My Personal Political Philosophy

This hub is being written because a fellow hubber, ryankett, ask some great questions in response to an article adapted from an essay I wrote for a political science class years back which I titled My Political Party.

As a result of his questions I am know going to focus on my personal socio-political views and attempt to explain why I have them. Some of these views are "classic" and not original, but I feel the unique combination of my views will be of interest to people. Or not. Whatever the case, I am doing it because I can.

I base my political view around several points and I want to be clear on where I stand. You are welcome to disagree with me. As a friend once told me "Everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion." As such I organize this hub as follows:

1) Religious View

2) Human Rights & The Role of Government View

3) Fiscal/Economic View

4) Environmental View

5) World Policy/Military View

Each point I will address. Some points affect others and so I may refer back to them. Feel free to comment, ask questions or share your own points in the comments but please keep it civil. You are also welcome to write your own hub and post the link in the comments. I am willing to create links section at the bottom and include your link so long as you do the same for me.

The beauty of civilization is that within it individuals can hold conversations about opposing points of view without fear of bodily harm. As a professor once told me, "No matter how thin the pancake, there are always two sides" (Dr. Paul Larsen, SUU). His meaning is that no matter how close two views may be there is always some point of disagreement and as such we should seek to understand and respect that point of view even if we do not agree with it.

I mention this first because it is a huge factor in my world view. I am Christian. I am saved. I follow Christ as best I can despite my failings. Interestingly enough I am also an evolutionist and a scientist as well. My personal view is that God is a god of science and as such abides by the laws he has created. Really my opinion is that I don't know enough about the universe so I seek to understand more. I don't presume to tell God what he is doing or how he did or does things so basically I am open to learning, understanding and hopefully one day all mysteries will be revealed and such. Until then I think people should still seek for truth and grow from it.

As for other religions and my relation to them. My personal belief is that so long as an individual or group of people are respectful of others and their faith or lack there of then that is fine by me. As for sharing of religion, I am fine by that. As I said, I am open to finding truth and I think all faiths contain truth. I do have an interesting view on Atheism and Agnosticism. I feel both of those views are also religions of a sort. You see, those who follow either of those belief systems have faith that there is no god(s) or just don't care and seek to live life as best they can. I personally believe that all people will have opportunity to find and accept the truth either in this life or the next and so the much shouted accusation of "Your going to go to Hell!" is a bit premature. I don't think God is that vindictive and I really can't judge if you are going to go to Hell or not, but my faith teaches me to love you and try to share the truth I know with you. If you reject that, fair enough. Your choice and more power to you!

On the same subject, anyone who seeks to force another to their point of view is evil. Shouting matches, Bible Bashing, religious war all are not of God and many people have used religion to be aggressive and hateful. There are even people who were atheist who justified their actions based of off political theory because there is no god so there is no right or wrong. Those individuals include most of the communist dictator etc. But I don't want to digress too much. Maybe that is material for a later hub if I feel like it.

There has been a lot of research, theory and through about human rights and the role of government and really it would take a lot of time to explain my thoughts on this. That being said, there is another essay I wrote that I converted to a hub which may clarify this subject and it is called "John Locke vs Thomas Hobbs: Founders of Modern Political Science". To keep it short and sweet I subscribe to John Locke's world view that people are basically good. Additionally, Locke says that inalienable rights (also known as human rights) are given by a supreme being and as such cannot be take away by ANY power on the Earth with rare exceptions (ie you kill another and so the punishment is death. But even that punishment is not taken lightly and should be done on the rarest of occasions). As such all human rights and governmental power should be viewed in that light.

Human rights is an interesting subject. What are they? How many are there? I'll start with the basics. The right to life, liberty and the ownership of property (John Locke said that, Thomas Jefferson changed it to the Pursuit of Happiness.) are basics. Also some that I would consider are the right to Respect, the right to Defend One's Self Against Aggression, the right to Try, the right to Succeed and the right to Fail. Keeping it basic is important to me. The more complicated things get the more you risk having a failure or a break down of some sort or another.

The Role of Government: Government's role is to protect the people for which is was created. Those protections are against foreign or external threats and internal threats. Government in all its forms should be limited to this. Foreign threats need little explanation but internal should be clarified. Internal threats include criminal actions, larger organizations and groups that seek to take advantage of or harm other groups and individual who seek to gain from others work through theft etc. We join society and forfeit some rights to that we can have these protections, but government does not have the right to take the rights I listed above away.

