ONE OF MY -ISM PRISMS

The conventional spectrum for political viewpoints doesn't make much sense.

Conservatives hate big government, supposedly. But they love taxes, subsidies, centralization, and regulation when it comes to the military and "national security". They don't want the government telling us what medicine to take, but they do want the government to tell us what drugs are too dangerous to take, and they think the government isn't throwing enough people in prison for taking or selling the dangerous drugs.

Liberals supposedly think we should be free to put whatever we want into our bodies. But they too want to protect us from the dangerous drugs, and so they want all sorts of regulation in place - God forbid we be allowed to take the wrong medicine. They oppose the wasteful military-industrial complex, but they just love the medical-industrial complex, and they want to expand it even more.

Sticking "Conservatives" on the Right and "Liberals" on the Left really doesn't help us map things out. Probably the most important question to ask when mapping out political beliefs is this: Who owns your body? How people answer this question should determine where they fit on the spectrum.

If they answer "your parents" or "your family", then they go on the right end of this spectrum under "Family-ism". According to this view, the people you inherently owe duties to are the ones in your family. Your parents can assign you chores whether you like them or not, and how much your allowance will be or even whether or not you'll get one; they can decide when you'll work in the family store and whether you'll be paid; they can demand that you accomodate them in your house when they get old and that you wipe them up after they make a mess in their bed; etc. They can decide what type of medical treatment you get, and no one else, not you, not the neighbors, and definitely not the government, can decide that for you; they can decide what kind of education, if any, you'll get, and again, no one else, not you, not the neighbors, and definitely not the government, can decide that; they can decide whether and how severely and by what methods you'll be disciplined; etc.

Just to the left of this kind of Family-ism is Extended Family-ism. Think of the Samoan girls who can't go out without getting permission not just from their parents but also from their siblings and uncles and aunts and grandparents. And you can think of my dad spanking my cousin for kicking my grandpa and yelling "Get out Fatso!"

To the left of that is Tribalism. According to this view, your most weighty inherent duties are not to your family or extended family, but to a larger class of people that you're somehow related to. There's one other trait that most other -isms have, but which I'll bring up here - the collective person. I could have brought it up under Family-ism. When the stolen gold and clothes were found in Achan's tent, he and his whole family were stoned to death. They all collectively shared the responsibility for his wrongdoing. But we usually think of tribalist feuds when we think of random people being punished for the sins of other members of their group.

When the tribe is defined in terms of a monopoly of violence, it's called a "nation". According to Nationalism, you owe your most valuable inherent duties not to your family, church, or ethnicity, but to that enterprise that holds the monopoly of violence over the geographic area you happen to be in. You ultimately belong to the State. It is the State (or, in American English, "the government") that dictates how long you'll work and what job you're permitted to work, how much money you'll be paid, how much money you'll give where, by what procedure you can become a member of the State, and whether you'll go to war. All members of the State are members of one collective person, all belonging mutually to each other, as if they all were married in one gigantic polygamous wedding when they were born (or when they were naturalized).

I wrote earlier that war is just a really big drive-by shooting. It's also a really big tribal feud. Since the members of the Nation are just body parts of the same collective person, individuals can be knocked off for their government's wrongdoing. Civilian deaths really aren't murder, according to Nationalism, because the civilians share their nation's guilt. Terrorism is wrong, not because innocent civilians are killed, but because they're killed by people who aren't owned by a Nation State.

"Conservatism" and "Liberalism" are really just different types of Nationalism. The stereotypical liberal thinks we should have unions and licensing to block out competition and protect the wages of American workers. The stereotypical conservative thinks we should have fences and cameras and armed guards along the border to make sure nobody "steals our jobs". They both want to use government intervention to dole out favors that wouldn't and couldn't be gotten through voluntary interaction. They both want a monopoly of violence to limit individual freedom for the benefit of the collective. They're both Socialist, because they're both Statist.

Up until the current recession, Nationalism was being outmoded by a more chic kind of collectivism - Internationalism. Why did we invade Iraq? Not just to protect America from the terrorists who weren't there yet, but also to liberate the Iraqi people from their tyrant. And why do we keep our troops out there in two unwinnable wars? Because our obligations to the Iraqi and Afghani people dictate that we continue spending American blood and American tax dollars in foreign lands. Nevermind the bridges, we got some liberating to do!

