So, i get a lot of confusion about my political ideology online, when I debate people. Liberals think I'm a leftist, leftists call me a liberal. Libertarians call me a fake libertarian. And I wanted to make a summary of my political ideology and positions.
The ideology
I generally describe myself as a social libertarian. This is basically a lib center ideology on the political compass, although it spans from lib left to lib right. Basically, imagine this. On a traditional left-right scale, you got capitalism on one end, socialism on the other, and various forms of liberalism (including social democrats) in the middle. Well, the libertarian spectrum is the same way. You got the right libertarians or as I like to call them "propertarians" on the right, the libertarian socialists on the left, and in the middle, you got this broad swath of liberal libertarianism known as "social libertarianism." I'm more on the left/progressive side of this spectrum, akin to being a libertarian version of a social liberal or social democrat.
If you want more specific descriptors of my ideology, I would say I'm significantly influenced by both Philippe Van Parijs' "real libertarianism" and Karl Widerquist's "indepentarianism." I also describe myself as a "human centered capitalist" a la Andrew Yang, although I hold much deeper ideological roots to the tradition that stem from my secular humanist roots. Speaking of which:
Underlying worldview: secular humanism
Before we can have a discussion on my ideas, we need to discuss my worldview, or the ideas behind my ideas. I would classify my views as generally humanist. For the purposes of politics, I would accept the agnostic atheist view that we should assume that a god does not exist when discussing ethics. My actual views on god are more nuanced and akin to a secularized form of new age spirituality, but without hard proof that can be readily demonstrated to any purpose, it is better to assume a god does not exist.
I would argue, as such, most of my views are based in naturalism and empiricism, I believe that I exist, and that the world exists, and that everything that we can know must be derived from those two axioms. This leads to a worldview in which I believe things like science, and logic, and reason, are what ultimately tells us what we can know. If you believe in something, you should be able to demonstrate it and convince another person of it. I'm not arguing for complete knowledge on every subject, but like Christopher Hitchens, I would say "that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
As such, I believe that the big bang happened, that the world is something like 13 billion years old, and that the earth is 4.5 billions of years old. I believe life evolved from simple single cell organisms to the complex life we see today. I believe humans have been around for 200 thousand years or so, and modern civilizations for the past 5,000.
Being a libertarian, I tend to have a somewhat negative view toward the history of states, believing that they have a legacy of conquest and violence. However, I would say at this point the state is too valuable of an institution to abolish, and that doing so would make life much worse for many people. I would say I support modern liberal democratic values. Democracy, rights (although i recognize them as social conventions), separation of powers, and having a government respond to the people. Just as I call myself a human centered capitalist, I believe all institutions should be human centered. Do they exist to serve us, or do we exist to serve them? Legitimate institutions do the former, unjust ones do the latter. The former has utility to improving human well being, the latter just seeks to subjugate our fellow human beings and to turn us into slaves. I believe that over the past 300 years or so, states in the west have been on an upward trend in becoming more just and improving the quality of life of our citizens, and we should keep that trend going.
As far as ethics go, I believe that all ethics exists to serve humans. We create rules in order to live in better harmony with each other. Ethics and rules should strive to improve the quality of life beyond that which exists in the state of nature, while preserving freedom as much as humanly possible.
I would say that human beings have neither a good or evil nature, and are a bit of both. Humans are ultimately self interested, and there is nothing wrong with this. Without some level self interest, why even create ethics and states in the first place? I would say I'm both an individualist and a collectivist and that you need some level of collectivism in the form of enlightened self interest in order to make rules to allow us to all live our lives individually and in peace. We should selectively support collectivism insofar that it benefits our self interest and expands our well being and liberty.
I would say that our biology, environments, and social systems greatly influence our behavior, and that we should strive to make our social systems serve us to the greatest extent possible. I believe a lot of mental illness is due to dysfunctional social structures that put great stress on individuals, and that alleviating these problems would lead to a happier more fulfilled populace with less crime, suicide, and other indicators of social dysfunction.
I believe in progress. I believe in trying to advance humanity toward a state of being that does not exist yet, in which we are all happy, healthy, well taken care of, and free to do as we want.
Economics
I like to ask one big question as far as how the economy is run: does the economy exist for us, or do we exist for the economy? If the economy exists for us, that's good, that's how it should be. If we exist to serve it, then it is unjust and it should be changed.
The core problem with capitalism in my opinion is that the economy does not exist for us, we exist to serve it. We are effectively forced to work and jobs are central to our lives. We define how we view a person based on what we do, rather than our inherent worth. And our answer to most problems with the economy seems to be that we need to create more jobs. But let's talk about what jobs really are, poor people being forced by the property rights system to serve rich people. So we really do exist to serve the economy it seems. And our economy seems structured to force us to labor. I know a lot on the right will use a lot of mealy mouthed words to jump through hoops trying to justify how this isn't just slavery with extra steps, but I remain unconvinced. Our system forces us to work while granting itself just enough mental acrobatics to justify how it totally isn't that. And in my opinion, this is the most serious problem under capitalism and if we solved this, it would solve a great deal of issues under capitalism.
So how do we solve this? Well, we give everyone a basic income, and this is what separates me from mainstream liberals and social democrats. While they merely want to regulate relationships between employers and laborers, I want to solve the core imbalance. And for that, we need to give people enough money to be self sufficient and not coerced into labor. In doing this, we create free people that don't exist either under capitalism as it exists, or socialism, which fails on its promises to resolve these core problems. If people have the power to say no and aren't forced to participate in the market, then the market would operate much more like the hypothetical free market dictated by voluntary buyers and sellers who exchange goods and services for money. If one side is coerced to participate, then people are not free.
