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In most wealthy countries, and in the US of a few decades ago, I would count as a centrist. I like a certain amount of regulation of business - enough to make sure they're not forcing people into slavery; enough to make sure that they pay for externalities of their businesses, like pollution; enough to make sure they hold up their ends of contracts and tell the truth in their advertising (like "this is safe to eat") - but not too much regulation - not regulation that becomes protectionist and creates barriers to entry; not regulation that makes it impossible to try a new system, or to fire someone incompetent.
I like a certain amount of equal opportunity - like public education and mass transit - but also like to be able to opt out, and make up my own education system, and drive a car. I take the very classically conservative notion that to help the poor, you should straight up give them money. No nanny state saying "spend this on food and you have to come to all these classes." Just give them money. I like taxes, and like a progressive tax system (flat tax is idiotic, because why would we take money from the poor to give back to the poor), but think our tax code is overly complicated. I don't want education credits and deductions for charitable donations and how many miles did I drive my car. Clean it up. This is again classically conservative.
More than anything else, I'm pretty utilitarian. I look at outcomes.
Of course in the current US political environment, I am not only counted as liberal but as bleeding-heart liberal, chiefly because I imagine poor people, womenfolk, Spanish speakers, and the gays. I don't imagine them anything in particular; I just have them in my mind.
When someone says I'm a bleeding-heart liberal (not to my face, and not even about me - just about people like me) the implication is that it would be better and more responsible if I were a centrist (moderation and compromise being good adult values) and also that I am not realist. The bleeding-heart bit could be substituted for something like "believes in unicorns" or "easy mark."
I am not an easy mark. I am, I have to admit, fairly generous, although this didn't occur to me until Ciro pointed it out. It is terribly easy for me to be generous because I am generally in a position to be generous. My generosity has never endangered me, which is part of why I have a hard time thinking of it as generous rather than discretionary. I tend to think of myself as flinty-hearted and cantankerous and completely willing to cut off social contact with anyone who displeases me. Put another way, I yell a lot and have very clear ideas about what I'm willing to put up with.
However, it occurs to me that bleeding heart probably is the right term. Because I read things like this piece by Charles Simic in the New York Review of Books, and I feel like I am bleeding. I pick up the newspaper and see the ways social programs are being gutted, and it seems to me that I am being stabbed. I've upped my personal contributions to the food bank, which auto debit so I don't even have to think about it, but this is of course a drop in the bucket. They can send me all of the "with your x dollars, you've fed x many families!" emails they like; I know that's not enough. I know I can't take care of 20 or a thousand people on my paycheck, any more than I can personally step in to repair the dangerously under-maintained bridges on the interstate highway system.
My mother in law is on food stamps and disability. My aunt is and has been for as long as I've been alive. My aunt always sent me a dollar for my birthday to buy a candy bar, and I know it was a higher percentage of her income than the $50 my grandmother from the other side of the family sent. I don't think my aunt got schizoprhenia and my grandmother didn't because my aunt made bad decisions and my grandmother made good decisions. I don't think my mother in law got rheumatoid arthritis out of being lazy. I don't think laziness or lack of will to work is the reason she has to walk with a cane or has hands so destroyed she can't type or hold a pen for long.
There are probably jobs she could do where she could sit down all day and could do all of her work by talking, but I bet other people could also do those jobs and don't need as many sick days. It's the kind of bet I like to make because I win that bet already: those jobs are full of other people, who don't need sick days because they're not on immunosuppresants to stop their bodies from eating the rest of their bones. Other people who can type sometimes if needed, or walk to another desk. And so on.
I read about the born-again Christians who shut down the government, who insist on maintaining a shut-down government, who met to pray and sing "Amazing Grace" to express their holy desire to end entitlement programs forever and free us all from government. And I think about the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, as I have thought daily about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes for the last few weeks. I think of the miracle in which Jesus said, "there is food enough here for everyone, if we share," and there was. I think of how Jesus said that this was a miracle all of us could do, just by not holding back. Not even a sacrificial thing, since we also get fed. Jesus isn't really necessary to the process.
