realpolitik, supposedly

most people that know me would tell you i can be a bit excitable, if not passionate, when the conversation turns to the arena of politics. this is not false and not an exaggeration.

however, due to a few recent conversations, i've decided that i need to clarify some of my very broad views on what, exactly, appeals to me about politics. usually when i tell someone where i work, the question is "So you're interested in going into politics, then?" it's hard to know what to tell them. so here are some very brief thoughts.

although it's taken me a while to pinpoint it, this is the way i see it: politics is simply large ideas expressing themselves on a large scale. i've written about this before, and it's a watery understatement: ideas are huge. a real idea will have the same reasoning behind making people kill and die and live. i hope i don't get negative points for referencing a movie, but...just watch V for Vendetta. :)

in our democratic process (which i realize is a rather narrowed view of how ideas work, but hey, i do live here and i think it works alright), if an idea is big enough -- if it has enough supporters -- it deserves to be considered. if it's big and good, it deserves to be applied. and politics is merely the medium through which we consider and -- if they're good -- apply our big ideas.

that's why it's so ridiculous to say "you can't legislate morality." on the contrary, dear ignoramus, that's about the only thing we can legislate. i doubt there's a single law in the country that isn't somehow tied to moral concepts like: don't take something that doesn't belong to you; don't harm people if they aren't a threat to you; keep your family together if you can; authority should be respected...i could go on and on.

and a little tidbit to keep you thinking: where does separation of church and state come into this, if every law is essentially the large-scale expression of a value judgment? (This idea-trail is a Stub. You can help Nikki's blog and her thought process by expanding it.)

anyways, there's a lot more to it than that. but this is why i don't get so excited about party issues, elections, or arguments in congress, or other things that don't have ideas behind them. real politics is ideas working themselves out on a grand scale. ideas are what i care about. and i've discovered the only reason i think twice about politics is because i have a lot of convictions and i want to change things. and a lot of those things need to be,and can only be, fixed through politics.

on the other hand, one reason i've become so disenchanted with much of the political arena lately is because, at least if we're talking about idea-centered politics, i'm (slowly) realizing how useless it can be to change a law without changing people. legislation merely reflects the will of the people (at least in most cases). my perennial example: abortion. is it a problem that our country gives permission for people to kill their children? absolutely. i'm not diminishing that and people should continue to work wholeheartedly to undo that sickening wrong. however (and a lot of organizations and people might disagree with me), the problem of permission is a shallow surface problem. the real issue is, why do people want abortions? once we deal with that on a grand scale, the issue of whether they're legal or not will (more or less) either take care of itself, or not be much of an issue.