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The principles that rule this blog

Principles that will govern my thoughts as I express them here (from my opening statement):


  • Freedom of the individual should be as total as possible, limited only by the fact that nobody should be free to cause physical injury to another, or to deprive another person of his freedoms.
  • Government is necessary primarily to provide those services that private enterprise won't, or won't at a price that people can afford.
  • No person has a right to have his own beliefs on religious, moral, political, or other controversial issues imposed on others who do not share those beliefs.

I believe that Abraham Lincoln expressed it very well:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot
so well do, for themselves — in their separate, individual capacities.”


Comments will be invited, and I will attempt to reply to any comments that are offered in a serious and non-abusive manner. However, I will not tolerate abusive or profane language (my reasoning is that this is my blog, and so I can control it; I wouldn't interfere with your using such language on your own!)

If anyone finds an opinion that I express to be contrary to my principles, they are welcome to point this out. I hope that I can make a rational case for my comments. Because, in fact, one label I'll happily accept is rationalist.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Carl S. Milsted, Jr. and his "Holistic Politics"

Carl S. Milsted, Jr. runs a website named "Holistic Politics." Normally, a name like this would send me running for the hills. Usually anyone who uses the wod "holistic" is the mystical kind of person, definitely antithetical to my rationalistic mode of thought. And Milsted's site uses psychedelic colors and lettering which might go along with that perception. So why am I writing this post, which, as you will see, is strongly in favor of some of the things he says?

Well, if you actually look at his site, his politics is not too far from mine. He started as a Libertarian but has grown away from its more extreme ideas — my first, and still current, political beliefs are really those of a "Rockefeller Republican," but this includes a lot of at least "small-l" libertarianism, and even some sympathy for the Libertarian Party's ideas, though I feel they are in need of watering down. He uses the Nolan Chart to plot political philosophy, which is the same as the "World's Smallest Political Quiz," which I mentioned in an earlier post. And on the basis of the chart, he argues that the political group most poorly served by our present two-party system is a big area in the upper-left portion of the chart, exactly where I find myself.

Actually, it looks as if Milsted was the author of the quiz that called me a "social liberal" which I referenced in my earlier post.

I'm getting rather interested in Milsted's ideas, though obviously I don't totally agree with them. And I will be commenting more on them in the future.

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