I realize that my blog is screamingly
Liberal, Libertarian, and about as Left as you can go. I fully
acknowledge this, and make no pretensions to being neutral as far as
politics are concerned. I am confident that I have very good reasons
for my beliefs, and when I talk about politics, it's not simply a
statement of belief, but rather a slightly editorialized analysis of
the facts that I have spent the better part of my life poring over.
Social theory is pretty much what I'm all about, and politics, when
you boil it down, is really just social theory. So, while everyone is
entitled to their political opinion, I think it's fair to say that
people who have taken the time to research human psychology and
social theory should be taken a little more seriously when talking
about politics than people who have not.
I have of course heard the argument
that Psychology and Sociology are “soft sciences”, and as such do
not tell us anything concrete about how the real world works, but to
be blunt, this is usually said by people who have never studied
either, and thus have no idea what they're talking about. The social
sciences, like any field in science, develop hypotheses based on
observations, and then refines these hypotheses over time by
conducting tests and gathering real, quantifiable data. While it is
difficult to peer inside the human mind with perfect accuracy, we can
understand a great deal about what motivates us, what makes us happy,
what promotes our well-being in the long term, and these are not
trivial questions. These are the type of questions we should be
asking if we really care about improving the society we live in, and
we should hold politicians accountable when they don't bother to ask
these questions, or fail to listen when science provides them with
answers. The solutions that are offered by the social sciences do, in
fact, provide measurable positive results when applied to the real
world, and so allowing ideology to trump sociology is, to me, both
unforgivable and irresponsible.
Liberalism is, to me, simply
associated with a higher level of scientific literacy, and a better
familiarity with the facts. Facts matter - this is just the way
the universe works. The world cares little for what we want, but
ideology still plays a large role in politics – we vote for the
person who makes us feel better, or says the things we want to hear,
or who agrees with our opinions. Instead of examining the issues, the
facts that surround them, and the interpretation of the facts that
shape the platforms of each party, many voters just vote the same way
they always have, assuming that their party will get its facts
straight. This is, sadly, not always the case. I would go so far as
to say it is not even often the case. An extreme example is
the Tea Party in the US, which repeatedly uses talking points that
are just factually incorrect. They just make things up out of thin
air sometimes, because they know that their voter base will not
bother to check facts. While this is not quite as pronounced in other
countries, it does happen all the time, and if the public made an
effort to be better informed, these parties would quickly be out of
business. When one jettisons ideology, what one is left with is
utilitarianism. What works and what doesn't become the driving
questions, and as far as I'm concerned, this is all that politics
should concern itself with. Full stop.
It might help at this point to define
our terms. Saying 'left' and 'right' can mean different things to
different people, so let's clarify exactly what I mean. While there
are certain policies that have been claimed by both sides of the
political spectrum over the decades, it is nonetheless fair to say
that certain policies have been characteristic of each side of the
political spectrum in general. As I've mentioned, the left is known
for being socially liberal, exemplified by Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau's famous quote: “The state has no business in the bedrooms
of the nation.” The right, in contrast, often feels compelled to
use the machinery of government to impose social mores. The left,
typically, believes in the utility of social institutions, and will
fund them as such. The right typically does neither, assuming that
the market will fill whatever functions that society requires of it.
The left sees social spending as an investment, one that will pay
large future dividends. The right tends to ridicule such expenditures
as wastes of taxpayer money, and promotes austerity as 'financial
responsibility'. The left is focused on the priorities of the lower
and middle classes and of individuals, while the right consistently
demonstrates how it favors the rich, and the well-being of businesses
over the well-being of individuals. None of these statements should
be controversial – they are based on the sorts of bills that left
and right parties try to pass and on the actions that their
politicians take when elected – but it's amazing how confused these
issues can become, given how often politicians will say one thing and
then do another. To be fair, this happens across the political
spectrum, and while I tend to agree more with the platforms put forth
by the left, greater accountability would be something that could
benefit every political party on Earth. In the end, they have to be
judged by what they do, not what they say, and then held accountable
if they do something irresponsible.
