Guest Blog: Political Biography

The Rant­i­ng of a (for­mer) Kansan: or How I Became a Con­ser­v­a­tive Lib­er­tar­i­an Com­mu­nist.

Well Adam asked for some sort of social-polit­i­cal post, so I?m going to rant on my polit­i­cal back­ground, as a sort of foot in the door for future polit­i­cal rants in this space.

First let me say that I am social­ly fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. This imme­di­ate­ly seems to get me labeled as a Repub­li­can. Which is some­thing I tend to hate, because Repub­li­cans are way too rabid toward abor­tion and the death penal­ty for my taste. This is where my strong lib­er­tar­i­an streak comes in. I don?t believe that the Gov­ern­ment should insert itself into our lives. Which is to say that while I believe that abor­tion is wrong, I?m not going to go out and bomb a clin­ic or make a big push to make it ille­gal. I also am opposed to gay mar­riage, but only in the sense that mar­riage is a reli­gious insti­tu­tion. I believe that the gov­ern­ment can make a legal ?union? but not a mar­riage. So I think that if you are homo­sex­u­al and you want to ?mar­ry? then you just need to be a part of a church that believes in that sort of thing and you can get mar­ried and the gov­ern­ment should rec­og­nize the union in the same way that my mar­riage is rec­og­nized by the state of Kansas (and all oth­er states via the due faith and cred­it clause of the con­sti­tu­tion). It is eas­i­er to say that I live a con­ser­v­a­tive lifestyle in gen­er­al and I do not preach myself as supe­ri­or (but yet I preach thus the post), nor do I wish to impart my beliefs on any­one (out­side of my fam­i­ly of course).

The Lib­er­tar­i­an aspect has already been touched on in the above para­graph, but I?m going to expand on these beliefs a bit as well. I believe in free­dom and lib­er­ty as spelled out in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the Con­sti­tu­tion, and the Bill of Rights. I think that a large, cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment is a bad thing. The Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should devolve much of it?s pow­er back to the states and the local gov­ern­ment. I feel that the peo­ple should be free to express their ideas, prac­tice their beliefs, and be involved with their com­mu­ni­ty. I believe that gov­ern­men­tal con­trol of people?s lives is almost always a bad thing.

The one part of the my polit­i­cal agen­da that runs con­trary to my oth­er beliefs is the com­mu­nism part. By com­mu­nism, I am not talk­ing Stal­in, Lenin, the Red Men­ace, and com­mie pinko bas­tards. When I say com­mu­nism, I?m mean­ing it in more of a true com­mune sort of way. The gap between the tru­ly wealthy and the rest of the peo­ple has stretched beyond belief. The poor­est peo­ple in this coun­try can­not hope for a change in their sit­u­a­tion for sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions if they are lucky, they are beat down upon by a very broad­ly defined mid­dle class. Mid­dle class in this coun­try starts at being ?fair­ly com­fort­able? (i.e. food on the table, roof over head) and runs all the way up to ?fair­ly wealthy?. This includes peo­ple who say they are ?upper mid­dle class?(Doctors, most lawyers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als). The mid­dle class peo­ple can move a bit either up and down the lad­der, but it is much, much eas­i­er for them to fall into the ?poor? range. To be tru­ly wealthy you must also wield a great deal of pow­er. I?m not just talk­ing about polit­i­cal pow­er like the Bush fam­i­ly, but also pow­er to con­trol the media, and the pow­er to keep politi­cians in their pock­ets. The last 24 years have seen a schism in how the ?lib­er­al? democ­rats and ?con­ser­v­a­tive? repub­li­cans do busi­ness. The democ­rats (Clin­ton) did more to reign in nation­al debt and out of con­trol spend­ing, while the repub­li­cans (Rea­gan, Bush­es) have been irre­spon­si­ble and increased spend­ing and cut tax­es on the rich.

If Adam lets me come back to do anoth­er appear­ance, I will point out how, while 20 years lat­er than pre­dict­ed, many of the items in Orwell?s 1984 are clos­er than you think.