Communication and Education Are The Keys to Better Government
A lot of people, myself included, get very passionate about their politics. Type A guys develop very strong opinions about how things should be. Of course these opinions are all shaped by the experiences that we have in life. Your experiences have been different from mine. Therefore, your opinions will not be identical to mine. Variety is the spice of life. It is what keeps things interesting.
If you tend to get into political arguments easily, you need to take a step back and realize something fundamental. Arguing about topics like politics is essentially a waste of time. You aren’t going to change anyone’s opinion by arguing with them. Instead, you should focus on persuading them in a calm manner to see your side of the story. You will be surprised how well this approach works.
Ultimately, you are both trying to reach the same goal. You both want to live a better life. You just disagree about what government should look like in order for you to live that better life. Once you admit to yourself that you both are really interested in the same end result, you can quit arguing about it. Instead you can actually have some common sense conversation from both viewpoints.
Arguments are caused by communication breakdowns. When one person misunderstands another one, they inevitably end up arguing. Think about it. Remember arguing about something with someone only to realize that you were misinformed from the get go? Once you realized you lacked this little piece of information, the argument vanished.
Most political arguments are based on the same lack of communication and misinformation.
Take the argument of big government versus small government. Anyone who has studied history and the founding fathers realizes that the reasons they formed this particular system of government was to minimize the impact of government in the average citizen’s life. People in that era craved independence from big government. The big government of the day was the English Crown. People were fed up with having to follow laws dictated by people they didn’t know who were nothing like them. (Starting to sound familiar?)
They realized that every law that was dictated from across the Atlantic Ocean was taking away a little bit of their freedom. Every time you pay a dollar in tax, there is one less dollar that you can spend providing a better life for yourself or your family. People will argue that the government is providing services for you in exchange for that dollar. This is true and unarguable. However, no one will argue that government is not wasteful. Government is far more wasteful than the average citizen or private business entity.
The individual person is far better at deciding which services he wants to pay for and how much money should be allocated to each one than a government is. There are certain functions that a government should provide because individual citizens cannot adequately provide them for themselves. These services include national defense. Beyond that though, are there really that many things that you would rather pay the government to provide for you?
I think you will find that the vast majority of people who have studied early American history are usually on the side of smaller government. They realize that the basis behind forming our nation was to increase personal liberty and personal responsibility.
I bet you that if you were to question the voter base of the Democratic Party, you would find that a huge percentage of them cannot define the word liberty to you in a satisfactory manner. I also assert that the vast majority of them cannot explain why this country was formed and why this system of government was chosen.
This is the root of the problem. I would assert that when intelligent adults study these facts and really think about them, 3 out of 4 will agree that limited government is the best path to personal prosperity. Personal prosperity and personal liberty can only be preserved if we limit government, especially at the Federal level.