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Liberals Unite! (Tee hee)

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Warning! This is just one issue that plagues us liberals. It's meant as constructive criticism, not to be an exhaustive diagnosis or an indictment. So, if you're going to respond, offer another idea and don't waste your time telling me this one isn't the whole answer. I know it's not.

Are we going to see a "blue wave" at the polls in November? I have serious doubts about that.

Sorry. We liberals are much too busy specifying pronouns, taking a knee, saying "me too," arguing about whose lives matter, making sure everyone's specific individual identity is fully recognized and respected according to the way each of us wants to be treated by each and every other one of us.

Now to be sure, I don't have a personal problem supporting any of these movements. But when will we create this nirvana, so we can start the programmatic progress for the country. Will it be about the same time the mega-wealthy have ALL the wealth?

We are sincere people who want the best for everyone, and I appreciate that characteristic. The problem is that "best" is different for everyone and therein lies the implausibility of the idea. Your own life satisfaction doesn't require the agreement of anyone else. I've heard it said this way, "you don't need to burn yourself to keep someone else warm." Taking personal responsibility is not just a good conservative idea--and that includes for your own happiness.

We're using up all our energy trying to herd cats. In practical terms, this creates such divisiveness that we can't pull our central principles together into a coherent stance that we all support--independent of all our particularizations. Will the Democrat's "better deal for the American worker," idea get traction, or will we be too busy arguing for our own individual interests to listen to it and sell it to our neighbors? In other words, "first, fix my pet peeve, and then we can address the whole."

At the expense of oversimplifying for brevity's sake, when it comes to getting and holding the political or financial power to change our society for the better, we're amateurs.

It seems to me there are reasons that military people lean toward the right. We might like to call it inflexibility, or just plain stubbornness. But I think it has much to do with self-selection. The ranks are filled with people who thrive in an environment of working together to pursue a common goal. They're willing to subdue and delay their own needs and wants in the efforts to achieve an agreed mission. They recognize authority and willingly follow "marching" orders.

That simply doesn't appear on our asset list on the left. We're good at questioning marching orders, arguing the validity of the mission, following our own drummers. All admirable qualities, but not very effective at achieving our societal dreams.

Here's the paradox I see today. The radical individualism found in the Republican Party, personified in Ayn Rand's philosophy, is willingly subdued in the rank and file in order to achieve a common goal. And the Democrat Party's ideal of social progress is being destroyed by particularization, a kind of radical individualism that's turning malignant.

What happened? How did the radical individual American join the left and the team spirited American join the right?

Robert De Filippis

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Author, columnist, and blogger with a long career in business management, management consulting and executive coaching. I've authored and published eight books: "You, Your Self and the 21st Century,"The Flowers Are Talking to Me," and "Faith (more...)
 

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