Reality is what it is, but obviously our interpretations of it are shaped by our biases. Most of us operate within a web of biases more or less supported by experience and factual information, and we make adjustements as we learn more. For extreme ideologues of the left or the right nothing comes into view except through a lens shaped by their ideologies--everything else is filtered out as politically motivated by their opponents. (It can't be true if that "extreme leftist" [fill in the blank] said it.) Or some one becomes branded for being an extreme leftist or rightist if he articulates an opinion that is associated with the extreme right or left. My opinions about abortion align with the right; my opinions about the war in Iraq and the threat from corporate power align with the left. What does that make me?
I'd like to think it doesn't make me anything if being something requires being either on the left or the right. I realize that politics is about coalition building and about creating group alignments to get policies enacted, but ultimately one's identity and thought process is not determined by one's political allignment. You figure out what you think first, then you support whatever polticial alignment you most agree with. That should be obvious, but you have to wonder if this is a habit of mind in very wide usage these days.
So who do I align with? In the case of abortion, I believe that the human fetus is a human being and has rights. I can't get around that. In the case of the economy, it's clear to me that it's natural for the big to eat the small, and as a Christian I have a bias to oppose the strong when they seek to implement an agenda designed to exploit the weak. So it follows that I support the relatively weak doing whatever they can to organize against the predictable predatory behavior of the strong. It therefore follows that I have a bias against predators like Wal-Mart. I think anyone who understands how the world works should have such a bias. Wal-Mart isn't evil; it just does what the strong do in the state of nature. Their business practices are as predictable as coyotes eating rabbits.
It's just common sense. It's not a matter of being left or right, Libertarian or Socialist. I'm not into the ideology so much as I'm into the practical consequences. If we lived in a society that was more collectivist in its mentality, I'd probably be worried more about the tyranny of the majority or the dictatorship of the proletariat or whatever the crazy tendencies or imbalances might be in collectivist societies. But the idea that in our radically individualist society we are vulnerable to any threat from collectivist ideologies is ridiculous. All the imbalances and social illnesses we suffer from derive from our loss as a society of any sense of the "common good," the sense that we're all in this together, that it's not every man for himself.
So if you disagree with me, there are two grounds upon which we can debate, and I wish more people would challenge me than do. But the first ground would have to do with fundamental principle or belief, for instance, if I am a Christian and you are a materialist, it has consequences for our opinions about abortion. My belief that the fetus is a spiritual being seeking incarnation makes no sense to you. Your belief that it isn't really a human being until it enters into society seems to me arbitrary.
We could argue on that level and you could try to convince me otherwise, or I you otherwise, but those discussions usually end up with both parties agreeing to disagree because the real debate is not about abortion but about first principles. I would at least respect you for having an opinion that was consistent within your materialist framework. The pro-abortion arguments I hear from Christians are the ones that I find baffling. But that's a topic for another day.
The second argument could be a challenge to the accuracy of my information or observations. I might be working with inaccurate or mistaken data, and if that was pointed out to me, I would have to correct myself. Or I could have an opinion about a complex matter where the data is incomplete and my attempt to connect the dots is provisional at best because the most important dots might not yet be available. Ideological thinking is impervioius to the facts. That was the point that Colbert was making and that Tom Tomorrow makes repeatedly in his cartoons. It's not the opinions that are contemptible--we are all often wrong; it's the kind of mind that refuses to adjust when the facts don't support their opinions, and such a mindset is, indeed, ridiculous and worthy or of our contempt.
On February 15, 2003, I marched against the invasion of Iraq. In my guts I thought the war was wrong; I was convinced that we were being conned at the time, and subsequent revelations have proved what was at the time educated guesswork correct. My bias about Republican foreign policy from observations since Vietnam, Iran/Contra, and now Iraq is not groundless. The same personalities have been working the GOP agenda for the last three decades. My experience and understanding during the last three decades is what led me to assume that what did in fact happen would happen. I was amazed that so many people afforded this administration the trust that they did and accepted the its casus belli at face value. I never believed it. It would have required my disbelieving everything I have learned about the way our government works.
So that was biased thinking, admittedly. And it could have turned out that my biased guesses were wrong. Some things that I was unaware of could have eventually come into view, but It came down to trusting my experience or trusting the administration, and that was a no brainer. Because the point is this: In a society whose power structure is dominated by the right, reality has a leftward bias. And in a society whose power structure is dominated by the left, as is in socialist countries, reality has a rightward bias. It's not that hard to predict the behavior that follows from this rule. And the extremists on the right project their own thinking onto the extremists of the left, and both understand one another well because in the final analysis they are pretty much mirror images of one another in reflecting the basic mindset, which is imperviousness to whatever does not fit into their ideological template.
It's a pretty simple rule, and you don't have to be that smart to understand it or see it in operation. The American power elite in this country have been dominated by a right wing ideology, and so it follows that, as Stephen Colbert said last week, reality has a liberal bias. It's not that Liberalism is superior to conservatism; it's just that it's closer to reality when the power structure is dominated by the distortions of rigid right-wing ideological thinking. It takes an extraordinary human being to swim against the current in the centers where money and power are the riptide that drive all policies. It's not impossible, but if you're betting the odds, you know where to put your money.