There is an old Chinese proverb, quoted by various leaders over the centuries, which says ‘It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice’. I have myself often quoted this proverb to family and friends when discussing various political issues and hope to use it for a series of posts over the coming weeks.
The basic point, of course, is that when you are looking for a solution to a particular problem the goal should be to find what works, without worrying about whether the solution matches your own personal political or ideological attitudes.
For example, when looking at domestic economic policy, it would not matter to me if the best solution was unbridled capitalism or hard line socialism, as long as the economy worked and people were able to work. Of course I doubt that either solution would work, instead I suspect it would be some sort of mixed solution. Thus the question becomes do we want some form of regulated capitalism with socialistic elements or do we want some form of modified socialism with capitalist segments.
Similarly when it comes to foregn policy, I am open to anything from hard line isolationism to full blown internationalism that leads us to intervene all over the world. Again, I suspect that the solution will be some mixed system, either a cautious internationalist policy or a open minded isolationist attitude.
I plan to discuss these factors in greater detail in future posts but would welcome initial comemnts both on the basic concept of being open to a wide range of solutions as well as a debate as to how realistic it would be to implement such a system in our increasingly partisan climate