My Political Philosophy

Recently I read somewhere that it is important to know what you favor in terms of solutions to political problems, not just what you are against. Otherwise you are not a political critic, just a complainer.

In recent years I find that I'm mostly expressing opposition to political events I don't like, such as the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling or the passage of Governor Walker's Act 10. So I decided to spend some time thinking about what I am for (in favor of) in the political arena, my political philosophy.

To give myself some guidance, I purchased a copy of "Chomsky on Anarchism", a series of essays and interviews by Noam Chomsky. Note that I would never label myself an Anarchist or advocate of Anarchism due to the very negative reaction the word (either form) elicits in the United States. But Chomsky is comfortable with both Anarchism and the closely related term Libertarian Socialism, as describing his political perspective. I find both his vision and his goals for human society to be quite compatible with my own.

My core political beliefs start with a Winston Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Some take this as a cynical, even bitter, statement. I interpret it as just the hard-headed truth. When the people decide a question with their votes, they don't always get it right, but that is certainly preferable to some dictator deciding.

The one major problem with democracy is that the majority may decide to persecute a minority group, such as when the majority in certain states of the U.S. made it near impossible for minority African-Americans to vote. As a democratic republic, which recognizes certain rights as applicable to all citizens, even when they are in the minority, the national government eventually stepped in to enforce voting rights for all adult citizens. So my preferred form of government is a democratic republic which protects the rights of all citizens, not just those of the majority.

The United States is a democratic republic, at least when it comes to voting rights. But that is far from the complete story. The State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941, delivered by President Franklin Roosevelt described "four freedoms" which he considered as essential to obtain for all people in all the nations of the world in order to ensure lasting peace. The four freedoms are (1) freedom of speech and expression, (2) freedom of religion, (3) freedom from want, and (4) freedom from fear.

The first 2 of these are covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, though recent Supreme Court rulings have transformed "freedom of speech" into a license for rich people and corporations (legally created people) to dominate political expression with their money.

"Freedom from want", which Roosevelt further defined as a healthy peacetime life, may have been a bit of a stretch. After all, I want many things I will most likely never have!

Seriously, "freedom from want" can be seen as justifying programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and National Health Insurance. One might restate it, much more modestly, as the freedom to pursue a reasonably healthy and potentially productive life without starving to death or dying for lack of access to treatment of diseases and conditions curable by the current state of medicine.

Even this very basic level of "freedom from want" - to the extent that it may currently exist - is threatened, even in a wealthy democracy like the United States, by those on the political right who seek to dismantle what they refer to as the "welfare state".

"Freedom from fear", which Roosevelt further defined as a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world, is certainly a long way from being achieved. Maybe the pure version of this freedom was forever doomed with the advent of nuclear weapons!

I guess "freedom from fear" is what some have used to justify our huge and powerful armed forces. But our idea of defense is somebody else's act of physical aggression. So the closest we ever got to "freedom from fear" was mutual assured destruction (back in the cold war years)! Today, the world seems infinitely more dangerous and less predictable.

But I'm not without hope. Democratic, libertarian socialism flowers like a cactus in the desert. I see co-ops of many kinds, farmers' markets and community sponsored agriculture (CSA) farms as examples of people organizing themselves in positive ways at the community level. I buy my food at a co-op, do my banking at a co-op (aka. credit union), and get my health care through a co-op.

Civil disobedience was rampant in the protests against Act 10. Some folks were mistreated by authorities, but nobody was killed. Read your labor history, many have been killed trying to assert and defend their democratic rights over time!

Democracy continues to be the only form of government that gives us any hope of eventually becoming a kinder and gentler world. We learn from great leaders in the politics of social justice including Ghandi, King and Mandela.

The struggle continues and will continue for many more generations. The times they are a-changin', always!