Current Events

Homosexual Marriage

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics, Religion , , , , , , ,

I don’t care much if homosexuals, a small percentage of the population, gain the right to marry. (The right to marry? What kind of a right is this?) In general, I don’t like the idea that an activist minority can use the armed power of the state to force a cultural change at all, on a well identified majority. (Why no thave a court decree that lies are now included under the definition of “truth,” subject to fines and even to jail terms for recidivism?) I also don’t get all that agitated by the realization that civil union contracts can achieve the same objective, concrete ends, as marriage without hurting deeply the many.

At the same time, I think that both fear of the new and a simplistic reading of the Bible motivates many opponents of homosexual marriage. (By the way, given the California large majority vote on Proposition Eight, it has to include many Democrats, not just Republicans.) I am no theologian but I have trouble imagining a God who loses sleep over the fact that some men love men (and act upon it) or that some women love women (and act upon it). After all, that was His indifferent design that did it.

I am not much concerned either about the example it will set if the right to homosexual marriage becomes the law in the whole country as it is already in several states. I don’t think we are on the eve of seeing a woman marry her two Chihuahuas, one male, one female, for example. The spread of polygamy is a greater possibility. One form, polygeny, might turn out to be OK because there is a shortage of functioning males, I hear. I do believe in slippery slopes though. I have to because I am a three-times former smoker.

Whichever way the Supreme Court decision comes down, I will easily live with it. My friendship for the homosexuals of both sexes I have known and who care about the decision makes this acceptance even easier. (That’s the way it is: Principles regarding abstractions tend to melt a little in contact with the warmth of flesh and blood of real people.) Homosexual activists are not, however making friends with me by their insistence of having the Court (or the courts) overturn the results of a well established democratic process. I mean California Proposition Eight (against which I voted).

Deep inside my brain, there is also a vague notion that the issue does not reduce to morality or to tolerance. It has to do with some very basic structures of human thought based on dualities. I don’t have a good grasp of this. I will wait until I do to discuss the topic (unlike some visitors on this blog who will say anything twenty seconds after it comes to mind.)

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , ,

1. Stanford’s online encyclopedia of philosophy has a new entry on ‘markets’.

2. Why the Swedes are moving to Norway.

3. John Stossel explains why Washington DC is the richest area in the US:

Lobbyists and taxpayer-funded special privilege won’t go away unless big government does.

4. BRICS planning to build their own development bank. Does this signal the end of the West’s 400-year period of dominance? No. If anything, this is a triumph of the ideal of the West and especially its thinkers’ critiques of central economic planning.

5. The Sectarian Social Democratic Ideal. A very, very good critique of social democracy.

Liblogic

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Again (AGAIN) the Midwest is trying to operate in spite of a major snowfall. Its’ a snowfall of extraordinary magnitude for the season according to many of those who know.  And, I have not heard or read any meteorologist arguing that, on the contrary, it’s a normal snowfall for the first week of Spring.

Snow is cold. This cold wave is yet another proof of the reality of a global warming trend that threatens civilization and, beyond it, Earth itself. Of course, this trend is the result of noxious human activities. It’s a done deal that there cannot be any other cause.

If you don’t see that the more industry and cars, the more cold, and the more cold, the more  warming, you are just uneducated or stubborn, or both.

By the same reasoning, the unseasonal cold makes fuels, including natural gas, less essential to human happiness. The president, served by the supine press, must see the current snow storm in the Midwest  as a signal to  redouble its efforts to prevent the rational utilization of America’s abundant fuel resources.

Got it?

There is a pleasant-looking guy in his forties  who often suns himself close to my coffee shop at the beach. He admires my grand-daughter. Of course, I took this to imply that he is a man of taste and discernment. We fell into casual conversation recently about a book I was holding. The conversation quickly turned casually political.

He is an Obama supporter. This being the People Socialist Green Republic of Santa Cruz, it would be surprising if he were not. So, I pried a little.

It took my beach acquaintance a few minutes to fold to the default option that President Obama at least looked presidential. He couldn’t name a single Obama achievement of which he was proud or satisfied. (I had unfairly deprived him of the opportunity to mention Obamacare by designating it  a Pelosi victory.) This is not the fist time I hear Obamites refer to the president’s looks. It’s not clear how you turn such people around. Update: I don’t mean that I hope to turn all, or many around, just a small percentage would do, pehraps 3%..

