Does the fact that your child want to do so for a good cause make a difference?
Well, yes. That makes all the difference. At least, that's how traditional liberal Democratic thinking goes.
Consider the response if you point out that it's illegal to come to this country without permission, steal someone's identity, and take a job "under the table". The liberal will explain to you the hardships that immigrants face, and that takes care of any and all complaints about illegal behavior. There's no recognition that there are two separate arguments at play here; the different arguments are freely mixed together*.
The left wing has spent the last thirty years justifying bad behavior by pointing out that the perpetrators are poor and/or are victimized by society. "Crack is a code word", they cry, as if "crack" - or "crime" or "blight" - were somehow an essential part of being a minority.
At the heart of almost every controversy lies the claim that something normally considered unacceptable must be overlooked or ignored, because a really good cause is involved, and therefore the people behaving badly must not be held responsible for their objectionable behavior. (Really, we're supposed to not even notice it.)
- They justify double standards by suggesting that "victimized" groups deserve special exemptions - not exemptions related to specific situations (poor minorities) but based solely and totally on group status (so that Eugene Robinson is oppressed while a poor white person living in a trailer is guilty of being his oppressor). Designated "aggressor groups" deserve punishment (without trial, jury, or statute of limitations. And there's no way to pay off the debt; identity politics debts have no end date and never get paid down.)
- They justify uncivil behavior by pointing out that the enemy is "fascist" ("racist", whatever) and anything that overthrows evil can't be too extreme.
- They judge and disapprove of how other people are treating their kids, or their workers, or Mother Earth, and then decide that anything done to people like that can't be bad. Especially if it liberates the children, the workers, or the trees.
- They argue that anything they do must be acceptable, because the other guys are worse.
You have to be sincere about the good cause. The only way to refute obvious injustice is to provide a countering example of injustice so awful that it has the power to make people believe that two wrongs really should make a right.
But if you can prove the cause is good, then yes - it's okay to justify bad things for good reasons.
I'm not so sure about that - I'd argue the point just to see where it led - but in any case, there is one little thing not being considered, and that's the phrase:
if there's no other optionIf there is another option, that changes everything. Or at least it ought to.
When I judge an argument - or Democratic party leadership - I tend to judge it against what I myself would feel I ought to do. And either I'm a helluva lot more resourceful than most Democrats, or they're just not trying hard enough.
Most liberal Democratic arguments fall apart right here at this "exploring all options" part, because they don't explore options. They just pick the first/obvious answer and act as if that is the only possible thing that anyone could do. Or, rather, a couple of decades ago, someone picked the first/obvious answer, and now everyone genuinely believes that is the only possible thing that anyone could do.
This is what made President Clinton so special. He actually made a commitment to execution ("the discipline of getting things done", as one executive puts it). Clinton wasn't just about being right in some ideological sense. He cared about whether it worked (and that included correcting for unintended, unwanted side effects). That's why he tackled welfare reform - earning the hatred of liberals who didn't want to believe that anything needed reforming. (Reform, like 'crack" and "blight", is racist.)
The Kennedy-Kerry-Obama wing of the Democratic party doesn't focus on execution. Every time I hear someone yelling about focusing on the issues - as if the issues could save Obama - I think, what issues? Which issues? Issues was Hillary Clinton's thing, and we didn't want it. Obama isn't about making anything particular happen. "Change" is just a registered trademark (TM). He doesn't even link directly to any issues, outside of his own "Christ and me were community organizers" self.
I do believe that most Democrats do genuinely want to fix things and make a difference in the world. But they don't think ahead. Republicans obviously think the way a chess player does - that is, "if I do x, what will my opponent do? How will I respond when he does?" Democrats just seem to think they've "well, that'll solve the problem" - and move on to the next armchair quarterback problem they don't intend to adequately follow through on.
And so they don't stop to consider likely or predictable problems, objections, obstacles, and so on. There just aren't any, in the Democrat's world. And they don't check back to verify that everything is working the way it should. They don't expect to have to make corrections.
It is interesting to consider the cliche about how liberals teach college while Republicans go into business. Businessmen all know that the first solution is almost always a bad solution. Management studies have proved this (look up "brainstorming" for information about what liberals aren't doing enough of). And of course they know that in the real world, things never work out like they look on paper - of course there will have to be adjustments. Of course we will have to collect and analyze feedback and assume we are at least partially wrong in our assumptions.
(This is what makes all the more funny-sad when liberals prattle on about how a college education is the only kind of education that matters. Most liberals don't get that college is about the abstract, but the real world is about execution - and that's what the working class knows about. Basic math can tell you how many hay bales will fit in the bed of a pickup truck, but only experience will tell you how many you should really load - and how fast it's really safe to drive**.)
One reason the liberals are struggling now is they are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy, because people cooperated with all their grand ideas - and none of them worked. These ideas mostly didn't work because they weren't well thought out. Whether this was laziness or ignorance, the fact is, when data started coming in indicating that things weren't working, liberals did not evaluate and adjust - they instead dug in, got defensive, honed 'talking points'and insults to hurl at critics instead of admitting that the solutions weren't delivering as expected.
