I was struck by the comments on yesterday’s post about a law being considered by the Senate that would require all food producers to be registered and regulated by the federal government, something many people fear would devastate the local foods movement in favor of the big agribusiness corporations. I noticed that known liberals and known conservatives who read this blog both AGREED that this would be a bad law.
DonS, reliably on the conservative side of most issues, put it this way:
As for the larger impact of this bill, maybe it will cause liberals to wake up a bit as to the effect of runaway government regulation. Though it often seems like something which reins in those nasty, greedy businesses, most often it is the result of an unholy cabal of big government and big business, erecting every higher barriers of entry for a particular market to keep smaller competitors out.
He’s showing his conservatism, of course, but it occurred to me that liberals tend to fear big business, while conservatives tend to fear big government. But the prospect of “an unholy cabal of big government and big business” is something that both sides would decry. Could the problem be “bigness” in general, that huge institutions of every kind tend to become dehumanizing, taking on a life of their own and running slipshod over ordinary individuals, and just getting too powerful for everyone’s own good? (Perhaps there are exceptions, safeguards, and checks and balances. But still. . . .)
What would be some other common ground that conservatives and liberals might be able to agree on? Maybe we can solve our nation’s polarized politics right here on this blog. (The idea is not to compromise either ideology or to “just get along.” Let’s let liberals and conservatives both be that way, continuing their opposition to each other. What I’d like for us to do is to find areas in which they already, if we look closely, might agree.)
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