As such, a basic income is not just the ideal safety net for me, but it's central to my ideology. I also support many traditional liberal and social democratic safety nets like universal healthcare and free college, as well as more traditional ways to regulate relationships between employers and workers like labor laws, unions, etc.
To expand on my human centered capitalist outlook, I also add this plank to it: jobs are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. We tend to want to "create jobs" to answer all economic woes. if people want to work, and people want to offer work, then yes, people should create jobs all they want, but we shouldn't just create work for work's sake, and then coerce people to do such work under the basis that it's good for them. We need to shed ourselves of this protestant work ethic garbage and allow for a system in which work is done to get things that need to be done, done, not for its own sake. We shouldnt seek to employ every able bodied person, especially against their will. Instead, we should distribute valuable work that needs to be done among willing participants as the market allows. Again, the economy should work for us, not the other way around, and work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. That's how I sum up my iteration of human centered capitalism.
Social issues
My core belief on social issues is based on John Stuart Mill's harm principle, that the only valid exercise of power is to prevent harm to others. As such, I believe in libertarianism in a more traditional sense here. That unless one's behavior harms others, people should be allowed to do it. If you wanna get an abortion, get an abortion (for reference, I don't think fetuses should be protected until late in the pregnancy anyway). If you want to be gay or trans, be gay or trans. BDSM is fine as long as its consensual, unless it gets to the point of seriously harming or killing others (please, no Armin Miewes type situations, that's where it crosses the line for me). I believe pot should be legalized and other drugs decriminalized. I believe that people should have a right to privacy under the fourth amendment. COVID, I do lean left on that, the actions that allegedly inhibit freedom like mask and vaccine mandates, as well as social distancing was intended to...prevent harm to others. I know a lot of libertarians will rip me for that, but again, I'm not an anti government extremist. I just believe people should be free to live as they want...until it harms others. Spreading diseases harms others. Therefore it can be regulated. There's nothing bad or nefarious about this. Again, it's to prevent harm to others.
Culturally, I consider myself a "classical progressive." I do this intentionally to point out that over the course of my life, and particularly in the past decade or so, the culture war has changed. It used to be a battle of worldviews, between secular humanists who believed in science and reality, and religious extremists who wanted to impose their crazy ideas on others. In that sense, I am left wing. I'm secular, progressive, libertarian, and left wing. HOWEVER, the modern culture war is not between these factions as much. The right is mostly the same, but now has become more "alt right", that is to say, more authoritarian and fascist like. And the left has gone all in with social justice politics. For laid back, libertarian me, I dont like either of these groups. The right goes without saying. Epitome of evil and insanity for me. But the left...eh...not so hot on them any more. The fact is, these guys aren't libertarian. They're authoritarian and want to force their views on others, and reduce peoples' liberties to ensure the supremacy of their views in larger society. I see this as a threat to my liberty, just as the right is a threat to my liberty. So nowadays, I consider myself a cultural centrist, leaning left, but disliking both extremes.
Foreign policy
In my ideal world, I wouldn't care about foreign policy at all. I live in the US, surrounded by oceans, in my own isolated corner of the world. I dislike interventionism in principle, and believe people should be free to govern themselves as they wish.
However, we do not live in an ideal world, and it's not the 19th century any more. As have been demonstrated by two world wars, and more recently, Ukraine, we, as the sole superpower, are forced into playing a political chess match with other rival powers like Russia and China. These other countries govern themselves by much different value systems than we do, and are fundamentally more authoritarian and less respectful of liberty and human life. Whatever grievances I have against the US and other western nations are tiny compared to what they would be if these countries took over. And these countries are looking to expand their influence into zones that have been traditionally western since WWII. Russia wants to expand into Europe and China wants to spread across Asia and the Pacific. We cannot allow this to stand. So sadly, I support America in a cold war against these other rival powers. I believe pax americana is a relatively good thing to the world, at least compared to the alternatives, and I view Russia and China as existential threats to the west's way of life. How can we be free to practice social libertarianism and human centered capitalism at home if we lose this cold war to authoritarian powers abroad? The short answer to that is: in the long term, we can't.
Generally speaking my foreign policy preferences are akin to Joe Biden and the democratic party. I both reject the psychotic influences of the far right in trying to force "freedom" and "democracy" on people, but also the far left that thinks we should literally be isolationists. Basically, my view is "Iraq bad, protecting Ukraine good". If that makes any sense at all.
Notable candidates I've supported in the past:
Barack Obama- 2012
Bernie Sanders- 2016
Jill Stein - 2016
Bernie Sanders- 2020
Andrew Yang- 2020
Howie Hawkins- 2020
Marianne Williamson- 2024
A brief ideological history of my belief system
Pre 2002- Apolitical, leaned conservative
2002-2005- Christian conservatism/neoconservatism
2006-2007- Moderate conservatism
2008-2010- Libertarian conservatism
2011- Moderate conservartism
2012-2013- Social liberalism/secular humanism
2014-2023- Secular humanism/social libertarianism
Political tests
Political compass- -4.25/-4.92 (moderate lib left)
Sapply values- -3.67/-1.33/5.63 (progressive left)
8 values- 71.2% equality, 53.3% globe, 68% liberty, 76% progress (social liberalism)
Isidewith- lean closest to Bernie Sanders (90%)
Conclusion
And there you have it, that's my attempt to succinctly describe my ideology. This might be outdone by previous articles I've done in the past, but I also believe this is more detailed and might be a good summary of what my priorities are these days.
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