Politics, what an ugly game: name-calling, back-biting, vilification, half-truths, slander, word-spinning, fanaticism, echo chambers…
And those are the idealists!
The pragmatists are generally more polite, but watch them closely and you'll often find amoral deal-making, cozying up to lobbyists, rampant vote buying, ignoring the Constitution, unjustified pork-barrel projects, and rigging the system to get reelected.
Ugly indeed –but rather fun for those of us who enjoy intellectual combat. Think of the joys of football or cage fighting and transfer the action to the mouth and keyboard.
However, unlike football and cage fighting, you are in the arena whether you want to be or not. Even if you choose not to vote, you still pay for the wars, corporate subsidies, special privileges, inefficient welfare systems, and bloated bureaucracies. You still have to live with pollution, traffic jams, neighborhoods turned into war zones, and general high crime rates.
Do politics or politics will be done to you.
Fortunately, it is possible to play nice, and in the process we can find many creative solutions to the world’s biggest problems. It’s simply a matter of going from either/or to both/and. Ditch the talking points and leave the echo chamber, and you can find:
- Good business practices – from utopian socialists.
- Ways to reduce profits and increase wages – from Adam Smith.
- Effective environmental ideas – in Forbes Magazine.
- Ways to restore conservative community values – in Mother Jones.
- A case for repealing many victimless crime laws – in the Old Testament.
- Powerful ways to increase economic equality – in conspiracy literature.
- Effective welfare system ideas – in science fiction and the Old Testament.
Welcome to the world of Holistic Politics, where we cross lines, invade echo chambers, relish irony and unearth forgotten solutions to many of the world’s problems. Come, learn how to think in multiple dimensions, and thereby advance the causes of liberty, equality, morality and nature…at the same time.
Freedom vs. Equality
Most democracies divide into parties of the Left and Right, each advancing a set of values and deprecating the values the other side. In between, we have moderates who help provide a mix of each, but such compromises are often ugly and inefficient. Opportunities are overlooked.
The Left and Right are so divided that they cannot even agree on what they are fighting over! According to the Left, the Left-Right spectrum is:
But the Right says its:
Both spectra are partially correct, and partially wrong. We could be charitable and make a spectrum that features the positive goals of each:
While preferable to the first two spectra, this positive view overlooks history. Many extreme Left governments delivered big government without much equality: think Soviet Russia. Meanwhile the Right government of George W. Bush has delivered a widening wealth gap and bigger government.
We get a better picture by looking in two dimensions:
The Left-Right spectrum runs diagonally, from big government egalitarian to smaller government aristocratic. In the middle, we have the worst of both worlds: bigger government and more inequality – so much for “kinder, gentler conservatism.”
The Upper-Left is overlooked, ill-served by either major party. Press the red buttons on the sidebar and you will find mini books on how to fill in the gap. Therein, you will discover:
Cut the subsidies for the rich, and we might not need government provided welfare. But in case we still do, I also have a series of articles on the economics of effective welfare.
Nature vs. Prosperity
In these days of growing population and fixed-size planet, the grand debate has shifted to preserving nature vs. prosperity.
This is well and good up to a point. Environmental preservation does have a price, and many forms of consumption do hurt the environment. But go too far in either direction and self-contradiction results: a pristine environment is a form of wealth! Once we get past the crisis stage, further improvement to the environment is a luxury. An anti-luxury mentality is thus self-defeating. Many environmentalists try to get around this paradox by magnifying environmental threats in order to stay in crisis mode. They cry Wolf! As a result, many non-environmentalists discount legitimate concerns. Not good.
To get to the next level of environmentalism, we need to look in two dimensions.
Excellence in environmental preservation requires that we either brainwash half the population into being nature worshippers, or we look for solutions in the upper left quadrant, at ways to boost prosperity while better preserving nature. The green buttons on the sidebar provide the latter options. For example, we can fight global warming by simplifying the tax code.
Liberty vs. Morality
Many in the Religious Right call for harsh laws for immoral behavior. On the other side, liberals call for government endorsement of acts contrary to Biblical Law and many Objectivists call for the outright renunciation of religion as the key to liberty.
The blue buttons point to ebooks resolving this conflict. Herein, you will learn:
- Some surprisingly libertarian components of Old Testament Law.
- Why imposing Christian standards of morality on the entire populace is an inherent contradiction.
- Why democratically elected government can never be a force for moral excellence.
- And more.
Warning: the books relating Christianity and government are solidly based on the Bible, more so than many popular Christian doctrines. This means heavy reading and possibly upsetting revelations.
Freedom vs. Libertarianism
If you love freedom but find libertarianism to be too extreme and/or simplistic, you have come to the right place. Here you will find a much more palatable freedom vision, more practical and more utopian than standard brands of libertarianism.
Granted, when I started this site, I was a libertarian, an active member of the Libertarian Party, and was trying to craft a more politically acceptable version of libertarianism. But as I researched and wrote the materials on this site, I found myself departing more and more from core libertarian dogmas:
- The very idea of Holistic Politics is in direct defiance of Murray Rothbard’s doctrine that all values should be subservient to cutting government.
- Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest is incompatible with a free society.
- Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and the other Austrian school praxeologists derive way too much from crude approximations of human nature.
- Murray Rothbard’s derivation of no-compromise anarchism is seriously flawed.
- Most schools of libertarianism start with an incomplete set of natural rights.
- Libertarianism does not maximize freedom; it ignores important aspects of freedom. The freedom vision on this site results in more freedom even though it allows for compromise.
These are hard lessons, I know. It took me decades to learn them all. Rand and Rothbard wrote powerful prose, siren songs for those who inherently love liberty. I was beguiled myself for many years, but my love of debate kept me out of the echo chambers, and I slowly learned from my mistakes.
The good news: sound ideas are an easier political sell than cultish rationalizations. The burden of proof is on those who want change. Accept the burden and persuasion becomes possible.
And as a bonus, I have ideas for a new political party to replace the Libertarian Party. It’s long past time for the forces of freedom to win a few.
Putting it all Together
The rainbow buttons point to “books” with import to all: liberals, conservatives, libertarians and environmentalists. We have unifying themes:
Then we have two books on how to get there. Dreams are fun, but it’s more fun to put them into practice.
Next: What's New
In this Series:
Copyright 2003-2009, Carl S. Milsted, Jr. All rights reserved.
Spread the Word
America dissolved the two tier social structure that still exists in the rest of our world. It was the major deterrent to economic progress in the world, because it shut off adventure by the many ruled by the few. The two tier, elite and powerful few ruling the weak many in the social herd, meant no one should stand above their fellows in each tier. No one could safely challenge the accepted and established way things operated. There was no attraction to do so, no pulling a single individual forward into uncharted waters, only the fear of being punished. America, without an elite and powerful few ruling the herd, experienced what it was like for free men and women to think out of the social bubble and act out of the box, become pebble-droppers and try to fly in so many areas of interest, that progress was the unavoidable result. This is what the 19th century libertarian Democrats fought to retain for America that the 20th century Democrats are trying to destroy. This is what the libertarians, objectivists, Ayn Rand supporters and most knowledgeable conservatives are trying to retain today against a new two tier society where an elite and powerful few have gained political power and are exercising it now. Claysamerica.com shows these roots for those interested in easy learning.
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