Suntan Joe was seething with hatred of President Bush. This is remarkable five years later. Curiously, it did not seem to be about the Iraq War. I sense that the antipathy runs deeper, that it’s akin to what some chimps feel about a designated other chimp with an unusual facial expression perhaps. That is also hard to beat.

Since the Republican defeat last November, I have been perplexed by the post-mortem analyses of people I usually trust. I feel that they are off the mark because they are too obvious perhaps, too logical. I am not doing better myself.

The Intricacies of Political Life in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Is Islam Prominent?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Religion , , , , , , , ,

Riffing off of Dr Delacroix’s piece on Afghanistan, and reading through the comments, I thought it’d be a good idea to “go with the flow” (as they say in Santa Cruz). Anatol Lieven has a must-read piece in the National Interest on the US government’s failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Among the gems:

I have been struck, both in the United States and in Britain, by the tendency of officers and officials to speak and write as if protecting the lives of troops from Taliban attack is the first duty of the U.S. and British states. In fact, it is the duty of soldiers to risk their lives to protect the civilian populations of their countries, and the only valid reason why the U.S. and British militaries are in Afghanistan at all is to protect their fellow citizens from terrorism. If that equation is reversed, and the needs of the war in Afghanistan are actually worsening the terrorist threat to the U.S. and British homelands, then our campaign there becomes not just strategically but morally ludicrous.

Indeed, one of the most common leaps of logic that neoconservatives and Leftists make in regards to foreign policy and the rule of law is the role of militaries in society. If there is to be a role for the state, it should be limited to maintaining a domestic court system, providing for the defense of the state, and signing trading pacts with other polities. Anything more than this results in things like exploitative generational gaps, trouble paying the bills, and terrorist attacks.

Lieven continues, explaining the geopolitical situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Continue reading →

Afghanistan, Conservatives and Libertarians. Telling off the King.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

There is an upsurge of hostility to the war in Afghanistan in conservative circles. Thus, the Independent Institute, an organization I have been supporting modestly but faithfully for years has a spate of statements against our anti-Taliban operations there. It’s understandable but disappointing.

Part of the reason for some conservative reserve is simply childish tit-for-tat: “You libs berated Bush about his war, in Iraq; the shoe is on the other foot and we will berate you about Obama’s war in Afghanistan.” It matters not to this mindset that it’s only Obama’s war in the trivial sense that he is not using his powers to withdraw.

The main cause of the upsurge of hostility comes from the strong libertarian component in our midst. Libertarians, by definition, dislike big government. They observe, correctly, that every war enlarges the importance and the power of government in relation to civil society, to society in general. They assert further that the taxation capability governments acquires in war time – largely with the help of the suspension of criticality occasioned by patriotism – is seldom rolled back. Thus, war means irreversible growth of the state and a corresponding shrinking of individual liberties. Hence, libertarians tend to be reflexively isolationists.

Of course, I think this is all true. However, this is only part of the story. It’s futile to ignore the concrete, short-term questions facing this country with respect to its involvement in Afghanistan. Here are three: Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links

1. The Liberalism of Classical Liberalism. This is a concise essay by economist Peter Boettke that is pretty self-explanatory. If you read it, be sure to keep my observation about socialists only caring about the rich in the back of your minds.

2. The Arctic is the Mediterranean of the 21st century.

3. A new witchcraft law being drafted in Indonesia needs to be implemented with the cooperation of witches and psychics (“experts in their field”) if it to be fair and just, says one lawmaker. Be sure to check out the ‘comments’ thread.

4. A long essay on John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Here is a juicy quote:

The next argument, of the late 1970s, took place within rights-oriented liberalism, and pitted Rawls’s brand of liberal-egalitarianism against the sort of right-wing libertarian views which found their most powerful voice in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. This debate, Sandel says, “corresponds roughly to the debate in American politics between defenders of the market economy and advocates of the welfare state.” There is a sweet irony in the fact that the egalitarian position should have been defended by Rawls, a wealthy “wasp,” and the neo-liberal one by Nozick, a poor Jew from Brooklyn.

Rawls’s book. I think this debate will continue to be the most important one of the 21st century, at least in the West.

