In general, politics is a depressing topic for me. Maybe it's because after six and a half years of blogging against socialism and big government only to see more of both, all I can do is repeat myself.

A big Ugh! to that. What could be more ineffective than telling my readers what I think when they already know what I think? Yet if I sit by and watch as the country slides into socialism (it's more of an avalanche than a gradual slide), I feel as if I am not "doing my job." What job is that? To engage in an ideological debate I have already had? With whom? My readers? No; the people who come here are generally not my ideological opponents, so I am not debating them. Besides, as I have said countless times, my purpose in blogging is not to debate people so much as it is to say what I think. I have done that, and I will continue to do it, but there's something about "chiming in" when I have nothing new to add of ideological value which strikes me as a bit hollow, and it would be dishonest of me not to acknowledge it.

This is not to say that there isn't a raging national, ideological debate going on right now between capitalism and socialism, because there is. Victor Davis Hanson puts it well:

We are still in a great public debate between capitalism and socialism, and individual freedom versus statism -- odd since hundreds of millions worldwide have escaped poverty the last 30 years due to the spread of Western-inspired free markets.

Many choose sides in the debate based on their own predicaments. Sometimes the more independent and secure who have thrived under capitalism promote it, the more dependent who have not detest it.

At other times the realist mind is opposed to the idealist. And we can also envision the split as an age-old dichotomy between the tragic view and the therapeutic: either man is born pretty awful and must toughen himself through denial of the appetites, or he is by nature wonderful but corrupted and hurt through the burdens placed on him by society.

In whatever way we frame the debate, again more than ever Americans are choosing sides.

On the one, are those who believe personal freedom and liberty trump egalitarianism and fraternity.

But please forgive the appearance of a debate here. I am really debating no one except myself.

What I find most worrisome about this debate is that things are reaching the point where it isn't an ideological one. People are not voting on whether they agree with the socialist ideology, but on what they get. The problem is as old as the Greeks, and CATO's Dan Mitchell explores it in Glenn Reynolds' latest Instavision interview. If a large enough group of people gets something which the government takes from a smaller (but more productive) group, they'll tend to vote for what they're getting. It comes down not to ideology, but to pure self interest. As the less productive majority becomes more dependent on the more productive minority, it does not matter which "side" has the better ideological argument. ("I don't know Keynes from Adam, or Adam Smith! I just want the government to pay for my medication, damn it!")

My worry is that because of the way socialism can become entrenched, these people will have the votes -- all ideological debates be damned.

The left loves this, of course.

But that's why I love Climategate. It reminds people that there is another ideological debate (albeit in scientific drag) which is not all about taking from one group of people and giving it to another, but which posits simply taking something from everybody, and giving to no one at all, save a bunch of whiny environmentalists and their warm-mongering allies in the scientific consensus community. Ordinary people -- including many non-ideological types who ask "what do I get?" -- are told that they will have to do with less, and pay higher prices. That they will have to have more and more regulations touching virtually every aspect of their lives (ultimately to include restrictions on travel, diet, pets, and even how many children are allowed). And in return for all of this, the average temperature might -- with stress on might -- go down a tenth of a degree in the future after most of them are dead.

Meanwhile, they still freeze in the winter and watch as the snow continues to fall. As a way to buy votes, AGW is thus a very hard sell for the left, and Climategate has exposed the sellers as the con artists and cheap swindlers they are.

Even if you're a tired anti-statist blogger like me, what's not to love about that?

MORE: Speaking of love, I am in love with this chart, which shows how they homogenized the decline:

Down is up! Hear hear!

And even the Russians are pissed!

I love the irony.