The government has the responsibility to promote commerce and as such should maintain roads and regulations that allow for free trade. More on that in section 3.

I mentioned the rights to try, succeed and fail. I also mentioned the right to property or as it is also know to pursue happiness. Economics is defined as "the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth." As mentioned above, government's responsibility is to protect the right to pursue happiness. As such government should only take what it needs to do its job.

Now, there are situations where a social safety net is necessary. Examples of this are a hard working person losses his or her job through no fault of their own. Or perhaps an accident disables said individual. In these situations the social safety net comes into play. Now, most people think this safety net is the responsibility of the government. But the government is only a branch of society. Even if you think government should be involved in such things, I feel that that involvement should be limited as follows. Federal (or national) government enforces laws that protect employees like requiring a business holds unemployment insurance. Local governments (state, county, city) endorse, support or encourage local welfare groups and organizations. In this way it is more manageable and is not a drain on public pockets. Small government equals less waste. It had been proven over and over again. Finally, the major focus should be productivity. If the local government has to pay or partially pay for a welfare system (or dole system as it is referred to in the UK) then their objective is to get people off it and into work ASAP. This is the give a man a fish/teach a man to fish idea. The best social welfare program is a job.

Taxes. Economist have a name for what they do to an economy. Whether it is sales tax, death tax, income tax, property tax, all of these make something called Dead Weight Social Loss (or Dead Weight Loss for short). Essentially this means that the money taken prevents economic and social growth. If you want to understand that better take an economics class, but that is the basics of it. Now, there are essential services that taxes pay for like roads, police forces, military etc. Taxes are necessary. I am not saying no to taxes. I am saying limit taxes. The government should take what it needs to protect us and that is it.

Now for my revolutionary idea. Why not make life easy and give value to citizenship? My idea is simple. In order for a person to vote, they will need to pay a tax of 10% of their income. This is very possible and it does not limit anyone from voting. If your income is $100 last year, you pay $10. If it was $1,000,000,000 you pay $100,000,000. This way the government gets the money it needs to run, people now have a value set to their citizenship and people who succeed are not punished for being successful. What do I mean by this? The current system around most of the world is a tiered income tax. If I make a million dollars I would be in a tax bracket where I pay a little more than 50% of my earnings in taxes. Why would I do that? It is a result of my hard work, my ideas, my innovation. On the other hand, under the current system, if I make under $10,000 then when tax season rolls around not only do I not have to pay any taxes. I get a check in the mail for $4,000! Since I was a student I am speaking from personal experience. So what happens is that people who have earned little get money for potentially doing nothing (I am not saying they did nothing, but it is a possibility) while those who work hard and earn lost are force to give their money to those who potentially did nothing to earn it! The result, there are classes of people all over the western world who are perpetually low income because it is easier. Call it welfare, call it the dole. I have personally seen people who live in such a way that they don't have to work and live off of the hard work of others and that is not right. That is a perfect example of Dead Weight Social Loss. What makes things worse is that these people who refuse to work have a vote and generally out number those who work their butts off. So now we have a situation where the people of Rome vote for more circuses and more free food and all the other people that Rome has conquered foots the bill! Is that fair? Let me put it another way. You go with some people to an event. The price for this event is $10 a ticket and there are 100 people there. You are a successful plumber or computer programer (your choice) and you have more than enough money to afford the ticket cost. While you are waiting in line to get in, you are recognized. When you get to the front of the line you are told that since you make more money and there are people here who make very little that you have to pay for them. You protest and say if they can't afford the cost of entrance why are they here. A vote is called for on the situation and you are told if you don't abide by the vote you will be thrown in prison. The votes are cast and here is how it works out. 50% of the people make so little that they don't have to pay to get in. 30% make enough that they have to pay, but not so much that they have to pay more than $10. 15% of the people make enough that they have to pay more than $10, but not by much while 5% (including you) have to pay close to $50 for a ticket that would normally cost $10 if it were not for this absurd situation. How is that fair? That is a simplification of the situation we are in now.

