I think that it is very important that we not only believe things, but that we live in accordance with our beliefs.  If you really believe in liberty and self-determination, then you have to respect the rights of others to the same, even when they disagree.  This is one reason that I'm a non-interventionist.  The world has enough problems without us trying to solve what others have as issues.

The other thing that is disheartening, once you begin to understand the connection, is just who benefits and who loses in many of these relationships.  Please understand this:  large business and large government are not enemies.  They are usually allies who work together for the mutual benefit at your expense.  The bailout can be seen as the first example, but if you prefer something more recent, consider that the functional impact of the health care bill is that now everyone is required to buy private health coverage or be heavily fined.

For those of you on the right, you might be surprised to know just how many on the left are mad about this, for the same reason you might be.  They are being forced to do something against their interest.  That is the point that I want to make in this, and that all my writing and speaking leads to:  only you can make the determination about what is in your interest and please do not cede that right freely to others, no matter how good their intentions.  When you want those powers back, you will regret it.
 
 
If there was a handbook for issues that you don't want to address, the questions involving the role between marriage and the state would definitely be near the front, maybe a page behind abortion.  Fully aware of how murky the politics can be in this area, I have spent much time thinking about this and offer my own analysis.

How you define marriage means absolutely everything in this context.  Is it simply the partnership between two individuals, recognized by the state, as the legal guardians of a family and in contractual union with one another?  If you believe marriage is simply an act of the state, and you believe in liberty, it seems you would have to define it as gender neutral.  That would be the basis for a civil union, but perhaps marriage is more.

I note that many people do not see it that way.  They see marriage as not only an act between a man and a woman, but also a commitment before God and according to some divine law.  In this definition, the mandate for marriage is not rooted in the state or in benefits conferred therein, but instead in the vows made between the parties and before God.  To those who believe marriage is sacred in that way, this strikes me as something different, and that is where I begin.

I don't think the state has any business being involved in marriage and in what that means.  Moral questions are difficult and contentious, and for us to make a judgment that limits the choices of others because of prejudices, even if they are rooted in tradition and have a logical basis for society and biology, seems beyond the scope of what government should be able to demand for any two people.  Thus, in liberty, I believe that supporting civil unions as a corporate arrangement should be beyond dispute.

That the state is not involved does not make marriage insignificant..  Maybe my residual Catholic roots are showing, but perhaps we would do best to consider marriage as a sacrament.  Just as the state would have no business in regulating baptisms, communions, or any other practices of faith, I think we would do well to leave marriage to the individual churches and other houses of worship, letting those who have strong beliefs decide within their own communities what they will recognize according to their own mandates.  If that is strictly between a man and a woman before God, clergy can make that decision and define their members thusly.

Ultimately, the vast majority of those who argue against allowing same sex relationships to have the same recognition do so on this basis; that it runs contrary to most of the Christian traditions.  I agree with that assessment (if not the justice of the opinion), and I would say if there is a divine law, then surely that it would be more important what is recognized before God than whatever a state decides.

But as people, living together, we cannot build our state upon the dictates of religion if we are to embrace liberty, no matter how moral it may be.  We can build ourselves, our beliefs, and our hopes upon those precepts.  We can apply them in our lives.  But how moral can any of us be if our society requires us to force what we think upon others?

That is why I support legal unions for everyone, believe that marriage is not a matter of the state, and find myself feeling that this is a view that is both fair and logical.  Reasonable people, of course, may disagree.
 
An Update 12/08/2009
 
Although I've been writing a ton, you haven't had the opportunity to read much lately because I've been very busy.  Working in conjunction with a few friends and partners, we're trying to build a news source for people here in my region that will offer quality political commentary, policy research, and a chance to reach into neighborhood issues.  As always, I'm amazed by both what is possible and also with the challenges to be overcome.  Fortunately, we're working the schedule at a natural pace, and I am confident that when we go live, that many of you will really appreciate what this will be.

That said, I continue to read the news and it is disheartening.  I understand that there are long-term issues and short-term issues, and that just because one seems pressing, that you can't neglect the other.  That said, I cannot remember an administration that seemed to spend so much time focusing on issues that have marginal relevance to people's lives today at the cost of not just neglecting, but actually harming the economic status of so many people today.  It is baffling to me, frankly.

