Another topic that I don't really touch on, but I feel like it's important to state to take my ideas into perspective. It's generally towards politics, economics, and social ideas but really, it can apply over anything.

I'm talking about being pragmatic vs. being moralistic. And if you haven't noticed the title by now, clearly I favor the former.

Now I am not niilistic or amoral or cynical in any way, but I sinply believe that practicality supersedes morals in any way. Morals help us establish ideas when we need them. Sexism is wrong. Racism is wrong. Homophobia is wrong. But when it comes to execution, I believe it's much better to be practical than be moralistic, and there are plenty of historical examples where that is the case (how Lincoln acted during the American Civil War, Frederick the Great and much later on Bismarck, and even back in ancient times with the ruthless Qin and Sun Tzu's strategies).

Of course, pragmatism doesn't ensure success or whether other people view you positively. But then again, I argue that pragmatism generally tries to avoid negative perspective as well. After all, people forget the sentence after Machiavelli's "far safer to be feared than loved", which is "Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred". So yes, The Prince justifies pragmatism, not how to be a no-approval and hated leader. (If you want to actually be the latter, the Book of Lord Shang is a better book.)

I may be rambling a bit too much, though.

I always feel the issue with people debating about politics or social and economic issues is that it's tied too much with morality when it shouldn't be. Politics is the process of where decisions are made: who gets what, where, when, and how, in short. Morals should not play the main role here. Sociology is the study of human society in general. Economics is the study of production and transfer of wealth and dealing with scarcity. Morals should not play a major role in any of these.

Americans and some Europeans are too concerned with connecting laws to morality. If something is illegal it must be because it is immoral, and so our laws reflect what is right or wrong. I believe that should not be the case. Law is simple public policy and rules, and does not need to be inherently enforced. For example, possessing and growing marijuana is illegal in Amsterdam...but they use policies of non-enforcement to actually control whatever negative effects it would have, because they realized it was far too impractical to enforce it anyways. And it worked. The city government had better approval ratings, citizens complained less, and there were no significant negative effects.

Compare that to our War on Drugs, which tried far too hard to crack down on illegal drug trade. The result was that there was a massive spike in incarceration, destabilization in Latin America, and negatively affected millions of both Latin Americans and Americans themselves. This really isn't a left or right wing issue; instead of treating the whole thing as a moral issue we should be looking for more practical approaches, like maybe just helping drug offenders, or at least go more for rehabilitation, not more punishment.

I can't really blame American sentiment, but I don't believe it's going the right way. Too many of us believe that breaking the law is "immoral", and if we're allowing exceptions or non-enforcement it is outright hypocrisy. We're letting criminals go unpunished, after all. But we don't consider what happens next. This is a strong case where being practical is far better than being moral.

And then we try too much to perceive what we think is "right". How many people have you heard say "We should have free healthcare because healthcare is a human right"? Replace that with "minimum wage", "free education", "abortion", "religion", "guns", "have sex"...the list goes on. Yet I don't see that many go beyond solid evidence besides "we don't have it, and it's a right and it's the right thing to do!" Which basically proves nothing.

While during this election I have initially gone for Sanders before switching to Trump, I have certain disapprovals for both strictly because they play too much on morals, not practicality. Sanders talks too much about how "we should do this because it's right". It sounds good, but there is hardly any plan behind it, and whatever plan he does have usually just suggests he is economically incompetent. At the same time, Trump plays too much on serving justice rather than actual practicality at times; a wall may actually end some Mexican cartels, but create more professional ways to go past it. It will always happen. Same thing goes for immigration, which won't reduce much of anything, just throw it to another angle and not bothering to reduce the harm. I approve more of his "hammer to crush a gnat" mindset for dealing with ISIS, but he still has several ideas which I am against. (I'm not willing to go on the "screw the U.S." bus, ever.)

Now that I have said all that I do admit that I may have a bias due to a slight leaning onto the conservative end (and being raised by an Asian family, which also means potentially different philosophies ). I don't want to hear promises, I want to hear solid plans. If you want to tell me how you're going to give everything free crap, give me good evidence why (that being said, I don't want the government to be giving free crap anyways, but set regulations so each person gets somewhat fair opportunities).

And don't plaster morals onto things that don't concern it.