One of the greatest lines from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is where he states that we all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This basically means that we should be free to live our lives and pursue our individual path to happiness. It also connotes that the pursuit of one individual’s personal happiness should not infringe on the rights of others (i.e. slavery). Of course slavery is pretty cut and dry, even though it took our country over half of a century to fix that issue, but there are a lot of other pursuits of happiness that are not nearly as cut and dry. What about the husband who needs a subservient wife to make him happy, what about the couple who needs their kids to be taught and taken care of so they can avoid that responsibility in order to be happy, and what about person who doesn’t want to work but wants all their needs fulfilled in order to be happy? How are the people in each of these scenarios going to obtain happiness without hurting or inconveniencing others? The majority of our laws address this very issue. You cannot steal from others in order to make yourself happy because this infringes on the happiness of the individual being robbed. Once again, pretty cut and dry. But what about issues that infringe on the happiness of whichever party doesn’t get their way. Like the businessman who is happy when he makes a lot of money and the environmentalist who is happy when an endangered animal is protected? One or the other can win, but not both. What values do we use to decide which is the greater good? Most will probably say that the businessman is in the wrong because he is trying to make money from destroying the earth or hurting other life. But what if it was the difference between families being able to afford to heat their houses in the wintertime or protecting an endangered animal? Now it is a little tougher. Many of you were still able to make a decision and it was probably governed by your values based off of your political polarization.

These polarized values govern most of our stances. These values define what is good and bad. The Liberal polarization says that protecting the earth is good and hurting it is bad. The conservative polarization says that utilizing the earth’s resources is good and permitting a family to suffer is bad.  It still isn’t very cut and dry. One thing that I have noticed with many of the partisan issues is that the conservative standpoint is trying to stop people from doing bad things and the liberal standpoint is trying to force people to do good things. But of course,  each according to their own value system.

Conservatives feel that many of the bad things that people do hurt others and hinder the happiness of others including themselves. Some examples would include using drugs, being sexually promiscuous, and having abortions. Conservatives feel that people will automatically step up and do the good things if they are not hindered by the bad, like helping the poor and afflicted, serving the community, and helping other countries. Liberals feel that many things called bad by conservatives are simply different people’s pursuit of happiness and that they should not be infringed upon. Liberals feel that many of the bad things are things that we aren’t doing, like protecting the environment, feeding the poor, and providing for the community. They feel that, if left to regular citizens, none of these would be accomplished, so therefore the government needs to take the responsibility of making those good moral choices to help our society. They basically say that we are all too selfish to individually give of ourselves to help others, but as a group we will choose greater good over serving ourselves.

These explanations obviously show that there is a lot of overlap as to what is good and bad on both sides, but a large part of the polarity is the faith in the goodness of ordinary people or the faith in the goodness of the group. The funny thing is that since people surround themselves with like-minded thinkers both sides are correct. Liberals see everyone around them being too selfish to give individually, but are willing to submit that responsibility to the government. Conservatives see everyone around them unselfishly giving to those in need and don’t see the need of putting that responsibility into the hands of the government. One example of this comes from the actress Angelina Jolie who gives her time and millions of her own dollars to helping out children in developing countries. She often complains of how, in comparison to other countries, the United States government does not donate as large of a portion of their money to developing countries as other nations. She never points how much of a walking contradiction she is, because individuals (just like her) and private organizations in the United States give a greater amount and larger percentage of their resources to developing countries than any other country in the world. She is a perfect example of selfless donation to help others and yet she doesn’t believe that anyone else in our country can be as individually selfless as she is. Is she right to some extent? Do we really step up as individuals and take care of our poor and needy in our own country? Are we often too selfish with our money and success in order to share it with our neighbors who are in need?

This is obviously a very complicated issues with an answer that lies somewhere in the middle. Is there still good found in the individual? Can we trust people and non-profit institutions to support the poor and needy? Should we give that responsibility to the government? Or should we do some combination of both?