what works?: a response to What Makes You Conservative or Liberal?

let me start off by saying, i know the point of my fellow contributor's post was not necessarily to illicit ideological colloguy but to simply to remark on the various statistics coinciding with one side or the other; a lot of money (or very little of it) and a lot of God=conservative, in the middle of these social dynamics=liberal. but there is a flaw in this: most of these "who's liberal or conservative" are not based on these individuals personal beliefs or their voting patterns (which would be difficult, not to mention illegal, to study with any degree of accuracy) they are based soley on party affiliation. party affiliation is not a good indicator of political ideology. for example, i am a member of a major party, however, i in no way adhere strictly to their cannon; i do agree more often with their take on issues (albeit those issues' numbers are dwindling) than i do the take of the other side, but the other side is not always wrong either.

here's the point, folks: we are not just statistics and our parties do not define us...we define our parties. and this garbage about your being conservative because you believe in this and you're a liberal because you are against that is lies funnelled in to the brains of american's by the propagandists (yes, that's what these language wars are) on both sides of the aisle. believe what you believe because you believe it, not because it's what fox or cnn said was right.

here's my proposition to america: it is the founding of a new (at least it seems new in skewed times such as these) political ideology. i call it practicalism (although the name is not set in stone nor is it important). practicalism is not a party or a platform, it is an objective viewpoint that every intellectually honest, active member of a party (and society) must take in order to keep his party, his country, and himself accountable. the philosophy is this: is this practice accomplishing its intended goals?; if not, get over your pride and ask, what do we need to do to accomplish them?; and is the practice fiscally plausible?...simplified: if something works, it works. if it doesn't, it doesn't and we need to find something that does. fdr is one of our most conteversial presidents; he either ushered us out of the great depression or he sent us plumetting into a convoluted spiderweb of bureucacies and social programs that continually threaten our economy. neither of these are completely true and yet neither completely false. but what fdr did (and this is what i admire about the man) was admit when a program wasn't working and move on to a new one.

we need to be willing to accept that our party does not have all the answers and those answers may actually be found on the other side...or in third parties...or (dare i say it?) other countries governments. we as republicans or democrats or american's do not have a corner on good ideas and the sooner we recognize that and (again, dare i say it?) humble ourselves the sooner our county gets to a place where we americans can all be proud of who we are, what we do, and what we stand for...because who we are, what we do, and what we stand for will work. and that's something that both the left and right can get behind.