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America today is rooted between two principal idealogies, liberalism and conservatism. Other idealogies are primarily off-shoots or branches of these political philosophies. Throughout history the two idealogies have had many stances. Liberalism has embraced change and new ideas, while conservatism has embraced protecting traditional ideas and preserving the good aspects about the status quo. Liberalism has generally supported more government, while conservatives have generally supported less government. When viewed these ways, it is easy to see what gaping hole these two opposite trends and goals leave: Embracing the best or correct idea.
While it is apparent liberals and conservatives both believe their ideas are correct or best, viewed from the abstract neither philosophy is logical. It is irrational to believe that the best ideas have all been discovered already and that there is no need to change. However, it is equally irrational to believe that no good ideas have surfaced in the approximately 10,000 or so years of Homo Sapien existence. It is equally irrational to think that somehow we have gone past the happy medium toward too much government, and should now start decreasing it. With a strong economy etc., that idea doesn't hold strength. Additionally to believe that more government always solves problems is on quite shaky ground when looked at reasonably and empiracally. The very foundations of both ideas are inherently flawed.
The solution to this problem is simple. A new Idealogy is needed. The obvious one is a philosophy that selects the best policy for the most number of people, respecting certain rights of the minority. When viewed against this backdrop, liberalism and conservatism are not only beneficial, but needed, to preserve the best concepts. A monopoly on ideas is not only impossible, but dangerous, and therefore a dichotomy of belief structures that are inherently opposite will produce the best concepts that rise to the surface in the maelstorm of debate. However, when proponents of one of these idealogies are rulers as well as originators, then their views will logically come to the forefront at the expense of the other philosophy's ideas. The solution then is to vote the rule of the people to a group of people whose political philosophy accepts the best ideas as proven empiracally as the ideas to pursue, not the ideas that are most consistent with a specific idealogy.
This new idealogy which I propose would not necessarily need to be a new political party as well. The Democratic and Republican parties are necessarily aligned with liberalism and conservatism respectively, but both have huge overlaps into the moderate center and have respective contradictions as well.
The contradictions in what the Democrats believe and the Republicans believe are obvious when viewed from their rationalizations instead of their rhetoric. Conservatives support Gun Rights because it is their inherent right, while liberals oppose Gun Rights because they want to protect and preserve life. However Liberals go right back and defend Abortion as a Reproductive Right, while conservatives oppose abortion in order to protect and preserve life. This idealogical see-saw tilts back and forth so much it is impossible to predict what each system will back from a philosophical standpoint. The two parties have developed so much clash as a result of ruling together that they have taken to opposing beliefs simply because a person from the other party originated the idea. The parties beliefs have become so inter-twined due to partisan reasons that the philosophies behind the parties have lost their intellectual integrity and when one excludes the parties' fringe groups the two have become nearly indistinguishable.
So what would be the guiding philosophy for this new philosophy? It would be: To observe a topic, rationally hear both sides of the issue without prior knowledge of the identity of the specific supporter/detractors,and without prejudice, bias or pre-concieved ideas, and decide by consensus which path or decision will benefit the most people the most total benefit, without infinging apon the inalienable rights of any.
This method of thinking would be the keystone of the new political philosophy. It would guide every political action, and all decisions would be based solely on logic. This method of thinking would allow for mistakes and change. Too often Republicans or Democrats oppose ideas idealogically only because their opponents support them, regardless of the facts. For example, hypothetically imagine this new idealogy came out in opposition to a new policy. However, later, new facts or reports are released strongly supporting the new policy from an independent source. This could very well swing the new idealogy in favor of this policy. Reason is only as good as the facts with which it can reason.
The inalienable rights that this philosophy would respect are:
1) The right to intellectual integrity and expression. One's right to think or express oneself, and the freedom from the undesired forcing of ones ideas onto another would be considered basic to all humanity. Included would be protection for the individual and organization from government intrusion into religion, free speach, and assembly/petition.
2) The right to life. Every and any Human must have the right to not be subjected to the deprivation of their life for any cause. The only instance where this is not applicable is where killing one person, who would be guilty of taking the lives of others, is guaranteed to directly save innocents who the criminal directly threatens.
3) The right to democracy. The government should be always responsive to the governed, meaning a democratic or democratically elected government for all people over a certain age. If any government at any time does not meet one of those two conditions, people everywhere have the right to overthrow it.
4) The right to truth. Recognizing it as essential to an efficient and fair democracy and capitalist system that truth be the measure of judgement, every citizen has the right to the truth from both organizations and government. Any malicious dishonesty is an infringement upon this right.
5) The right to equality of opportunity. Every citizen regardless of race, religion, gender, political beliefs, sexual orientation or nationality has the right to the same opportunities as any other.
