Conservatives and liberals- Are they any different?

In my last post "Conservatism- Intellectual backbone wanted" I wrongly assumed that Conservatism could be backed by an intellectual backbone. In his comment on the same post Burgess Laughlin said:

Conservatism, by definition, opposes capitalism. Conservat-ISM is an ideology, the ideology that holds four values as its guide: God (or religion generally), Tradition, Nation, and Family (as in "family values"). Philosophically these values mean supernaturalism, mysticism, and altruism. The step from those to statism is very short -- and it usually involves the nationalistic sort of statism.

Today I read an article "Are you a conservative or a liberal? by Linn and Ari Armstrong which addresses the issue of what exactly do conservative and liberal tags actually mean. They define both as:

What does it mean to be a conservative? Many of the same conservatives who claim to support free markets and liberty also endorse economic protectionism, censorship, welfare spending, corporate welfare, immigration restrictions, prohibitions of various substances and activities that violate nobody's rights, abortion bans, and so on.

Liberalism, one might think, has something to do with liberty. Yet today's liberals endorse political economic planning on a vast scale. They typically want to forcibly redistribute more wealth, impose controls on private property, and impose more “enlightened” forms of censorship.

Many of today's conservatives and liberals find common cause in the belief that politicians should largely control your life.

The above description renders the tags meaningless as they both lead to the same thing- a mixed Government. Armstrong's also mention Thomas Paine's discussions with Edmund Burke in his "Rights of Man" where Paine defines mixed government as:

A mixed government is an imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts together by corruption, to act as a whole. In the mixed Government there is no responsibility: the parts cover each other till responsibility is lost; and the corruption then moves the machine, contrives at the same time its own escape.

Paine goes on to offer the alternative.

But in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this soldering, praising, and pitying, can take place; the representation being equal throughout the country, and complete in itself, however it maybe into legislative ans executive, they all have one and the same natural source. The parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. As there are no discordant distinctions, there is nothing to corrupt by compromise, nor confound by contrivance.

In the end nobody says it better than Ayn Rand who is quoted by the authors as saying:

“The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of ‘conservatism' and ‘liberalism' which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men.”

Beyond modern nation states - The China Post

Sometimes you find interesting stuff in the unlikeliest of places. Taiwan's leading English-language newspaper The China Post has this nice editorial extolling the virtues of constitutional republicanism. The article "Beyond modern nation states" states:

The modern nation state is the instigator and perpetuator of the war of all against all because it is a perpetrator of injustice. It is a perpetrator of injustice because it “robs Peter to pay Paul.” It robs Peter to pay Paul because it is endeavoring to re-engineer society. It is endeavoring to re-engineer society because it has exceeded its original charter, which was merely to defend against aggression.

Does this sound familiar in times of Obamanomics? In fact it is true of almost all countries today and with our Obama the Robin Hood the long crumbling bastion of Republicanism seems to have fallen. The Post goes on to blast the "free and fair elections" as an excuse for all excesses.

Champions of democracy believe the modern nation state is well within its rights to coerce individuals, as long as it performs certain rituals as “free and fair” elections, plebiscites, and referenda.

It advocates repudiating democracy and reaffirming constitutional republicanism to counter the power that makes the modern nation state a constant threat to all its citizens.

Thomas Paine-Governments right to exist

I am currently reading Thomas Paine's "Rights of man". Some of it was so interesting that I almost forgot the 110 deg. of heat at work today (reading between rounds). The heat is bearable, it's the humidity which was a real killer today. Here is some of what I read today where Paine takes a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.

They may be all comprehended under three heads. First, superstition. Secondly, power. Thirdly, the common interest of society, and the common rights of man. First was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to hold a intercourse with the Deity, the world was completely under the government of superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever they were made to say, became the law; and this sort of government lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted.

After these a race of conquerors rose, whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre. Governments thus established, last as long as the power to support them lasts; but that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favour, they united fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called Devine Right, and which, twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and State.

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel for the honour and happiness of it's character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in contradiction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.

It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

Capitalism: The Only Moral System

Today's Denver Post published a nasty attack on capitalism. This is Ari Armstong's online comment. Here is the letter:
http://tinyurl.com/qw2z4u
And here is his reply:
I’ll untangle Brickley’s many confusions. Capitalism protects people’s right to live their own lives and interact voluntarily with others, by their own judgment, free from political controls. Capitalism means a system in which individuals rights to property and contract are consistently protected. In capitalism, the job of the government is to protect people from force and fraud.

To the degree that politicians interfere in the market, that is not capitalism, but its opposite. If “bribed governments” grant to some businesses political advantages to seize wealth by force or forcibly harm competitors, that is not “unregulated capitalism;” it is a market controlled to some degree by politicians.

Capitalism is regulated (made regular) first by a government that protects against force and fraud, and second by the independent judgment of individuals. If you don’t like a company’s products or services, don’t buy them! If you think you can do better, you are free to try. But this is not the sort of “regulation” that the enemies of capitalism have in mind. Instead, they call on politicians to control the economy and violate people’s rights.

Brickley is right about one thing: capitalism is incompatible with pure democracy. Capitalism protects individual rights. Pure democracy is mob rule, it is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner, it is 51 percent of the population enslaving the other 49 percent.
Brickley calls capitalism, the only system compatible with the reasoning mind of man, a “religion,” and equates it with Soviet communism. This is pure projection. For the full justification of capitalism, see Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Capitalism is marked by men of drive and genius developing the goods and services — the health care, the technology, the food, the housing, the cars — we need to thrive. Their motive is to produce life- enhancing products and exchange them voluntarily with others for their personal gain. No motive could be more noble.

As for nastiness, we need look no further than Brickley’s smear campaign against capitalism and capitalists.

Why Democracy does not work- Idea cellular advertisement on TV

Idea sells it's mobile service using democracy as a recurring theme in a series of ads being shown on TV in India. It shows people in certain situations not being able to decide what to do and taking an instant sms poll using their cellphones. The final decision is whatever the majority decides.

One advt. has a pretty girl who is bumped by a street hooligan and when she objects, he says he can do whatever because this is a democracy. Then she polls using her cell (I assume her friends) giving commando or Gandhi (show the other cheek) as options and when majority says commando -she gives him a commando style kick.

Now the problem with this is the same as problem with democracy- what if their was a third option- lets say slit his throat. Would she have done it just because the majority decided that it was what the hooligan deserved?

Instead wouldn't it be better to have a system where the mob or the majority does not have the power to decide the fate of the individual (the smallest minority) and instead certain principles governed the interaction between individuals. Situations like the one in the ad and in a democracy where individual rights are crushed by the majority should not be allowed to take place. Such a system to prevent these from happening does exist- it is called a republic.

Read the following definition from Ayn Rand Lexicon- The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule . . . a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights . . . . The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
Leonard Peikoff, “The Philosophy of Objectivism” lecture series (1976), Lecture 9.

Click here to hear Yaron Brook talk about democracy. (via rationalpassion)