Rick Santorum

A quick post. Details later.

Rick Santorum (R-PA) says nobody in the USA dies from lack of medical care. Rick Santorum is plainly confused, ignorant or lying. Rick Santorum is wrong. Research in reviewed medical journals has established the number of people who die because they lack medical care, mostly because they lack medical insurance, at more than 44,000 per year. That's more than 120 people each day. These are people whose only access to insulin is through the ER of a charity hospital and who only show up in acute diabetic distress. These are people who can't get chemotherapy because chemo is not an ER procedure and so die from breast, prostate or colon cancer.

If Rick Santorum is wrong or lying on this simply verified matter, why should any of us trust him with our nation?

Who Do I Chose?

I consider the candidate's actions to be most important. After that I consider his moral and political philosophy, both extremely difficult to judge because they are ideas or thoughts. If she should tell you of the noble and virtuous ideas, you must consider the possibility that she is unwilling or unable to turn them into actions. Jimmy Carter is a case in point: moral and idealistic, but incapable of gaining enough support to do something.

There are different styles. I've found many conservatives are top-down moralists: they assume if they elect a moral person to an office that virtue and good policy will inevitably result. Liberals are bottom-up consensualists: they assume if the policies are good that those policies will cause leadership to follow. Both are flawed. Moral men can do bad things and well crafted policies can lead to unintended results.

Ultimately, that is why other ideas about the practice of politics need to be tried: democracy, responsibility, community based economics and politics, decentralization and justice. Neither of the leading parties speaks in any depth to these issues. When I hear someone who does, then I know that at least a beginning of serious thought is there and this may be a candidate worth supporting.

Real differences

I get a feeling that "conservatives" and "liberals" are genuinely different and not in the ways usually discussed. It hasn't much to do with practical versus idealistic or consistent versus waffling or straight talking versus slick talking.

Conservatives in our day are comfortable with "the Rules": they think that they have a chance if we just keep the rules for success or normality or happiness the same, then all will be good. With this kind of mindset, any change or success outside of the norms, as they understand them, is really a personal threat: the notion that they might not really understand what the real rules of life are forces them to confront the awful prospect that a heuristic approach to reaching their goals may not succeed. That thought is anathema to a conservative.

Liberals are more concerned that we do things with the right motives, that we help those who haven't found success. To them "the Rules" are neither fixed nor necessarily friendly. The liberal approach is to redress the causalties of capricious application of the rules. Success outside of the norm is to be celebrated, it may show some of the those who don't succeed in conventional ways a way to enjoy an alternate success. That some may be incapable of any kind of success is anathema to the liberal.

The problem with either approach is that neither admits that a heuristic or systematic approach to society may not solve problems of injustice, ignorance, evil intent or chaotic circumstance. Each is looking for a solution outside of themselves, one in rules, the other in systems. To do that is to fundamentally to deny our humanity. That is why I prefer the progressive's somewhat unruly reliance on personal action, justice, wisdom, equity, mercy, responsibility and generousity.

Chaos

As I struggle to emerge from the post-election depression that has been my companion since November 3, one project seems to have promise. So, I have embarked on this, a journey of exploration. I have set upon this path pursuing a question that was always on our minds through the spring, summer and fall, but never quite was posed in a way that compelled an answer: given that our politics has given way to a choice between vanilla with chocolate swirl and vanilla with fudge swirl; what are the real, the important issues that deserve a real choice, a contrast, not just a naunced shading?

Many cultures have creation myths that are likely connected to that ur-story in our distant prehistory of how we came to be. In the common threads of these stories we can hazily make out the pattern of that first story that came from our first story-teller or if you have faith perhaps from someone who knew what actually happened. Many of these stories start with the world/universe/reality in chaos, without discernable pattern or purpose. The story usually tells us that something acted on this chaos to bring order or pattern into the world and it connects us to that emerging pattern. My own faith teaches that our physical being began as matter unorganized, chaotic was organized into preconceived patterns.

If indeed creation is marked by emerging patterns, then our world, our nations, our cultures, our families are best served by a conscious attempt to find and act in harmony with those patterns. That is the task I set for myself: finding the patterns that should form the indices for our conduct, our society and our policy. It is to build a rational, spiritual, reality-based daily politics. If you happen to read this, look at the patterns in the dust, hunker down, make a suggestion.

Axiomatic principles

Some things just have to be assumed to be the way they are, as honestly mediated reality. Without assuming that which we experience is related to our actual environment, we are left to try to puzzle out an always hidden reality behind the hullicinations that we live in.
So ...

A. We can see, hear, feel, touch and smell at least part of the real world. No shadows on the wall nonsense.

B. We exist. We are real.
If we are somebody else's dream, then we are somebody else. We'll get down to the real being eventually. I'm dealing with reality here.

C. We have always existed and will always exist.
Whether through eternal spiritual life or DNA imprint, there is a self that pre-exists and persists beyond our present physical form. My beliefs are that an intelligence has existed from before the patterns of the universe were manifested. We became aware of the patterns rather than the patterns possessing a means of self-awareness.

D. We have the inate ability and capacity to choose among alternatives.
If this were not true we would be passive spectators in a grand theater, without ability to influence or choose in any meaningful way. Life would be fultile and this blog would be pointless navel gazing (It may be anyway, but not for this reason)

From the above axioms we can start forming principles.
1. We have value.
2. We are not solely anything's or anyone's creation to do with as they choose. At a most fundamental level we are our own.
3. We can learn and understand our circumstances as they actually are. Effort is required.
4. We are capable and trustworthy to make our own choices
5. Choices based on reality are best. The more of reality that we can incorporate in the basis for our choices, the better they will be.
6. Our history shows that complex cultures are more robust. We learn by interaction.
7. If we each have inate value, then there is no stable system that gives one of us a greater value than another.