6) The right to vote and run for office. Every citizen has the right to vote for the candidate of their choice for office as well as run for office.
7) The right to a fair trial and freedom from unjust imprisonment. Every citizen is entitled to a fair, impartial, quick and public trial free from perjury or evidence tampering.
8) The right to all other liberties and freedoms that cannot and should not ever be taken away from the citizen.
Now that we know what this new idealogy should never take away from individual citizens, it is time to hedge against those declarations. The following two instances are the two where the government has the right, derived from the acumulated rights of the governed, to infringe upon an individuals rights. This new idealogy would advocate the following as its principle of government intervention in peoples' individual rights.
1) The Harm Principle-Similar to that advocated by John Stuart Mill, the government only has the right to interfere in one persons liberty or rights if that person is infinging upon the rights of others. These unenumerated rights include everything listed above in addition to the right to property, the right to personal conduct and satisfaction, the right to freedom, and more.
2) The Public Safety-In instances where the rights to life of all would be protected, the government has the right to infringe upon rights of citizens for temporary times of war or danger only to preserve national security. The war powers include military conflct as well as the power to regulate information, trade and other areas where it can prove that the national security is being threatened. However, once the danger has passed, all such restrictions must be lifted, and any controlled information must be released.
So, now we know what the government can and can't do in this new idealogy's perspective. What exactly should the government do?
1) The government should first and foremost protect the rights of its citizens. Any infingement upon these rights by other individuals, corporations or other groups, or by government itself, or any other government, would therefore be protected against by the government as its primary goal.
2) The government should enact policies to protect those of misfortune from having their lives destroyed. This embraces the philosophical considerations of welfare and the "social" aspect of socialism, as opposed to economic socialism. It means that the ideaology supports helping people attain and/or regain standard and normal lives regardless of birth conditions.
3) The government should enact policies to do the most benefit to the most number of people, without infinging upon any specific person's rights.
Now that we have the new idealogy's position on government action, the observant reader will have wondered long ago how I define "good" when I say "the most good for the most number of people." Good is a sum of all possible things, positive and negative, that are affected by the enactment of a specific action. For example, a overly simplified equation for good is g=M(a+b+c+d)-N(w+x+y+z); where g is the good of the program; a, b, c, d, are the specific benefits of the change brought about by the action; w, x, y, z, are the specific harms of the change brought about by the action, M is the percent to which the policy works and N is the extent that the policy actually causes the harms. Obviously, it isn't as easibly quantifiable as that. Just how "good" is raising someones standard of living, or allowing easier access to the internet for children in schools? Rather, this formula can provide a means of qualifying the impacts of a decision. For instance, if Congress were to consider passing a law to ban hand guns, the good, g, would be defined as the potential benefits: a decrease in the murder rate, a decrease in the gun-accident rate, and a decrease in school shootings. This would be compared to the potential harms: potential decrease in constitutional rights, decrease in protection for normal citizens from gun-wielding criminals, and increase in paperwork/beaurocracy for normal citizens. The third factor in determining the good is whether the plan will actually work and fix the problems, and whether what it tries to fix uniquely causes the harms or problems. For instance, in the above example, I don't believe banning guns would stop all murders, but I do believe that it would stop some murders. On the "bad" side I frankly don't believe much in any of them. So I would support more Gun Control. So, to sum the formula up, the benefits mitigated by the ability of the plan to change things for the better should be weighed against the harms mitigated by their liklihood to occur and by the seriousnes of their dangers. If the total "good" is positive then by definition the idea being debated should be enacted. If the good is negative, or bad, then the idea being debated shouldn't be enacted.
This calculus for decision then inherently demands that values be defined so that the good can be determined and weighed with the negatives. These values presuppose that no rights of any individuals have been or would be violated by the proposal. The values for the new idealogy would be, in order: truth, freedom, justice, and pursuit of happiness. These values can be visualized to form an hourglass shape, with truth, freedom and justice forming the pyramid like base, resting on the foundations of each other. Atop of this base is the ever-opening top that consists of happiness and the pursuit thereof.
Truth is the foundation of this value scheme because without truth, a person is frankly living a lie. One notion or fact can utterly change that person's entire perspective on his or her life, thus practically changing into an entirely different person. This is to say that intellectual integrity and progression is the ultimate goal of humankind. Without truth, neither of those two ideals is possible. At the cost of everything else, the idealogy would stand for truth.
Freedom is the ability for the individual to act as he or she pleases. The more freedom for the individual to act, as well as organizations to act, is considered a positive. This serves as the foundation for what is to come because if one is not free to experiment with what might possibly be to the liking of a certain individual, than that individual is being denied the right to the pursuit of happiness. By awknowledging that organizations also should be included in this value decision, my idealogy would implicitly endorse free-market capitalism on principle, as it would be consistent with the value of freedom to act, but would curb capitalism's excesses when organizations infringe upon the rights of the individual or when it would serve other values to do so.
