her mother's wedding ring is in there. Maybe the sprinkler switch is on the wall behind the fire. Maybe if she doesn't put her hand in, queers and dykes will be able to get married, or a black man will get into the White House. She's being brave. She knows what she's doing, and she's putting that hand in unless somebody stops her.
Here's my point. Somebody has to stop her. Somebody has to tell her, eventually, that no, her mother's ring isn't in there, the sprinkler switch is over here, and it doesn't harm anyone, in any way, if people who love each other gain the right to marry. Somebody has to tell her that she doesn't have to be brave in that way--that bravery will be required of her, certainly, but not this way. Maybe, down the road a bit, somebody can explain to her that it's not just her hand she's frying but everyone's hand.
But right now, immediately, what's needed is for putting the hand in the fire not to be an option.
And because there are always the people who will try to get this good, decent, brave, strong, misinformed person to put her hand (and everybody else's) into the fire again, and again, and again, it needs never to be an option. Because it's a stupid option. It's a damaging option. It's an ultimately pointless option. Just like voting in, again and again and again, a bunch of people who care more about businesses than they care about customers, who care more about "the state" than about the citizens of that state, who care more about their super-rich friends than they do about the homeless, the jobless, the healthless, the old, and so on...and whose care, in each case, consists in facilitating the hoarding of vast amounts of wealth rather than taking a fair proportion of that wealth in taxes and spending it wisely to benefit the aforementioned groups. Voting for such people is likewise a stupid, a damaging, an ultimately pointless option. It is a misuse of individual freedom. And if we are ever to progress at all as a species, away from tribalism, selfishness and hatred, I honestly believe it is an exercise of individual freedom which should, in the interests of true freedom for all (which is the only real freedom there is), be prevented.
Conservatism can be a force for good. I honestly believe that too. But for that to happen it must radically reinvent itself (again), and till it does, I do not see a logical reason why conservatives in the current mould, or those who espouse current conservative ideals, should not be prevented from standing for public office on the grounds that they are not fit to hold it. Only when parties like our Conservative and the US's Republican Party are no longer able to gain power, either by popular vote, by fraud and chicanery, or by being handed it by a catspaw in another party (hi Nick; how are you sleeping these days?), will they be incentivised (to borrow their favourite buzzword) to re-examine their goals and their methods, and ask themselves if they are truly seeking office for the right reasons; if they are endeavouring to justify the faith put in them by good, decent, brave, strong, tragically misinformed people, or cynically using that faith to wangle themselves another four years on the gravy train.
All of which, rounded up, tied off with a bow and combined with the price of a cup of coffee, would buy you a cup of coffee. I wish all my US friends safe passage through Hurricane Sandy, and the best possible election result for America. Whichever that may happen to be.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 06:53 pm (UTC)http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/10/29/
the-scalzi-endorsement-obama-for-
president/
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 07:01 pm (UTC)Sure, they like to call themselves conservatiives, they would like us to believe them when they say it. A used-car dealer might want you to believe he is your new best friend. His wanting you to think that doesn't make it so and doesn't make believing him a good idea.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-30 03:27 pm (UTC)I can only see one logical reason, and that's the sad fact that there is no possible method of keeping bad people out of public office that won't be grossly abused to keep good people out of public office.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 09:07 am (UTC)The difference between a child and an adult in your analogy is who is held responsible if that person makes a poor choice. In either case, the responsibility would eventually fall on whomever left an open flame out there to touch. Ideally, there shouldn't be one at all, but without it we starve, we freeze, and we trip over things in the darkness.
But should a government be held responsible when someone within its constituency makes a poor choice? If the motivation for voting is a moral imperative, than the answer for that voter is yes. More and more We the People are being forced into making such choices for the government so that the government of the future can make those choices for us.
That's what worries me. It's the Prometheus Effect. Either way it goes, something and a whole bunch of somebodies are going to get burned.