Personal Political Manifesto

Originally posted on my blog: http://rayito2702-tdrh.blogspot.com/2008/10/personal-political-manifesto.html

Below are some rambling thoughts on my personal political views.

I think that insomuch as humans interact, government in necessary and can't help but exist. There will always be formal and informal rules that govern human interaction.

Government is a reflection of the people it governs and is, in fact, made up of people that it governs. Bad constituency is the primary motivating factor that leads to bad government. Likewise, independence and ethics grounded in the individual leads to an ideal government.

Less important are political philosophical movements. Democrats and Repubicans, Communists and Libertarians all claim their system is the bomb. And they are basically all correct. Political philosophy is less important than individual commitment on a society-wide basis to upholding societal laws. If such a commitment exists, anything will "work".

It is merely a question of what kind of society is desired by the people.

Here are some elements of government desired by this person.

First and foremost I look for fiscal responsiblity and transperancy. I don't think it's necessary for the government to ever go in to debt. Defecit spending and inability to stick to a budget is evidence that the people we have elected do not know what they are doing. If we can't trust our representatives to handle money we can't trust them to do anything else.

If congress wants to authorize going to war, for example, then it should increase government income to pay for that war by either re-allocating existing funds or by increasing taxes and other sources of governmental income. If the American people don't want to reallocate funds or pay more taxes then it is a safe bet that the American people do not really want to fight.

I am much less concerned about the amount of taxes I pay than I am about the respect with which the money I donate to the government is treated. But an irresponsible government is a government I don't want to give money to.

Simply balacing the budget will, in my opinion, fix most of the percieved inadequacies in government.

Government is fundamentally a part of all human interaction. It is, by defintion, the rules that govern human interaction. My greatest investment, the government's greatest investment and the world's greatest investment in the future is our children. No other investment comes close. A society that is conducive to empowering future generations is fundamental to our progress.

Embracing infantacide in the form of legalizing abortion of convinience is the first and foremost of child-hating policies that goverment should discard.

Endorsing standard marriage institutions over non-standard ones is also important.

I am a huge fan of environmental and resource conservation. Environmental issues pervade society and in many ways are larger than communities, states and even nations. Thus, it is appropriate to deal with these issues at the highest levels of government.

Issues of government should be handled at the lowest possible level.

As Abraham Lincoln said, government is "of the people, by the people and for the people". People resolve issues, not governments. We are all responsible for the state of the country we live in.

I don't buy in to any political parties. I'm politically independent. I vote for canditates on issues and ignore their party affiliations as much as possible. However a tendency for a canditate to mindlessly vote a party line is a sure turn off.

Offensive Board Games

There are a number of games I've seen that have offended people such that they will not play them.

I'm not talking about games like Juden Raus or Up Against the Wall... that, while offensive to people now days, are more an artifact of their times then they are a game created with modern sensibilites.

And I'm not even talking about intententionally offensive games like Ghettopoly.

I'm talking about games meant for a mainstream audience (insomuch as there is a mainstream audience for niche board games).

There's the obvious games about WWII that draw ire. In fact I've seen accusations calling the all war game hobbiest as facist wannabes. WWII games are in particular frowned upon in some quarters because they allow players to "play" the Nazis. There's a lot of hemming an hawing about how appropriate this is. But check out the most recent edition of Axis & Allies and you will not see a single swastika. In the original version you'd think Erwin Rommel led the third Reich.

Some frown on war games in general about all the death. And I have to admit, playing a game of Paths of Glory weirds me out due to the amount of carnage represented. WWI must have sucked.

But these offenses caused by war games do not surprise me at all.

Let's go for something a little less obvious: Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, players try to build buildings and develope plantations in and around colonial era San Juan, Puerto Rico. There's no war, no violence but you do have to "hire" "colonists" that come in on a "colonist" ship. The colonists are represented by little brown disks (make sure you read some of the comments on that picture!).

Puerto Rico defenders say that the colonists are also employed in offices, universities, etc. And therefore the little brown disks represent generic workers. Supposedly the prototype of the game that was used before it was published had blue disks as workers. Nevertheless, many people refuse to play the game for due to this little "colonist" issue.

Now for something that completely surprised me: Imperial. Imperial is a stock market game where players, rather than investing in companies, invest in pre-WWI era European countries. A company's value is a function of how well developed its military and industrial capacity is. A player holding a stock majority in a country can even use its military to attack a neighboring country in order to reduce that county's stock value.

So how does this novel take on the stock market game genre offend? Well, people associate this game's theme with the ideas put forth in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Go figure.

I find it fascinating to see what people, myself included, find to be offensive.

Religious Freedom

I was reading about the holocaust. Interestingly enough when all the foreign national Jews were trying to quit Germany during the initial phases of persecution, it was difficult to evade the Nazis because most nations in Europe at that time put a person's religion on their passport. Americans were lucky in that there was no such mention on US passports.

A friend of ours recently moved to Germany. Part of the visa application asks the applicant about their religious beliefs. Furthermore, according to him, one has to pay taxes to support the popular religions of Germany. An individual gets to choose whether a portion of their taxes go to the Lutheran Church or the Catholic Church.

I was listening to Cherie Blair on NPR. She mentioned that one of the reasons it's expected for a British Prime Minister to be a member of the Church of England is due to the fact that the Prime Minister gets to appoint the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This level of religious interference on the part of government seems so foreign to me.