PMB has observed that exchanges of political ideology often play out like a contortion of the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis paradigm. A better way of putting it: political ideology is transmitted between opponents in the manner of a tennis match with no enforceable boundaries.
Take, for example, a political conservative who supports the right of corporations to offer unpaid internships:
A conservative in the first instance espouses an ideology that supports personal responsibility and industriousness, and holds that these (and hard work) are justly rewarded in an economy of unregulated or un-refereed actors (the serve is in).
A liberal's ideological retort is that unregulated commerce produces over-powerful conglomerates (corporations) that can leverage accumulated power and capital over and against individuals, producing conditions for exploitation (the return is in, but just on the line).
Our conservative volleys back with the assertion that such corporations are the ultimate manifestation of the fruits of individual responsibility, industriousness, and the conditions of unregulation that enable just reward for these pursuits (the volley is out of bounds, but the actors play on).
Our liberal returns with the assertion that, on the contrary, such corporations are the paradigm of unfettered greed and exploitation, grown under the untenable conditions of unregulation (the return is further out of bounds on the other side, but the actors play on).
Our conservative arrives at the ideological position that corporations and their rights and liberties must be supported at all costs against a liberal opposition that hates corporations (the return is up in the stands somewhere by the pressbox, but the actors miraculously play on).
Our liberal arrives at the ideological position that the rights of individuals must be protected at all costs from ruthless corporations, and from a conservative opposition that cares nothing for exploited individuals...
And the actors play on endlessly, smashing the ball carelessly and recklessly in the general direction of their opponent without any regard for the boundaries of the court itself.
What we end up with is a conservative whose underlying ideological principles of just market rewards for the hard work of industrious individuals has become subordinated to a crude and unthinking pro-business ideology, derived oppositionally from a boundless struggle with a liberal opponent. This conservative has undermined the foundational principles of his conservative identity by taking an ideological position against the right of an industrious individual to be compensated for labor in a free market.
And what of our liberal? By the time he gets through with the conservative, he's arguing for the very types of individualisms that constitute the core of his opponent's conservative thought.
This is how American politics can have swaths of Tea Party activists who hate elitist New-England liberals but love the Founding Fathers (a bunch of elitist New-England liberals). This is how we can have swaths of free-market capitalist investment bankers making arguments for government bailouts of failed private firms. This is how a constitutional right to bear arms can turn into a constitutional justification for a psychotic obsession with guns themselves.
A strange world, this.
