Stop Looking Left and Right and Start Looking North
Are you sick of hearing the arguments put forward by both the left and the right? If you’re like most people, you don’t agree whole heartedly with either of them. You’re left either choosing from the one who aligns slightly more with your ideas or who offends you the least. As a country with the third largest population in the world, behind only the billion plus countries of India and China, you would think we could find better political candidates than this. The problem is that current politics, exacerbated by the mass media, would like us to believe that the political spectrum is a line between left and right, with moderates falling somewhere in the middle. Thats it. A nice simple line that keeps you focused on the people on the other side of the spectrum from you. Or if, god forbid, you are a moderate, being attacked from both sides!
Luckily for us, the history of political thought is far more advanced than this. We need to stop thinking in terms of left and right and start thinking North and South. A helpful depiction of this is the Nolan Chart. The left-right spectrum is still on there, but as you can see, there is a lot more area above and below, or what I like to refer to as the North and South ends of the spectrum. This is likely far more important to most people that squabbling about the details of farm subsidizes and welfare checks, but most people have never seen or thought about politics in this way.
The North-South spectrum describes how much control the government has to make decisions for us. Or more simply, the level of freedom we enjoy. At the North end of the spectrum is complete freedom of choice for all decisions with no government involvement. At the bottom is authoritarian rule and complete government control over every aspect of our lives. I care a lot more about where people fall on this spectrum than I do where they fall to the left or the right. At the bottom you get National Socialism, the Nazi party, where the government controlled everything. Or the likes of the Soviet Union, again, with complete government control. Both of these systems fell to the right and left of each other, but what they had in common was they were both on the Southern end of the spectrum with their governments controlling everything. We know how life turned out for people living in those regimes. Not free and not pleasant for anyone.
So while our politicians and the media have us bickering over left and right policies, we seldom stop to think that maybe they are both terrible if they are pushing us farther south along the political spectrum and taking away more of our freedoms.
This is why the mission of Operation Libertas is to spread the philosophy of liberty based on the principles of non-aggression, free markets, limited government, personal responsibility and voluntary charity. We support any law, policy, movement or idea put forward that moves the needle farther North on our Freedom Scale. We couldn’t care less whether they are Republican, Democrat, or even a member of the Libertarian Party. If their policies move the needle South, we will oppose them. If their policies move the needle North, we will support them.
I think that is what most Americans are frustrated about when it comes to politics. We’re sick of having to pick a team or a side when we really don’t like or support all of their ideas. We also feel pressured into supporting the guy or gal we voted for, and just ignoring their bad policies. But when we stop and look at things from the North-South perspective, we realize we don’t have to pick sides.
The trajectory of history has continually been pushing North, towards increased freedom and prosperity for all of mankind. In future articles we were detail the philosophies behind liberty and freedom. Join us in this fight and subscribe to receive the latest in Operation Libertas articles and become a sustaining Task Force member.
Recommended Reading:
The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom
The Libertarian Mind, by David Boaz was the first book I read to figure out what this whole libertarian idea was all about. I really liked the historical context provided in this book, from English aristocracy demanding more freedom from the King, to the US Constitution, and into the present. Boaz break down a lot of different topics and really opened my mind to what freedom really meant.
Will you be discussing the philosophies of earlier social critics, such as Søren Kierkegaard?