The Assumption Divide

The things that separate conservatives and liberals begin with very different assumptions about what is important and what works. All of their approaches to problem-solving stem from their often differing assumptions about responsibility, function, and progress. Here are a few of the assumptions conservatives (Con) and liberals (Lib) tend to embrace:
1. Con: Capitalism creates competition, and that is good.
Lib: Cooperation rather than competition serves the people best.
2. Con: The “playing field” will never be level and never has been.
Lib: The “playing field” can be made more level through law and policy.
3. Con: The individual is entirely responsible for his/her own outcome.
Lib: Government’s job is to protect the weak from the exploitation of the strong.
4. Con: Criminals should be punished. (stick)
Lib: Criminals should be rehabilitated. (therapy, education)
5. Con: Economies must grow to survive.
Lib: The ideal economy is sustainable.
6. Con: That which governs best governs least.
Lib: Government should be a player, not just a referee.
7. Con: People are self-interested, motivated by fear and greed, driven by competition.
Lib: People are naturally good, like to work, and tend to contribute to society.
8. Con: Caveat Emptor (Let the buyer beware.)
Lib: Caveat Venditor (Let the seller beware.)
9. Con: Market volatility is the price for opportunity.
Lib: Economic security is more important than getting rich.
10. Con: Wealth is a right.
Lib: Wealth is a privilege.
11. Con: Health care is a privilege.
Lib: Health care is a right.

There are many more assumptions that both liberals and conservatives make, but these are enough to show that most political positions assumed by either group are based on assumptions about human behavior.
Conservatives assume that human nature is untrustworthy, selfish, and by nature aggressive, so why not accept those “facts” and build an economic system that utilizes that nature? If folks get out of hand, simply punish them. Otherwise, let the system self-correct. Capitalism, for them, is as close to a perpetual motion economic machine as mankind can find.
Liberals, on the other hand, always seem to want to give mankind the benefit of the doubt and assume that people can be cooperative, can change, and can be reformed with just the right therapy or positive incentive. They also see losers as victims of the system rather than flawed individuals who simply don’t have the gumption to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (not that anyone wears bootstraps these days) and try again. The conservative likes to use old adages like the one referring to bootstraps to validate his view that losers remain losers because they give up trying to win.
Each group’s assumptions about human nature are, in part, the direct result of the other’s existence. They are a chicken and egg duo that continues to drive politics today. Neither is entirely right or wrong but is simply one side of the spectrum that is the reality of human nature.
There was a time when politics was a meeting place for ideas. Today, it is a battleground where self-righteous pontification takes the place of dialogue and the possible arrival at that “settlement in the wilderness” called Consensus. The U.S. Senate in particular is the primary locus of the most uncivil war since the one Lincoln presided over. Neither liberals nor conservatives have a handle on the exact nature of humankind, and therefore neither should be so trusting of the assumptions each holds so dear. Given the behavior they exhibit from either side of the aisle, they are in no position to make any claims on a true knowledge of human nature except that it is flawed and in need of something beyond the status quo.
Today’s health care debate is supposedly about principles. Most of it is about manufactured nonsense and irrational fear based on false assumptions. The debate does not even come down to the last pair of assumptions in the list: Is health care a right or a privilege? At whose profit is lack of health care justifiable and at whose is it not?
When the well-being of the corporation takes precedence over the well-being of the citizen, something has gone wrong with somebody’s assumption scheme, and something has to change. Otherwise, that old adage about “the strength of a society is measured by its capacity to care for its weak and elderly” has no currency, and we are left with the mechanistic ‘survival of the fittest. As a result, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as our ideals seem lost in the wake of survival mode.