There are days that I wish I was running now.  There are so many things I want to say, because people need to hear them.  This morning, I am thinking that people need to know the purpose of government is not to guarantee economic success or regulate every aspect of our lives where some selected few think we are incapable of making smart policy decisions; but rather to serve to protect the interests of each individual from the impositions of others.  Liberty, as always.

It makes more clear for me the fundamental difference between what I think and what those who are going to be my future opponents believe:  I think we should make the decisions; they think they should.  It is not a malicious thing, but rather a misguided paternalism that people don't quite understand as such.  We can change that, and through media, politics, and just hard effort, I am sure we shall.
 
Dead to Rights 11/19/2009
 
One thing I struggle with is in trying to keep a completely logical framework, but to also be realistic with what I support.  I think it is important to know why you believe what you believe, because it shows you stand for something.  As I often say, you can compromise on policy, but never on principle.

I've chosen to wrap myself in the banner of liberty because it seems just to me that each individual should make their own choices, should be free to receive the benefits or costs of those decisions, and that those should not be imposed on others.  Spoken that way, it's hard to oppose liberty, but it becomes more complex when you get into details.  I've been participating in an interesting conversation where we are asking whether liberty means having something or having access to something.

For many issues, it is a clear cut case about liberty.  Having access to a series of choices and having those choices are one and the same.  People are able to make decisions and see them actuated.  But there are times with specific issues where this becomes harder, and there are two specific issues that trouble me in this light:  healthcare and education.

As I articulated in my earlier article, I value life, liberty, and property in that order.  If we presume someone has a right to their own life, what does that oblige us?  I've heard a compelling argument that it means nothing more than the right to exist without threat of that being taken.  But, I wonder what does that mean in terms of health?  Should we have the capacity to sustain life be a logical consequence of supporting life.  My thought is that while it is perhaps not a right, it might be part of a social contract.

I also think education falls into the same situation.  What does liberty mean without the functional ability to understand the concepts?  Or even more fundamentally, the language being used?  Without education, we lose the ability to function as social actors, and I think in order to be realized as an individual, we need society, the awareness of people around us who are not us, to realize that we are distinct.

These may not be rights.  If you define liberty such that access to education and access to health care are guaranteed, but the provision for them is dependent upon any involuntary classification (which for children, wealth would be included), are you depriving people of a necessary item?  I think it isn't, strictly, a right, because you're compelling services.  But, this leads to my next evolution in thought.

Liberty is the inherent state of man.  Nations, states, socieities, and communities are all compromises derived for mutual benefit.  The social contract is the balance between the liberty that is inherent and the security we desire for our own physical and intellectual protection.  Most accept things like borders, Courts, and other arbiters as governmental agencies.  But what distinguishes civilizations is what functions we choose beyond those, and where that balance is struck.

I love liberty, and want the utmost of freedom.  I try to design the minimalist state that I think would be successful as the object that I work to create.  But, I wonder on health care and education, because before the ideas we have, we need the ability to be and function as physical and material beings, and to understand wonderful discussions like the ones we have here.  Note that I am not arguing for how these should be structured, as I believe choice should always be retained to the individual to select care or service, or to refuse that option.  My assertion is more basic:  that we cannot deprive people of these, at least at some fundamental level.

Even if it is an affront to absolute liberty, I think it is the minimal requirement for a successful society in this day.
 
 
This is a little premature, but I will be celebrating my 29th birthday on Monday.  With each year, I always sit back and reflect upon what I have learned and how I have grown in the past year.  There always seems to be something new.

This has been a productive year and I find things are moving in the direction I want in all areas in my life.  I find that being stubborn and determined is a big part of making that possible, but I've learned something even more important:  You can't sacrifice who you are for what you want to be.

Smart people sometimes find their lives going astray because they make bad bargains with themselves.  We sell ourselves into believing that if we don't do things a certain way, they cannot be done.  It's a very easy argument to make that the ends justify the means, and it is usually wrong.  How you do things determines who you are as a person, and if there is one thing I'm learning, it is that how you arrive somewhere is usually more vital than where you are going.

I worry less because of this.  It is okay if not everything succeeds if you did what mattered to you.  In politics, in life, and in anything else, I think this rings true.  This above all else:  to thine ownself be true.
 
 
Although I've had several blogs through the course of the last few years, this one has certainly been the least personal of any that I have written.  As I have become more involved in public life, I have come to believe that is a necessity; that I limit what I share lest that be used in an unfair way against me.  That said, I want to take one post here to talk about my feelings.

