George Rebane
The above cartoon by our tried and true progressive cartoonist Bob Crabb was filched from the pages of The Union’s 16jan21 edition. It provides an opportune lesson that illustrates our polarization and the sorry condition of jurisdictions that practice monopoly politics. (I do like the Burma-Shave signs.)
Collectivists like Bob sincerely want to “find a cure for” partisan politics. They totally miss that partisanship is the only political order that provides the necessary and critical feedback loops which yield balanced governance. Without effective and ongoing partisanship we get runaway one-party rule of the type that in recent years has put a heap of hurt on a number of states and urban jurisdictions led, of course, by California.
While our Democrats, along with other international globalists, work ardently for an overarching, all-powerful world government, almost all other people, who are able to give the problem some thought, oppose such a sure path to a stable and lasting tyranny. As conservetarian, I would never want a political monopoly of free-market capitalism in my country to dominate so as to eliminate effective feedback from collectivist ideologues.
Progressives, hewing to the teachings of the immortal Marx, have no concept of the function of such balance in the ongoing back-and-forth of governance, and even less knowledge of how to achieve and maintain that needed tension. For them, all goodness and light comes from but a single fount of truth enabled by one-party rule. No broadly beneficial and productive social order has ever been achieved without robust feedbacks that check government excesses which easily arise from human weaknesses.
Government, by its very nature has always lacked these critical feedback mechanisms, and as a result is the most inefficient way to organize people to get almost anything done right. (Most recent example, the states’ inability to efficiently distribute and administer C19 vaccines, again led by California.) Nevertheless, every society needs individuals to contribute some time, treasure, and talent to collective enterprises, such as national security and shared infrastructures, that would be inefficient undertakings for private enterprise.
But here the modus operandi should always be guided by the minimalist principle of having the smallest possible government, but no smaller. And to achieve that is where the collectivists and capitalists must meet on a sufficiently par basis of partisan politics to arrive at a workable social order, one that provides hope and equal opportunity for all to pursue their dreams, rewards merit and industry, does not abandon those unable, and all of it no matter how inevitably and unequally we are suited for the pursuit.
As history illuminates and we demonstrate daily, all other mono-partisan approaches to organize society lead toward tyranny or anarchy.
rebanesruminations.com 
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