Justice is the protection of society at the cost of a guilty party. Society has the inherent right to self-regulation through laws and government in accordance with the social contract theory, and to preserve this right and duty it must advocate absolute justice for all concerned to preserve fairness and equality. Justice serves as the forebearer for all else to come afterwards because sacrifices of the person must be made as a hedge against other individuals harming that person in the future and depriving any person of the right to the pursuit of happiness.
The Pursuit of Happiness is the ultimate end of mankind, guided by the bounds of absolute knowledge and intellectual fact. The concept is ideallistic in the extreme, but that is no excuse not to move toward this state of paradise. Every advancement that allows for the individual to have access to truth, to be allowed freedom, to be safeguarded by justice, and that promotes unfettered pursuit of happiness is to pursued fully.
A closing concept to the guiding philosophy of this new idealogy is the concept of who it applies to. This question is difficult to resolve legally and morally. I am obviously an American, and the political philosophy I am advocating has no built in restrictions as to who it applies to. Partisan politics force such cutthroat competition that each legislator is beholden to a specific area of the country for his or her job and can hardly afford to think of anyone outside this jurisdiction. They certainly can hardly afford to think of people in the rest of our country, much less the rest of the world. However, morally I cannot accept that people who have the good luck to be born in America or are able to move here are inherently more deserving of attention and privileges than people born elsewhere. This is why I advocate using every person everywhere in my calculus for determing the worth of an idea in practice. However, in this respect I would respect as authentic and reasonable the decision that the legal responsibility and rights of the legislator extend only to those as outlined by the constitutional governance of that specific legislator. The question of who to apply the values also extends to different classifications of people. Some members of certain groups claim to have the right to specific benefits to certain races, genders, religions or nationalities of people. These people's value schemes are weighted in the favor of one specific group to the exclusion of another. However, this does not make moral or logical sense and therefore my new idealogy would ban any government or public discrimination or preference as applied to groups that are designated by or choice.
Now that the political rationales for my idealogy have been established, the question is what to name it. I don't really have a name for it, so the best I could come up with is rational intellectualism. The intellectualism is used here because the foundation of the idealogy relies upon the assumption that two rational human beings judging an idea completely without prejudice, and equal values and facts, will come to the same conclusion. It must be that the truth can be reasoned out about the best idea with the facts available, or else there is no reason or purpose for a common idealogy or philosophy at all. Obviously in the real world you will never get a situation, in part due to widely varying pre-concieved notions and facts from widely varying life-experiences. However, the notion that consensus can be reached through pure intellectualism is the backbone of this idealogy.
So how would "Rational Intellectualism" exist in the real world. The two possible answers would be that it could come to exist as a third idealogy behind a third political party, forming a triangle sytem with common centers, rather than the linear system that exists today. However, it is also possible that Rational Intellectualism could be embraced by members of both parties in some form or another, with the methodology of the Rational Intellectualism adopted but several of the assumptions, like the purpose of government and possibly the rights and values, ignored or changed. This would be a substantial improvement over the current system.
So what precisely would this new philosophy and idealogy support? The answer is Rational Intellectualism supports no specific modern issue intrinsically. For example Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, supports Laissez-Faire capitalism right out of the box as one of the four principle tenets of the philosophy. Rational Intellectualism makes no such assertion or assumption. Its positions are variable to change when and if sufficient evidence is present to swing logic into the favor of a new position supported by reason or facts. That caveat aside, the following issues I will summarize below are probably beyond reproach, due to the realization that it is very unlikely any new facts are to be released. To proceed I will give a short summary of the key points of Rational Intellectualism in the current society and world.
Globalization
It is inherently selfish and unfair to view issues from anything other than a global position. To view local, state or national issues as more important or more worthy of action than global issues is a dangerously regressive and an isolationist standpoint not unlike one that ensnared us in the largest war the world has ever seen when it could have been nipped in the bud
Abortion
Regardless of the irrational rhetoric thrown around by both sides of this debate, abortion is the termination of a biological organism with 46 homo sapien chromosomes and a DNA code unique from the mother or father. This same description of abortion can be said of infanticide, euthanasia, or murder. Until we are ready to accept the killing of the elderly, the sick, the homeless and other "undesireables" we cannot accept this. To see my full opinion on this issue click Here.
Gun Control
It is unreasonable to assume that we have somehow managed to reach the perfect level of arms control in our nation today. Once we accept the fact the government can and should regulate weapons like anthrax or nuclear bombs, we must decide where the perfect level of control is. To preserve lives over an unfounded constitutional defense of gun control is irrational, and so we should enact gun control laws. To see my full opinion on this issue click Here.