Romeo And Juliet: Democrats

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

The quotation is usually attributed to Winston Churchill, although it's interesting that during his youth he was a conservative and joined the Labor Party later on. He did, however revert to his conservative philosophy after that. And there he remained. Whether or not he originated the idea, however, he expressed the same sentiment on several occasions.

It's not a new idea. Respect for age has long been a component of the philosophy of all peoples. The wise man of every culture is old.ⁱ His wisdom comes from long experience, and is, in large part, based a recognition of reality – the reality he has seen with the passing of the years.

But most people don't start out this way. They are passionate and optimistic. For a brief period there is perennial spring, and young love is all around. The young are always in love, or about to be. “In the spring a young man's fancy ...” Romeo and Juliet were in their teens,ⁱⁱ and they were very much in love.

The passion of the young, however is not only for opposite sex; it also manifests itself in their attachment to particular political ideas and causes. They display great concern for those less fortunate, and they see society as both the cause of that condition and the party responsible for its solution. So it's natural that they consider society responsible for righting the wrongs. But it's an attitude that started long before.

“Daddy. I want that.” “Mommy, I want all my friends at my birthday party.” “At school we're collecting for the hungry. Give me a few dollars to take in.”

Children, who don't understand what they are doing, are eager to have, and to give away, someone else's money.ⁱⁱⁱ And the inclination to do so persists as a habit even as they enter their earning years. When they're young, moreover, they see the good in everyone and view society as responsible for making certain that all those good people are taken care of. Even if the “rich” must do it. The later stories of Robin Hood illustrated this outlook. “Take from the rich and give to the poor.” It's socialism, which is seen by them as the most just form of economy – as long as they're on the receiving end, or at least not asked to pay. It's a continuation of the idea that there is virtue in giving away someone else's possessions.

What also develops during youth is the view that they will live forever and never age. There arises with that view some suspicion of those who are older, and of authority in general. Children are convinced that they know more than their parents, and they distrust those who are in charge.^iv In fact, they are wary of all those who are better off than they, and very openhearted when it comes to the needs and demands of those lower than themselves in society.^v There is no concern over the precise reason for their own position, or that of others: the better off you are, the less worthy. And vice-versa. They are liberal in their view of how the underprivileged^vi should be treated. And they are passionate in their beliefs. They are young^vii and sympathetic.^viii They view those in poverty as the virtuous^ix while those who are not impoverished are responsible for the poverty. They may not know who Winston Churchill was, but they exemplify the characteristics he described.

Conservatives view the world differently – especially their perception of their philosophic opposites. They forget that they were once young. From their perspective, liberals have no concept of reality. In their eagerness to right society's wrongs, the young are impulsive, reckless, and destructive. They give little thought to the likely results of their actions – only to the desired results. The possibility of unintended consequences, they believe, should not prevent action. Planning for the future should not delay acting in the present. And in the end if they work virtuously, good will triumph over evil.

Conservatives believe that the young accept, on faith, the idea that people are good and should be trusted. From their own point of view, however, it would be better not to trust any others and to plan for all possible contingencies. To a degree, they agree with their counterparts in respect to distrusting authority, but their reasoning is different. Liberals are likely to accept as it stands the teaching of Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Thus it is wrong to follow those who are “corrupt” and who are “almost always bad men.” Implicit in that concept is the idea that until they became powerful and great, they were pure and good.

But that is where they part ways with conservatives who consider many people bad – not just those in power. For most of us, though, our sins are practiced on a small scale because that is all that is available to us. When the corrupt become powerful, however, they become a threat to everyone else. A Hitler or a Stalin who is not in power may be malicious, but his influence is limited. It is the individual, not the office, that is the source of evil and corruption. And it is the office that magnifies malevolence.

It's oversimplification of course, but, for the most part, there are good people and there are bad people. And there are the rest of us.^x Unfortunately, those concerned about the plight of the downtrodden will try to aid them irrespective of the consequences, and others will prefer to consider those consequences before trying to help. What is often needed is a sensitivity by both groups to the views of the other. We cannot be blind to the needs of our brothers and sisters, but we cannot ignore the costs of our actions nor their possible results. And we cannot ignore the costs that we are imposing on future generations. They will be called upon to help the poor who exist among them, and may be unable to do so if we impose the cost of helping our needy on our descendents.

The ideas of discussion and compromise are neither original nor new. But we cannot make a headlong attack on the needs of the world's people without first discussing the best way to accomplish our goals without creating more problems than we solve. We cannot consider plans that will enrich the hearts of the planners and the pockets of those who implement the plans more than the intended beneficiaries. However we can't delay acting until we've devised a plan that will deal with all conceivable contigencies. We cannot place ideology above reality. It may be necessary to take some risks, as long as we know what they are.

No matter our age, we have to follow both our hearts and our brains.

Next episode: “The Bible And American Law” – You can't have one without the other.

 

 

 

I        Some of the young are, indeed, smart. They may even be smarter than their seniors as are some scientists, composers, chess players, and mathematicians. But they are rarely as wise.

ii       Using Churchill's criteria, that would make them liberal. In the context of American politics they would have been Democrats if they lived here now. (Of course if they had survived from Shakespeare's time to ours they would be quite old, and probably conservative by this time. At least if they had brains in addition to their hearts.)

iii       It's an inclination that persists during their school years but diminishes, and usually disappears, when they realize that it's their own money; that it causes their taxes to be higher.

iv       A special distrust of government and government officials exists, often with good reason. Surveys tell us that members of Congress, and politicians in general, rank very low among the various groups in our society when it comes to matters of confidence.

v        Ours, or elsewhere in the world.

vi      The word “underprivileged” suggests that they were not born into the wealthy class and that they have no responsibility for their condition. While that is often the case, it is not universal and the choice of that word prejudices the hearer and tells him that those so described have been placed in their unenviable situation by the “privileged” – those who undeservedly oppress the rest of us. Someone who started out underprivileged and, by dint of his own efforts, is now well-off, was good and has become evil.

vii      Not all liberals, of course, are young but, like Peter Pan, they may choose not to grow up. The philosophy may persist in some as a sincere reflection of their belief in equality. For others it may be a characteristic admired by their profession (it's important for one who wants to progress in academia for example to be a member of the right – politically left – clique, just as it is for little girls, though the cliques of little girls may have different criteria for membership, and they may not be as mean) or a self-serving property. Union members will certainly demand higher pay owed to them by the rich, and the poor, whether young or old, are certain that they are owed the support of society as a whole.

viii     In the terminology of coldhearted conservatives they are bleeding heart liberals.

ix       Of course they don't see virtue in poverty.

x        I'll discuss that issue at another time. Stay tuned.