That left-wing poster boy Harlock pointed me at an article that got me thinking. He also damaged my fragile brain by sending me an Amazon.com URL for Barbie and Ken as Arwen and Aragorn. Bastard.
Any road, in a nutshell, the article is an interview with Berkeley professor George Lakoff who explains that the conservatives are currently on top because they "have spent decades defining their ideas, carefully choosing the language with which to present them, and building an infrastructure to communicate them." In other words, they've spent their time making money and helping themselves. Meanwhile, the liberals have blown all their energies hugging trees and helping those who need help most.
Lakoff makes some interesting observations. His illustration of conservative "strict father" and liberal "nurturant parent" conceptual systems reads like a good CliffsNotes synopsis. It also pisses me off.
What Lakoff has to say doesn't irk me. Rather, he reminds me that a lot of things in general get my blood boiling.
Generally, I'm too conservative to be liberal and too liberal to be conservative. One might think that I've built myself a cozy little nest on this fence of mine. If you've read some of my Cants, you'll know that the slightest provocation will get me leaping to one side or the other.
The first bit that got me started was Lakoff riffing on the conservative faith in a "free market" economy: "and you get the conservatives' version that says if everybody pursues their own well-being, the well-being of all will be maximized by nature."
I find this bit of truth so damned frustrating. If the conservative world view is based on the "strict father" model, where people are basically bad and require punishment to be disciplined and successful, how can any conservative believe that a natural, free market with everyone selfishly pursuing their own well-being relatively free from parental/governmental control can maximize the well-being of all? I'm amazed by the blindness or chutzpah of folks who can live under such a contradictory set of beliefs: "People are bad and must be punished. Good people are disciplined, wealthy, and powerful. These good wealthy people need to be allowed free reign to wield their power in pursuit of their own self interest because, as history has shown, their actions ultimately maximize the well-being of all."
It makes me want to puke.
On the conservative side of my fence, I've been thinking about mountain lions. First, a Reader's Digest article about kitties terrorizing suburbanites in Colorado caught my attention. Lately, it's been the attacks in SoCal.
I wonder if Mark Reynolds (killed by a mountain lion) and Anne Hjelle (face chewed off by probably the same mountain lion) voted against Prop. 197 in 1996 to keep all those gun-totin' Hee-Haws from satisfying their disgusting blood lust by heartlessly blasting away at the poor little kitty-witties?
California's voters have spoken. They want mountain lions to return to more of their former habitat. Well-off Californians naively buy houses built in the mountain lion habitat and then whine and complain as coyotes and mountain lions eat their dogs, cats, and children. Perversely, Californians prefer to control the cat population after the fact by killing or relocating the kitties after they've killed livestock, pets, or Californians. Californians would rather pay for squads of sheriff's deputies and game wardens to traipse through the backwoods with full-auto assault rifles chasing down killer cats than to have a few hundred hunters a year pay dearly for the privilege of possibly bagging a mountain lion.
I don't understand why anyone would want to shoot a big cat. I prefer to eat what I shoot. I'm never eating a mountain lion if I can help it. I've heard folks trade recipes for bear chili. The idea makes my stomach churn. All you Cal and UCLA grads are safe from me.
Also, the idea of mounting the cat as a snarling rug is just so 16th century. I certainly don't have room in my house for a stuffed mountain lion. If I did, I'd still leave the collecting, stuffing, and displaying to the museums.
All these personal reservations aside, I don't have any problem with hunting as a wildlife management tool. What a surprise, no? Licenses and tags generate millions of voluntary dollars a year. Responsible hunters have a vested interest in preserving habitat so that they'll have animals to kill in the future. The Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp is a good example of this, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in its 70-year history to protect millions of acres of wetlands. Besides, a few unlucky and/or stupid hunters dying every season gives PETA something to celebrate.
I don't think hunting mountain lions would solve everything, but I think it's a bit sad that the Department of Fish and Game doesn't even have the option.
Oh, and I think most illicit drugs should be legalized in a controlled, prescription-like manner. Of course, this would collapse the economies of some nations and cause the DEA to shrink a bit, but I think it would be worth a try.
Here's a link to that Lakoff article: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
Pakeha