Vinay Gupta is to blame for this post. Anyway, for quite a while I’ve harbored a slightly drunken theory about political ideology. Meaning that your political ideology might very well reflect your inner demons or greatest strengths. Or both for that matter. It is one of those thoughts that makes the world make sense of all a sudden when slightly inebriated, perhaps less so when sober. Anyway, you can get quite a long way:
- Anarchists are so bloody good at organising things they can’t believe that governments or corporations are necessary for a decent civilisation.
- Liberals (in the European sense of classical and neo-) are so bad at organising things that they can’t believe anyone else can do it either. Also, liberals tend to be quite nice to people they know, which also erodes from any belief that government should play much of a role in an equitable society they may harbour.
- Socialists tend to be rather poor at being social at a personal level and therefore think we need a strong government for us to end up with a somewhat equitable result.
- Conservatives are just psychopaths who believe none would do the right thing unless coerced into it by draconian criminal penalties, including the death panel. Because they wouldn’t do it either.
- Libertarians are sociopaths with the emotional maturity of toddlers and simply cannot fathom the extent to which they rely on others in society for about everything they perceive as having bootstrapped themselves.
I have to admit though that it falls a little bit apart with libertarians. A good thing they’re pretty rare and rarely get laid. And if they get, they usually lose their ideological feathers.