From the Comments: China and the Future of Nationalism

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , , , ,

Riffing off of my recent post on Chinese porn searches, Dr. Delacroix writes:

This piece is opening a big closed book about contemporary China. Many Western intellectuals keep pretending that Chinese society and contemporary Chinese culture are inscrutable. I am one of these but I can’t fool myself forever: The pretense is largely a way to avoid commenting on what we really, readily see […]

Think of the psychological implications of having no interest in seeing how others do it! Does it imply anything about the extent of the otherness of others?

Dr. Delacroix goes on to encourage more research on China in the near future and rightly points out that libertarians have not adequately studied the region. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Libertarianism is extremely weak in most areas of intellectual pursuit. In fact, the only reason libertarianism has any clout at all in academia is because it has a strong showing in two of the most important academic fields of inquiry: economics and philosophy. Perhaps this blog will contribute towards shrinking that gap.

My own impulse is to look at institutions for cultural, economic and political explanations of society. I’ll have more on this later, but another fascinating post by Shanghaiist on the Russian state’s recent debut on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) is worth highlighting. From the report:
Continue reading →

A Wide Net; Cyprus Lesson; Conversations with my Ghost; Unfeminism; the Blooming Sequoia

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , ,

I am too busy, because I am completing my memoirs and because I am refinancing ( a real bitch!), to do proper postings. So, here are pellmell thoughts  to stay in your minds and in your hearts during this dry spell. (That goes for my enemies too. I love being in their hearts, festering.)

Yesterday and today, I had hits from India, Mauritania, Ecuador, Yemen, and Estonia among others on this blog. I don’t  know many actually read my stuff. I hope all the hits correspond to actual readers although I cannot be sure, obviously. That is the miracle of the Internet. In spite of all the garbage it carries, like a large river, it’s good for development, the development of knowledge, in this case, and of rationality. There is a special spot in my heart for forthright, brave, tiny Estonia. Read up on it.

Once in a while, I even  have a spirited discussion on the Internet with people I would not meet in the other life, the life many persist in calling “real.” I am glad I cast a wide net on the Internet.

This week  the Cypriots gave the world a lesson. Hardly anyone  noticed because our commentators keep spreading boring cliches instead of looking for that which is both unusual and meaningful. Their government tried to make palatable the prospect of taxing bank deposit by promising to do it only to the rich. Ordinary Cypriots did not take the corrupting bait. They still said “No!”

I am like them: I don’t want to tax more the rich, the very rich, the billionaires,  the crooks, the mafias, the zebras, the giraffes, anyone! I just want the  federal government to shrink radically. I don’t know a single liberal who is aware of this principled position, not one.  Listen to them on this blog’s “comments” section. Their heads are full of silly stereotypes about conservatism as a political philosophy. I think they are not evil but lazy.

A couple of days ago, a high-school buddy recognized me through the excerpts of my memoirs on this blog (“I Used to be French: An Immature Autobiography“). Frankly, I had not thought of him for fifty years. His name  acted like a key that unlocked a door I had not entered in decades. It’s not that the door was double-locked or anything like this. The door was closed and I had no reason to bother to look for a key. I just ignored it. It contained no treasure in fact, just a few objects of interesting memory. But inside, there was also a ghost, the ghost of me when I was a teenager.

I don’t know if the French have high-school reunions. They might because they imitate eventually everything that America does.  If they had reunions and I knew it, I would probably not go. First, I failed there. I would sound stupid saying one hundred times in one evening, “No, I did not get it.”  Or I would have stopped going after ten years, when the  prospect of scoring with the girls you secretly lusted for as a teenager begins to  turn into a nightmare. I have no wish to see my own aging in others’ waistlines. I would think unkindly both of those who looked worse and of those who looked better than I. Does this make sense?

My high-school buddy reminded me of an episode of which I have nearly no memory. He recalled a time when he and two girls and I were waiting for admission to an expensive swimming pool . (That was the same  central Paris swimming pool. “Piscine Molitor,” that figures into the great movie “Life of Pi ” and that gave  its hero his name.) My classmate must have expressed admiration for the light gray flannel pants I was wearing. (That part must be true; I was already a flea market super-champion then, a superman picker.) He says I gave him the pants. I think he means then and there; I am not sure. I love the  story, of course. It depicts me, the young unformed me, as a generous person. Or was it only the love of the grand gesture?

URGENT UPDATE THE NEXT DAY: I did not give him the pants, I sold them to him. It means that I made up in my own mind by myself a story of generosity. That’s awful! Too bad, it was a good story.