I am someone who works very hard to find a way to a better future that is sometimes difficult to see.  When you advocate for liberty, sometimes, it is hard to grasp what it is you are actually asking.  The best metaphor I can think of is that liberty is like air, no one seems to think about that much until it thins, until breathing becomes difficult, or until it is gone and you can only choke when you try to inhale.

Sometimes, I feel like I am selling hot air.  There are times when my words are difficult to share because I'm really trying to promote an idea.  Where others promise tangible rewards, I only am able to offer this idea of freedom.  I think it more precious than anything that any program could possibly offer, but not everyone sees it that way.  Not everyone sees that as the price you pay when you let someone else make a decision.  And honestly, it isn't always so black and white in this world.

For all that, I know to my core that this is right.  I imagine what the future will be, and what will be the foundation of who we are as people.  I think of myself.  I want a world, terrible as it can sometimes be, where I have the chance to determine my own destiny, explore my own ideas, express my own personality, and shape a life for my family based upon the strength of my will, reason of my ideas, emotion of my heart, and imagination of my soul.  I am willing to give up easy for good.  Even if you could have everything paid for and we wouldn't go bankrupt, it wouldn't matter, because it didn't have a price.  We invested nothing.

So, the future.  My values never change; I just become stronger and clearer in my expression and expectation.  Perhaps I become more radical, because I feel principle matters more than pragmatism.  You can compromise on policy, but not on belief.  That is where people lose themselves.

I have a few projects.  I will continue working to build a media that exposes corruption.  People deserve to know what happens in their country, what the relationships are between candidates, campaign finance, contractors, and parties.  No turning a blind eye, and no accepting what should not happen.

It's a new world, but to find independence, one must be willing to independent, and to walk the long road with their head held high even when the end is clearly nowhere in sight.
 
 
With good reason, libertarianism is seen as a philosophy that centers around individual liberty as the only ethical foundation upon which a society may be built.  The central premise is that unless you have individual choice governing the relationships between people and whatever institutions or arrangements they create, a coercive act such as the use of force must be inserted to compel the acceptance of any unwilling party.  More simply, either force or the threat of force is used to create any other society.

Thanks to this philosophy, doctrinaire libertarians always revert back to individual liberty as the highest aspiration in their political goals and philosophies.  Many believe that if people simply recognized that they have their liberty as a natural right, respecting it both for themselves and others, then we would have a more just society.  I agree with this premise, though I think it unlikely to happen or to be as complete as they think in the absence of one key factor:  prevention of the centralization of power.

The old saw is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  In this imperfect world where we don't have people acting simply for the interests of each individual, ranging from the petty tyrants who seek control through force, or the most kind hearted idealists, seeking to create their vision of utopia, they all share the need to create institutions that can impose their will on others to succeed.  To the extent they have greater legal, financial, moral, or any other authority, especially with respect to the other edifices in a given society, they can achieve this end.

This leads me to my next thought in applying libertarian ideals in a pragmatic way.  While recognizing that individual liberty should be protected to the utmost possibility, said pragmatist can see that without the prevention of centralization of power that the thought of liberty is likely to be subsumed to the power of another agenda.  From this assertion, I begin to draw the conclusion that those who would defend liberty will recognize there are times when that absolute must be compromised in order to prevent such a nexus of power from coming into being.

The founders understood this clearly which is why there are so many levels of division in the American government, between state and federal, between chambers, and between competing interests.  Pluralism is healthy, so long as it is sincere, and no interest (or collection of interests) can gain monopolistic control over the agenda.  This means standing opposed to any state that rules by fiat, against corporations that would use the state to simply advance only their agenda, against labor if it would reappropriate assets, and against anyone seeking compulsion through force without compromise.  It does not mean that any of these interests, inherently, are bad.  But, it means that if the balance between them ever falters, then that is when the subtle slide into authoritarianism begins.