Now here is an interesting fact. While most "rich people" have to pay high amounts of money in taxes. What they have leftover they give back to the community. Sure they buy nice things life planes, boats, cars and houses. Why not? They earned their money. But often these people take their excess money and invest it into building more businesses that give people jobs. They donate to charitable organizations and so much more. Oh, I hear you folks out there shouting, it is because of the tax deductions! Well, here is the funny bit. There is historical evidence to show that this is not the case. Income Tax was initiated in the USA in 1913 with the passing of the 16th amendment to the US Constitution (not sure about other countries). Prior to that event there were large numbers of well-to-do people and rich people such as Teddy Roosevelt father who spent what would amount to millions in today's money helping those who were in need. So, as far as I can see, an income tax is wrong unless it is a flat tax. Representation without taxation is a huge problem in today's society and I feel fixing this would make the world a better place!

Right, up to this point I have been spouting mostly conservative ideas and concepts. Now for a but of a change. The environment. I don't subscribe to the global warming hype, BUT I do know that we humans have big effect on our local environment and that effect can cause larger issues. Acid rain is just one example. The fact is that our current tech level creates pollutants. Not only do these pollutants harm the local ecology around us, they harm us as well since we are a part of that ecology. The movement to lower emissions is ESSENTIAL to our survival as a species. Since the government's job is to protect us against internal and external threats, I feel it within the government's bounds to say that emissions must be taken below a certain level each year until it has either stopped or we have found the threshold that is sustainable to the environment. At the same time alternative energies must be heavily invested in and improved. I don't see the solution to the problem happening overnight, but I do see that if an actual effort were made improvement would be see.

Yet another environmental issue I see is sustainable resources! We already practice this with sustained foresting. Companies own large swaths of land and do a planting harvesting cycle that prevents the destruction of all of our trees. The issue is that not all countries practice this and what is more, the issue is not limited to trees. Our oceans are being over fished! It is a fact that several species of fish that were once very common are endangered or extinct because of over fishing! Current international law means there is no real way to protect our oceans (which is a major food source for a large portion of the Earth's population) from over fishing. There is farm fishing, but in some cases farm raised fish harms the environment more than helps (just to note, there are some fish farms that do help).

An economics professor suggested that the solution to this problem is to privatize the oceans with regards to fishing so that businesses have an interest in keep the fish populations up. He used the example of Dr. Seuss's story The Lorax to say that if the evil greedy Once-ler's had owned the Truffula tree forest they would have conserved the forest to make more money in the long run rather than wipe it out. Jon Stossel's report "You Can't Even Talk About Part 4" (aired on 5/8/2009) shows that this approach has already worked in preserving the North American Bison as well as African elephants and rhinos. I also have heard suggestions of large amounts of regulation or no fishing zones. And I have heard Australia has imposed no fishing zones with a great effect. The point is that there is a problem and there needs to be a solution.

The one thing that I take issue in regards to the environmental movement is the stupidity! Compact florescent bulbs have mercury in them. What helps the environment in less power consumption hurts it with mercury getting into the local environments from land fills. The cost of the solar power project out side of Las Vegas is a joke. It looses money at a HUGE RATE. It is a laughing stock! Because of this I classify myself as a conservationist. To be clear, I am in favor of having a lower environmental impact.

This one I keep short and sweet. It is not the USA's job to get in the middle of every single conflict throughout the world. We are hated around the world for our meddling and it has to stop. We need to back up our allies when we need to. We need to defend ourselves against foreign threats as necessary, but it is not the United States of America's job to be the World Police. In conjunction with that, the USA needs to stop allowing the United Nations make it their donkey. If the UN wants to send in peace keepers, the USA is not the first country to call nor is it the one that should provide the majority of the finances or troops in such conflicts. Diplomacy is not done at the point of a gun. That being said, the USA should have a strong armed forces. Peace through strength has been proven over and over again. But the operative word there is PEACE. I am sick and tired of hearing about our boys and girls getting killed over someone other person's war. We need to employ real diplomacy and use weapons as a last resort, not the "Or Else" option that is always close at hand.

As I said, for the most part I am conservative. For the most part I align myself with Ronald Reagan style Republicanism (also known as Tea Party to some extent). But the true summary of my point of view is that I use logic and evidence to support my views. I use common sense in my choices for political representatives. I am willing to see the other guy's point of view, even if I don't agree. With that, I hope this article has help you at least see my point of view. Feel free to comment. As always, be respectful even if you don't agree with me.

Author's Note: After some consideration and discussion I have found that I am more Libertarian than any other thing. I suppose it is my desire to influence one of the two parties in the USA that made me want to define myself as a conservative from a different mold. Still, my points stand.