What Are You?

It seems that most of us prefer short descriptives in categorizing our position on current events and the challenges they provide. You know: left, right, moderate. Or, if you prefer, Republican, Democrat, Independent. (Yes, I know I omitted the Tea Party. It is simply a faction of the Republican Party and can be found way over there on the right of the rest of the right.) Even “for” or “against” can be heard when offering a broad brush opinion. They all have one trait in common: they’re simple, short, and clear cut. The problem is that many of the issues before us today are anything but simple or short or clear.

So let’s take a short quiz to truly ascertain our priorities and political allegiances. Let’s start with the right to life: are you opposed to abortion rights and believe life is sacred? If so, how do you feel about capital punishment? How about gun control? Are you a member of the NRA and believe that guns don’t kill people, but only people kill people? If so, are you repulsed that a maniac can obtain a weapon capable of firing a large number of uninterrupted rounds and use it in a school?

If you support a free market system, I guess the latest spike in gas prices is causing you no angst nor financial pressure. We can all trust corporate America to provide safe and healthy products, can’t we? Who needs regulators and inspectors?  After all, they only stand in the way of a truly open market-based economy.

Do you want a smaller, less intrusive government and a balanced budget with no deficit? Are you ready to “adjust” your Medicare and Social Security privileges to achieve that goal? How about unemployment benefits or aid to dependent children? 

And what about all those bureaucracies, be they public or private? Surely we can pare them down a bit. But wait a minute...don’t most of us fill some sort of square within a corporate flow-chart? We’re necessary, though, aren’t we? They need our contribution, don’t they?

All of a sudden, that plain and simple description of our values gets a bit muddy, doesn’t it? As well it should. You see, many, if not most, of us move about the spectrum as the conversation changes. And sometimes we move even within a given topic. That’s because any issue at hand is much like a diamond. Or a lump of coal. Either has multiple facets and each can be flawless or seriously flawed. It all depends upon our perspective at that particular moment. To think that the world is simple is overly simplistic.

I’d say that our positions can be boiled down to two: the theoretical and the realistic. If we are not drawing unemployment benefits it is easy to say that those programs are needless. Once we lose our job, though, that theory gives way to the reality of our situation.

I suggest we use a more relaxed definition when attempting to pigeon-hole our position or anyone else’s. Me? I claim to be a social progressive and a fiscal conservative. And I know that my positions could well change depending on the realities I’m currently facing in my life. Now, some might call that schizophrenic. I prefer “complicated” and see it as more befitting in a world where nothing is as simple as we’d like.