I don’t know about you but I really enjoy this kind of adventure that comprises tiny, bearable elements of disorder. The Internet does not replace reading books though. It’s different but equally attractive.

Random pearls of wisdom: I overhear parts of a conversation while treating myself to  a rare greasy breakfast at my local diner:

“You have to kill them with silence.”

I stop the waitress who said this to ask,

“Is that what women do to men when they are angry?’ She never skips a beat, “No – she says – that’s unscientific.; women can’t do this, I mean stay silent.”

Smart women like this are dismantling stone by stone the phony monument put up by feminists over thirty years. It’s good that there are women equal to the task because feminists have been partly successful in  emasculating American men. (Many of the poor saps actually think showing sensitivity will get them laid!) How can I be sure? I am old enough that young women actually confide in me on the topic.

There is a completely incongruous redwood tree in my front yard about which I bitch periodically. It’s breaking up my portion of the sidewalk. It’s already cost me over $10,000 in sewer  repairs. One of these days, in a big wind, it will fall on my house, I fear. It gives us unwanted shade.

I like redwood trees but there are tens of thousands in the forest a mile away. This is not New Jersey or New Mexico; it’s not a rare tree around here. The city of Santa Cruz forbids me from cutting it. (Yes, it’s on my property.) The city has the criminal stupidity to demand a fee before it will even hear my appeal!

Well, several years ago, my wife planted a  bush bearing small yellow roses not far from the redwood. There was not foresight, no planning, no knowledge involved, maybe not even a green thumb. For some reason, the rosebush loves it there. It spread to everything. It’s a good climber. Right now, it has climbed about fifty feet up the redwood tree trunk and branches. The redwood looks like it’s in bloom with many yellow flowers. A deep part of me loves this display of joyous anarchy. I wonder if it violates some city ordinance I have not heard of though.

Unemployment: What Is It?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Politics , , ,

Unemployment has regained center stage now that the debt crisis has receded from that position, at least for a time. Unless things change dramatically over the next year unemployment will be the number one issue in the forthcoming presidential election. Hardly any proposal will escape being labeled “job-killing” or “job-creating” or both.

To begin with some basics, what is work and what is a job? For economists, work is any activity that we would not perform without tangible compensation, usually money. In our work lives almost all of us are also motivated by nonmonetary considerations, and to the extent we diverge from the most remunerative activity available to us, we are blending work and leisure. A retired person who takes up college lecturing may do the work primarily for the satisfaction it brings. If his salary were withdrawn and he continued to teach, he would be enjoying leisure.

The goal of all economic activity is consumption, which to economists means not just mundane goods like faster cars but also “noble” ends like cathedrals. Jobs are therefore not ends in themselves, as much as public discussion would suggest otherwise. They are means to acquire income to be used for consumption and saving, in addition to personal satisfaction, learning opportunities, or socializing.

A person who lacks a job is unemployed if he or she wants work, has suitable skills, and has realistic expectations about compensation. These are vague terms; they make unemployment a murky concept. That goes double for underemployment, though both remain very real phenomena. Continue reading →

Religion or Institutions: A Final Word

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Liberty, Religion , , ,

Over at Facts Matter, I believe I finally settled the issue of whether or not Islam is to blame for the violence in the Middle East. I put the nail in the coffin with this:

Still no evidence. I am, again, arguing about the real color of a unicorn’s horn…

Dr J asks:

Refresh my memory: Blasphemy laws where? “Popping up….”

Right now? Post-socialist Europe. And post-coup Thailand. And post-monarchist Nepal. Go ahead: Google it!

Are you implicitly stating that Russia is part of the historical West? Peter the Great just another Montesquieu?

Nope. You didn’t specify that the examples had to be from the traditional West. Speaking of moving the goalposts:

Death for converting, anywhere? (I did add this.)

Can you provide me with an instance of this happening in a Muslim state?

One more from Dr J:

With what penalties? (Death or more?)

Fines as far as I know. Again, can you give me an instance of a death sentence carried out in a Muslim state in the name of blasphemy?

David: rather than try to rebut every one of your points, I think I’ll just let your comments stand on their own. For your own benefit, insert the word “Muslim” in place of the word “Christian” throughout your lengthy defense of the latter.

If you do this, you’ll not only be proving my point, but you’ll have a better understanding of what is going on in the Middle East today. The difference between the United States and, say Russia or Egypt, is institutional.

