Left – Right
Progressive – Conservative
Democrat – Republican
All of these are presented as a dichotomy that one must choose because we have a two party system. You may have intermediate ideas and beliefs, but ultimately one must choose.
I, being who I am with my knowledge, background and experience, can not understand why one would espouse the first of the viewpoint pairs listed above.
Except…
I like our system of government. It is based on competing ideas, so arguments are taken on and conflicts arise so that only the best of ideas rise and are instituted. In theory. Where the theory doesn’t work is when one party is able to act without the input and tempering of the other.
Those on both sides know that without the other our government would run amuck: be out of control.
The conflict is essential.
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I believe progressives see the conservative’s philosophy as more popular. Such that it would take over and have no opposition if they don’t espouse radical lizard-brain-stimulating emotional points of view.
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All the left-right conflict we see in the news and by those in government is a show to keep some on one side, and some on the other so that we will have two sides. I don’t know what would happen if we only had one side, but those on the left are more and more willing to espouse illogical, fanciful, and emotional ideas to keep the government having two sides.
Maybe the two sides keeps government less powerful than one side. More gridlock, less action. More stalemate, less interference in my life. The left-right pendulum swings in all three branches sometimes on one side, then back to the other: wash, rinse, repeat.
But at least it swings….
One reply on “The Reason for the Left.”
While I agree with the notion that the conflict is necessary to constrain the government, I disagree that this is the result of some implicit conspiracy to maintain the conflict. Rather, there are many who are primarily-motivated by emotion and irrational whims (i.e., children), and they comprise the basis for the Leftist mindset that is currently set upon increasing division within the populace.
As a side effect, this inherent division serves the purpose to distract the masses from the fact that a select minority are acquiring more power over the lives of everyone else. This gets back to your secondary premise that it’s all about an elite’s attempts to appease the secular gods named power and money.
Now, I’d be happy if we managed to steal the rope from that pendulum and then used some bodies, which are currently occupying the seats of power, to replace the swinging mass.