I do not like class arguments as I find them inherently limiting, but people accept these identities and thus validate them.  It makes them relevant for this illustration of how a nation can quickly become authoritarian.  Let me draw up two examples, using government, workers, and business as our actors.  In each case, government serves only to advance the interest of the strongest entity, which ends up being true for financial and political reasons in fact.  If you have a strong relationship between government and workers, you end up with a state where they begin to determine the nature of business, vote for reappropriation of assets, and use the laws to take money from others.  If you have a strong relationship between government and business, tax money is reappropriated in terms of contracts, where government begins to serve as the force for the business interest with little care for either the labor force or end users.    An interesting thing happens when both have a strong relationship with government; when the government is large, what happens is the bureaucracy tries to satisfy the interest of both.   Only when the strong relationship is between labor and industry, in the presence of constrained government, is there balance achieved whereby these extremes can be avoided.

It is why I find myself supporting many arrangements that might limit liberty in an absolute sense, but that I believe bring necessary and appropriate balance.  I would not want any group to dictate our future, so I support both sides and the negotiation between them.  Labor, through unions and other assemblies, serves a good purpose in being a negotiator for the interests of the works against the profit motive of the corporation.  Industry, through taking labor and fashioning it into something productive, should be encouraged to innovate and to compete, but not be able to simply monopolize and dictate.  Government, ideally, should just be there to make sure no one dominates anyone unfairly in the society, as defender of liberty, but also wary of the corruption that come from any single body, group, or entity becoming larger enough to coerce the state into growing into something more.

This was the failing of the past, and it is the fight for the future.  Liberty requires us to recognize those entities that have an interest in using the state to force policy on us, and to make sure they are not only removed, but also that their counterpoint is found and set into balance.  Otherwise, a battle might be won but the war will be lost.  Centralization of power is the greatest single threat to human liberty, and with the advent of new technology, the possibility actually exists to have a state that can dictate more aspects of our lives than ever before.  That is what must be prevented.
 
 
Politics is full of what you might call "Gotcha!" situations.  The premise is simple:  you find someone who holds a certain principled belief, and then you present them with a situation that challenges that belief, no matter how improbable it might be, in an effort to make that way of thinking look foolish.  An example commonly used, for instance, is when people ask people who are opposed to abortion what should be permissible in the case of rape.  It is a fair and hard question, but in most political situations, the people asking these things care less for the answer than in trying to score points for their view by picking the worst case scenario of the opposite view.

Knowing that, the question itself is an interesting one and is an example of a moral dilemma.  The most interesting questions are often the most controversial as we find ourselves judging a situation where two (or more) deeply held beliefs come into conflict with one another.  We have the life of an innocent victim that has come into being through the perpetration of a heinous crime.  We have the liberty of a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong and her own free will to consider.  We have a quandry, and these questions are the ones where we will always fight and have no clear answer as individuals.  Yet, they demand consideration.

I started thinking about this the other day when I was posed a similar question, and I want to offer my own framework for how I consider these dilemmas, in which I've discovered my three core personal values for how we should regard one another:  life, liberty, and property.  They are certainly not unique, but I don't know how often we really think about their consequences, so I am showing why these matter, in that order, in helping us answer hard questions in our own lives.
  1. Life - Without life, nothing else is possible, and to be able to exist is the most basic and fundamental right I can imagine.  It is that which we should defend most dearly, in all situations.
  2. Liberty - Liberty is truly nothing more than the freedom of thought, and the freedom of action to pursue the logical consequences of that thought.  So long as this does not impinge upon the life or the rights of others to their own liberties, I believe this must be our second value.
  3. Property - Property means that if you apply your thoughts and effort toward a process or a material, that you can gain possession and have recognition of something as being uniquely your own.  Whether the property is intellectual, such as an idea, material, such as land, the basic principle remains that you should have ownership of that which results from your labor and innovation.
I take a minimalist view of government, in that I believe it is the responsibility of people to create opportunities for themselves, and that it is our shared goal to ensure that government, the state, or any other action does not prevent us from having the freedom to be, to think, or create.  That might make it overly simple, but my argument is that without these, we have nothing.

With them, we have a chance to live with one another, and to answer our challenging questions.  To those who would think otherwise, my question to you, is upon what basis do you construct your own beliefs, in fairness to others, and giving them the same privileges you would probably reserve for your own thoughts.

Looking at our difficult scenario from above, you should already know my answer from the comments above.  Although I hold the rights of any person dear and find it abhorrent that their liberties were violated, to punish the life of someone who was not directly responsible for the action strikes me as unjust.  I freely admit that I value life , though uniquely so, above freedom of thought and action, so I will argue passionately for the unborn, though I believe there are two victims here.