Posted by
Stephanie Herman on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 8:41:02 PM
In politics,
size matters.
What's big must be treated differently than what's small. Seems simple enough, but if everyone understood this basic truth, conservatives and liberals wouldn't have nearly as much to argue about.
It all stems from our desire for universal theories. Take, for
example, the problem that currently plagues physicists today: Our universe
seems to be based on two sets of physical laws, and unfortunately, these two sets of laws conflict.
PBS recently aired a documentary, The Elegant Universe, explaining the
problem and a possible solution in the form of string theory. In it,
Brian Greene explains that Einstein’s general theory of relativity is the law that governs the
large objects in our universe – things like planets and anvils and gnats. In
terms of scale, these objects would all fall into the macro realm, and are all governed and described by a certain set of physical rules. Small things,
like subatomic particles, are governed by a different set of rules we call quantum
mechanics. One set of laws for the macrocosm, and another for the microcosm. It's this dichotomy that annoys many physicists. They would
much rather discover a
Universal Theory of Everything,
not one theory for the
large and a separate theory for the small.
The same problem has plagued politics for centuries. While it's true that there is one set of public policy theories for the macrocosm, and another for the microcosm, most politicians today - especially those on the Left - deny this reality. They would rather simply take what works well in the microcosm and apply it to the more complex macrocosm. In fact, the Left has laid claim to a unified theory of public policy, which leads me to the premise of this blog:
The fundamental failure of liberal philosophy is its application of microcosmic rules onto the macrocosm.
What exactly am I talking about? Please stay tuned.