And this is unacceptable because it doesn't work, but more importantly, it is unacceptable because ethical breaches are involved. Yet people insist that this first solution is the only option, that's even worse. That's downright negligent. And they have to grow ever more committed to demonizing those who complain - and then, bang! There goes the moral high ground. This is really visible this election cycle.
Democrats need to understand that ethics exists for a reason. Ethical breaches have a cost. Ethical breaches are linked to every major failure of the Bush administration. Ethical breaches cause a loss of credibility, a loss of legitimacy, and a backlash ("for ever action there is an equal and..." yeah). Ethical breaches would have handed Democrats this election if they hadn't blown it.
We would be cruising to victory if we'd done the work instead of just trying to mimick the more-successful Republican (dirty) tactics - yet again with the first solution instead of really understanding and fixing the situation.
The first solution is usually just some variation on, "let's just fix it - now. Let's just use a blunt instrument and force the solution we want. Bludgeoning is fun."
But this approach is like crash dieting. When you try to hurry and rush, you lose a bit of weight - but you gain back more than you lost. You're trying to force an agenda there, but you're not working with the natural systems - you're not appreciating homeostasis and the feedback systems that rule your body. If you try to force something too unnatural, not only will the system correct - it may overcorrect.
And now the Democratic party is overcorrecting. Seriously:
- Ask environmentalists if their short-term gains were worth the backlash.
What would have been better? Positive actions, not negative hating-shaming-blaming. Finding a way to solve the problems that actually addressed the problems (including the problem of massive scope and scale - you do not dam Niagra Falls with a Loofah and no wonder anyone who tries feels depressed!)
Instead they waged a propaganda campaigns to persuade people to "just stop being a high pollution filthy pig"**. - Ask feminists if their short-term gains were worth the backlash.
What would have been better? Positive actions, not negative hating-shaming-blaming. Envisioning how a post-patriarchal world might look, and then making that vision a reality.
Instead they just declared war on "the patriarchy". (As opposed to - ??)
And what's the word for someone who collaborates with the patriarchy? Men are "pigs" and women are - "pigs with lipstick" ?? (Do we still not see why that particular phrase has been picked up?)
The Democratic party doesn't measure results very well. Sometimes it doesn't even seem to occur to them to do so, or to even think about what the end result is realistically going to be.
Take the immigration debate. If the liberals had their way, we'd all "just stop being racist" - what kind of a solution is that? If I were the one who cared enough about the immigration debate to get out there and fight for it - that is, if that were my issue - I wouldn't start by taking on the people who are in a rage because strangers keep using their front yard as a port-a-potty. I wouldn't even start with the crackpot idea of giving people who are here illegally a driver's license - thereby making them legal yet not, apparently with the goal of formalizing the policy that the law can be safely ignored, except when it can't.
I'd fight to change the immigration law so these people can come in legally.
What the hell is wrong with everyone? Would you want someone defecating on your porch? No, you wouldn't. Don't lie.
Ethics and rules and the concept of social behavior (the very bedrock of groups living together) - contrary to local superstition, these things are not really handed down one day from a divine entity (who yelled because he can't stand all the bowing and scraping). The rules we live by - the real rules - these are the products of evolution. They serve a purpose.
We must start learning how to measure results not by how much change we see, but by how much change we see minus the backlash.
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* The question might conveniently jump back and forth between
"should we do something to help these people - and, if so, what?"to
"how should we respond to these illegal and/or destructive behaviors? What is the appropriate balance between this group of people, who claim entitlement on humanitarian grounds, vs. that group of people, who claim entitlement on the basis of (existing law/precedent/property rights/etc)?"The entire immigration debate would be cleared up if we just made introductory logic compulsory in grade school, and then the entire populace would be able to recognize when an argument jumps the shark.
** If you aren't worried about the haystacks falling onto your front hood and obscuring your windshield, you don't have enough on there. You can fit a few more. Drive slow.
Update: I meant hay bales. I've fixed the main body of the text, where I also wrote "haystacks". You can only put one haystack on a truck. No, I don't know what's wrong with me. I think it has to do with a particular haystack I once saw driving around Kentucky. I assume there was a vehicle under there somewhere, but we'll never know.
** Seriously: I once read a writer who argued that we should all take five minute showers - no hot water allowed. How does this solve the problem? It doesn't. In exchange for a lot of sacrifice, you get a dent in the problem that is barely noticeable.
But it sure makes people not want to be an environmentalist.
Really, though, it's the shaming that killed the momentum.I've said this before, but I want to repeat it: using tactics such as coming into elementary school classrooms with characters such as the Lorax to "speak for the trees" - with the obvious intent of making children see their own parents as being "like the Once-ler" - is really just as despicable a tactic as using a cartoon character to "speak for the unborn babies" would be. It doesn't belong in a publicly funded classroom and it isn't "censorship" to want it out of the classroom.
You don't win hearts and minds by trying to teach children that their own parents are "bad" and need to be "fixed". (And teaching a child to steal a parent's cigarettes does not help the anti-smoking crusade. It is seriously antisocial behavior, and obnoxious as hell.)
Personalizing and shaming working class men as causing or being in favor of environmental degradation is a mistake that is still hurting the movement. Just what were these men supposed to do to clear themselves of the guilt here? The demonization of the lumberjack was never about "finding solutions" - it was about scapegoating.
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