http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jul/21/voter-turnout-rate-down-in-08-census-data-show/

I totally disagree that public schools lean left. But there may be some merit in being fresh out of the last phase of life where everyone is a part of a community (their school/college/U). We tend to lose that when we graduate if we don’t keep ties with our neighbors and our community and get involved with (or form) organizations that reflect our values and interests. Politics have gotten out of control and we like to blame monied lobby groups and campaign finance laws, but we also need to take a look at ourselves and assess why we don’t have “people like us” in government. If we can’t achieve a government that is more representative of ALL of Spokane (where we know who the power brokers are and can choose to ignore them), we can’t do it anywhere.

I hope this sparks more discussion and participation.

They share a geography. Hence they will travel on the same streets, patronize some subset of the same set of merchants, etc. They will have no more in common than the facts of their location dictate.

“But more to the point, regions tend to share assumptions.”

No. Some set of assumptions may come to be associated with a region (just as some preferences in diet, dress, entertainment, etc., may come to be associated), but that only means that those variables are somewhat more prevalent there than elsewhere. It never implies that everyone, or even a majority, in that region shares them. “New York Loves the Met” may be true in that relative sense, but you can be assured that only a tiny fraction of New Yorkers are opera lovers.

“Certainly there are disagreements (and this is nothing new), but that doesn’t make everyone living in their own little world (and nor is this an acceptable ideal).”

People in civilized societies live in interconnected microworlds — the worlds comprised of their families, friends, co-workers, and others with whom they’ve freely established relationships of one kind or another, for one reason or another, most of which are pragmatic and endure only as long as the advantages they afford continue. They have some interest in the microworlds immediately linked to theirs, because events there directly affect their own. Beyond that adjacent shell their interests dissipate rapidly. The microworld is the modern substitute for the tribe as the basic social unit.

“Being pro-dialogue or pro-community (which the partisanship of the ongoing battles of the 60’s have worked so hard to destroy) doesn’t mean I want everyone to think exactly alike. What it does mean is a willingness to believe that we can work together, that compromise is possible, that pragmatic common-sense solutions are most likely to lead us to the answers to our most pressing challenges.”

But most “communitarian” ideologies aspire to exactly that — that everyone think — or at least act — alike in those matters considered crucial by the particular ideologue. But the key to success for civilized societies is to realize how limited the sphere of “common interests” actually is, and refrain from imposing policies which exceed those limits.

(A “civilized” society, BTW, is simply a society characterized by cities ((from the Latin “civis”)) and a city is simply a community so large that most of its residents do not know most of the others).

narrow the

Your interpretations of my preachings are woefully off base.

I specifically explained that just because a candidate is a member of a group doesn’t mean they will necessarily represent the general interests (if any are discernible at all) for that demographic. The reverse is true as well.

Happy armchair endorsing!

First off, I’m not sure I should take your remarks at all seriously when you essentially pull the Nazi card (although you deserve some credit for not coming out and directly saying it at least).

People who live in the same places have a great deal in common with one another. This is particularly true in America and other “civilized” nations where people have a greater sense of mobility and a choice about where they live.

In fact, one of the more perplexing problems we face is the self-sorting taking place (a la Richard Florida).

But more to the point, regions tend to share assumptions. Certainly there are disagreements (and this is nothing new), but that doesn’t make everyone living in their own little world (and nor is this an acceptable ideal). We should yearn (as I believe many in my generation do) for neighbors (Mr. Rogers deserves at least some of the credit).

Being pro-dialogue or pro-community (which the partisanship of the ongoing battles of the 60′s have worked so hard to destroy) doesn’t mean I want everyone to think exactly alike. What it does mean is a willingness to believe that we can work together, that compromise is possible, that pragmatic common-sense solutions are most likely to lead us to the answers to our most pressing challenges.

Hope you realize my dig about raising the voting age to 45 was tongue-in-cheek.

But . . .

“More than being proponents of “leftist” politics we tend to be post-partisan – team players who are reasserting the need for cooperation and shared values.”

In that sentence you illustrate and affirm the distinction you’re trying to dismiss (although “left” v. “right” doesn’t quite capture it). The “left” (and much of the “right” also) is enamored of the ideal you just articulated — “cooperation and shared values.” But that ideal, which is as old as Plato, is not realizable in civilized societies comprised of millions of persons. It is an atavism, a relic of our tribal, primate heritage. Civilized societies are “societies of strangers” — communities of persons who have little or no shared experience, who differ radically in their interests, tastes, preferences, perspectives, and goals, but who happen, by accident of birth, to occupy a common territory. There are no values shared by all of them; although almost everyone can find others with whom they can cooperate for specific purposes, there can be no global cooperation. Civilized societies are not tribes, not “big happy families.”

All the destructive “isms” of the 20th century aspired to the ideal you cite — they were all attempts to transform, usually by force, the society of strangers into some semblance of a tribe, in which persons are not longer unique individuals all pursuing their own idiosyncratic conceptions of happiness, but merely exemplars of a tribal identity, obliged to further the alleged goals of “society” (as articulated by its ideologues).

You need an ideal that reflects the actual structure of the society in which you live.

More than being proponents of “leftist” politics we tend to be post-partisan – team players who are reasserting the need for cooperation and shared values. We are pro-dialogue. A huge departure from the culture wars of the 1980′s and 1990′s which we had front row seats to as we grew up.

Too often this leads to us avoiding politics and government – dismissing them as inherently the partisan messes we watched growing up – and instead we attempt to shape our world for the better in the private or non-profit sectors.

Many of our generation (I’m 25) are already making serious contributions in these fields (particularly in Education), but ultimately I hope that we will take the same pragmatic problem-solving skills and apply them to our Government as well.