Personal Journal

California

Today, I’m happy about election results in California.
When something political occurs which lends itself to fitting within my political perspective, it puts my soul at ease.
I can tell you why I’m a conservative in a simple sentence (hopefully simple):
A democracy will tend to gravitate toward socialism (toward imposed egalitarianism), and to do so, the state will be forced to take things from people and give the confiscated property to others (i.e., it will be forced to tear freedoms away from people); to create an egalitarian state (as Plato said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”). The people who have the least drive will bellow loudest of their needs, the people who quietly push ahead in the world will have the most taken from them; the state will punish success.

This is what we saw in the Soviet Union (except that it functioned with an inner apparatus where, if you were willing to co-opt your integrity for the inner circle elite, instead of the egalitarian state, you could profit). There’s no doubt to me that socialism enslaves the human soul. It enables people to yield their souls to the corruption of our base nature (that we want to be idle, surfeited effortlessly).

I have always believed that capitalism’s danger lies in the excesses made possible by human greed. Socialism’s danger lies in the excesses made possible by human sloth. With capitalism, I believe that very few people would possess the level of greed to become slave lords (though we have historical examples from the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries).

In a socialist system, I believe very many people would possess the level of sloth to imprison an entire society to meeting their needs. We can see France and German entitlement programs requiring massive state allotments of resources, and being unsupportable into the near future (in the same way that our own Social Security system is unsustainable, though it should be noted that a previous administration [Lyndon Johnson] started taking all social security contributions and making them part of the general federal budget for general spending [at that time, far less Social Security money went out than came in – so taking that surplus into the budget allowed the federal budget to have more money; today, the opposite is true, more money goes out in Social Security than comes in, and if previous administrations had been restrained, that social security money surplus would have accrued over all this time, and would be buffered by huge savings. It was spent, instead, and now we will have to drain the federal budget to keep good the promises].

See, I know that most people will forsake meta-cognition for immediate gain. I’d say probably 60 to 70 percent of the population would rather just take away from other people “who have more than they need” so that they themselves can have a short term convenience.

But I believe that human beings MUST create governments that do two things: First, they must restrict the ability of human corruption to restrain humanity. Second, they must harness the goodness produced by free human spirits without punishing those who excel in a free state.

So I am a capitalist. I would rather see the state find ways to restrict those whose greed corrupts than yield to those whose sloth corrupts. It damages fewer people in terms of the state’s imposition upon the governed. It requires the state to have less harmful impact on the human soul (which craves complete freedom).

So back to Arnold.

I’m pleased that Schwarzenegger was elected because the kind of conservative that I am will be highlighted. There is, to me, a deep philosophical rift in the Republican party. The crux of the matter is how we define ourselves on social issues. Conservatism to me is about restricting the government so that it cannot oppress people. That means less taxation. That means less legal intersecting with people’s lives. The issue is about liberty (and I think I’ve said that I’m not a libertarian because Libertarianism presumes that all people will give freedom to others and will take responsibility for their own lives, and that is a Utopia we’re not going to see in a society where the lazy and the power hungry can conspire politically).

I found out today that my particular breed of Conservatism is known as being an “Eagle” conservative. Socially libertarian, fiscally conservative. They say that Arnold is one of us. In the nation’s most populous state, it will be good to see one of us at work in a state so heavily under the influence of Democrats.

For the record, I was against the recall. I thought we ought to let Gray Davis hang himself, and the Democrat party would be there with him by association. But as I’ve learned about California politics, from which I am much removed, I have learned that an Eagle Republican could not obtain the Republican nomination in the state due to the need in primaries to yield to the Social Conservatives (i.e., the Christian Right, which I don’t mean to disparage, but who don’t understand that their agenda can be far too easily equated with the same kind of non-secular government that we abhor in the Islamic nations of the Middle East). That’s a big problem with the social conservatives in the Republic party. Their religious convictions. They feel compelled by god to impose them governmentally (indeed, which is not necessary given the readings of the Bible).

I am hopeful that this brand of conservatism will be given more publicity, and that more independent minded (I should say “unaffiliated” for we all aspire to be independent, don’t we?) will recognize it for what it is; the best movement politically for the liberation of the human spirit within a governed populace.

Blah, this rambling probably isn’t the least bit entertaining to read, and I apologize.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn