{"id":21,"date":"2020-10-02T20:48:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T20:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2024-08-29T16:59:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-29T16:59:56","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I have created and will be maintaining this website under a pseudonym. The reason for this anonymity is because of my real-life circumstances.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I live in a rural part of a &#8220;red state&#8221; (using the modern parlance &#8211; I first became politically aware in an era when &#8220;red&#8221; still meant something rather different). Most of my local friends, neighbors and coworkers are unabashedly Trumpist. At worst, they are openly racist, gun-hoarding xenophobes, and at best, they are anti-government, Randist &#8220;libertarian&#8221; or &#8220;prepper&#8221; types.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In fact, I came to my current political position as a self-described libertarian. I am sympathetic to libertarian ideals, but the question must arise: if libertarianism is advocating maximum <em>liberty<\/em>, exactly what sort of liberty are we speaking of trying to maximize?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The current American libertarian right is interested almost solely in maximizing a &#8220;liberty of conscience&#8221; (and thus of behavior) and perhaps a &#8220;liberty of opportunity.&#8221; It tends to exist in flat denial of what I prefer, which is a maximization of <em>actual human liberty<\/em> on the ground. Paradoxically, oftentimes, if you embrace this latter ideal, you realize that in fact government serves a very important role: it helps you keep the playing field level.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Therefore although I consider my core political instinct to be libertarian, I lean leftward with respect to the role of government. This is in line with anodyne, centrist movements such as &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cato.org\/cato-journal\/fall-2020\/assessing-state-capacity-libertarianism\">State Capacity Libertarianism<\/a>&#8221; but can lead in the directions as extreme as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Libertarian_socialism\">Libertarian Socialism<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anarcho-syndicalism\">Anarcho-Syndicalism<\/a>. I would simply say I am a &#8220;left-libertarian&#8221; without any hint of contradiction and without trying to pinpoint where on the leftward spectrum I want to stand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I find the current Manichaean arrangement of political parties in the U.S. to leave both poles philosophically incoherent. Both parties espouse both interventionist &#8220;big&#8221; government in some respects and espouse <em>laissez-faire<\/em> &#8220;small&#8221; government in other respects.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I have become something of a single-issue voter, though, and when confronted with a choice between Democrat and Republican, I let that single issue control me. That issue is the <em>raison d&#8217;\u00eatre<\/em> for this website: <strong>open borders<\/strong>. For now, because of this, the Democratic Party has my loyal support, straight down the ticket. The Democrats are not an &#8220;open borders&#8221; party, by any stretch of the imagination, but they are at least not xenophobic wall-builders, as has become normalized for the Republican Party in recent years. I assert the need to accept a &#8220;least worst&#8221; approach to voting, and will not throw away my vote on a third party just due to some stand on principle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I <em>do<\/em> have other views on other political issues. I expect the blog part of this site will focus on my trying to work out, in real-time, a consistent &#8220;human-liberty-maximizing&#8221; platform for myself, always bearing in mind that for me, the ethical imperative for this century is that <em>migration is a human right<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have created and will be maintaining this website under a pseudonym. The reason for this anonymity is because of my real-life circumstances. I live in a rural part of a &#8220;red state&#8221; (using the modern parlance &#8211; I first became politically aware in an era when &#8220;red&#8221; still meant something rather different). Most of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/about\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;About&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godsright.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}