Left or right? How about up and down?

I just wanted to highlight this wonderful article from Arianna Huffington (by way of Lynne Kiesling over at Knowledge Problem). That it comes from the co-founder of the Huffington post, I think, makes it that much a stronger point. The old left-right paradigm is just that: old. Ancient, even. The French National Assembly from which it was derived contained political ideologies which simply don't exist in the mainstream anymore (such as absolutist monarchism); it's about as irrelevant to modern politics as Watt's steam engine is to mechanical engineering today. While the National Assembly (as well as other contemporary representative bodies) certainly had a huge influence on modern democratic politics, that influence has been joined by two centuries of experience with representative republics. Perhaps even in its own day it was just a convenient short-hand, rather than serious political analysis.

Regardless, the age argument is only one small part of the main point: The left-right paradigm doesn't tell you much about modern American politics. Arianna does a wonderful job demonstrating this in a few short sentences:

I won't try to one-up her here.

But probably the most important part of that article is the tone. Ms. Huffington is extending the sort of courtesy that is very rare in political journalism today. While at least a bit of it is no doubt professional in nature, I also trust that Arianna actually cares enough to want to be affable and polite. This is the sort of spirit our country needs more: a spirit that acknowledges the basic humanity of the opposition. One that is willing to engage in constructive debate instead of destructive mud-slinging and fact-spinning. I'll admit to not reading that much of the Huffington Post, but perhaps I've been too influenced by those who do, coming up with the thought that it was another political rag with little to offer by division and choir preaching.

So, I'll end with an ode to man whose rhetoric put us all into a pleasant sleep filled with candy dreams of capitalism and free markets: Ronald Reagan. Never liked most of his politics, but man could he speak.

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'

We libertarians, liberals, and (certain sorts of) conservatives may think progressives are those who would spread bounties and benefits at the expense of liberty, but that isn't the reality. That's more of the tribal nonsense that leads to simplified models like the left-right political scale. After all, isn't the main difference between social liberals (and their allies, the social democrats -- in America both falling under the 'progressive' heading) and classical liberals (and their libertarian and conservative allies) a disagreement over the meaning of liberty? There's a good discussion there! Perhaps we should be having it instead of pretending our opposites are totalitarians in disguise, who obviously lack our love of freedom.

Forget left and right; remember, our differences are ideological, not linear. Embrace the freedom we all love so much. And maybe embrace each other a bit more, too. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Global inequality HAS decreased

Looks like somebody was nice enough to do the leg work on this one.

Global poverty has, in fact, decreased. Does this mean that, whenever somebody harps on the income gap in the US, we can say they don't care about poor people in the Third World?

How does global poverty look?

One thing you'll hear a lot in politics today (and really any time since Reagan) is that 'the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer'. Completely ignoring the truth of the statement (it'd be surprisingly difficult to find a correct answer here; it's a statistical mess), one thing I've noticed is that it's almost always spoken while referring to a single nation, or on those rare occasions where it isn't it's usually about some grouping of OECD countries. But we don't have autarchic nation-state economies anymore, in fact we haven't for a century or more. We have in an already globalized world, one that's becoming increasingly more so every day.

So, what are the statistics like for the world as a whole? With China industrializing, finally, I'm sure any reading of global poverty would show massive atrophy just from that, but China isn't the only fast developing country. Certain countries in Africa have been posting strong real growth for a decade or more. South America, with certain countries acting as exceptions, has been pulling itself out of poverty for decades. Chile is a step short from being a normal, medium income country not all that different from Poland or the Baltic Republics. All over the word globalization is drastically changing the lives of billions of people.

So, how does global poverty look today versus thirty years ago? I've made some cursory searches but it's surprisingly difficult to find reliable data on the matter.

An article on the 'regulation' fiasco

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=327193177201817

I like this article for one major reason, and that's this line:

Regulation is of course not always bad, and it would be hard to find anyone of any party who says that it is.

Regulation, as in the act of using the threat of government force to stop people from doing something in the economic sphere, isn't an inherently good or bad thing. Like guns, screwdrivers, and axes, regulation is a tool whose usefulness is determined more by the way it's employed than anything intrinsic to the act. Only the most hard-core anarcho-capitalist, for instance, is against any kind of environmental regulation, but you'll find a surprising number of rightist Republicans and other free market types aren't against using regulation to stop the dumping of harmful chemicals into our nation's rivers or the clear-cutting of our valuable forests.

The problem with regulation is when it is used by people who believe it is inherently good, and that wide-spread and totally encompassing regulation is somehow good for the economy. The lesson we should have learned in the 1970's, and the reason Reagan was able to get elected and do everything he did, was that the hand of government can very well lie too heavily on the private sector. After the 'de-regulation' of the 1980's we experienced one of the longest periods of economic creativity ever. While certain regulations thrown to the way-side in that period contributed to the current crisis, asking regulators to be pre-scient to the degree necessary to predict an economic bubble decades in the future is asking a bit too much. The current crisis isn't a condemnation of all de-regulation, nor is it a sign that government should have nothing to do with regulating the economy (as the story in the article above would suggest), it's a sign that the world is a lot more complicated than we give it credit for.

