"I don't worry about politics, it doesn't really matter."
I was surprised by this statement. So I probed, "What exactly do you mean?"
"I mean it doesn't matter. It's only a matter of preference. If you want big government, then that's what you think is right. If you want small government, then that's what you think is right. There is no right stand or wrong stand in politics, it's just what you want."
His statements gave me pause. Was he perhaps right? Was I being an outrageous dogmatist by holding firm on the issues I believed in, asserting that I was "right"?
But I didn't have to ponder on it long to realize this: He was right in one sense. Politics does boil down to merely what one wants. But that doesn't mean that there is no right or wrong opinion. For isn't it wrong to want certain things?
Isn't it wrong to want laws that uphold the enslavement of millions of African Americans? Isn't it wrong to want to bar people from work simply because they are of Irish, or German, descent? Isn't it wrong to want to round up millions of Japanese-Americans, even those who have been here for generations, into concentration camps? Isn't it wrong to want to forcibly sterilize thousands of women against their will because they are "unfit", either mentally or racially? Isn't it wrong to want to arrest, try, and blacklist thousands of Americans because they might have ties to communism? Isn't it wrong to want to protect people who snipe cops from the top of buildings? Isn't it equally wrong to want to protect cops who shoot unarmed civilians?
All of these have been, and a few continue to be, political agendas. Things that people not only wanted, but things they actually did.
And thus is exposed the naivety in the oversimplifications of my Canadian friend's opinion: Yes, it is just what you want, but there is a right and a wrong stand, for it is wrong to want certain things.
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