It is with that in mind that I say my political views lean libertarian. That is, it is these philosophical principles that make the most sense to me. A few years ago I was trying to explain why that is to a friend of mine that wasn't very into politics or political thinking. I thought about that a great deal and I came up (with some pride) with a simple way to boil down to this seemingly large, complex subject to a belief in one basic moral principle:
"The only moral use of force is in stopping force used against others."
This basic (and purposefully somewhat a oversimplified) principle is the starting point for nearly all of my thinking on these topics. While reading through wikipedia recently I found that (unsurprisingly) others had already come up with a similar but more complete formulation calling it the Non-aggression principle (NAP):
There are inevitably many gray areas on what exactly counts as "force" or "aggression"; I'm not too interested in discussing those here (pollution is a big one). There are also inevitably philosopher types who can come up with the tricky, problematic moral quandaries (eg. "what if you had to kill one person to stop two deaths", ect); not much interested in discussing those fringey type problems either.The Non-Aggression Principle is the idea that each person has the right to make his or her own choices in life so long as they do not involve aggression, defined as the initiation of force or fraud, against others. The principle asserts that aggression, defined by proponents as any encroachment on another person's life, liberty, or justly acquired property, or an attempt to obtain from another via deceit what could not be consensually obtained, is always illegitimate.
What I am interested and is looking at that as a basic, core principle and asking - is this Right or is this Wrong? And if that principle is wrong, what principle would replace it? Because, you see, I've been in a conundrum for years on this.
I strongly believe that when trying to determine what is just, what is right and wrong, one should have a sound moral principle as ones guide and not just a pragmatic look at the results one wants. Even when well-intentioned, ignoring your principles to get your desired results can be disastrous (see: a bunch of history's once well-intentioned tyrants). And I look at that "NAP" principle and it see it as sound and correct and just. Could there be other morally justifiable uses of force? I haven't been able to think of any principled way to do so and other attempts I've seen to do so boil down to "force is OK when I like the results". Which is ultimately no principle it all. And hell, it surely doesn't sound bad on paper, does it? (Does it??)
Problem is, if one believes in and supports this principle...well, the result of saying everyone should live by this fairly reasonable sounding idea of are just nuts. Just wildly impractical. Because - and here is where the politics come in - if we go by this "no force/aggression" moral idea, it becomes nearly impossible to have a useful gov't of any kind. Sure, you can have cops and soldiers who can morally use force to stop force, but how are you going to pay them? Forcibly taking people's money - ie. taxation - already violates our simple little principle! That's the biggest crazy hurdle to a functional moral (by this definition) government but even if you somehow get past the issue of morally funding the government, you're still left with a gov't that can't do so many of the things that we now want and expect our gov't to do because they would break the Non-Aggression Principle - such as enforcement of discrimination laws I recently expressed ambivalence towards. I've seen many serious libertarians propose thoughtful ways around these issues but I've never been convinced that any of them are remotely practical.
So. Following what I believe is a sound moral principle leads to a uselessly crippled gov't and therefore a society just gone to hell. That...can't be right. Good moral principles should lead to a better, more just, more stable society. This one seems to lead to chaos. Something's wrong. The options: either this a moral principle is wrong and it needs to be replaced (but by what??) or the way we think of gov't is immoral and needs to be replaced (but by what??). Since I have more confidence in my moral thinking than in our thinking about governance I generally lean towards the latter, but the truth is, well, I'm stuck.
(Ugh, it took me about 3 hours to compose this post and I could say sooooo much more about all this.
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