Howdy

I'm still alive! This has been a busy month. Many things are afoot. Since you were kind enough to stop by, though, I'll share a moderately interesting notion with you.

From the inception of this site, I've enjoyed being "unashamedly partisan," though from time to time I've somewhat undermined my own arguments, inadvertently or otherwise. The details aren't important. What I want to discuss here are the potential dangers of partisanship.

What motivates a partisan? The slippery slope argument. Is there any other motivation? No, there is not. The slippery slope argument is all that is necessary and sufficient to create a hard-core partisan. The partisan sees that something has changed, or is changing, or has been proposed to change, and from the direction of that change infers that the people behind it will not be satisfied with that change, but rather, that it is merely the first installment of a long line of similar and progressively more absurd and destructive changes.

The problem, however, is that this extrapolation is not always correct. In general, I find that a good rule of thumb is that Democrats overestimate the evil of Republicans, and Republicans underestimate the evil of Democrats. See, told you I was partisan.

But seriously, there comes a time, or many successive times, when one tires of reacting with shock and horror to the latest depredations of one's political opponents, because after all, once something happens a couple thousand times, it really shouldn't be all that surprising when it happens for the 2001st time. And one must always consider the irritating possibility that many opponents are good-hearted people who mean well and just don't have a whole lot of sense. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to get away with any old thing, but it might mean that they shouldn't be hated for it.

In the end, I think there is one fundamental truth of politics, and perhaps of morality in general. If an action is bad, it is bad because it produces worse results (whether they're immediately obvious or not) than the alternatives. If it produces worse results, then it will ultimately succumb to the actions of people who have better ideas. This may not be much consolation to the hundreds or millions of people who will suffer unimaginable pain as a result of the bad ideas, but at least one can take some solace in the knowledge that the bad ideas are self-defeating in the long run.

George Orwell argued in 1984 that this is not necessarily the case -- that it is possible for bad ideas to become self-perpetuating. All I can say to that is: maybe, but maybe not.

Have a nice day!