Moving Left? Moving Right?
I’ve had some interesting dialogue lately about reactions to Katrina, and whether how the situation has unfolded may (or may not) have shifted political “leanings”. I’ve talked to several folks, actually – and most of them report a political change that they attribute directly to events in New Orleans.
I found this so fascinating that I have shared (parts of) a couple of discussions below, and created a poll for people to register their own views on this (it’s in the left nav column). Feel free to share any of your thoughts in the comments.
One person moves right
The “goings on” in New Orleans (both immediately after through today) brought the liberal media bias to front and center for me. Even though I’d shifted toward the middle years ago (from pretty far left), I had a tendency to judge conservative writings far more harshly than liberal. I filtered, but only for radical bias to the right or left.
There’s more to this, though, then the media bias. The tragedy of New Orleans is, to me, more a function of political failures over time – not racism. Yet the left continues to press a racial agenda. As much as anything else, that slant has left a very bad taste in my mouth. The result is a big question mark for everything, and an overall political shift slightly right of where I was on August 28.
One person moves left
Prior to Katrina, I was a pretty strong supporter of Bush, and definably conservative. The lack of attention, funding, and support for SE Louisiana and New Orleans, however, has been very disillusioning.
I find that my views are tending more toward the liberal side recently than they did. I think I’m pretty much in the middle now.
3 Comments:
For a few reasons (mainly market worhip) I found myself as liberal again at forty as I had been at twenty, that was before Katrina. But I don't think Katrina argues so much against conservatism as today's Republican Party. If you combine the anti-government conservatism of a Goldwater Republican with cronyism that would make a Daley or Tweed Democrat blush, like today's Republican Party does, it's a recipe for incompetence. I wish I could remember where I saw someone expound on that theme.
I'm a better informed liberal in favor of society's obligation to the success of individual's in fulfilling their potential, but more experientially conservative, demanding more individual responsibility from people in both their own destiny, and in fulfilling their responsibility to society. More left, and more right.
David -- try Pat Buchanan for criticism of the Bush cabal neoconservatives (e.g., http://www.amconmag.com/). I know, I know -- he's a self-promoting wild cannon with some pretty ugly social views, nevertheless, I think his old-school conservative criticisms of the Bush administration are very insightful.
Much like schroeder, I find myself both moving further to the left and the right (though not to the modern Republican party) at the same time. I think that a liberal government is what New Orleans needs, but that our people themselves need to try to be more responsible for themselves.
I must agree that the constant use of race race white black horror! is something that's glaring from many of today's papers (though I disagree that it's all due to a liberal media -- I find most of the media to be quite conservative at times, both politically and in their reporting methods). I don't have the access to the media that you all do due to the censorship here (I download the BBC World News via torrents each day and access as much as I can online -- provided that the site's not been blocked that day), but I can't help but shudder each time I come upon an article trying to insult the reader by only talking about race.
(Sorry if this posts multiple times. I'm in China and it doesn't like Blogger/Blogspot much -- I can [sometimes] access Blogger.com, but not blogspot.com. Odd!)
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