[Vision2020] Political/Economic Ideology Complexity:Christ Church,
etc.
Tbertruss at aol.com
Tbertruss at aol.com
Sat Mar 19 17:54:48 PST 2005
Kai, LFalen et. al.
LFalen wrote:
"When I took political Science fron Dr. Robert Hosack many moons ago, he
described the varying shades of political views as a circle. going from the main
stream to the left is toward more colectivism: to the right is less big
government. At 180 degrees from main stream is anarchism. this is where left and
right meet at the extreme of ether side. The main steam has been shifting towards
the left, which is where some republicans are under your definition of left
leaning."
This analysis does not explore what "right wing" means with precision, nor
does it recognize that the strong meaning of "left wing" or "right wing" is
often not "anarchism." Anarchism is a different theory of political and economic
organization that I do not think should be described as just an extreme
version of either "left" or "right." An extreme version of Left Wing can mean total
control of all economic and personal life by a government. This is not
"anarchism," and this simple example reveals that the outline you offered fails to
account for the obvious possibilities in the political/economic organization
of a society.
When we consider the extreme versions of "right wing" organization, there are
times it appears that left and right do meet. Consider this dictionary
definition of "right wing:"
right wing
n : those who support political or social or economic conservatism; those who
believe that things are better left unchanged [syn: right]
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
The form of society advocated by Doug Wilson/Doug Jones and company is "right
wing" according to the above definition. Christ Church and their form of
Presbyterian Trinitarianism advocated is an attempt to return to an earlier
system of organizing society they feel is the truth. They oppose many of the
changes being promoted by the Enlightenment and Progressivism. This is an almost
classical form of "conservatism," yet there is a powerful element of
"collectivism" (left wing?) in how they try to impose their order.
Odd that Christ Church members who assert they are libertarians, such as Dale
Courtney, are lending their support to extreme limitations on personal
liberty, clearly an approach contradicting libertarian philosophy, with its staunch
insistence on maximizing the liberty of the individual against externally
imposed authority. So while Christ Church and Wilson are "conservatives," the
collectivist impositions they impose on the members of their church are similar
to what "big government" might enforce, but on a much much smaller scale: e.
g. women are denied leadership roles and certain sexual orientations are
banished: well, at least if they stand up in Christ Church and announce they are
Gay, with no intention to change, they might be "exiled" from the church.
I think Wilson/Jones's Christ Church can fall under the description of an
extreme "right wing" ideology, yet they display elements of what an extreme 'left
wing" government might try to impose to limit its citizens freedoms. They
are therefore most definitely not libertarians.
To return to the notion that left and right meet in anarchism, it is clear
that Christ Church, while being classically extreme "right wing" and
"conservative," and also "collectivist" in their impositions on personal freedom, they
are most definitely not "anarchists," again an example where LFalen's suggestion
that extreme left and right meet in anarchism breaks down.
Given the complexity of possible and existent political/economic
organization, a rethinking of the labels we employ for differing political/economic
ideologies is useful. Consider that modern corporate capitalism features global
economic entities that have the power of "governments" to impact the lives of
human beings. Exxon/Mobil has more power globally than many of the nation states
of our world today. So the question is not just more or less "big
government."
We need to at least ask the question, do you want big government or big
corporations or neither controlling your life? It is possible to have a society
with a weak government that features a small group of very powerful "capitalist
free market" corporations controlling many of the dominant economic aspects of
society, imposing their authority on individuals (third world tribal rights
get trampled) do to their domination of economic options. This situation is
not traditionally left wing, not right wing in the sense of "conservatism"
(modern corporations are actually agents of radical change and reorganization of
society), not libertarian (modern large scale corporations impose a lot of
control over individual freedoms), nor anarchist. How about "multinational
corporate capitalist collectivism?" This label, with its blatant contradictions, is
just an attempt to break away from the stereotypes of political/economic
ideology that appear to limit the perceptions of what is occurring in fact in our
current political/economic globalized world.
Given the complexities of political/economic organization perhaps we should
abandon using "left" and "right" as though all systems fit somewhere inside the
parameters of these terms. We could use an x/y grid to outline four
different political/economic orientations of varying mixtures and extremes, based on
regulation of economic activity and personal freedom. You can pick X or Y to
represent either economic or personal freedom, but as X or Y goes positive
there is more freedom, as they go negative there is less:
Libertarian: Minimum regulation of economics and personal liberty. Here we
see similarity
to anarchism in some respects, which might connect with
LFalen's suggestion
that right and left meet in anarchism. But I think this is
only true in a very
specially defined understanding of "right" and "left."
Green Or Democratic Socialism: Much more regulation of economic activity,
while
maintaining maximum possible personal freedoms, though the
classic
response is that economic activity is a critical aspect of
personal
freedoms, therefore this approach has a fundamental flaw.
Modern
Republican: Less regulation of economic activity, more regulation of
personal lives and civil
liberties, though the intersection of economic regulation
and the restrictions
on personal liberty impact the economic sphere
dramatically. For example,
legal and taxed cannabis would impact economics
profoundly, yet
government insistence on restricting what many believe to
be an issue of
personal liberty limits the legal economic options, in
effect becoming a
dramatic limitation on economic freedom. Furthermore,
large scale
economic entities in the marketplace can limit the success
of small
scale economic opportunities, e. g. Wal-Mart, which leads
us to
more theoretical complexity when regulation of economics
can induce more
freedom for what some would consider positive forms of
economic entities
that offer the individual more freedom of choice for work
and lifestyle.
Government regulation of economics can limit too much
control by gigantic
economics powers, leading to more freedom in the
marketplace for some
kinds of economic entities, an argument a Green party
member might make.
Left Wing in the strong sense:
Big government control of economic activity and personal
freedom: the former Soviet Union or China, though China
now is an odd
example of a mixture of Communist one party state control
& unbridled capitalism, a good example to demonstrate
political complexity breaking stereotypes.
+
! Y: Economic Freedom
Modern !
Republican ! Libertarian
!
X: Personal Freedom
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---- +
!
Left Wing ! Green
Extreme !
!
No doubt there are many theoretical problems with the above scheme for
positioning political/economic ideology. It is probably too simple. We might need
to add another axis to accommodate another variable, perhaps, in a 3-D space,
or pick different variables for the x/y or x/y/z space.
And though we can find governments in our world that somewhat fit (reality
never fits the procrustean bed of theoretical ideology in politics) left wing
extreme (N. Korea), Green or Socialist Democracy (Canada), and Modern Republican
(USA), what nation on earth truly represents Libertarian?
Ted Moffett
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