Written by Julian Modiano   

What frustrates me most when debating politics is not people’s opinions, even though I almost always disagree with most of them. Opinions can be infuriating, but when they’ve been well thought out and are supported by at least some evidence they can be respected. What makes debates much less interesting and significantly more discouraging is that while people tend to hold certain opinions very dearly, most of them have chosen a ‘side’, not ideas, to stand by.

People usually consider themselves Democrats or Republicans, socialists or conservatives, left- or right-leaning – or some other similar label. But branding yourself as any one of those just makes it easier for you to compromise on justice and what you believe to be good. If you consider yourself a Democrat, for example, when a Democrat leader supports a policy that goes against your values you may be more willing to ignore it, while if a Republican leader enacts a policy that is largely consistent with your beliefs you may still condemn it. In my opinion, you should decide what you believe, what your fundamental values are, and then hold all politicians to those same standards. Once you do, you’ll notice that virtually none of them ever even come close to consistently upholding those values.

To try and demonstrate this, I’ll compare some of the policies of Democrats and Republicans in recent years. What I want to make clear is that I’m not arguing that you should not support these politicians by my standards (by my standards most of what all of them do is wrong) – what I’m arguing is that whatever your political opinions are you should not support either side because both have enacted largely the same policies. If you had chosen to stand by ideas and not sides you would have condemned both more or less equally, regardless of your what your opinions are.

Take the recent debate over the Republican budget resolution, which supposedly cuts spending by $5.1 trillion. Democrats are attacking it for imposing austerity on the poor and destroying the ‘safety net’, while Republicans claim that their budget will make the government more fiscally responsible. The truth? The new budget merely increases spending by less than had been previously planned (by 3.5% per year instead of 5.2%). The 'cuts' are really just slightly smaller increases. If conservatives traditionally oppose increases in spending and liberals usually praise them, then conservatives should be opposed to the Republican plan, while liberals should definitely not be raising such loud cries against it.

If we look at George W. Bush’s policies, we find that conservatives who (in my opinion, correctly) oppose Obama’s massive increases in welfare spending should just as equally condemn Bush, who presided over huge increases in discretionary spending and an overall increase of 83% in federal spending. He was also “instrumental in adding the Medicare drug benefit, which by 2009 was adding more than $60 billion a year to federal spending”. He also proposed and signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed by LBJ, which expanded federal influence in public education. In fact, Bush was the biggest domestic spender since LBJ. If conservatives had chosen to stand by their ideas and not their Republican ‘side’ they would have been appalled by Bush’s record. Liberals, on the other hand, could have hated him for his foreign policy – but should have largely supported his domestic policies.

Scrutinizing Obama’s record yields very similar conclusions. If liberals are supposed to support peace and a foreign policy of diplomacy, and if one of the main reasons for their hatred of Bush was his war in Iraq and Afghanistan, then they should be even more horrified with Obama. To take one example, Bush deployed Special Ops to 60 countries – Obama has deployed them to 134. He has hugely expanded the number of drone strikes and civilians killed in his covert drone programs, and has even bragged about it. And his administration has pushed for expanding funding to programs aimed at modernizing their nuclear arsenal.

Even domestically (and from a liberal perspective) he hasn’t been great. He has continued to sign into law the NDAA, the extension of the Patriot Act passed by Bush and condemned by liberals for granting the government the power to hold and interrogate suspected ‘terrorists’ indefinitely and without trial. He has cracked down on drugs, arresting more people for marijuana possession than Bush. He has even been tougher on immigration, deporting a record 1.5 million immigrants. And let’s not forget that he presided over the infamous NSA spying program. If liberals condemned Bush for his atrocities outside of the country regardless of his domestic policy of expanding entitlement programs, how can they continue to support Obama solely on the basis of a few of his domestic policies despite his belligerence abroad and his erosion of civil liberties at home?

One of the main reasons for the confusion is that the mainstream media hosts a political debate that is extremely narrow and usually manages to avoid any serious issue. My advice? Liberals: try watching Democracy Now! every once in a while, or reading some Chomsky. They have proven to be dedicated to leftist ideas regardless of the particular label of certain politicians. Conservatives: why not try reading Ron Paul every now and then, or getting some of your news from Infowars or LewRockwell.com; they have shown to be consistently committed to conservative values regardless of what supposed Republicans have been peddling.

I don’t agree with many of the opinions supported by those sources. But at least they are reliable in their ideology and do not buy into the false dichotomy that is prevalent in mainstream political debate. They have chosen ideas, not sides – and are therefore significantly more honest and reliable than CNN or Fox News. And most importantly, they are generally ideologically consistent, not rife with contradictions.

My recommendation to everyone is also to at least try finding some news from foreign sources, such as Al Jazeera or Russia Today. They are obviously not free from bias; but at least it’s not the same Western bias that infects most of the media in the United States and Europe. Getting a perspective tinted with foreign bias is an easy way to unearth biases in our own media that you had previously never thought to question. When forming an opinion on economic issues, why not check out Mises.org – Austrian economists seem to be the only ones able to predict coming recessions and their analysis is rigorous and academic, so perhaps it is worthy of some consideration before forming your own opinion.

If you start doing some serious looking, you’ll find that Democrats and Republicans are all on the same side. Their campaign rhetoric would have them appear as polar opposites, but a close study of the actual policies they have enacted shows that they are merely different sides of the same coin. Remember, find the evidence, apply your moral values, and choose your ideas. Then judge all politicians by the same standards of those political ideas regardless of what the politicians are calling themselves.