Freedom is scary

I've been thinking about this matter of why conservatism is a harder sell than leftism.

It seems to me that the crux of the matter is that freedom is scary.  There's an old Blondie comic strip that has stuck with me through the years that sums up the matter of self-ownership:  Dagwood is seated in a chair, reading, with the phone on a stand beside him.  It rings.  Wife Blondie pokes her head in the room, says something like, "If that's my bridge club gals, tell them I'm on my way."  Okay, got it.  Phone rings again.  Son Alexander pokes head in room.  "If that's Joey, tell him I''ll meet him at the gym in fifteen minutes," or whatever. Okay, got it.  Phone rings again.  Daughter Cookie:  "If that's Jean, tell her I'll meet her at the mall in twenty minutes," or whatever.  Phone rings again.  Dagwood looks at the reader and asks, "It's for me; now what do I do?"

Freedom means determining how you're going to proceed from square one, the particular point where you currently are, and that means choices.  And choices have two unsettling qualities: they come with consequences, and they mean foregoing other options you had right up to the moment of decision.

The leftist says that it's easier for some people than others.  You know, the whole line about "rich muckety-mucks born into privilege don't know what the masses have to deal with every day."  A corollary to this is the claim that some people have insufficient information to make a particular choice in a way that's beneficial to themselves.  Well, sorry, but no one starts life with a baseline of heavenly perfection.  Every human life comes bundled with issues of one sort or another - health, family dynamics, weather and nature events, sudden changes in fortune.  None of us can know the intricate details of another's circumstances.  The starting point for any of us is not zero, but rather some tangled number that goes out many decimal places.

So we have to ascribe to anyone who qualifies as an adult human being the capability to make choices as well as anyone else.  It's the only fair way to regard another person.

I guess what got me thinking about all this this morning was that someone on my Facebook newsfeed had posted a poisonously stupid quote from Rachel Maddow about poor people not wanting to be poor, but lacking the opportunities that rich people have.  What a disingenuous glossing-over of the key point, which is, Who are any of us to define the term "opportunity" for anyone else?  I may have the opportunity to be a shipyard welder, but since it doesn't interest me in the least, it's not really within the realm of my opportunities.

But leftism depends on a one-size-fits-all approach for its attempt at legitimacy.  ""To each according to his needs" and all that.  I don't know what my fellow human being needs, beyond food, water and shelter.  And if we say that that is all he needs, we remove his very humanity.  We reduce human beings to the level of cattle, blankly staring ahead as they are herded into the pen.

But, of course, deciding to be a cow is the easier route.  As long as you're sufficiently amused, you don't miss a thing about your former status.