Feb 4th, 2006, 04:26 PM
Seth's politics
I wrote this for an ultra-conservative Catholic message board, but it basically explains how and why I lean politically the way I do.
One thing that irks me in political discussion is the use of the word “liberal”. That being said, most people would call me a “liberal” in most issues; I support same-sex civil unions (reserving the appellation of marriage for strictly religious ceremonies), I believe the present economy should be more collectivistic, I would like to see greater separation of Church and State, I believe that civil liberties should not be encroached upon any minority, I opposed the Iraq war, I feel that the United States should heed more respect to the world community (it has never even paid in full its insipidly paltry dues to the United Nations, despite having been granted the honor of hosting its facilities). To the contrary, I do hold very conservative personal reservations. I believe in an active deity (particularly that corresponding to the Roman Catholic faith), I feel that financial reward should be commensurate with personal effort, and, most incongruous with my designation as a bleeding-heart liberal, I feel that abortion is an abomination against which there should be strong legislation.
I was sixteen during the 2000 elections, but had I been of age I would have voted for George W. Bush. I thought he was a moron at the time, but I conceded the possibility that maybe having a simpleton as Commander in Chief would be worthwhile if he were to instigate anti-abortion legislation. When it became clear within the first few months of his office how small a priority morality was to him, I immediately felt embarrassed for having been deceived. When it became clear that Bush was to blame for overlooking the intelligence prognosticating 11 September 2001, it made me literally ill to think I had once supported him. Popular conspiracy theory holds that Bush actually orchestrated the World Trade Center attacks, but I find such an idea juvenile. However, I find it most likely that Bush was in the same chair as Franklin Roosevelt probably was in with regards to the Pearl Harbor attacks: preemptive amelioration was avoided as to profit from tragedy.
And so, at age twenty I voted for Senator Kerry in the presidential races. I did not do this because I approved of Kerry in the least, but rather because he was the only candidate who had not already proven what a failure he would render himself in the president’s chair. Abortion was not an issue—if it had been, Bush would have worked to those ends in his first term. I simply voted because I didn’t want to carry the blame of political apathy.
The central reason for which I am “liberal” is that I have internalized the value of altruism. I cannot speak of my works as an altruist, lest I be praying loudly in the streets to be heard. However, I am perfectly free to speak of my ideals. At age fourteen I studied for Academic Team the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and the one thing that stuck in my head from his writings was the resurrection of an old phrase by Plautus: Homo homini lupis est (Man is a wolf to other men). The upside of Hobbesian philosophy is that government is inevitable as society grows. This opens the possibility that a governing body can force people to be nice to one another. This begins with the imposition of legal sanctions for ne’er-do-wells, but it opens the possibility of imposing social equity.
I’ve read Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Adam Smith and Emile Durkheim and an onslaught of other titans of economic thought. From this, I’ve developed varying sentiments about communism. I speak about communism because it is polar extreme of what is popularly called “liberalism”. Communism is founded on good intentions. I’ve heard that maxim many many times since high school economics, and it holds true. What I’ve never read but have personally formulated is this: the essence of communism is the idea that all things bad about capitalism should not be amended, but annihilated. The earliest modern communist that I have in my memory was a post-Revolutionary Frenchman by the name of Fourrier. To read Fourrier’s writings is to batter off the inclination to laugh hysterically at social naiveté, until one attempts to empathize with a person who just lived through the Reign of Terror. When the risibility of Fourrier’s ilk was realized, what filled the gap were national and religious-oriented socialist parties who wished not to wipe out capitalism, but to correct it.
What I have to say about Karl Marx is that he had a remarkably astute perspective on reality and a glaring deficiency in realism. Marx assumed that Europe was on the brink of revolution, and as such he not only chastised such socialist parties as the Roman Catholic socialist parties of the 1840s and other nationalistic socialist parties as being ineffectual, but he denounced them as worthless and short-sighted. Marx conceded that communism could only take root if it were to spring at the global level. He most likely realized that this would require a virtual cataclysm, but he died optimistic regardless.
According to Marx: Religion denigrates the unity of the human being—abolish it. Free enterprise tends to result in alienation (Entäuserung) between the worker and the consumer—abolish it. Accumulated wealth (Das Kapital) invariably results in disparity—abolish it. Inheritance perpetuates social inequity—abolish it… and while you’re at it, the family structure.
I point this out because few people realize how polarized communism really is. Thus, calling a socialist a communist is no more appropriate than calling a libertarian a fascist. With that clarification, I am a free-market socialist. I believe in a redistribution of wealth, but I also believe that free enterprise is the propellant of any sustainable economy. What this amounts to is essentially the popular Western European system: heavily progressive taxation and strict regulation of labor and quality standards. The central fault at present with the European system is the lack of economic mobility, but in my opinion the blame for this falls mostly upon the educational system.
I guess I should explain my use of quotes in the term “liberal”. I have no idea from whence the American political nomenclature came, but it’s diametric with common sense. Liberalism was first referred to as an economic system—perfect liberty of the market from the government. In the Old World terminology, liberal refers to an espousing of laissez-faire market ideology. Apparently, American politicians decided to apply the term to perfect liberty of everything except the market, and the inchoate Democratic Party of the late 20th Century was stuck with the misnomer.
What liberalism means to me, in the American sense of the term, is a favoring of the population at large versus total lack of imposition upon the individual. The problem is, both political parties work toward and against this ideal aggressively. The Democrats, most obviously, favor progressive taxation that suit social programs to promote economic parity. Republicans, however, are somehow associated with morality and so do not flinch away from restricting personal liberties under the guise of “family values” or other such hubristic nonsense. As an altruist, it’s obvious which party I should favor.
The Democratic Party does have the fault that it expects perfect assimilation of ideas in regards to personal liberty. This is harmless in most cases; at worst, some rich white kid would lose a scholarship to a minority student or other such non-issues. However, in the case of abortion this fault resonates deadly. So, the idea of abortion requires some exploration. The most common misconception is that liberals love abortions, as if pro-choice women simply can’t resist having sex only to destroy the consequential embryo. The vast majority of pro-choice liberals see abortion as a last-resort tragedy. Many pro-choice advocates concede that abortion often leads to downfalls such as regret or depression.
From a catholic perspective, it is sinful to be pro-choice, even if this entails personal abhorrence to the practice itself. The practice of abortion is by any face a social evil. However, the prerequisite for sin requires an awareness that one’s actions are evil. If one is disillusioned by the quip that what is aborted is simply undifferentiated tissue, then they are not deliberately sinning. (Note that a Catholic cannot possibly hold this in her defense, as it contradicts Church teaching.) So, a sin is committed when an abortion is undertaken, but the evil lies in the ignorance. To call an abortion advocate evil, then, is asinine as she is not deliberately violating her own sense of right and wrong. Historically there have been abortion advocates who could merit the label of evil in that they abused “women’s rights” as a fuel for their own gain or misguided views, (exemplia gratia, Margaret Sanger’s eugenic idealisms), but it is puerile to believe that such people represent a majority.
I would love to see abortion rendered illegal in all cases but when the mother’s life is endangered. However, quite likely this is a pipe dream. What I do consider far more probable, and incumbent upon the pro-choice alley, is the possibility of banning abortion as a market. Planned Parenthood, for example, operates with enormous profit margins. If the sad reality is that abortion shall remain legal, it is only sane that there be no capital incentive for an abortion to be undertaken. That is, abortion mills should not have the opportunity to profit from undertaking the procedure. What this likely means is an incorporation of the industry into a state function that presents the information clearly, concisely, and gravely.
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