Sunday, May 23, 2010
Question of the day (UPDATED)
Question: In politics, when people demand "bipartisanship" and "centrism", are they truly interested in cooperating with the other side, or do they just want the other side to cooperate with them?
There's another interesting point made in the article, which I have observed personally, too. Specifically, while conservatives tend to be very eager to self-identify themselves as such (see video below), I don't think that the same can be said of liberals and/or leftists. As Mona Charen puts it in the article I linked to above:
They imagine that they occupy the sensible center....
So, they don't really consider themselves to be ideologically motivated, even though they may well might be.
If you want a textbook example of this phenomenon here in Canada, just try looking up the words: Frank Graves, EKOS, CBC, bias, culture war, etc. It might be interesting to see what comes up.
UPDATE: Conservative Tim Powers confronts this phenomenon quite nicely over at his Globe and Mail blog:
...the underlying arrogance that remains the Achilles heal of the Liberal Party and some elements of the NDP. To appropriate, or never forsake whatever the case maybe, conscience and in turn moral superiority as the sole property of one political entity demonstrates a significant political disconnect grounded in entitlement, formed by myth, ultimately reinforced by the assumption of manifest destiny that will derail any potential of future political success. Put simply, if the foundation of any Liberal-NDP coalition is “we are better people than them, we know best and we must get back into power,” then the structure will be faulty.
