Political affiliation

This is something I wrote three years ago when asked to describe my political views... Put here for posterity...

I'm a moderate. I think there are things that lots of people want from this nation, and the best bet is to allow both sides to have a voice. Compromise and adaptation is what makes our species great, I'm wondering why it's so repellent in our government.

But unfortunately, because certain things have become dogmatic, I'm a conservative to the liberals and a liberal to the conservatives. The 2nd Amendment is a perfectly good litmus test for this. If I say that I want people to own weaponry, but I want rational restrictions on that weaponry, I'm pissing off both sides. The dogma from the left says that more guns kills people, but the dogma from the right says ANY restriction on private ownership of arms is a violation of the Bill of Rights.

But I think there's a rational approach to this. If we create a spectrum of armament ownership, where 0 is ZERO private weapon ownership and 10 is anything goes, we can help get this into perspective. The reasons to avoid the low end of the spectrum are well-rehearsed... We want to be able to defend ourselves against criminals and government oppression. The reasons to avoid the high end are that we don't feel private ownership of nukes and barrels of anthrax serve any legitimate purpose and pose an necessary risk to the surrounding communities.. So the middle ground is finding where we can meet our needs, protection, while avoiding the hazards, unnecessary danger.

The #5 in this scenario, to me, is to classify weapons of indiscriminate slaughter as unprotected weaponry just as "Fire in a theater" is unprotected speech. Any weapon that you cannot reasonably aim and use to eliminate a threat without harming the people around that threat is indiscriminate in its use. This makes it so that full automatics, chemical and biological weaponry, and nukes and other explosives are not free for private ownership. Sniper rifles cause a complications in that I'm not sure weaponry that can be used without knowing who actually fired the bullet, and that's up for debate in legislature.

I use this approach in all my debate. There is little dogmatic philosophy that I subscribe to, and I look at almost everything as a complicated effort to balance our desires with as little complication as possible. And thus, I usually end up in the middle.

As another example, I think capitalism is the best solution to deliver finite goods to the most people, but I don't think monopolies and oligarchies are natural extensions of the free market. I believe money can be used coercively, despite the opinions of the Mises folks. Competition is crucial for markets to function as efficient tools of society. But touting the virtues of markets is anathema to the left, and putting any kind of restriction on a corporation is anathema to the right.

I think we're the best nation under the sun, but I also think we have to recognize and accept our weaknesses without posturing or egotism. We have to provide ourselves the room to be wrong... because sometimes we are. Just trying to do the right thing does not transitively make all your actions correct.