Political Bickering... At What Cost?

In an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times written by Paul Krugman, he discusses the difficulty that conservative politicians have with bringing their promises of fiscal responsibility to fruition.  His major discussion point is how conservatives have long been proponents of education and childcare, but their tax and spending policies have blatantly challenged their major platform.  Throughout his article, he jabs at the idea that conservatives are two faced, that they say they stand for one thing but act in contradictory ways.  He uses past examples of how presidents such as George W. Bush ran on the ideal of supporting our children's education, touting Texas's low dropout rates as the proof that he can bring that success to the rest of the country.  Paul Krugman then talks about how in order to attempt to balance the budget, Texas Governor Rick Perry has had to make spending cuts in Medicaid and in school administration layoffs.  While these points are biting and may seem outlandish to many who have always seen the Republican party as the fiscally conservative champions for the youth, Paul Krugman did effectively lay out some of the problems with the Republican party's approach to monetary and education policy.  However, the weakness of his piece is that he merely expresses his disagreement with conservative policy while providing no real advice on how to improve the current situation.

This belief that politics has become a back and forth of childish arguments that have no constructive goals is echoed by an article in the Rasmussen Report called Partisan Politics.  This article shows that while many congressmen and women are hopeful for a bipartisan future, the voting public continues to distrust our political leaders' ability to work together for the good of the nation.  They see constant arguments and outbursts by politicians not as passionate outcries for change, but as infantile calls for support of their own political platform.  As a country, we see too many politicians criticizing the beliefs of opposing parties while not offering nearly as much constructive advice on how to better improve our national standing in all areas.  Politics has become too much a competition over who looks better in the media and can fit our usual view of what a leader looks like, when it should be a competition over who has the best ideas and the talent and determination to implement them in an effective way.

We read articles like Paul Krugman's and we see his opinion and belief that Republicans are doing a poor job, but we don't see any viable options being offered to change the current course of the country.  His article comes across as immature bickering that is intended to inflame debate over whose opinions sound the best.  As long as these articles are published, not just coming from the eyes of a democrat, but from the republican side as well, America will continue to see politics as one big argument that appears almost removed from the wants and needs of the people who the politicians are actually representing.  The more we see articles like the one written by Paul Krugman, the less we will believe in a future in which partisan politics will no longer impede the progress that this nation needs.

The Secret to Happiness?

In the book Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni, one of the chapters discusses the connection between happiness and the mind.  This is interesting to me because it references some material that I have rarely seen.  The first time I was introduced to information similar to this was in a book called The Secret.  It explains how happiness is a choice that is made by the individual through the things a person thinks about.  Until I read the section about this in Forni's book, I have not seen anything about this subject in a mainstream let alone academic book.  But more than the location of where I found it, I thought it was interesting how Forni made the connection between personal happiness and how it affects the outside world.  The book The Secret focused purely on the personal effects of this way of thinking, but Forni explained how a change in the way we think about our happiness also effects the relationships we have with those around us.  


In an editorial written by P.M. Forni for the Dallas Morning News, he discusses various opinions and arguments about the state of civility in America.  In one paragraph, he brings up the health effects that good relationships can have on a person.  He goes on to connect the heath benefits of harmonious relationships to the civil discourse that comes from them.  It is no stretch to imagine that his idea of happiness and the mind leads to increased civility through healthy relationships.  Therefore, the idea that happiness comes from the mind could be one of the most influential arguments and ideas for those who are discouraged by the assumed lack of civility in our culture.


One of the things that I did not like about The Secret was the focus on personal gain, almost to the point of narcissism.  But Forni's point about the positive mind's affect on our relationships shows that we must not use this positive thinking only to try to benefit our own lives but to affect beneficially those around us.  This idea seems to be what could bring about a change in the civility of our society.  The belief that it is within ourselves to determine our happiness as well as our relationships seems to be the kind of game changing idea we need.