Lens of Liberty

Everyone sees events unfold through their own ideological lens. My lens is liberty.

Everyone is biased. Particularly when it comes to politics, there is no such thing as unbiased analysis. It is the responsibility of the audience to understand the biases of any source and keep them in mind when evaluating the information presented. For this reason, I feel it’s important to explain my own biases.

Ideology. It’s a word that is often used with negative connotation as in, extreme ideology, rigid ideology, ideologue, etc. However, ideology is merely a filter through which we process information and events. It should function as an intellectual framework, and one that is never complete. That framework must be constantly examined and adjusted as necessary in light of new information. I look with great skepticism on anyone who claims to be “free” of ideology. When opinions and beliefs are formed in isolation, contradictions are inevitable. Contradictions are the product of intellectual laziness.

I reject the right-left paradigm on which most political analysis today is based. The labels liberal and conservative can mean anything depending on the context, time period, and issue being discussed. Labels that can mean anything mean nothing. The designations of right and left to political opinions are equally worthless. What value can a system of classification have when it puts Hitler at one extreme of the spectrum and Stalin at the other as if they are polar opposites? They are merely variations on a theme.

Political science is the study of power. How is power distributed in a society? who has it? and what are it’s limits?  So rather than left vs right, the real dichotomy is government vs the individual. Totalitarianism vs Anarchy. Collectivism vs Individualism. Servitude vs Liberty. Any movement towards greater government power necessarily means a reduction in power for the individual. In this way today’s Republican and Democratic parties lie fairly close together somewhere near the middle of this spectrum, though I would argue that both are in a slow, but inexorable creep in the direction of greater government power. Likewise Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia lie, not on opposite ends of the spectrum, but together on the far extreme of government power.

The word libertarian may conjure up different images in the mind, depending on whose mind, but in as much as libertarian mean individual liberty and minimal government, I am comfortable with the label. The libertarian movement boasts brilliant and intriguing thinkers who could accurately be described as anarchists. While I find their writings thought provoking, they remain a step further to the extreme than I’m willing to go. Take a step back from the edge and that’s where you’ll find me. Liberty is the ideal and government, by it’s nature, restricts liberty. So the absolute least amount of government necessary is what I advocate.