Max Weber famously argued that Protestantism was responsible for the rise of capitalism in the West. There was something about Protestantism that changed the way northern Europeans thought about the world, as well as how they justified their actions. He was wrong, of course, but his argument continues to influence large swathes of opinion today. Why? Because of “selective anecdotal evidence that is fortified by the perceived well-being of contemporary Protestant states.”

The myth of Islam’s violent penchant should die with the same last breath of the imperialist’s claim of superior foresight. If anybody wants to go a couple more rounds in the ‘comments’ section here, I’d be glad to take you on. If you are hesitant, ask yourself if this is because you are afraid you might be proven wrong, or because you know deep down inside that you are absolutely correct about Islam’s mythical penchant for violence.

Russian and US Relations: Definitely Cooler and a Further Inquiry Into Why This Is

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , , , ,

I appreciate Evgeniy’s recent remarks on the deterioration of Russian and American relations. This is an issue that has not received as much attention as it should.

From my own point of view, I can think of a few items that have caused deterioration on the American side of the relationship. Here is a small and by no means comprehensive list:

  1. The missile shield being built in Eastern Europe, ostensibly for the prevention of missile attacks from Iran. This is pure garbage. Iran has zero interest in attacking Europe with missiles. The Europeans have proven themselves to be very even-handed when it comes to affairs in the Middle East over the past few decades, and especially in regards to all things Israel. The missile shield in states previously under Moscow’s thumb is a direct provocation towards Russia, and there is absolutely no need for it. Russia, for its part, has no need of attacking Europe either. Moscow currently has a symbiotic relationship with Europe and its energy needs and its own problems in the Caucasus and the Far East.
  2. The contempt that establishment foreign policy figures in Washington have shown, and continue to show, towards Russia. The remnants of the Cold War have simply refused to go away in Washington. I think this is largely because if the establishment consensus were to acknowledge that Cold War policies are irrelevant, then they would all be out of their lucrative jobs. This contempt spills over into the political arena as well. Remember Mitt Romney’s comments about Russia being the “number one enemy” of the United States? Pure nonsense and both the American people and the Russian people deserve better.
  3. The continued occupation of the Balkans by Western coalition troops. NATO should have either dissolved or become an all-European alliance once the Warsaw Pact came apart and the Soviet Union split up. Taking sides in the Balkan conflict was designed to do two things at once: 1) stick the West’s thumb in Russia’s eye and 2) convince the Muslim world that the West was paying attention to its needs. A few years after attacking Serbia and initiating the process of splitting it up into smaller states, two skyscrapers full of innocent people were bombed by two jet planes filled with innocent people in New York City. The attacks were done in the name of Islam. In addition to the failure of the Balkan invasion to court the Muslim world, the exercise of power in Russia’s traditional backyard did indeed infuriate the Russians. Instead of an ally or a friend, the policies of NATO have led to cool receptions and deep levels of mistrust in Moscow.

These three policies are a good starting point for understanding why Russian-US relations have cooled considerably since the collapse of the USSR and the presidency of George HW Bush. I think more reaching out is needed on both sides, and I again thank Evgeniy for initiating this discussion. I am hoping for a long and prosperous friendship between free thinkers from two magnificent societies. A friendship that is dedicated to peace and understanding between two peoples who should have never been enemies in the first place.

The Predictable Failure of the Iraq War

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve gone over the knowledge problem associated with foreign policy before, and I believe it is sufficient to say that libertarians were right in deflating predictions by hawks that the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq would go over smoothly. Hawks on both the Left and the Right oversimplified the situation in the Middle East. Their condescending tone towards both the Iraqi people and the broader Middle East guaranteed failure from the outset. Anybody who believes that a state – no matter how wealthy and powerful – can just waltz in to another state – no matter how poor and weak – and impose its will upon it is a fool.

Gene Healy reports from DC:

In a 2001 debate on Iraq with former CIA Director James Woolsey, my Cato Institute colleague, then-Chairman William Niskanen, argued that “an unnecessary war is an unjust war” and one we would come to regret having fought.

Niskanen was right. A new report from the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University tallies up the costs: nearly 4,500 U.S. troop fatalities, an eventual budgetary cost of some $3.9 trillion and more than 130,000 civilians as “collateral damage.”

[…]

Bill Niskanen, who passed away last year at the age of 78, never tired of reminding conservatives that war is a government program — and an especially destructive one at that.

