News: Editorial

The Long Strategy

Ah, I wish there were a lot more people like David Brooks in this country. He seems to really get both liberals and conservatives - their strengths and weaknesses. For example, while I don't agree with all liberal policies and beliefs, I find it quite difficult to understand the morality and/or logic of many conservative views. The "right answer", though, in my opinion is usually somewhere in the middle, sometimes leaning more to the left sometimes more to the right. But for those of us who identify strongly with one side or the other, it is obviously hard to find the proper way to compromise with the other side. Really, I just want people to be healthy and happy in the end; I happen to have liberal beliefs because I feel that those are better able to meet those goals for the most possible people in the end. I think a lot, if not most, people feel that way too (although maybe they think conservative ideas serve those goals better), but we are all susceptible to selfish or self-destructive tendencies in a variety of ways, thus polluting those idealized goals.

So we need more people like David Brooks, to show the conservatives what they do wrong and the liberals do right, and vice versa. Sadly, I feel like this country is just getting more and more polarized. Our current situation, as always, is the result of a mixture of countless decisions and events, but to simplify it seems like the prestige and power of our nation is declining. Liberals would likely argue that our problems began either with the Reagan administration (such as myself) or the second Bush administration, but are also likely to see global problems (energy and environmental issues, etc.) as larger than those of the United States specifically. Conservatives would likely argue that most things were going OK (there's a wide difference in what "OK" here means, I'm sure) until Obama was elected and began making significant changes; they are also more likely to be more concerned with the direction of our nation (socialism?) than more global issues. The problem is, we need to focus on the issues of both our nation and the entire world, and how we are being affected by them in both long term and short term ways. Neither party seems capable of doing all of these. That's why we need more people like David Brooks.