Bleeding forehead, that Jesus. Bleeding lower ribcage.
I like a certain amount of equal opportunity - like public education and mass transit - but also like to be able to opt out, and make up my own education system, and drive a car. I take the very classically conservative notion that to help the poor, you should straight up give them money. No nanny state saying "spend this on food and you have to come to all these classes." Just give them money. I like taxes, and like a progressive tax system (flat tax is idiotic, because why would we take money from the poor to give back to the poor), but think our tax code is overly complicated. I don't want education credits and deductions for charitable donations and how many miles did I drive my car. Clean it up. This is again classically conservative.
More than anything else, I'm pretty utilitarian. I look at outcomes.
Of course in the current US political environment, I am not only counted as liberal but as bleeding-heart liberal, chiefly because I imagine poor people, womenfolk, Spanish speakers, and the gays. I don't imagine them anything in particular; I just have them in my mind.
When someone says I'm a bleeding-heart liberal (not to my face, and not even about me - just about people like me) the implication is that it would be better and more responsible if I were a centrist (moderation and compromise being good adult values) and also that I am not realist. The bleeding-heart bit could be substituted for something like "believes in unicorns" or "easy mark."
I am not an easy mark. I am, I have to admit, fairly generous, although this didn't occur to me until Ciro pointed it out. It is terribly easy for me to be generous because I am generally in a position to be generous. My generosity has never endangered me, which is part of why I have a hard time thinking of it as generous rather than discretionary. I tend to think of myself as flinty-hearted and cantankerous and completely willing to cut off social contact with anyone who displeases me. Put another way, I yell a lot and have very clear ideas about what I'm willing to put up with.
However, it occurs to me that bleeding heart probably is the right term. Because I read things like this piece by Charles Simic in the New York Review of Books, and I feel like I am bleeding. I pick up the newspaper and see the ways social programs are being gutted, and it seems to me that I am being stabbed. I've upped my personal contributions to the food bank, which auto debit so I don't even have to think about it, but this is of course a drop in the bucket. They can send me all of the "with your x dollars, you've fed x many families!" emails they like; I know that's not enough. I know I can't take care of 20 or a thousand people on my paycheck, any more than I can personally step in to repair the dangerously under-maintained bridges on the interstate highway system.
My mother in law is on food stamps and disability. My aunt is and has been for as long as I've been alive. My aunt always sent me a dollar for my birthday to buy a candy bar, and I know it was a higher percentage of her income than the $50 my grandmother from the other side of the family sent. I don't think my aunt got schizoprhenia and my grandmother didn't because my aunt made bad decisions and my grandmother made good decisions. I don't think my mother in law got rheumatoid arthritis out of being lazy. I don't think laziness or lack of will to work is the reason she has to walk with a cane or has hands so destroyed she can't type or hold a pen for long.
There are probably jobs she could do where she could sit down all day and could do all of her work by talking, but I bet other people could also do those jobs and don't need as many sick days. It's the kind of bet I like to make because I win that bet already: those jobs are full of other people, who don't need sick days because they're not on immunosuppresants to stop their bodies from eating the rest of their bones. Other people who can type sometimes if needed, or walk to another desk. And so on.
I read about the born-again Christians who shut down the government, who insist on maintaining a shut-down government, who met to pray and sing "Amazing Grace" to express their holy desire to end entitlement programs forever and free us all from government. And I think about the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, as I have thought daily about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes for the last few weeks. I think of the miracle in which Jesus said, "there is food enough here for everyone, if we share," and there was. I think of how Jesus said that this was a miracle all of us could do, just by not holding back. Not even a sacrificial thing, since we also get fed. Jesus isn't really necessary to the process.
Bleeding forehead, that Jesus. Bleeding lower ribcage.
