The attraction of being a Republican
I was listening to “man in the street” interviews about Pataki’s plan
to authorize issuing drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. I
was struck by the idea that so many wrong decisions can be attributed
to acting based on “what should be true” instead of “what is true”.
In the case of the NY drivers license debate, that works out this way:
The “what is true” view (Pataki’s) is that we already have MILLIONS of
immigrants driving cars, and when they’re in an accident, they flee the
scene (hit and run) because they have no legal right to drive. If you
issue them licenses (and make them buy insurance) then there will be fewer
hit and runs, and fewer uninsured motorists, so everybody ELSE will fare
better, in that insurance rates will go down, illegals will be more likely
to take drivers education, etc.
The people that have the “what should be true” view just say that the
illegals should not be here, and should not be allowed to drive. But
THEY ARE HERE. We DON’T KNOW HOW TO find them to SEND THEM HOME. SO
NOW WHAT?
And I think a lot of the attraction of being Republican is that it
fits in perfectly with the “what should be true” mind-set. People
grow weary of hearing about how we’re destroying the planet, and there
are scary people who want to kill us. If we act on “what should be
true” (there is no global warming) we can just keep driving our
gas guzzlers with no ill effects. If we choose to believe in
“mission accomplished” and “our troops are well supported by our
government” then Iraq has been a big success, and we’ve showed
those terrorists not to mess with us. (Please ignore the problems
with Walter Reed Army Hospital, the non-existance of any kind of
GI-Bill for returning troops, insufficient facilities to treat
returning soldiers for PTSD, 3000+ dead Americans, many more dead
Iraqis, etc. etc.)