If you add up the harsh economic sanctions imposed upon the Iraqis by the Democrats earlier in the decade, the 130,000 civilian toll increases significantly (to about half a million, most of whom were children).

Only a foreign policy based around commerce, peace and honest friendship will succeed in both the short and the long runs. Luckily for us, it appears that there is a growing consensus on this argument among the population of the United States. It helps that most advocates of the war are either remorseful or they are becoming more and more discredited by the day. From Hitlery Clinton to Dubya to John McCain, the old guard is steadily giving way to a breath of fresh air. Air that is more suitable for a republic dedicated to individual liberty.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Israelis hit the beach. None of the comments I saw paid any tribute to…you’ll see.
  2. James Buchanan on the Chicago School. Thoughts on the school from Virginia.
  3. A Profession with an Egalitarian Core. Economists have confirmation bias.
  4. Why Nations Fail. Acemoglu and Robinson give us an excerpt from their popular book.
  5. Bush’s War (and Part 2). Top-ranking Democrats thought Iraq had WMDs too. Therefore, the Iraq War was…a success? A good idea? A noble cause? Imagine trying to pitch these arguments to specialists (or laymen) in any field, anywhere in the world.
  6. An Ottoman map of Africa from the 17th century.

How to Rebut the Condescending Leftist

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , ,

Economist Bryan Caplan, in responding to calls for more to be done by governments for the world’s poor, writes the following:

Isn’t the entire problem that the world’s poor have little of value to sell on the world market? The answer, surprisingly, is no. The world’s poor have a very valuable good to sell: their labor. Though Third World workers often earn a dollar or two a day, even unskilled labor is worth $10-$15,000 per year on the world market.

There’s just one problem: First World governments’ immigration policies effectively forbid international trade in labor. The world’s poor cannot legally work in a First World country without that government’s permission. For most current residents of the Third World, this permission is almost impossible to obtain. If you’re an unskilled worker with no relatives in the First World, you have to endure Third World poverty, win the immigration lottery, or break the law.

Do read the whole thing. It’s from the recent Cato Unbound symposium on “Authority, Obedience and the State.” The Cato Institute is probably one of three think tanks that actually puts out work I can count on (the other two being Brookings and Hoover). Their monthly Cato Unbound is one of the best symposiums on the web.

Dr. Delacroix has written on immigration before. Here is a piece he produced for the Independent Review. Here are his blog posts on immigration.

Rebirth of Competitive Federalism

ryancgorham Comments, Current Events, Liberty, Politics

Before I begin I have a confession, I am a Party man. That being said, I have ties to the Liberty movement beginning when I was at Florida State and I am well-versed in Libertarian Theory and the Austrian School. I believe in a concept, which was termed recently “Competitive Federalism”. I first heard the term used by former Senator Jim DeMint at a Gala for the James Madison Institute on Wednesday (March 13th). The Liberty Foundation recently released a report outlining the idea, written by Opportunity Ohio President Matt Mayer, linked above. Senator DeMint described the idea by discussing the on-going competition between Governors Rick Scott and Rick Perry over the State-level Job Creation numbers, working to create a business-friendly regulatory environment (history here and here). This healthy State versus State competition is what our Country needs to revitalize the economy and clean up the statutory mess at both the Federal and State level.

This idea has been something that I have been thinking about for a long time, through my search to define for myself where I stood on the political spectrum. Through college, there seemed to be a constant need for those politically involved or politically interested to define themselves with labels. What I discovered is my views aren’t all that hard to pin down, but there is no true label for them. Personally, I am conservative, but I don’t believe everyone must live their life how I choose to live mine. I espouse the belief that competitive federalism should guide our policy debate; as for many, I believe the Constitution is the guideline for which we were meant to restrain our Federal Government, and I believe the Federal level is not the place for the Social battles unless absolutely necessary.

Some battles are meant to be fought at the State level; if California as a State decides to vote for one issue and I don’t agree with it, I should have the ability to vote with my feet. This would create a much more hospitable environment in the movement as a whole, and open up the floor for the other issues looming over our heads. Winning the battles over these pertinent issues is the only way to move the National Discourse forward. While Social issues are vital to how we live our lives day-to-day, moving them back to the States where possible allows us to build a true coalition for issues such as Tax Reform, Governmental Spending, Education, Transportation, and Trade.

Look for more posts in my series on Labels and defining political views in a changing landscape in the coming weeks.