* * Talking politics on Facebook

One of the interesting aspects of social media is the opportunity it provides to re-connect with long-lost friends and acquaintances. Facebook has brought me back in touch with people I knew way back in college, when, as I joke, dinosaurs still roamed Tech’s Drillfield.

One of those individuals is a man who now lives in Pennsylvania. He has baited me into a detailed conversation about politics. It started innocently enough in November and it has gone on irregularly since then, limited mostly by the amount of time either of us is willing to devote on futile attempts to convert each other. I will say that in making these exchanges, I have had a chance to critically examine my own positions and find logical and hopefully compelling ways of justifying and proffering them.

He first wrote, “I guess I wanted you to be aware there's a bunch of Christians who are trying to figure out a way to get beyond the current stand-off in America and gridlock in Congress. It would be nice to find a way to cooperate, but I don't know what that would look like, given the contempt on both sides.”

No fault in that statement!

Then he asked me about the pending Senate bill to imprison US terrorist suspects without due process. It quickly became a point/counterpoint exchange, with him generally taking the conservative bent and me generally the liberal.

He asked, “What's underneath your political energy? My political energy is driven by an underlying ideology (Christian) and my family of origin (not so-much Republican, but strongly conservative).”

Too deep a question for me! I’m just motivated to ensure that everyone has equal access to health, welfare, happiness and prosperity. So I asked him what he thought was the greatest threat to that.

“Big Government.” And, “Some conservatives believe the only fix is for Obama to win a second term so that America will fall apart completely… the ‘falling apart’ being the only ‘truth’ that will convince enough Americans to turn things around from their current left-ward spiral.”

Whether our nation is in a left-ward spiral, a right-ward spiral, or no spiral at all, is, I suppose, in the eyes of the beholder. And how big should Government be? I think it should be big enough to provide the things the people ask of it, which these days is principally defense, social welfare (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and prescription drug programs), infrastructure, pensions, health care, education, foreign aid, and debt payment. I’m sure many of these programs were fought tooth-and-nail at the time they were instituted, as many of them are now. But the irony of signs seen at Tea Party rallies saying things like, “Keep your big government hands off my Social Security,” shouldn’t be lost on any of us.

He is definitely of the opinion that governments traditionally do more harm than free markets. He wrote, “However, free markets do evil. Free markets have limited ability to fix societal evils. I know this. I agree with you. However, historically and currently, more evils come from big governments than free markets.” He thinks our government has too much control over corporations and I think corporations have too much control over our government. He thinks if government had its way, we’d all be impoverished slaves. I think if corporations had their way, they’d eliminate all worker, consumer, and environmental protections and we’d live in a polluted wasteland.

We did find some agreement in that there is way too much waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this is not a political issue and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have fashioned a lasting solution.

On and on it has gone. He deserves the final word in this most astute observation, “You and I are intelligent, high-functioning guys and yet we are at opposite poles on politics. We are well-read and moral people, yet we violently disagree.” That we can have these disagreements is surely one of the most positive things we can say about this great country that both of us love.