I became disillusioned with politics many years ago. First I came to see liberalism as a hypocritical sham, and then I started to see conservatism in the same light. Moderatism (is that a word?) looked like a cop out. Just split the difference, and make snide self-superior remarks from atop the fence. I stopped voting. I tried to develop my spiritual side instead. I tried to be above the dirty business of politics.

I tried. I really did. But as time went by, it got harder. In my everyday life, politics went on, and effected me whether I liked it or not. Office politics. Lying, bullying bosses. Lying, backstabbing, brownnosing colleagues. Then there was dealing with closed source software vendors. Especially Microsoft, but the others were a bit sleazy too. And what was with all the taxes that got withheld from my paycheck? Was I really getting decent service for all that? Were the poor even getting decent service for that?

Finally it occurred to me that I had unilaterally disarmed in a world full of predators. I started rearming, piecemeal. I became more cautious, more inclined to cover my rear, but I refused to become dishonest. It was a purely defensive politicization at first.

After a while, I experimented with confrontation. I came to the conviction that when I confronted people, I got all the nastiness out of the way up front. Sometimes it was plenty nasty, but in the long run, I always came out in better shape than when I used to acquiesce. And I got to keep my self respect! You never really appreciate self respect until you've lost it for a while.

Over time, I started noticing that the world was badly run. Not just the office. Not just my local government. Not just my industry. Not just the United States. The whole world was badly run, by my standards.

Some ways of running things were less disastrous than others. I'm too realistic to believe in true laissez-faire. You've got to have antitrust, truth in advertising laws, and some consumer protection. But given all these qualifications, a moderated capitalism really was the least awful of all systems. And democracy? The rule of the common idiot. A democratic republic? The rule of hucksters. But all the other systems were far worse. Enlightened despotism? Might as well suggest that the Tooth Fairy run things.

Over the past few years, there have been two political issues I found it impossible to keep my mouth shut about: Microsoft and the Clinton presidency. I despised both, often for the same reasons. The power lust, the mendacity and the sheer childishness of both repelled me. In the past year, the death culture squeezed on to the list. Abortion, assisted suicide, pressure to suicide, euthanasia, eugenics - the slippery slope was real, and it was frightening. Nietzsche lives, and he is dangerous.

I voted in the last election, after having abstained for twelve years. I went for McCain in the primary, though I considered registering Democrat and voting for Bradley. After the bitter disappointment of the primaries, I couldn't bring myself to vote for either Gore or Bush. In fact, both parties disgusted me, and the "third parties" all looked distinctly half baked. But I couldn't live with just staying away. So I split the ticket. I voted Nader for president, and for Libertarians wherever possible in state and local elections. Where there was no Libertarian, I usually voted againt the incumbent. Threw away my vote, you say? It had already been thrown away for me by the broken political system. I just salvaged what I could into a protest vote, against the whole damn charade.

Then came 9/11. And fast on its heels, the torrent of leftist bile, the naked unreasoning hatred of all things American was exposed. It's not just the pan-Islamicists. It's brainwashed young Eurotrash and even some trash in this country that think the slaughter of thousands is an excuse to say "it's your own fault. Suck it up" and then laugh.

Everything I have even qualified respect for is bitterly opposed by people who whom I can only have the utmost contempt. It's a moral issue. But it's also a political issue, because all moral issues get politicized sooner or later. Politics is insidious. It lays claim to absolutely everyhting it can grab, just like Hitler or Soviet communism. I didn't choose to be political. Politics intruded on my turf. I haven't gone anywhere!

Until just a week ago, I had never ever put a bumper sticker on my car. I had never had an idea that could be condensed to fit on a bumper sticker. After 9/11, I had one. I wanted an American flag on my bumper. They sold out before I could act, so I had to bide my time. But I finally got one. Proud To Be An American. So there. For all our faults, and they are many, we're still way better than the rest.

So now I've finally reached the point of being unreservedly political. The last vestige of apoliticality has just been scoured away by the unrelenting friction of life.

My political stance (the core of which was my stance before it was a political stance) is not something that can be easily summarized. I'm too subtle for the standard political spectrum. I'm not on that line. I'm way off to the side somewhere. But if you throw out all the coordinates save the left-right axis, I project onto the line at a point distinctly right of center. No, I don't think I'm too far right. I think the line is too far left.

So I'm political, and not by choice. Politics forced itself on me, and I can't shake it, so I intend to give it hell. I want to be a firebrand. I want to be a nuisance. I want to be a blowhard. In internet parlance, I want to be a troll. I have nothing but utter contempt for the left, and some aspects of the right, too. I would gladly have left them all alone, but people keep messing up this world I'm forced to share with them. Now they've taken to crashing airplanes into it. They won't leave me alone? Fine! I am at war. It is a war against politics. Some kinds of politics more than others. But it is a war against politics, which has invaded my life, therefore I find myself being political merely by standing my own ground! So be it.

Right wingers, I am much closer to your point on the standard spectrum than I am to that of your traditional opponents, so I will frequently appear to be your ally. Don't read too much into that. I reserve the right to oppose you vigorously on specific issues. And I may frequently appear to be more remote from your position than I am, because I use a different concept-space than most. But sometimes I really will be disagreeing.

To the soft left, I say: grow a backbone. Your whole philosophy is one big exercise in taking the easy way out. And stop patting yourselves on the back for it.

To the hard left, I have nothing to say to you, except this: You are beneath contempt in my eyes. Small children are more deserving of respect than leftists. The hard left are morally and intellectually corrupt.

Above all, I will tolerate no flimflam, no evasion, no cryto-nihilism, no denial of established facts, no twisting of words, no denying of evident probabilities or any other form of slight-of-hand with the burden of proof, no playing hot potato with the burden of proof, no Clintonisms, no Chomskyisms. I expect (and hope) to be myself held accountable by others to the same standards. But I will not submit to other standards.

Also, I reserve the right to use irony, in the Kierkegaardian sense, if it seems the best way to get a point across, or if I feel I just need to lighten up. But I will always be sincere at some level, just not always at the surface level.

My core beliefs, as much as can be summarized:

An approximately Judeo-Christian God, minus literal omnipotence.
Free will.
An adundance of grossly non-even probabilities in the universe.
The moral sense, as described by James Q. Wilson, but with a more Kantian interpretation.
A version of original sin that largely substitutes nurture for nature.
Critical thinking, from reasonable axioms and from probable or established facts.
The reality principle.
A moderate version of William James' pragmatism, conceived strictly as a methodology.
Abstract thought, but only so long as it connects with reality at some point.
The law of the excluded middle, where applicable.
The importance of honesty in discourse, public and private.
The finiteness of human understanding.
The adequacy of reasoned faith.
The necessity of the Kierkegaardian leap.

Some important derivates that emerge from combinations of the above:

Personal responsibility for those of the age of reason.
The inequality of cultures. I catch an awful lot of flak on this one, but I'm sticking to it.
Due diligence: the need to gather as much information as is practical before acting.
The need to act at some point, regardless of having enough information.
Settle for answers to most questions in terms of probabilities, not booleans.
Learning from experience, not necessarily one's own.
Better a few good friends than a lot of bad ones.

[link|http://www.iaetf.org/orr299.htm|Cutting through the doublespeak]

Excerpt:

Fifteen people in Oregon, we are told, legally committed suicide with the assistance of their doctors in l998. According to the report, not one of them was forced into the act by intractable pain or suffering. Rather, those who died had strong personal beliefs in individual autonomy, and chose suicide based primarily on fears of future dependence.

That isn't how assisted suicide was supposed to work. For many years, we have been told repeatedly by advocates that assisted suicide is to be a "last resort," applied only when nothing else can be done to alleviate "unrelenting and intolerable suffering."

Yet pain wasn't a factor in a single one of the Oregon suicides. Thus, rather than being a limited procedure performed out of extreme medical urgency, legalization in Oregon has actually widened the category of conditions for which physician-hastened death is seen as legitimate.


Another excerpt:

The first woman to commit assisted suicide in Oregon had a 2 1/2 week relationship with the doctor who wrote her lethal prescription. Her own doctor had refused to assist her suicide, as had a second doctor who diagnosed her with depression. So she went to an advocacy group, which referred her to a doctor willing to do the deed.

Hers was not a unique case. The report states that six of the 15 people sought lethal prescriptions from two or more doctors.

Assisted suicide proponents told us this wouldn't happen either. They promised that assisted suicide would only occur after a deep exploration of values between patients and doctors who had long-term relationships.

Thanks to the study, we now know that death decisions are being made by doctors the patients barely know. This isn't careful medical practice; it is rampant Kevorkianism.

The study is as notable for what it omits as for what it includes. Information about the people who committed assisted suicide came from death-prescribing doctors. Treating doctors who did not participate in their patients' deaths -- professionals who could have provided invaluable information about the health of the people who died -- were not interviewed. Nor were the doctors who refused to write lethal prescriptions. Family members were not contacted either.


I say:

The slippery slope is lubricated by selective information and short memories.

you don't seriously mean to suggest a moral equivalence here, do you?

Or are you one of those people who see a woman as nothing more than a pair of tits? No wait. Then you could only sanction assisted suicide when done to females.

I didn't present any argument. I pointed to the existence of the slippery slope. Look, there it is.

You're acting like a small child who won't admit the milk has been spilled. "Look at all the spilled milk on the floor!" I say. "That's a weak argument" you say.

The trouble with cheap dismissals like that is they work both ways.

I see your pink unicorn and raise you one willful refusal to understand.

[link|http://www.haciendapub.com/smith.html|Death culture meets the sexual revolution]

Excerpt:

Smith calls acceptance of euthanasia "terminal nonjudgmentalism." He finds a good example in A Chosen Death by Lonny Shavelson, an emergency physician, who describes "Gene" who has had strokes and depression but is not terminal. Sarah, from the Hemlock Society, is given the task of assisting in his death. Sarah found her first killing experience tremendously satisfying and powerful, "the most intimate experience you can share with a person...More than sex. More than birth." Sarah gives Gene the poisonous brew as if she were handing him a beer. Gene drinks the liquid, falls asleep on Sarah's lap who then places a plastic bag over his head and croons, "See the light. Go to the light." But Gene, suddenly faced with the
prospect of immediate death, changes his mind and screams out...and tries to rip the bag off his face. Sarah won't allow it, catches Gene's wrist and holds it. Gene's body thrusts upwards and Sarah lays across Gene's shoulders...pinning him down, twisting the bag to seal it tight. Gene's body stops moving.


I say:

Sarah's last words to Gene: "Was it good for you, too?"