Holistic Politics: Promoting Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, and Environmental Values at the Same Time

Politics, what an ugly game: name-calling, back-biting, vilification, half-truths, slander, word-spinning, fanaticism, echo chambers…

And those are the idealists!

The pragmatists are generally more polite, but watch them closely and you'll often find amoral deal-making, cozying up to lobbyists, rampant vote buying, ignoring the Constitution, unjustified pork-barrel projects, and rigging the system to get reelected.

Ugly indeed –but rather fun for those of us who enjoy intellectual combat. Think of the joys of football or cage fighting and transfer the action to the mouth and keyboard.

However, unlike football and cage fighting, you are in the arena whether you want to be or not. Even if you choose not to vote, you still pay for the wars, corporate subsidies, special privileges, inefficient welfare systems, and bloated bureaucracies. You still have to live with pollution, traffic jams, neighborhoods turned into war zones, and general high crime rates.

Do politics or politics will be done to you.

Fortunately, it is possible to play nice.

Why Politics is so Ugly

As long as we need to make group decisions, there will be politics. And as long as we want different things, there will be acrimony.

Some want more general prosperity, some want more freedom, some a cleaner environment, some more justice, some more equality, and some a more moral neighborhood in which to raise their children. Trade-offs do exist. We cannot have it all.

So people band together into factions and parties, championing their favorite values. We get left-right political spectra such as:

With such factionalism, people have an incentive to exaggerate the problems close to their hearts and belittle other problems. Since values are inherently personal, such belittling often degenerates into personal attacks.

At the extremes, such one-dimensional politics can degenerate into binary politics, where one value or set of values trumps all others. The Communists were notorious for ignoring all values other than equality, and sent people who disagreed into labor camps. The radical libertarians who have long dominated the Libertarian Party say the non-initiation of force directive is the only political value, and vilify any who would use the might of the state for a higher cause as a thief or worse. And we have some deep ecologists on the fringe who would do away with civilization in order to return nature to its pristine state.

Fortunately, most people are closer to the center, and recognize some need for compromise. Their rhetoric is less heated, and deals are cut – inefficient deals.

We are often left with half-baked solutions which leave neither side happy, riddled with special-interest loopholes and giveaways. We get gigantic welfare programs which fail to eliminate poverty, reams of regulations which partially protect the environment, and a giant prison population while crime and immorality run rampant.

Compromise is not enough.

Holistic Politics: Synergy and Harmony

Trade-offs exist. But so do synergies! There are many overlooked opportunities for "Both-And" where people settle for "Either-Or."

But to find those opportunities requires treating multiple values as positive—using the same brain. By treating freedom, equality, nature, prosperity, and morality as all positive, it is possible to find creative solutions to many of society's problems, such as:

Simple approaches to quickly reduce the major pollutants and greenhouse gases
Welfare systems that give security to the poor while leaving incentives to self-betterment
Ways to increase prosperity while reducing concentrations of corporate power
Ways to shrink government and shrink the wealth gap
And much more

Multi-Dimensional Politics

To get away from the trade-off mentality, we need to transcend one-dimensional politics. We need to treat separate values as directions in two or more dimensions. Consider Nature vs. Prosperity:

All too often, people think in terms of the dotted line, that we have to choose somewhere between low-prosperity/pristine environment and high-prosperity/damaged environment. They thus overlook opportunities in the upper left: ways to increase prosperity and better preserve nature. Similarly, they overlook the bad laws on the books, laws which hurt the economy while encouraging environmental destruction.

Today, the environmental debate is front and center, but let us not forget the longer running debate, for that is how U.S. political parties are still aligned: freedom vs. equality.

Notice the gap in the upper-left: there is no political party offering up a moderate combination of more equality and less government. One-dimensional thinking can be seen in how the major parties band from lower left to upper right.

Seeking Wisdom in Surprising Places

Holistic politics happens. I didn't invent it. But all too often it gets overlooked. Defenders of capitalism will offer up efficient ways to protect the environment in between pages that insult environmentalists. Leftists will offer up good business practices inside books referring to corporations as oppressors.

I am a connoisseur of ideology. It started with a love of debate, and grew as I found allies and good ideas in unexpected places. I have attended meetings of Libertarians, Democrats and Republicans; straight laced business interests and tie-dyed hippies; environmentalists and conspiracy theories; New Agers and Christian fundamentalists. I have been on both conservative and New Age radio broadcasts, and spoken in person before libertarian, progressive, conservative, moderate and patriot groups.

I frequently get surprised by the ideas shared by groups that hate each other, and ideas advocated by one group that would be of more benefit to another. In my exploration of people and books, I have stumbled across many interesting ideas, including:

Good business practices – from utopian socialists.
Ways to reduce profits and increase wages – from Adam Smith.
Effective environmental ideas – in Forbes Magazine.
Ways to restore conservative community values – in Mother Jones.
A case for repealing many victimless crime laws – in the Old Testament.
Powerful ways to increase economic equality – in conspiracy literature.
Effective welfare system ideas – in science fiction and the Old Testament.

On this web site you will find many such ideas, gathered from three decades of reading and discourse. There is too much reading for one sitting, so please bookmark this page. Though I am adding material to this site, it is not a blog; it is the rough draft of a book, or several books. Even the oldest articles are still apropos.

The articles are listed down the left sidebar with the colored buttons: red for equality, green for nature, blue for morality and rainbow for general. The articles can be read in any order. The pages in the current article are listed in the upper-left; the pages in an article are meant to be read in order, though you can often get away with skipping around.

Enjoy. Be hopeful. And tell your friends.

Next: What's New

In this Chapter:

Spread the Word

Del.icio.us