Why do we need a left and right in politics?
Look, it'll come as hardly any surprise to anyone that I'm not really a political animal but, hopefully no one thinks I'm quite as stupid as my dad - who's solution to the economic crisis is 'why don't they just print more money?' I know there has to be differences of opinion in anything, but especially in politics but, what I really find interesting, is that politicians on the whole, tend to spend most of their time arguing about stupid, minor differences in policy, rather than actually governing the countries they've been elected to govern.
Obviously I'm only talking about Western Politics here and, for the most part, Australian politics. At the moment, we have Julia Gillard promoting a carbon tax, or at least attempting to and Tony Abbott railing against it. But the thing I wonder is; is he railing about it because he actually thinks it's a bad idea, or is he railing about it because he thinks everyone else thinks it's a bad idea?
Now, I don't have any real opinion about whether it's a good idea or not; all I know is that plenty of countries have a carbon tax and they haven't gone to the wall because of it. So, here's my question (and the actual point of this post): why can't Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott get together and hash something out that a) they can both agree with and b) that will actually be good for the country.
For my money, neither side of politics has all the answers. But, put the best things from both sides of politics together? Surely that's got to be better than one size fits all for four years, then you can decide if you want a change. From my experience, both sides aren't much different from one another anyway.
3 comments:
Good questions. Possible answers:
Because you need to know where the edges are before you can find the middle?
And because those who stand on the edges define themselves by it, making it difficult for them to move left or right, without feeling that they are giving up something of who they are?
They can't get together because they are blindly defending their respective "sides". Look no further than the US to see what you SHOULDN'T do. If history repeats itself, which it most certainly does, we are Rome... and currently consumed with the blind, masturbatory frenzy of our final act. Instead of putting our energies toward taking the good ideas from each camp, the members of each spend all their waking hours explaining why the other side is wrong... and if that doesn't work, we just blow each other away. Save me a spot in Oz, if you would... I may need to jump ship!
Bruce: I agree with what you're saying. I'm happy that people define themselves in a certain way, I just think that, if you're the final say, the final executive power for ALL of us, then it should be mandatory for you to pick the best of BOTH sides of politics for your final answer, rather than be hamstrung with an ideology - Labour, Liberal, Republican, Democrat, whatever - that might not suit the particular problem you're dealing with. Hell, you owe it to US, the people that are going to be most effected by the decision.
BV: sadly, you've hit the nail right on the head. But seriously, our government isn't any better than yours. Just smaller, fortunately. I'd hate to think of what would happen if we had your access to nuclear weapons. One thing I do know, they would have been used by now.
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