I don’t know when it happened. Maybe it came as a result of reading Atlas Shrugged this summer. Or, maybe it’s simply true that you really do get more conservative as you get older. Whatever the reason, I seem to be moving far, far away from my near-socialist positions of yore.
First, a note – when I refer to “conservative,” I mean conservative in the sense of Libertarianism, or old-school Republicanism. Self-determination. Government is not the answer. That kind of thing. I definitely don’t mean social conservatism, which seems, in a whole lot of ways, to directly contradict many libertarian principles.
In my classes, I’ve found myself questioning ideas that I’ve never really questioned before, and thinking about welfare issues from a more conservative position than before. I can see more clearly how government is often ineffective, and how it sometimes makes things worse. Am I simply being contrarian, or trying to understand the other side? Or do I actually embrace fully the conservative position on government provision of social services? Well, I’m not entirely sure. I still believe the private sector has its fair share of inefficiencies and failures, so I’m not quite ready to jump on the anti-government bandwagon.
I seem to be occupying some kind of confusing spot in the middle, where my opinion depends on the details of the situation at hand. Sometimes the government is better. Sometimes the private sector is better. Sometimes regulation is okay, sometimes it’s not. The one generality I feel comfortable making is that I firmly believe in the right of the individual to decide what’s best for them, and that they should be willing to bear the consequences of that decision, for better or worse.
While all of this paradigm shifting has me scratching my head on a regular basis, my biggest “who the hell am I?” moment came this morning.
I was talking with a coworker about the current financial crisis, and it turned into the standard discussion about whether or not the government is right in bailing out the errant financial institutions. I said I didn’t like the whole bailout idea.
“Yeah,” replied my coworker, “but I think we should help out the people who lost their homes.”
What came next were words I never thought would come from my lips:
“No one made them take out those risky mortgages so they could buy houses they couldn’t afford. Why should we have to pay for someone else’s mistake?”
She told me that was really cold. And while part of me cringed a little as soon as I said it, I kind of really do feel that way. In the back of my head, I hear 25-year old Me arguing with 32-year old Me:
How do you know the details of those people’s situations? Maybe they were conned into taking those mortgages. Should people be punished for not educating themselves? You’re so not compassionate.
Maybe I have lost my compassion, and become even more of a misanthrope than I already was. Maybe I have become that person I always used to hate. I’ll be the first one to acknowledge that we still have a whole lot of systemic inequalities in our society, and that it’s idiotic to think that everyone has the same opportunities. But does it really take that much smarts to know that an adjustable-rate mortgage is not always the best move? Or that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is?
The only thing I know is that the more I think about this stuff, the more confused I get. Some of these issues are so hopelessly complex, it’s hard not to feel totally paralyzed while mulling them over. I don’t know if I trust anyone who claims to have it figured out.
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