Scale Differences Between the Political Parties

It's a political year and I'm heading to Washington, DC tomorrow. I don't know squat
about politics so I started thinking about it a little.

One of the main things that always bugged me was an understanding of the parties. At
an issue level it's fairly clear... dems pro abortion, reps anti... reps pro war, dems
anti... etc.

But at the vision level I'm always confused. I was taught that the republicans favored
smaller government and that democrats favored bigger government. Which clearly isn't
the case. If you favor small government (reps) why would you be anti-abortion? Lots
of examples where this generalization isn't true.

Here's what I think is going on: Neither the republicans nor the democrats favor
bigger or smaller government. Instead, they favor a particular sized government at a
particular scale (individual scale and corporate/program scale). This preference is
opposed across scales within each party.

And that's been confusing me for a long time. I always thought that they had the same
sizing preferences across scales. That if you favor small government you favor small
government.

Not so.

Republicans favor big controlling government at the individual level (religious
undertones, family values, etc.) and they favor small unobtrusive government at the
corporate level. Dems are the reverse... they favor small government at the individual
level and big government at the corporate level (regulation, distribution of wealth,
etc).

And this is only on the domestic front. Foreign policy is a completely different
matter with its own set of visions and contradictions.

I find it tough to choose a political party because a) no single party articulates its
vision clearly and b) no single party agrees with me on even most of the issues.

But at least I'm starting to see some trends. Hopefully my insight will give me a
slightly more sophisticated scheme from which to build a political understanding.

Dave Winer makes an interesting href='http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/2004/02/15#a718'>observation that "before we
even consider a candidate, we should talk issues among ourselves. Make decisions and
then, kind of like the Priceline model for buying stuff, go shopping for candidates
whose values match ours." I agree.

The problem is that the candidates set the agenda.

And that's where web logs can help. Even if all 280 million of us did meet and
discuss, we'd have a hard time setting the agenda through the central media empires.
They just can't track all of us. But if we all log our thoughts, share our links and
let technology filter the common thoughts to the top it would be feasible for
centralized media to follow us and reverse the system.