Tuesday, June 30, 2009

New Gallup poll says 'A pox on both your houses.'

A new poll posted on Gallup.com today states:

"A Gallup Poll finds a statistically significant increase since last year in the percentage of Americans who describe the Democratic Party's views as being "too liberal," from 39% to 46%. This is the largest percentage saying so since November 1994, after the party's losses in that year's midterm elections."

It goes on...

"Notably, there has been no change over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say the Republican Party is "too conservative," though the 43% who say the party leans too far to the right matches the historical high mark set last year."

So record high numbers of respondents believe the Democrats are too liberal and the Republicans are too conservative. So ideally, they move closer to each other and become "just right", right? Wrong.

We don't need Republicans to become more like Democrats or vice versa. The big lie is that solutions to the problems facing this country lie somewhere along a straight line between the two major parties. In reality, both parties agendas are more like a plate of spaghetti that occasionally intersects with the truth.

The common thread between most politicians of all persuasions is control. Republicans generally believe we should all adhere to Judeo-Christian values and that they should be institutionalized to a large extent. Democrats tend to believe that we are all each others keepers and the good of the community and society should be paramount. Both parties seem to believe that the preservation of the "too big to fail" trumps free market principals. Americans believe none of it.

Government's job is to enable us to freely associate in the absence of force. It is not to mold us into the people they want us to be. We don't have to all get on the same page. In fact, that is the antithesis of what this country is about. This is a nation where people of all kinds of beliefs, with all kinds of personalities and backgrounds find a way to live, work and play in relative peace. This is not accomplished through conformity. It's accomplished by eliminating the requirement for conformity except that we agree not to initiate force against one another.

We don't need Democrats to get more Republican or Republicans to become more like Democrats. We need both parties to get out of our face.

No comments: