Imagine a world where politics are about policy. Voters would struggle to become informed and abstain from voting on issues about which they’re ignorant. Decisions would be based on subtle cost-benefit analysis, and leaders would feel free to change their minds without being branded a “flip-flopper.”In this world, coming from a small town is an asset, and not putting your hand over your heart is a gaping liability.The real world’s politics aren’t about policy.Perhaps, in the unexamined subconscious of the average voter, the dog show of politics is really a thinly veiled argument over which groups should have status in society. Democracy answers the question, “Whom should we respect?”It doesn’t actually affect my grandmother if the Ten Commandments are displayed in the courthouses, but she is filled with righteous anger when they are removed because “this is a Christian nation.” As far as the Constitution is concerned, she’s completely wrong, but this is a place where Christians can feel at home and those of other religions, or a lack thereof, are shunned.On the flip side, I don’t think it really matters if science teachers mention intelligent design. A 400-word essay (or five-minute YouTube video) on falsifiability makes ID seem like the kind of institutionalized BS en vogue teenagers shun in droves. Perhaps the average atheist fights to maintain the purity of science in the classroom to bolster the status of scientists.Another status-marker is telling others what to do. Think of nonsmokers telling smokers where they can light up or teetotalers calling for blue laws or prohibition.In economics, think of those who prevent poor workers from taking jobs for which they’re not paid the legally required “minimum wage.”Most of us like to pretend we’re free speech fundamentalists who believe everyone has a right to talk. It makes us sound modern, pluralistic and confident in our beliefs, but I’m skeptical of such claims. Most cried foul when the Supreme Court recently upheld the rights of those in corporations to engage in free speech. Most debates on the ruling skipped the morality of censorship and jumped right to the status of corporations.When I debated the topic with fellow columnist Mark Macmurdo, he pointed out “the term ‘nonprofit’ sounds endearing, but is actually misleading. The Citizens United folks aren’t collecting donations for Haiti, they’re producing films.”In other words, free speech is for the good, virtuous and respectable columnists at The Daily Reveille, not the low-status documentary-making partisans who organized themselves as a nonprofit corporation.I’m not above such discourse myself. This entire column could be interpreted as an attempt to boost the status of those making substantive arguments.Status wrangling isn’t inherently harmful. Status plays a role in the human mating dance, so we can’t expect it to simply disappear.But we can and should be skeptical of those who piggyback conclusions with status. “Support the troops” isn’t an argument about the Iraq war — it’s an empty-headed command that says nothing about the merits of continuing a particular policy.One final moral: Don’t use the state to boost your status. In the same way we sneer at the loser who has to lie to boost his status, we shouldn’t respect those who have to use state force to prove their worth to the rest of us.Doing so is low-status.Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old economics major from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dmorgan.– – – -Contact Daniel Morgan at [email protected]