Greens and Libertarians

My experience with the actual positions that seem to be taken by people who call themselves by these labels, (Green or Libertarian), has led me to the following generalizations, (which are never fair of course).

The ideas that are put down on paper by Libertarians attract me at first glance. We all get frustrated by "big anything" sometimes, including government, and I am no exception. But when put into practice, (for example when you hear a Libertarian in a debate focused on how they would solve problems), I come away with the idea that they are really rooted in the worst kind of selfishness. If is all about me, then I want all the ability to make all the decisions for myself, and I want nobody else involved. I want small government, no taxes, I make all my own decisions. There is a great deal of this Libertarian philosophy (I think) that drove the shift in the Republican party 25 years ago away from being for fiscal conservatism and toward a single-minded focus on tax reduction, and a push to starve government programs of cash, assuming they would go away.

The bottom line is that at some point I have to think of myself within the culture that I live in. How does my culture meet the needs of all the members? It is great to theoretically think in terms of charity and people voluntarily stepping up to the plate to solve problems within the culture, but the fact is that this simply does not happen in our culture. At one end of the spectrum you have the notion of a social democracy - we empower and expect solutions from government. Most of the western world leans far more toward this model than we do. Over the past 25 years, we have been moving steadily away from this model, under the banner that people are better at managing "their money" (the Christian in me has a problem with this term) than the government is. As a result, effective tax rates - especially on higher income brackets - have plummeted over the last 25 years. In theory, we should have seen a corresponding rise in both the personal savings rate, (as people take better care of "their money", as well as an increase in the rates of "giving" to charitable and philanthropic causes. In fact, personal rates of charitable giving have not dramatically changed during that period, and the personal savings rate has continued to drop - I think that it actually stands at a negative number right now. (In 1987, when the tax rates were dramatically dropped such that the top rate dropped from 50% to 28% - meaning that high earners had an extra 32% of their income that they kept - the rate of charitable giving rose only about 7%.)

At the end of the day, I guess I do believe that as a culture we should be providing for each other. While much of that work can be done by private organizations, the fact is that Americans don't tend to fund such a model voluntarily. The other drawback to that model is the lack of democratic process - those with money will begin to fund the organizations that favor them, rather than maintaining an egalitarian perspective. So, after wondering for many years if the Libertarian philosophy was one that I could sign on to, I came to the conclusion that they had some interesting ideas, but that their foundational premise was too self-centered for me. They don't really want to solve problems, they just want more control over what they consider to be theirs.

As to the Greens, I have similarly found myself supporting their positions on many things over the years. I know that this is a broad and unfair generalization, but they do too often seem to me to be very "elitist" and "politically correct" - too much so for me in some cases. For example, looking at the 10 Basic Values, they list "Feminism" as one of these. While this is a very politically correct term to use, what does it mean? I don't think that you would find a common definition of what that word means across the board. Mind you, if you know me you know that I am a huge believer in social justice for all, I believe that no one should be discriminated against based on what they are or aren't, and you probably know that if push came to shove, I would probably rank women in general as smarter, wiser, and more capable in most professional respects than men, and believe it to be obvious that western culture has scorned and denigrated femininity for over 1500 years. I don't call myself a feminist though, because I don't know what the word means. I have known militant "female supremacists" who assign that label to themselves, and everything else on the spectrum. So for an organization to use such a vague word as a "Basic Value" bothers me. It shows a lack of thought, and a tendency to do something because it is politically correct - the wrong reason.

With that criticism, I will say again that I find myself agreeing with Greens on many (but certainly not all) issues. Looking at their "Basic Values", how can anyone argue with Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice, Ecological Wisdom, Responsibility, and Non-violence? (I think that the other labels fall neatly into these).

At their web site, the Greens offer a very nice discussion guide in the form of a comparison of their position with the position of the Democrats and the Republicans - you can find it here. I think the document is not entirely fair with the other parties, but makes a great discussion document. I think that we could print this document, and bring it with us as a discussion guide, and start wrestling through the issues one at a time, and see where we end up. Would be a fun thing to do - I might surprise myself at where I ended up. Would be nice if the Libertarians were a little less theoretical, and we could add a column for them on here too. How about another column for a new party that we form right there at the table? That would be fun! We could call ourselves the Christian Heretics. :o)