Politics is child's play

It actually doesn’t get any more sophisticated than this: The Conservatives are the jerky neighborhood kid who wants to play with his toys by himself and won’t let you join in. He might invite you to look at his pet snake, may allow you to touch it once, but won’t let you hold it. These acts are within his rights, but clearly he is an unpleasant, and ultimately unhappy, sort. The Liberals are the weirdly thoughtful and considerate child who starts a pick-up game, notices the sad sack wallflower kid who can’t run or catch standing off to the side, and insists he be included even though all the kids know he will reduce the fun and quality of the game.

Our dichotomous political ideologies are children’s personality social clubs. Both form from the socialization of individual feelings. They have endured because all feelings are valid: They form naturally in the body owing to vast divergences of circumstances. Still, questions arise. At the child level, is one of these general moods – “Conservative” or “Liberal” – more valid than the other? Or not? Doesn’t the selfish child have a right to be antisocial or self-important, to not want to share? Doesn’t the prosocial child have a right to pressure the other children to be decent and compassionate to an outcast?

(In search of a “winner,” can we definitively say that one – the individual – comes before two – the group? Or that two – relationship – comes before one?)

The problem is that government renders society involuntary, a chain gang. We are forced to suffer the impact of the selfish, forced to suffer the intrusions of the altruist. And both are forced by government – the bully with the gun – to join the game.

Sour boys could leave and go home if the wallflower is allowed to play. Selfish boys who guard their toys will, in time, be left alone and lonely. It’s when you let the armed bully in, standing at the perimeter, that the game is lost.