The International House of Bacon

I’ve had a pile of smaller posts that I can’t expand upon much further, so an omnibus might be better. Yeah.

1) If there’s anything that Adam’s rabble-rousing has positively done as of late, it’s gotten me to think a little more about ideology, and my personal positions on the matter. I’ve spent some time on my voting practices, but it doesn’t really address myself at all.

I’ve kind of fashioned myself a Goldwaterian conservative for lack of a better term - after all, he’s a pretty stand-up figure, people generally know who he is, and it’s a good contrast from neoconservatism or Bush-style big-government conservatism. The problem with that is that it’s a little vague and a little inaccurate. After all, the idea of Goldwater is one of small government conservatism, and has achieved a somewhat Obama-ish tone in where his words have gotten somewhat construed to mean whatever people want them to as opposed to what they’re actually saying. Goldwater was anti-religion in government! Goldwater was a warmonger! Etc etc.

As I’ve not been shy about, I spent some good time with the Libertarian Party shortly after becoming voting age until shortly after 11 September. A lot of those ideals I still connect with - strong preference for individual rights, weak centralized power, minimal regulatory influence. On the other hand, there’s a lot that I wasn’t in favor of, such as the full privatization across the boards (I’m generally in favor of public schooling, but on a local level, for an example), and the blowback-style excuses trotted out following the attacks and the bizarre notion that going after bin Laden was the wrong idea.

Either way, I think I may have found a term that better matches my ideological bent at this point: Neolibertarianism. Essentially, for me, it takes the best parts of libertarianism (localized control, a focus on liberty) while pushing for a more realistic foriegn policy (the thing that turned me off from the Libertarian Party to begin with). While neoconservatism has gotten a bad rap over the last few years (truly more due to the characters involved and a misunderstanding of the basic ideology rather than the actual things it stands for), I think this simply better fits my point of view, and, in its limited appeal, appears to allow for a wide range of beliefs and a better dialogue about appropriateness as compared to the more monolithic libertarian ideals. More on the concept here and here.

2) The whole FDLS raid thing has left me super-conflicted, and it’s interesting that it comes so close to the 15th anniversary of the Branch Davadian raids by the FBI. The whole FDLS situation is obviously more complicated than the David Koresh-thinks-he’s-Jesus one, but I can’t help but thinking back a bit when news of the FDLS raid came out.

While I consider the Clinton impeachment my first real political awakening, watching the Waco situation unfold on CNN live as it happened was probably my news-event awakening, as I didn’t really understand what was going on, but, hey, the Branch Davidians were a cult and the government’s here to help, right? Obviously, as time has worn on, the “facts,” as they were, have become much more clear, and I still think that the raid itself is one of the more shameful periods of this nation’s post-civil-rights-era history, especially considering how the government could of handled this.

So bringing this back around a bit, my natural skepticism is tempered by knowing how problematic the FDLS sect of Mormonism is, and the further fine line between a firm tolerance for religious freedom and an equally firm intolerance of child abuse and forced marriage - especially the apparent intersection thereof. I’m immensely thankful that there was no significant violence to speak of in this situation, but still…

I mean, there’s very good evidence to suggest the entire Branch Davidian thing could have been avoided, even if Koresh was an abusive madman, and the treatment of the FDLS situation seems to at least be inadvertantly cognizant of this. At the same time, the Mormons are arguably one of the most persecuted religious groups in American history, forcing much of this sort of thing underground. Decades of religious persecution causes distrust of the government, and then the government acts when they’re acting outside of what the government considers okay? I’m not entirely comfortable with that.

The facts are these - forced child marriage is wrong, wrong,wrong, but so is not giving broad allowance to religious groups. The FDLS crossed a significant line, but how much of that crossing has to do with a response to the type of issues they’ve faced from their fellow countrymen and government? I don’t know, and it’s a tough place to sit. Some other posts that kind of cover my problems with this are here and here.

3) Interestingly to no one, I’m sure, the common theme that’s been going through my head is a general distrust of government in general. It’s why I’m especially down on an Obama presidency, it’s why I generally like New Hampshire, it’s why I’m attracted to libertarian-style philosophy and uncomfortable with the FDLS raid. Cass Sunstein had an excellent post at The Volokh Conspiracy about this concept that’s worth highlighting a bit.

The concept that resonated the most with me is the idea of libertarian paternalism - that, in the existence of rules, the default should be the choice that does the most for what is called the “choice environment.” The examples Sunstein uses are things like allowing for malpractice insurance waivers to help lower costs and create a contract between patient and doctor - things that allow for individual choice and reasoning as opposed to the one-size-fits-all regulatory structure in place. It allows for more flexibility and specificity that the current structure simply cannot provide.

This conceptualization is ultimately what confuses me about liberalism in general - the idea that individuals will usually have a better idea as to what works best in their situations seems like a big heaping pile of common sense to me, and yet the answer from the left - and ultimately from the government in general, regardless of whether it’s the left or “the right” in power - ends up being exactly the opposite of that. Harken back to the malpractice waiver concept - if health care costs are so high right now, talk about an easy way to reduce costs by contractually creating the scenarios that would reduce the ways to encourage litigation. I mean, my wife spent 4 hours in the ER with a gallbladder attack and it never dawned on any of the doctors to perform an ultrasound, and we could theoretically waste everyone’s time with a lawsuit and perhaps even win - how is that really, truly, right?

Yesterday, a discussion ensued regarding my general distrust of law enforcement, and it’s the same deal here - what reason do I ultimately have to trust people who are not working for my best interests, but instead working for the interests of people who are arbitrarily deciding what is right for everyone regardless of the circumstances surrounding it? This same sort of nannying pervades law enforcement, smoking bans, and even the forms of religious persecution we see in the United States in the last 20 years. It seems so counterintuitive to promote these things, and yet the most popular Democratic candidate at this point seems hell bent on expanding that sort of state, and to what ends? I don’t get it, folks, I really don’t.