jdavidb's Journal: Why politics is bitter conflict

According to Walter Williams, it's obvious: it's because we're making decisions for everybody instead of letting people be free. Thus, when one's preferences win out, it's necessarily at the expense of someone else who doesn't share those preferences. Of course they fight, bitterly.

The solution is to get government out of these decisions. Eliminate the political machinery that has the power to control these things, and then people will quit fighting for control of it.

But but but!

[FroMan]

What about my handouts?

Re:

[pudge]

What about my handouts?

Exactly. :-) Quoth Bastiat [bastiat.org]:

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may

Re:

[pudge]

Oops, I messed that up. Bastiat quote ends right before "To the original point."

Re:

[jdavidb]

I think you're correct: it is the only rational way to think.

The other way requires thinking that people are not free, but are instead subservient to society (or, to be more accurate, subservient to our own personal notions of what they should and should not do). I think people are free, and I witness the damage caused by thinking otherwise (your sex ed bickering issue being a prime example), and I cannot possibly think otherwise.