[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Your right on one thing — I do see things in terms of black and white (no racial intent there). There is right and there is wrong, despite your wish that there not be. [/quote]
False - I never said there is no “right and wrong”, only that for the vast majority of politics, it isn’t about “right and wrong”, but about “trade-offs”. You fail to see the difference - your problem to fix.
Pure naivete. You can know you are “right”, but you are one man with one vote in the Senate or House. You’d like to get something done that comports with your principles, but you are outnumbered by other people who think they are equally “right” by going the opposite way with their principles. You get one vote. So what do you do?
Do you refuse to budge on every single principle you have - stand there and cross your arms? Newsflash: you’ll never move anyone towards your position if you don’t get them there by metes and bounds.
You want all-or-none - no problem, just don’t cry when you realize that you’ll wind up with “none” as a political eunuch.
Why does any of this matter? Because a President McCain or anyone else must govern in a world that is the way it is, not as he wants it to be. You want a principled monarch - real American politics intentionally pits competing interests against one another. The competing interests are people who believe in their principles as much as you. It’s intentional - the Framers wanted it that way.
As such, I want to vote for someone who can govern in the real world - not the idealistic fantasy land where armies line up to march for their principles. Dramatic, and silly. Principles matter - I never said they didn’t - but what I want are principles in practice, so I’ll vote accordingly.
You needn’t worry about lecturing me on a “moral existence” - your problem is, and continues to be, that your “moral existence” as you refer to it in politics doesn’t exist. It may warm your cockles, but ever since the birth of the country - when Hamilton and Jefferson sparred on what government meant - no one had a monopoly on “principles”. Plenty of questions were left to the political realm to be hashed out through the marketplace of ideas and not cemented as unassailable “principles”.
Stand up for your “principles” and refuse to budge even when there is more of a trade-off than a moral in play - and enjoy that stance as the parade of the real world passes you by. At least you will have a nice view.
The rest of us love principles enough to actually negotiate them through the marketplace of ideas. That takes work - but is worth it.