Editor’s Note: I was just sent this article from Daily Kos by our longtime reader, political observer and artist Fe Bongolin. Here is a short excerpt from a very worthwhile piece of writing. Thank you Fe as usual. –efc
To put it simply, the 2008 Presidential race will not be over politics but — as it was in 2000 and 2004 — over the purpose of politics. In that sense it will be a meta-debate, and one that many will miss because they thought it was settled long ago.
Here then are the disputants in this argument over what politics is for in the first place. On the one hand, there are those who think that political argument is best aimed at perfecting a pluralistic society of equal citizens who do not agree on metaphysical questions of purpose and meaning, but nevertheless wish to live together under conditions of amicable cooperation, and on the other hand those who think that political debate is about winning, precisely, the metaphysical argument — about settling fundamental questions of purpose and meaning on the public stage.
Pluralists do not want to address metaphysical questions on the public-political stage. This is not because they think they cannot win but because they think they should not win. Religio-philosophical victory in a political — as opposed to dinner-table — setting has, pluralists think, no upside. We get along as a people in the first place because we first agreed that religio-philosophical issues are not something we need to agree upon. We don’t debate those matters at the ballot box. Rather, we need only agree on the best ways to further our society to the benefit of all, so that we may in our own ways address questions of purpose and meaning at home. A home secured by a concern for the general welfare.