Obama Self-Reliance Tour Kicks Into Action

Bill O'Reilly's July 16th Talking Points Memo

Let us begin this discussion with the supposition Mr. O'Reilly makes concerning the differences of Conservatives and Liberals. "Historically, conservatives have preached self-reliance and liberals have espoused government programs to level the playing field." I take a different approach to this difference. First, I find little use for the word "historically" when talking about liberals and conservatives (or Democrats and Republicans if you prefer). The parties of the United States have fluctuated much during the history of our nation. To suggest that Lincoln would be a Republican in the George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan sense of the word is fairly outrageous. In my mind, the parties made a reversal in ideology around the time of Woodrow Wilson. So when I use the term "historically", I will be referring to the recent past (no more than 100 years ago). Secondly, I think self-reliance is a mantra of both parties. The only caveat I would place on that is that the Democratic party tends to support taking care of those who can't take care of themselves more than the Republican party. Where my differentiation comes into play emphasizes the means to which people achieve their self-reliance, or more to the level at which they achieve it. The Republican party tends to favor non-intervention. People are born and they take matters into their hands and it's a survival of the fittest mentality, which, more often than not, turns into survival of the richest. The Democratic party, however, tends to favor "leveling the playing field" as Mr. O'Reilly puts it. Not leveling the playing field in terms of a socialist idea that everyone should have the same wealth, but rather a leveling of the playing field at the starting line. I look at it this way: some people are born wealthy, some people are born poor, some people live in inner city environments, some people live in the suburbs. Those born wealthy are basically born with a head-start in life. They get the best education, they have connections from their parents, they are expected to reach a certain spot in life and don't have to work very hard to get there. Compare that with the person born in poverty. They may find themselves going to an inner city school which is worn down and has generally poor educational value. They are at the back of the pack from birth. In order to achieve the same success as the wealthy-born person, they have to work ten times as hard and get some lucky breaks in life. Then you have someone born into the middle class. This person will probably get a decent education, though not as top-notch as the wealthy-born person. They will have to work probably three times as hard as the wealthy-born person to achieve the same results. So when Mr. O'Reilly mentions "level[ing] the playing field" with regard to Democrats, I think of that as leveling the starting line, rather than the playing field. Welfare, educational scholarships, and educational spending all go hand-in-hand with that. So the difference in ideology basically is that Democrats want everyone to have the same options in life from the beginning and Republicans want advantaged people to continue to have the advantage, though they certainly wouldn't phrase it like that. They would say something more to the effect of being for fairness (a term often used with regard to their philosophy on taxes, but that's another story). So now you can see where Mr. O'Reilly and myself differ on the self-reliance issue regarding Democrats and Republicans.

Unfortunately, Mr. O'Reilly takes his definition of party lines and self-reliance through the rest of his thought process. His basic assertion is that "[w]e still don't know Barack Obama" because he is taking a Republican value of self-reliance as his own. "Is he sincere?" O'Reilly asks. I'm certain you can see where I am going with this. Since I don't consider self-reliance as owned by the Republican party, I certainly don't see any conflict in Barack Obama supporting the typical party-line of the Democrats and also suggesting that people be more self-reliant. There is no policy in suggesting people be self-reliant. The policy all relates to how people become self-reliant and whether we assist those less fortunate than others to achieve that goal. But, in the black and white world of Mr. O'Reilly, the two are mutually exclusive. Hopefully one day Mr. O'Reilly can understand that the world is a huge shade of grey.

And that's "The CounterPoints Memo."