Like all things in life, we need to be able to find that razor-thin balance where regulation is used to ensure safe working conditions and an environmentally sound economy while still allowing business leaders the flexibility they need to succeed in the increasingly competative global economy. No matter how much Nostalgiaconomists like Paul Krugman would like to return to the halycon days of the 1950's with a highest marginal tax rate of 90% and more government regulation and bureaucracy than you can shake a stick at, that window has closed. Not only has Europe long ago gotten back on its feet after the second World War, but Asia has finally found grounding and remade itself into both a trading partner and rival for the West. We can't afford to return to the 'safe' cocoon of pseudo-syndicalism we enjoyed in the post-war years. The way forward isn't to look backwards.

A very good article on recent tax proposals, from CNN

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/04/news/economy/colvin_rich.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009050504

This part I find especially important to pay attention to:

The flaw in that definition of rich is that plenty of families making $250,000 a year don't feel rich. They probably see themselves as upper middle class, especially if they live in blue-state coastal cities and suburbs. An income of $250,000 is a lot richer in Abilene, Texas, than in New York's Nassau County, where it takes $430,000 to enjoy a similar quality of life, according to bankrate.com. So let's call them the "working rich."

One thing many people never take into account when getting whipped up into a populist fervor about the 'wealthy' who fit into the $250,000+ tax bracket is the cost of living for the people making this money. Yes, they may live in a mansion by comparison to their lower earning fellows, but they pay out the nose to keep up on their mortgage for that mansion. Yes, they may have a complex climate control system in their house, but that climate control system shows up on their electrical bills every month. Their quality of life, overall, may really be better than the economically unfortunate, but that isn't a justification to tax them more. Changes in their taxation rate may have the exact same bankrupting effect it would have on someone pulling in $42,000 a year (the national mean) because, even though they make much more, the bills they pay are usually proportionately more.

That isn't to say they should pay no taxes at all or anything like that, they ought to pay their fair share just like anybody else, but we should remind ourselves that we haven't walked a mile in their shoes (or sat at their desk sometime before April 15th) before we use their wealth as an excuse to hate them.

A Mission Statement for the Dose of Reality.

Now that I've got the central idea out there, I'll describe what I hope to do with this blog.

As you can see from the first post, this blog is meant to be and will be exclusively political. The manifesto I just put up describes, in short, the basis of my political outlook and the point of view from which all other postings will be made. In a world dominated by the Democrat-Republican dichotomy and their attendant political machines, it's sometimes hard to tease the truth out of what's going on around us. Each side has entire media networks and research organizations dedicated to making them seem right and correct to the American people. The unfortunate victim of this race to political power is clarity. It becomes trivially easy to simply talk past each other rather than discuss things based on their merits when the two sides of a debate are exposed to two entirely different sets of information.

This needs to be corrected.

I will admit that I'm not free of bias. Some would call me a libertarian (although I'll maintain to my death bed that the right term is republican liberal) but I do go out of my way to try and get the facts and data behind me, most of the time. It helps that I don't particularly like most of my 'fellow' libertarians and don't share their extremism or dogmatism. Finally, I've got just enough of a hold on my own ego that I do second guess myself quite often. Using these imperfect tools, I hope to be able to take the happenings in our increasingly complex and distorted political world and present them in a way that is both truthful and open. My sources are not perfect, nor unlimited, so a realistic aim for this blog is only a marginal improvement over the mainstream media, but if I can succeed in removing even a fraction of the bullshit from the things people hear every day I'll consider the whole project accomplished.

Now, I want to be clear that that doesn't mean I'll be using kiddy gloves. There are some things which, due to the data I've been exposed to, I feel are rather definitely right. I'm not going to skirt around touchy issues in an attempt to seem unbiased or moderate. I will not hold back just because something may be controversial.

So, to finish, I hope anyone who stumbles across this blog enjoys it and shares it with their friends and family.

A Republican Liberal Manifesto

Since the initial foundation of the American system of government, there have been two threads of political thought running through nearly everything. They can even be seen today in the modern Democratic and Republican parties. These two traditions go by names that at first will seem familiar, but in fact carry meanings alien to current understanding.

The one is a word practically without set meaning: Liberal. What a liberal is ends up being a question entirely dependent on who you ask. If you ask a pundit like Glenn Beck he'll tell you that a liberal is a pussy-footed, socialist, nanny-stater who has the destruction of everything good about America at heart. If you ask a columnist like Paul Krugman, he'll tell you that a liberal is anyone who cares about the people of America, someone who wants to use government to positively effect the lives of all American citizens (but especially the disadvantaged). For some people it just means the Democrats.

