On the 28th of September, Kentucky senator Rand Paul blocked an oil and gas pipeline safety bill. The bill was supported by Republicans and Democrats as well as the Oil & Gas industry. It was designed to help remedy the exceptional number of explosions, spills, and deaths associated with our aging pipeline infrastructure. It would have called for automated cut off switches and certain new safety standards that the industry thought would be wise but wanted standardized across all providers to ensure the costs of the safety measures would be shared across the industry. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee unanimously approved it's passage.
Rand Paul's reason for single handedly using Senate rules to block it?
Principle. Ideology. He is against government regulation.
Let's talk about ideology.
Ideology is the collection of principles, beliefs and ideas that we hold dear and use to steer our decisions. For many, our ideology is our religion while for others it is a sense of personal conscience or conviction that some things are right or wrong. All of what makes up your or my ideology is a collection of abstracts: Pro Life, Pro Choice, Don't raise taxes. Help the poor. Shrink government, stand with constituents first – none of these things is a tangible thing we can touch or hold in our hands. Instead they are ideas that we cherish as personal values.
Ideology acts as the stars in our night sky as we navigate our life's ship. As we move through our lives, ideologies play a big part in settling the question of 'if all else is equal, which path do I choose?' The answer to that is usually steers us towards our ideological goals.
Someone without strong ideology is called an 'opportunist'. Opportunists are guided by whatever gains they can make case by case. They have no particular ideology or strong values, so as the situations around them unfold they do what they think is best for themselves or for their job. Opportunism is not always bad, but it leaves the opportunist somewhat unpredictable to the outside world. In politics, opportunists are often flip floppers because they change their stances based on prevailing conditions that shift and move year to year. Opportunists are difficult to trust because life is complicated, and as the factors influencing the opportunist change, so will their stance. Opportunists have no particular direction of their own and are on a journey of exploration. They are at the mercy of external factors and pressures first, taking the path that gives them the most or catches their fancy. Guiding or controlling an opportunist is relatively easy: Take control of the circumstances around them, and you can control the outcome. Many politicians are opportunists.
We call someone who is clearly influenced by their ideology 'principled'. A principled person is someone who is willing to make personal sacrifice and take harder roads in order to stay in line with their ideology. We have always admired principled people because they are willing to forgo personal gain in many cases to ensure what they do is, in their opinion, right. Principled politicians are of particular value because they are often harder to corrupt. They are more consistent and often fierce advocates for ideas they made plain in their campaigns. This makes them more resistant to lobby interests and trustworthy to citizens who rightly believe men and women of proven principle are to a certain degree predictable. Principled politicians understand the journey they take in the direction of their ideologies will be a winding one and a marathon not a sprint. They are willing to bow to the necessities of the moment or the situation so long as they are not asked to abandon or directly oppose their ideals.
We call someone who is dominated by their ideology a 'fanatic'. A fanatic is someone who sees nothing else of value besides their ideology. They are willing to make any sacrifice and pay any price to move closer to their goal. If the compass of their ideology points over a cliff, they will jump instead of navigating a route around it that shifts their direction away from direct movement towards their guiding light. Fanatic politicians spend most of their time justifying the damage they do by ignoring the complexities of the systems and structures they lead in order to get another step forward in the direction of their values. The collateral damage done by a political fanatic is often extreme as their single minded pursuit of their bright star leaves them blind to the people angered, disenfranchised, crushed, and broken in the process.
Rand Paul is a libertarian and doesn't like government regulation. He blocked a bill supported by the gas industry, Republicans, Democrats, and the public designed to fix an issue that had cost the country millions and almost fifty people their lives. He blocked the safety bill for the simple, abstract reason that he doesn't like regulation.
This, unfortunately, like so many of the moves by the Tea Party freshmen in the legislature, is not the sign of a principled politician being true to his ideas. It is quite clearly the sign of a fanatic being willfully blind to the damage he's doing in the name of an abstract to which he is loyal. We the people do not live in a purist world. We do not live in a society where our individual ideas of right and wrong are absolutes to which all others must bend. It is, in fact, exactly this kind of ideological extremism that we claim to fight against and fear most in the world at large. But it runs rampant among the new crop in congress and the few senators the Tea Party managed to elect, resulting in the lowest approval of their work in history.
It is a good thing to be principled. But like all things in a diverse society, principle must be tempered with moderation and common sense. Being a fanatic is as easy as being an opportunist and is equally reviled. The real champion of principled politics is the one who knows how to navigate towards the shining star of their values without being fundamentally led astray or trampling headlong over valuable projects in the name of rigid inflexibility. It is, like so many truly valuable objectives, a balancing act and one the current Republicans seem unable to grasp.
The principled champions of our world - whether it was Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi or most any other major figure of public action - all understood when to act in line with their principles and when to stay silent. When to stand up for what was critical and when to step aside. It would do well for congress to pick which one of their heroes they admire the most and follow suit, to take a step back from being fanatics which has cost them their reputation and our society's recovery and become truly principled champions of conservative values. Until then, they face repercussions that may surprise them when they are evicted by an ever more enraged population. While Obama may not survive 2012, the new crop of congressional ideologues is almost certainly doomed and that doom is a monster of their own creation raised and fed on their intolerant positions of fanatical ideology mistakenly championed as principled politics.
