Fair(ly different) and Balanc(ing on the edge)

So if you read my links on the left you will see a link for uncommon knowledge over there.  I will say from the onset that National Review Online and Uncommon Knowledge are conservative news sources.  I like listening to Uncommon Knowledge because they usually have some really smart conservative people on the show.  I feel this is a good balance to the more common Keynesian economists on the more mainstream news.  However when it comes to reporting you have to look at all of the news in that light.  However what is interesting is the interviews with Roger Ailes (Yes, of Fox News).  The links are here: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), yes there are 5 - 8 minute sections.

This interview is very slanted to conservative views, you can tell the moderator/interviewer is very conservative.  He is usually well informed and insightful however in this case I don't think he is doing a good job for reference.  What is most interesting to me is something that came up when I visited Texas recently, how different others view points are, and how much they believe it.

This has gotten me to thinking (in addition to the psychology literature I have been reading recently) do maybe all people have very similar views and the projection of them is warped by upbringing and nurture that we just drift in different ways?  I mean all people (in general) don't want others to suffer needlessly.  All people would like clean water to drink.  All people care that others are generally comfortable to an extent.  (I mean I this there is a distribution on all of these because some people are just more 'evil' than others but the variance is smaller.)  Could we all just be focused on different aspects.

For instance, housing crisis:  I don't want people out on the street, however I feel it is better to let Austrian economics rule and let the market return to correct level (price wise) because it will do the most good for the country.  This will make housing more affordable, clear back inventory, get non-junk bonds in the market, etc.  However someone else might say they support strong government intervention to support the unnaturally high price levels because then people have an incentive to pay, homelessness and vacant housing leads to crime and problems, and eventually inflation will catch up and the housing will return to an affordable level.

So what is different here?  Actually not that much behind the scenes.  We both want affordable housing, we both want people to own houses if they like, we both want better lives for the general public but our 'political' viewpoints are very different.  Mine would be considered Austrian and the other would be considered Keynesian.  I wonder if this is how politics really is.  Same problem, same basic values, but nurture causes us to slightly favor one thing which causes us to listen to people who capitalize on that one thing.  This in turn causes a divide between people which create partisan politics.  But at the core aren't we focused on the same goal?

I was thinking about all of this because Roger Ailes said a couple of things that got me thinking that maybe it isn't a delusion that Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, etc. are subject to but just a viewpoint.  Some trivial thing in our past makes our implementation and leanings slightly different.  Perhaps we could get more done if we acknowledged that at the core we want to solve issues and in general want the same long term goal, then the short term implementation detail can stop seeming like huge mountains.

I will say (as an aside) I know where my freedom / personal responsibility mindset comes from, my parents were very effort oriented parents.  As long as I tried my hardest they were proud.  If I did something wrong I had to admit my guilt and accept the consequences (you can see how this falls into the housing crisis and the more general Austrian viewpoint :-) ).