Beneficence: Left2Right

December 08, 2004

Left2Right

I'm not yet ready to jump back into blogging full speed, but spent much of this evening catching up on reading other people's blogs that I like to follow. Was intrigued to see this new blog on the scene: Left2Right . When I do get caught up on my offline projects, I will look forward to engaging with this group some. Especially interests me to see Stephen Darwall there. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the English moral philosopher Ralph Cudworth. Darwall's actually one of the probably less than 50 living people who've read much of Cudworth, and I cite his work in my dissertation (which, sigh, sits idly on my shelf).

I did wonder at this early post by Eliz. Anderson: What Hume Can Teach Us About Our Partisan Divisions, who writes:

Hume observed that differences in interest are the most "reasonable." They are most open to compromise and negotiation. Moreover, arguments about what policies are in people's interest are most open to revision in light of evidence. If interests were all that divided us, the Democratic Party (what there is of the Left that has institutional power) would enjoy an overwhelming majority, since it represents the interests of the bulk of the population, while Republican policies favor mainly the rich. Most people understand this, and the Left can offer sound arguments and evidence to persuade those who disagree.

This confused me at first--for it doesn't seem patently obvious to me that most people DO think the Democratic Party represents their interests. Then I wondered whether there was actually something rather favorable in this in that perhaps Anderson is suggesting that the majority of the voters who voted Republican in the recent election must be rich, or at least must consider themselves to be so. This would mean that, contrary to the typical assertions from the Left, the number of the "rich" in America is growing significantly, a trend that would seem on its very face to begin to undermine the assertion that "most people" understand the Dem Party to represent their interests.

December 08, 2004 in ThinkingPolitics | Permalink