Not only do we have enforceable obligations to fund the Iraqi and Afghani war efforts, we also have the enforceable obligation to fund the Israeli war effort. Because, after all, we belong not just to our own people and our own government, but also to the governments that our government has especially good relations with. So long as money is taken from us by force to build F-16s and tanks and missiles, some of those F-16s and tanks and missiles will go to the State of Israel for their seasonal games.

Foaming-at-the-mouth Neocon "patriots" aren't the only ones who want U.S. troops and tax dollars spent abroad. You can probably think of some genocide somewhere that some "progressive" wants the U.S. military to stop. But the military isn't the only tool in their box. They also want us to send more food, more investment in their underdeveloped markets, more subsidies for their infrastructure, more oversight of their elections, more AIDS medicine, and many more types of foreign aide that'll be lost in bureaucracy - basically, more hand-outs to corrupt governments - all wrung from our noses by threats of imprisonment and deprivation.

Internationalism is just a more leftist kind of Nationalism. And in some cases, it leads to an international State. Think of the European Union. The Brit doesn't owe large sums of his money only to his compatriots for their healthcare and education; now, he owes something to just about everybody in an EU-member country. He doesn't just have to obey the regulations dictated by Parliament; now he has to worry about the dictates of Brussels.

The central idea of Internationalism is that we are a collective person with people who are not part of our Nation, that we owe foreigners the same supposed duties we owe our compatriots, that whatever it takes to give foreigners a decent life can rightfully be taken from us by force, that we have the authority to take control of foreign countries - basically, that we belong to foreigners and that foreigners belong to us. The logical consequence of this is Globalism - the rank leftist idea that everybody in the whole world belongs to everybody in the whole world. Whatever it takes to give everybody in the whole world a decent life can be taken from everybody in the whole world by threat of force. Naturally, the solution to all the problems in the whole world is one world government.

So there you have it. The better political spectrum shows family-ism on the right, where individuals are owned by their families, Nationalism in the middle, where individuals are owned by the Nation State, and Globalism on the far left, where everybody is owned by everybody.

You'll notice that the further left you go on the spectrum, the less voluntary (or rather, the more involuntary) the ownership relation. If you hate your parents, you could theoretically disown them. If you don't like your country, you could expatriate. It would be really hard to, but it's possible if you're rich enough. If you don't like the world, though, well that's gonna be hard to run away from.

Also, the further left the ownership relation, the less control you have over the decision-making process. Just think of it this way - the bigger the body of people, the more diluted your voice is. Democracy can "work" in a city-state or a commune; it can't work in a nation-state or a world government, since people have virtually no say in what goes on.

And, the bigger the body of people, the bigger their administrative body will have to be, meaning that more resources would be soaked upward through that pyramid scheme called "government".

Secessionists, devolutionists, and others who believe in decentralization lean towards the right of this spectrum. Some of them want more powers to be transferred from the Federal government to the States. Some of them want the states in their region to secede completely and be their own country. Some of them go further. When they say "small government", they really mean small government - small like The Free and Sovereign City of Santa Clara type small. Then there's me.

I really don't fit anywhere on this spectrum. If you were to try to place me, you'd have to put me off to the right of it. I don't think the individual is owned by anybody. No one is entitled to any inherent duties from the individual, not even the parents. Whatever rights the parents have over their kids are very, very limited. And government has absolutely no rights over children. No one has inherent authority over another. Not family, not government, not international peace-keeping organizations.

I admit it, this spectrum is still a spectrum, and so it only works on an issue-by-issue basis. Typical conservatives are Familyist in most private matters, Nationalist when it comes to abortion, Internationalist when it comes to military defense, and Familyist when it comes to economic matters besides immigration, in which they are Nationalist. Typical liberals are Nationalist when it comes to the family, except for abortion, in which most of them are Familyist (the unborn fetus is property to be disposed of by the mother) (though some of them are Nationalist or even Internationalist in that they think government programs to encourage aborting unwanted fetuses would work towards the common good), Nationalist when it comes to health insurance, Nationalist or Internationalist when it comes to the economy and finance, and Internationalist when it comes to military defense and the environment.

Also, the result it gives depends on how you define the individual. By my definition, the pro-choice libertarian isn't an Individualist, but a Familyist. But by the pro-choice libertarian's definition, she would be an Individualist and I would be the Familyist/Tribalist/Nationalist/some other kind of anti-individualist.

Another political spectrum would be useful. Rather than ask "Who owns you?" it could ask "What is sovereign?" That would have to be the topic of another post.