I know this blog is supposed to offer some sort of
information on the debate universe, but the last couple of weeks, aside from
letting in people to the Tiggers, and watching Penn’s waitlist fill up quite
admirably (more on that another time), I don’t have much information on the
debate universe to offer. I mean, you can only marvel at the idea of Big
Questions for so long when it has literally no affect on you. I mean, does
anyone think that BQs are suddenly going to take over the Ivy tournament
landscape? Maybe if they make it BIG Big Questions, and therefore BBQs, it
might have a chance, but it’s like sending kayaks to fight battleships: sort of
fun to watch them try, but you’re not really betting on them. (Then again,
there was the battle of Salamis… Not exactly kayaks, but close enough.)
No one expects that I will come up with any great political
analysis here. It’s not my job, and I don’t try. I in no way consider myself up
to the task. I am not a political animal, nor am I terribly committed one way or
another, aside from some predictable tree-hugging leftist leanings. Then again,
I am a student of politics as such, the idea of getting things done in the
public arena. The first question is, what should be done by government, and the
second question is, how do you go about getting it done. That is interesting to
me. The simple idea of the less government the better has its attraction, but
we live in a world where individuals, however they might band together, are
incapable of doing many things that must be done, and I subscribe to my own
little theory that the purpose of government is to do the things that only a
government can do. Sadly, we live in a country nowadays that doesn’t even come
close to this ideal. Just drive around on the roads in my county for a while if
you wonder what I am talking about, vis-a-vis infrastructure. Or look at the number of people in the
country who are suffering from great needs of varying sorts that they are
incapable of handling themselves. Those needs have to be addressed by government, in
situations where no one else can address them. The idea that this makes
government too powerful is a belief that causes harm that could otherwise be
prevented. In our modern world this makes me a liberal. So it goes.
I would say that virtually all of my thinking on such matters
arises from reading I’ve done in the last couple of decades, all as a result of
my connection to the debate universe. I’ve read canonical ethical philosophers,
I’ve read modern philosophers (albeit to a lesser degree), and I have a few
people who are simply engaged citizens whose postings and links and personal
essays inform me about things that I would otherwise remain in ignorance of. I
like being exposed to contrary ideas, but I’m even more interested in being
exposed to expansive ideas that broaden my knowledge and allow me to see more
than just my own experiences. I don’t think that in any way I would have the
same brain if it wasn’t for debate. God knows what my brain would otherwise be.
More self-centered, probably. More effete. More boring, come to think of it.
I’ll vote tomorrow, and I hope that you will too, if you’re
eligible. I expect little to come of it, in aid of improving things in the
direction I think government ought to go, because I question anyone’s ability,
at the moment, to affect change, or more to the point, get things done, period.
We need leaders with skill and knowledge and ideas and plans. We don’t really
have them at the moment. Come to think of it, we usually only get them in times
of great catastrophe (e.g., FDR confronting both the Depression and WWII,
Churchill in WWII, the Founders creating modern democracy). I’d rather not
stumble into a new time of great catastrophe to get things moving in a good
direction. But I have no ideas how to make any of this happen. Neither, it
would seem, does anyone else.
This is not our finest moment.
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