A few posts back I gave some of my reasons as to why I could not longer in any good conscience vote for the Republican Party. That does not mean I am all happy and satisfied when forced to vote on the Democratic side of the ballot. The issues I have the liberal side f the equation are less pressing than those I listed from the right, but they give me serious hesitation and also trouble my conscience. So in no particular order are some of those issues.

• Identity Politics: There is a great tendency on the left to see people as the check boxes that they are assigned. Too many times have I heard responses start off with a recitation of a person’s categorization placing such labels above the person’s ideas in importance. I am far too much of an individualist to see people first as a label and secondly as an individual. They is not to say that as a culture we do not have miles go in fighting all manner of discrimination. Nor is it saying that the proper view of the world is to pretend to be colorblind. (Or any other kind of blindness) which invites someone to ignore the pain and struggle that others have faced and continue to face. However putting people in little boxes invites other forms of discrimination, such as expecting that person of a particular race, orientation, or what not is a traitor to their own if they hold contrary and unpopular views. The problem with bean counting is that in the end it reduces people to beans.
• Paternalism: The liberals are far more likely than the conservatives to pass laws for someone ‘own good.’ Seat-belt laws, Helmet Laws, Smoking Laws, and so on, laws, taxes, and regulations meant to guide the common person towards the preferred behaviors. For years I have referred to this tendency as ‘the enlightened man’s burden.’ It springs from a conceit that they know best and it is an obligation to make sure that everyone lives in the manner that the enlightened know is best. Often couched in terms of societal costs (helmet-less riders cost us X dollars every year) it is an insidious argument freedom has no dollar value and as such always looses. People have a right to be stupid and free.
• Luddism: From nuclear power, and genetic engineering, to vaccines there is a powerful tendency on the left to harbor fears of technology. The same people who would chastise conservatives for refusing to listen to climate scientists will happily embrace fears of GMO without any more scientific support than the conservatives that deride. They will happy boost for more space exploration, and yet protest the use of nuclear fuels for those same spacecraft. It is my opinion that the conservatives are often anti-science but that liberals are often anti-technology. (there is talk in the news today of GOP candidates and their anti-vax stands, but this idea is much more at home in the upper-middle class college educated left.)
• Utopianism: The idea that humanity is perfectible seems to be a meme that is much more infection among the left. There seems to be a desire, a dream, to find the system that will bring out the perfect system where everyone is happy and there is no want. A place where racism, sexism, and other ills are diseases of the past. I think this is why the left has always flirted with socialism and communism. Communism really is an atheistic religion promising heaven on earth and an end to all suffering. I do not believe that people are perfectible. There will always be the base drives and desire that propel so much human misery. The idea that we can find a utopia is a delusion that distracts us from the work we can achieve.

As with my post on the Republican Party, the subject of the post and comments is the liberal philosophy and the Democratic Party. You are welcome to comment but stay on topic.