Now, I think it's worth stepping back
and taking a look at the social policies from either end of the
political spectrum over the past fifty years, and simply analyzing
how well these have played out respectively. Since many of these
policies are interrelated, for simplicity I'll divide them into two
broader categories: Social Mores, and Social Investment. No ideology,
just the facts, what works and what doesn't.
1. Social Mores: There are several
areas where social norms have been debated hotly between the right
and left, but the top two are most likely sex and drug use. In areas
with more liberal policies toward sex, that allow certain forms of
prostitution, access to pornography, and so forth, the cases of rape
and sexually transmitted disease tend to decrease, and do so
dramatically when paired with comprehensive sexual education. In
contrast, the more conservative policies that restrict the sex trade
simply tend to drive it underground, and where sex education is
stigmatized, teenage pregnancies and disease both skyrocket, because
people are just too ill-equipped to protect themselves. Abstinence
is simply an unrealistic expectation to have of a highly sexually
motivated species like our own, and when it is forcibly imposed due to some
antiquated cultural stigma, the results are unsurprisingly
disappointing. The Drug War also proves how disastrous it is to try
and dictate private behaviour – people generally do what they want
to do, and trying to force them to act a certain way only breeds
resentment, while wasting a lot of money in the process. In areas that
have treated drug use as a public health issue, favoring education
and prevention over criminalization, rates of abuse have decreased,
while governments have saved millions of dollars in tax revenue. In
places where the sale of soft drugs like marijuana is taxable, the
government actually sees a huge boom in tax income, that can be
invested in any number of beneficial social programs. I think, in
terms of social mores, the practical advantages of the liberal
position should be obvious. On the right many people seem to vote for restrictive policies because they feel it's the "right thing to do", but ironically, these sort of policies lead to even more unnecessary suffering.
2. Social Investment: In countries
that invest in education, the result, shockingly, is a better
educated population. This, in turn, has allowed these countries to
pull ahead economically, as their citizens can compete globally for
jobs on the cutting edge, and often bring that experience back to
their home countries later in life, where they reinvest this
knowledge. The same “butterfly effect” has been demonstrated
with other social programs as well, with dollars invested generating
huge returns down the line. Well-managed government programs have
demonstrated their effectiveness in managing public health,
stimulating small business growth, reducing poverty, and any number
of other areas. Conversely, when such national institutions are
privatized, the result is equally consistent – corporations,
driven by the bottom line, are motivated to cut corners, and as such
the quality of such services decreases, often dramatically.
Competition, which is supposed to facilitate quality control in the
free market, does not work when large corporations are given
monopolistic control and a captive market. “Trickle-down”, a
theory from the right, in which society helps subsidize the rich so
that they may “create jobs”, is now largely proven to be
nonsense. In the real world, quite the opposite proves true;
investment in the individual, such as a strong minimum wage and
strong social support for those who are struggling, creates a stable
base for the economy. Workers with more stability and income tend to
spend more, which fuels new and existing businesses, allowing
business owners and the more wealthy to flourish as well. As it happens, the economy works better when fueled from the bottom up than the top down. Austerity
measures, when enforced, choke off this flow of capital through the
economy, and for a policy that has so often been put forth, is
remarkably ineffective. This is not theory – this is just what
happens, and the data shows this very clearly.
This, in a nutshell, is the liberal
position, at least as I see it. It's not that we are dogmatic in our
beliefs (at least not for the most part), they simply make the most
sense, given the available information. The key difference, I think,
is the ability on the left to change opinion based on new
information. While this ability is not exclusive to the left by any
means, I have noticed that it is weighted quite heavily in that
direction. I suppose in writing this, my goal is to appeal to those
on the right that carry this trait, and who simply vote the way they
do out of habit. I would ask you to expose yourself to the facts, and
simply be objective about what works, what doesn't, and which
policies actually offer the most realistic hope for a better future.