Rand Paul's reason for single handedly using Senate rules to block it?
Principle. Ideology. He is against government regulation.
Let's talk about ideology.
Ideology is the collection of principles, beliefs and ideas that we hold dear and use to steer our decisions. For many, our ideology is our religion while for others it is a sense of personal conscience or conviction that some things are right or wrong. All of what makes up your or my ideology is a collection of abstracts: Pro Life, Pro Choice, Don't raise taxes. Help the poor. Shrink government, stand with constituents first – none of these things is a tangible thing we can touch or hold in our hands. Instead they are ideas that we cherish as personal values.
Ideology acts as the stars in our night sky as we navigate our life's ship. As we move through our lives, ideologies play a big part in settling the question of 'if all else is equal, which path do I choose?' The answer to that is usually steers us towards our ideological goals.
Someone without strong ideology is called an 'opportunist'. Opportunists are guided by whatever gains they can make case by case. They have no particular ideology or strong values, so as the situations around them unfold they do what they think is best for themselves or for their job. Opportunism is not always bad, but it leaves the opportunist somewhat unpredictable to the outside world. In politics, opportunists are often flip floppers because they change their stances based on prevailing conditions that shift and move year to year. Opportunists are difficult to trust because life is complicated, and as the factors influencing the opportunist change, so will their stance. Opportunists have no particular direction of their own and are on a journey of exploration. They are at the mercy of external factors and pressures first, taking the path that gives them the most or catches their fancy. Guiding or controlling an opportunist is relatively easy: Take control of the circumstances around them, and you can control the outcome. Many politicians are opportunists.
We call someone who is clearly influenced by their ideology 'principled'. A principled person is someone who is willing to make personal sacrifice and take harder roads in order to stay in line with their ideology. We have always admired principled people because they are willing to forgo personal gain in many cases to ensure what they do is, in their opinion, right. Principled politicians are of particular value because they are often harder to corrupt. They are more consistent and often fierce advocates for ideas they made plain in their campaigns. This makes them more resistant to lobby interests and trustworthy to citizens who rightly believe men and women of proven principle are to a certain degree predictable. Principled politicians understand the journey they take in the direction of their ideologies will be a winding one and a marathon not a sprint. They are willing to bow to the necessities of the moment or the situation so long as they are not asked to abandon or directly oppose their ideals.
We call someone who is dominated by their ideology a 'fanatic'. A fanatic is someone who sees nothing else of value besides their ideology. They are willing to make any sacrifice and pay any price to move closer to their goal. If the compass of their ideology points over a cliff, they will jump instead of navigating a route around it that shifts their direction away from direct movement towards their guiding light. Fanatic politicians spend most of their time justifying the damage they do by ignoring the complexities of the systems and structures they lead in order to get another step forward in the direction of their values. The collateral damage done by a political fanatic is often extreme as their single minded pursuit of their bright star leaves them blind to the people angered, disenfranchised, crushed, and broken in the process.
Rand Paul is a libertarian and doesn't like government regulation. He blocked a bill supported by the gas industry, Republicans, Democrats, and the public designed to fix an issue that had cost the country millions and almost fifty people their lives. He blocked the safety bill for the simple, abstract reason that he doesn't like regulation.
This, unfortunately, like so many of the moves by the Tea Party freshmen in the legislature, is not the sign of a principled politician being true to his ideas. It is quite clearly the sign of a fanatic being willfully blind to the damage he's doing in the name of an abstract to which he is loyal. We the people do not live in a purist world. We do not live in a society where our individual ideas of right and wrong are absolutes to which all others must bend. It is, in fact, exactly this kind of ideological extremism that we claim to fight against and fear most in the world at large. But it runs rampant among the new crop in congress and the few senators the Tea Party managed to elect, resulting in the lowest approval of their work in history.
It is a good thing to be principled. But like all things in a diverse society, principle must be tempered with moderation and common sense. Being a fanatic is as easy as being an opportunist and is equally reviled. The real champion of principled politics is the one who knows how to navigate towards the shining star of their values without being fundamentally led astray or trampling headlong over valuable projects in the name of rigid inflexibility. It is, like so many truly valuable objectives, a balancing act and one the current Republicans seem unable to grasp.
The principled champions of our world - whether it was Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi or most any other major figure of public action - all understood when to act in line with their principles and when to stay silent. When to stand up for what was critical and when to step aside. It would do well for congress to pick which one of their heroes they admire the most and follow suit, to take a step back from being fanatics which has cost them their reputation and our society's recovery and become truly principled champions of conservative values. Until then, they face repercussions that may surprise them when they are evicted by an ever more enraged population. While Obama may not survive 2012, the new crop of congressional ideologues is almost certainly doomed and that doom is a monster of their own creation raised and fed on their intolerant positions of fanatical ideology mistakenly championed as principled politics.
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