Ryan I Am

For several years now, my Facebook profile has listed my political views like this:

Independent: Liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism are all only partially correct, and are all partially wrong.

Surprisingly, nobody’s ever asked me what this means.

Philosophically, binding one’s beliefs to a single ideology is only defensible if one can prove it to always be correct. Any Philosophy 101 class could find edge cases where all of these break down. You know how Newtonian physics don’t work at atomic, subatomic, or extremely large scales, but they’re just right for certain everyday objects? It’s kind of like that.

It’s not difficult to prove this concept. Liberalism, when drawn out to its fullest extent, becomes communism. Conservatism, when carried to the extreme, becomes fascism, and libertarianism turns into anarchy. Clearly, we’re all just varying degrees of centrists.

Going deeper to a spiritual level, all of these ideologies are “philosophies of men.” A Christian will remember Paul’s warning to “not be taken captive by vain philosophies, according to the tradition of men.” In politics, ideologues are often put on pedestals. Yet any single pure ideology is clearly flawed. So we dilute them. You there, you’re a liberal, but you don’t think the welfare system should indefinitely support lazy slobs? And you over there, you’re a conservative, but perhaps think that a tiny bit of regulation of the financial industry would be helpful–maybe just enough to break up those “too big to fail” banks–so that it doesn’t self-destruct (again) and take the country down with it (again)? Congratulations, both of you have just proven your own ideologies to be wrong. The liberal must admit that incentivizing laziness by witholding consequences is expensive and wasteful, and that the concept of liberalism is therefore flawed. The conservative must admit that at least some government regulation is necessary and even helpful to the economy, and thus laissez-faire is a false prophet.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll accept these statements as truth. If you’re not, you’ll find a report from a think tank that just happens to subscribe to your ideology that proves me to be wrong. Ironically, you would have only proved my post title to be correct: Blind followers are blind.

It’s not easy to keep the blinders off. How can one be sure to keep an open mind? It’s probably impossible. Satire and humor are a good start. Reading multiple viewpoints is must. Since so much of the national debate centers around economic policy, edumacation is mandatory. If you’re not at least reading the two opposing viewpoints of the highly-regarded Becker-Posner Blog, you’re not qualified to participate in the conversation.

Of course, every individual will see politics through her own lens of life experience. Often, this is more of a weakness than a strength. Even a lifetime of experience is purely anecdotal. Few Americans that have consumed 20, 40, or even 60 years of television and music could compete in VH1′s World Series of Pop Culture. I’ve read a dozen or more science books yet am not even qualified to introduce a scientist at a conference. My point is not that a little bit of humility goes a long way. My point is that a lot of humility still doesn’t get you anywhere. Does anyone doubt their knowledge is limited? When you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you firmly claim that “America’s policy on X should be Y,” especially when you’ve never studied X or researched Y?

For this reason, the educated guess is king; the inevitable result of a world with problems that can’t and won’t wait for well-researched answers. And that’s okay, because behavior is unpredictable, policy must be ever-adapting, and it’s impossible to predict the right answer every time. And that’s my point. It’s not good enough to give an educated guess based on a flawed ideology. As much as it gets my goat that the fat cat bankers got away with secret bailouts and golden parachutes, I know that deep down, Bush and Bernanke were right–letting the banks fail would have annihilated any chance we had of preserving a modern, civilized society. And as much as it saddens me to see a homeless family on the corner, I know that as a whole, society suffers less due to the vast benefits of capitalism than it would under communism.

So, am I a liberal, a conservative, or a libertarian? I am neither and all of them. I am for correctness. I am for looking at the issue carefully and providing the greatest number of benefits to the greatest number of people. In other words, I am for optimization. That educated guess? It better have the most evidence showing it to have the highest amount of the desired effect at the lowest cost.

And if you start to argue policy about what that desired effect should be, it’s time to turn it around and look again at that optimization curve, and determine policy based on that.

On a higher level, wouldn’t that be a supreme being’s ultimate goal? Show me a god who is not on the Happiness Maximization plan and I’ll show you a god who doesn’t understand calculus. No doubt, atheists already agree.

All political ideologies are partially wrong, and at least all are partially correct. Prove me wrong in the comments.