A reversal of parties

There has been an obvious trend of politicians at least paying lip service to the idea of pushing policies, not partisanship, but has anyone noticed a virtual shift of ideological positions from the two parties?

Consider the issue of the legalization of marijuana. Many local governments legislate to decriminalize it, but the official federal law is that there is no legitimate medical use for marijuana. The United States federal government actually holds a patent for medical marijuana, but they don't let that contradiction get in the way of any sane policy. The so-called Republican position is to crack down on marijuana, but this directly clashes with what should be a deeper ideological philosophy, states' rights.

Rarely do governments legislate for more freedom, but the state of California effectively decriminalized marijuana with California Proposition 215 and California Senate Bill 420. In spite of this, the federal government still carries on Nixon's poisonous legacy of raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Charlie Lynch was found guilty on all counts in August, and is scheduled to be sentenced next week. If this is appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court, Scalia would need to employ the most convoluted and intellectually dishonest legal reasoning to confuse himself enough to justify his flagrant inconsistency. On the other side of it, Democratic philosophy holds that big government is a cure for social ills like tobacco consumption, and yet the left advocates for the legalization of marijuana. How is it desirable to socially engineer people away from tobacco, but alright to let them use marijuana? The inconsistency from the Democrats is just as mind-boggling as the inconsistency from the Republicans.

Now we have left-wingers who preach the virtues of socialism as a political ideal, and they hate those capitalist corporations, but when those corporations fail, they want to throw taxpayer money at them to prop them up! At least the Republicans in Congress had the sense enough to oppose the bailouts yesterday, but there's still a troublesomely high amount of support for the bailouts from the conservative buzz, on the grounds that some financial institutions are too big to fail, or that even though big government caused the problems, big government is needed to fix it. Of course, it's no surprise that there would be plenty of conservative support for the bailouts. Why would a party that's so irrational regarding social freedom and religiosity take any such rational approach to free markets? The Republicans have no philosophy at all, just a mishmash of horrible ideas.

Both of the parties are aquaria of cognitive dissonance.