On Being Pro-choice

I’ve been feeling a blog incubating, and now it’s ready to hatch. Don’t worry, it hasn’t been incubating since my last post—more like since this afternoon. Although the title suggests otherwise, I’m not writing about abortion rights this evening. I’m writing about politics in America (wait a minute…)

Sadly, my understanding of politics barely scratches the veneer. My blog fodder starts with the two big political conventions over the past few weeks and ends with my and Annie’s exploration of the “Issues” section of the Libertarian Party’s website this evening.

There are a lot of things about our country that worry me. The federal deficit is the biggest. I also worry about our nation’s infrastructure (energy, transportation, etc.). I worry about our lack of a viable long-term energy policy. And I worry about the “War on Terror”. Or is it the “War on Terrorism”? (What, I mean, who, is it exactly that we’re at war with? Could we call it the war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban?) I could go on, but I think that list is plenty long for this evening.

I just took a short dish-drying break, but now I’m back. It was actually a pretty productive break. I realized that the ground I want to cover with this post is much larger than I have the time or insight to cover. Annie asked a barrage of questions, such as “Why is it that we only have two political parties?” I’m at a little bit of a loss—I need to do some research. Doesn’t it have something to do with Andrew Jackson…

As a side note, I do some of my best thinking while washing the dishes. When we left our privileged enclave on the northern outskirts of Tucson and moved into our slowly-but-definitely-decaying downtown apartment, we left behind some of our best friends. I’m talking about our washer, our dryer, and, our dishwasher. Alas. We had the chance to buy a cheap dishwasher on wheels that hooks up to the sink, but we decided to keep our current system (based on Andrea’s grandparents’ tradition of doing the dishes by hand together after dinner). We’ll probably change our tune when we have kids, but it works well for us now, and it gives us plenty of time to think. If only everyone in America would get rid of two appliances, the dishwasher and the television, our inspiration for blog posts would skyrocket. Of course, we wouldn’t have time to post because we’d all be doing the dishes…

Back to why I opened this can of worms that is politics in America. It looks like the big idea, the big voting criterion for this time around is “change”. Apparently, Washington (or Wahrshington, if you prefer) is broken. Something has to change, because a broken Washington can’t address the pressing issues like the one’s that I mentioned above. What I’ve been wondering lately is whether the path to Washington isn’t a little broken. Maybe there are a lot more views on politics than can be captured by two political parties in a winner-takes-all contest. It was this kind of thinking, together with some politics talk with our friends Heather and Earl, that led us to the Libertarian Party website.

I’ll try hard to be politically correct here: I think that the Libertarian Party is kind of kooky. As hard as they try, they just can't convince me that the market will save all the endangered species if the government will just keep out of it. Reading through the “Issues” section was like seeing the ghost of impassioned small-town letters to the editor parade across my laptop screen.

There must be something out there for me. I haven’t checked out the Green Party website yet. And I guess there’s always Ralph Nader, a party unto himself. I’m trying hard not to be cynical—I just really haven’t seen change that I can believe in yet. I think Annie’s question is a great one: why can’t we have more parties?