The other word has a rather more definite meaning to most people today: Republican. A Republican, to the modern conception, is anyone registered with or otherwise affiliated with one of the Republican state parties or the Republican national party. Quite simple. Some people will broaden the definition a bit, including anyone who holds 'conservative' views, defined entirely in opposition to 'liberal' ones. But neither of these words is attached to the old definition, to the meaning that I'll be using for each.

Back in the day, when the country was first founded, a liberal was someone whose chief political aim was the reduction of the size and scope of the state to the smallest level necessary for the proper running of the country and the maximization of personal liberty. The people who drafted the Constitution did so with explicitly liberal intentions: They wanted to create a government which was entirely restrained from acting unless a series of difficult hurdles was overcome. They believed this was necessary because otherwise the government would begin infringing on people's liberties. Today we'd call some of them libertarians, some conservatives.

Likewise, a republican was a person broadly dedicated to something called 'non-domination' in society. To a republican, no one man should have great power over another. Equality of authority is a definitively republican ideal. This sort of egalitarianism can (somewhat ironically) be found everywhere in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It's said he was brought up being told by his mother that, though he was wealthier than many others, he was fundamentally no better than any others. This sentiment was borne out in his greatest work: the Declaration of Independence, when he states that, "All Men are Created Equal". Mostly we'd call them progressives or liberals today.

Today you can see this ideological conflict within and between the two major political parties. Right now, the Democrats are dominated by a 'progressive' sort of republicanism, always quick to come to the defense of the common man against the rich fat cats on Wall Street and the major corporations throughout the country. Likewise, until recently the Republicans were run by a degenerate sort of liberal, leading to the deregulation and tax cutting craze they've been on for thirty years. The two parties have, for the most part, been treading one way or another between liberalism and republicanism since their respective creations. However, it hasn't always been so clear cut which party was the liberal party and which was the republican party. At the beginning of the 20th century, we had a series of progressive republican presidents from both parties: First Teddy Roosevelt of the Republicans, then Woodrow Wilson from the Democrats, Herbert Hoover from the Republicans, Franklin Roosevelt from the Democrats.

The real story of the two parties is an increasing ideological separation. Whereas in the past you might have been just as likely to find a liberal amongst Democrats as you would amongst Republicans, nowadays the two parties are starting to contrast more and more strongly. This has to do with the use of the party machines as ideological platforms by a few of the more famous modern presidents, namely Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, but also several others over the past seven decades. As the conflicts have become more and more bitter, sometimes it feels as if the only thing keeping the country together is an almost instinctual tendency to moderation amongst the actual American voters. We dislike and distrust any one person trying to push us too far in any one direction. Extremism in America is a dead ticket, politically.

But it wasn't always like this. Once, in the early days of the Republic, there was no contest between liberals and republicans. The Democratic Republican party of Thomas Jefferson saw no contradiction in using the methods of liberalism to achieve the aims of republicans. Abraham Lincoln is also a prime example of these two ideologies being seamlessly joined in one man. What these two presidents were, and what many others like them believed, was in something called republican liberalism, and that's what this manifesto is about.

Republican liberalism is a political ideology which looks to two ideals: Liberty and Equality. In a republican liberal framework, the best way of achieving one is to ensure the other, whereas today we find many on all sides of the political spectrum ready to sacrifice one to heighten the other. A republican liberal politician would fight to avoid granting special favors or privileges, such as the catering to special interests which dominates Washington politics these days. A republican liberal is just as opposed to the government support of large corporations which abuse and under-pay their workers as he is to government intervention in order to stifle industrial creativity. Most importantly, a republican liberal believes in the ability, right, and duty of each individual to maintain their own life and well-being, whether that be done on a personal basis or in collusion with others in a voluntary collectivity.

The aim of republican liberalism is unity where now there is now fragmentation. It seeks a balance between freedom in one's property and the aim of equality of opportunity. Imagine a world where the state stays out of people's lives except when they want and need it there. A world where the long-term pilfering of the livelihood of every American through inflation and deficit spending is non-existent but also where social programs don't find themselves eternally under funded. In so many words, republican liberalism is about have a just, well run government that does not use the various classes, sub-cultures, and sub-groups in society as pawns in electoral games.

It's hard to imagine anyone but the most devoted anarchist believing no government at all to be necessary.. The debate, in reality, is to what extent is government necessary? Do we want it removing all risk from our lives? Do we want it mediating every exchange of value we engage in? Are these things even possible? To most people, the answer to these questions is obvious: Of course not. But the people who offer an alternative to these nanny state measures often don't provide quality statesmen, or even very good bureaucrats. No matter who has been in charge, the public debt has grown enormously. Now that the Republicans have had 8 years to spend outrageous amounts of our money, the Democrats are relishing their chance at a turn. The principles of republican liberty offer a way out.

Tomorrow may contain a better world, but only if we're willing to build it.