Standards and Conservativism

Monday, June 04, 2007

Standards and Conservativism
Currently Reading
Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy
By Bill Gates
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I wrote this in response to a blog post about conservativism. I figure it's long enough to post here, so her she goes. (my original posting of this response was on the facebook reference to the blog post by the author of the blog)
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Hmmm. I respect Kirk, but I must say I'm disappointed at the arguments and presuppositions of the quotation in the blog post.

First, I believe the labeling to be a perfect example of how labels are absolutely detrimental to an in-depth discussion of politics. Almost every individual disagrees at some point, label or not, on policy. If there is disagreement on policy, then the philosophy is /also/ different, for if our philosophies are the same, then the results must be the same also.

That said, I think that much could be accomplished in the way of understanding political philosophy if there is spent either replacing labels with explanations of concepts* and/or defining important words, such as liberty -- and /sticking with those definitions/.

Kirk seems to imply, and quotes Mises I believe, that something called a "license" is unjustified. Though I have not read the overall context of the paragraphs I read in the post, I must say ... it's total bunk. I've read similar arguments by Dr. Kennedy in the book "What if America were a Christian Nation Again." I completely "bought" the arguments a few years ago -- until it occurred to me that the argument was simply a desperate attempt at illegalizing what we don't like without creating any form of a realistic standard for it.**

The reasoning can be found in simply questioning /everything/. Let’s take marijuana for example. Should it be made illegal? By what standard? We can’t simply outlaw something on a whim we /must/ have a standard, or a model, for determining when a policy action is justified. This standard should be coherent and must work well with the other standards we have for other questions of policy.

For example, if we say that “smoking is terribly unhealthy, but I don’t think it should be illegal when it occurs at the citizen’s home”, then we have created a certain standard. That standard (or, at least, the implications of the standard include) is the following:

1. We shouldn’t ban something simply because it is unhealthy

2. Activities in private should be more free than public activities.***

But now, let’s look at another policy question. Most of those I have discussed the issue with believe that marijuana should be illegal because it is so unhealthy/addictive/whatever. They also, incoherently, believe that tobacco /should/ be legal. This reflects a contradiction of standards, considering on almost every level, tobacco is /much, much/ worse than marijuana! Also, marijuana has certain medical properties that tobacco simply doesn’t have, and is not technically addictive.

But most conservatives support this policy distinction, in clear violation of a foundational standard regarding substances (and, also, a foundational standard regarding /everything/). What could be the cause of this?

I have asked myself as to what the cause is for some time. It took me months of /knowing/ that marijuana should be legal before I could finally admit that it should be legal. I know realize that it was simply hard for me to completely cast my cultural prejudices away long enough to seek the truth.

Tradition brought with it double-standards. Tradition is not inherently good, and, indeed, can be considered more harmful than it is good. Just ask Jesus.
But what should the foundational philosophy and standards be? I’d still be interested in seeing a comprehensive philosophy other than my own. I haven’t seen a coherent one, except utterly vague and unenforceable ideas. For example, whatever is justified for cultural justice. What? That’s complete silliness.

I honestly believe the Libertarian against Conservativism dilemma could be ended if all of the sides simply decided to think outside of cultural biases, hard as it may be, and formulate biblical standards that did not bring with them absurd conclusions. For example, we could not say “sin should be outlawed”, because everyone would be in prison.

I hope this makes sense. The reason I’m arguing what I am arguing is because so often I’ll hear a conservative person say things such as, “governments should only step in to protect people from other people”, only to see them go completely against this principle in all practicality. I think when we try to match our policies to our philosophies, we’ll find much ground-changing, along with a, well, friendlier relationship among conservative and libertarian groups.

Wow. This was long. I’ll post this on my Xanga. :-p

* I realize that a label is justified when both parties understand what the label means. But this situation is usually rare, more so with “libertarian” than “conservative”

** By realistic standard, I mean a standard which allows some level of freedom and happiness. We could certainly formulate a standard for outlawing marijuana. But it would also include the outlawing of brownies, fried foods, soda pop, cable TV and Tom Clancy novels.

*** Note that my use of the word “free” means literally that – the absent of restrictions, though not total. Also note that I do not believe freedom from restriction is as justified nor as valuable and desirable as total freedom from restriction – that is to say that some restrictions are necessary to stop chaos and other restrictions from occurring out of accident. This was a bad bunny trail.