I hear a lot of people make comments that supporters of particular parties or politicians are idiots or stupid, people who voted for Bush, people who voted for Kerry, people who voted for Badnarik (who you ask?) They are all to each other stupid people and they can’t all be right, but can they all be wrong? Well, yes. It’s wrong to be that confident of your assessment of the situation when the world is as large and as complex a system as it is, and that disrespectful of theirs. It is right to be confident enough to vote on your judgment and to consider it just when adequately examined, but it is not right to wholly condemn millions of people because they have a different opinion from you. No one has ‘it all’ figured out and no one has any crystal ball foretelling the future, and you are not really that clever. Perhaps in the future, when some benevolent Artificial Intelligence which can read, understand, and conceptualize every book, idea, fact of history, interpretation and story, will we be able to consider something to have ‘it all’ figured out. But not now, and not anytime soon. Socrates brought out this idea to its logical extreme when he said “All I know is that I know nothing” He was executed on charges of ‘corrupting the youth’

Consider that if you start with someone having a political opinion at all, you are starting on common ground, even if their opinion differs from yours. At least they care about the world enough to form an opinion. Many people do not. Most people have very similar values; they want to see the same thing accomplished which is generally the best life for the most number of people. How do you accomplish that good life for the greatest number of people? Do you do it with a controlled economy and lots of regulation or with a free economy and little regulation? Or do you do it with no government at all, as some people assert. Each of these people holding these beliefs will assert that they are the best ways to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people

I must digress into a short discussion of ethics here, that of Kantianism and Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism literally is the greatest good for the greatest number, even if at the expense of a few. A utilitarian is just in killing one person to save many. Or killing their rich grandmother in order to pass the money to her 10 poor grandchildren. Those ‘lifeboat’ scenario ethical dilemmas usually center around utilitarianism. Few people are literally utilitarian, but some prominent people are, John Rawls, the author of “A theory of Justice” an inspiring piece to many modern political philosophers, and Peter Singer, a prominent figure in the Animal Rights movement. Kantianism, on the other hand, is the idea of holding individuals to the highest level of respect, of never treating an individual as a means to an end (that is, using them to accomplish something) and to always treat them as an end of their own. Thus many acts are just under utilitarianism but unjust in Kantianism. The short hand ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ is used by political philosophers in the utilitarian literal sense, but it is usually used by average people to indicate a system of utilitarianism checked against Kantianism. That is, certain fundamental rights are respected, rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property, etc, while the greatest good for the greatest number is desired without infringing on those rights (at least not too much)

So when you condemn a person for his political beliefs you are asserting that according to your information that your interpretation is the best way to accomplish your values and his is not. However, it is physically impossible for you to be cognizant of all the relevant information to make a completely informed decision in such a matter, and that other person can very well be just in asserting that according to his values and information set that his conclusions are correct. In fact his values may very well be identical as yours but through his information set he has come to a completely different, albeit still logical and rational, conclusion. After all, we haven’t all read the same exact things.

Now clearly some value sets can differ, but I feel most people are very similar in their value set, and where value sets diverge greatly (for instance in literal collectivists, those pro-slavery, or neo-nazi’s) then we have a reasonable cause to make a moral condemnation of ideas which are so obviously destructive and deadly to individuals and to freedom. The value set of these people clearly does not start with any conception of greatest good checked against individual rights. But most people, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, objectivists, anarchists (both socialist and capitalist) in general have a similar goal in mind; that of a good healthy society where people are free and live long lives and the world and environment are in good shape. It is always important to recognize this common ground.

Additionally the dichotomy presented in American politics is clearly false, why did the leader of the Labour party in the U.K. support the Iraq War? Any cursory examination of the political parties of the liberal representative democracies will reveal divisions that do not abide by American divisions, they are not all split along ‘Democrat vs Republican’ lines, just with different names. Clearly the major parties present in America are not the only mindsets that a large number of people find rational. Even in the fringe parties, the Internationalist libertarians and libertarian party in France supported the Iraq war, while most of the libertarians in the rest of the world opposed it. Who was right? Based on what values and what information set?

All of this begs the individual to identify and define their values, and to have a very clear, rational outlook data sets. Having a good interpretation of your data set is also extremely dependant on logical thought and the ability to recognize fallacies of logic (that is spotting things that sound as though they are true but have a clear logical reason why it is not rational to believe them to be) Most students of skepticism and logic despise the current education systems treatment of the subject, we feel it is primarily because if students were taught early on the basics of reason and logic that they would not end up believing 90% of what those in power try to drill into their skulls. But even so you can still come out with different opinions, as me and many of my friends well versed in logic and rational thought have (some of them might notice a fallacy of logic in my comment on Socrates)

So I have to laugh at people who ‘it all’ figured out, and feel a bit sad for them. I am an atheist and a neo-libertarian, and sometimes I will call myself an objectivist. I also voted for Bush last election and the libertarian candidate in the election before that, and Bill Clinton in the election before that. If you want to call me stupid for doing so, go ahead and pick which ever affiliation I was stupid during so you can feel superior. But perhaps first you should examine my value set and find out if it is similar to yours and then trade our information sets. If you do so, perhaps one of us or both of us might change our conclusions. This is why I have just as many close friends who despise Bush as I do close friends who like him. None of us are infallible and we all recognize that, because none of us have value sets that vary widely. None of us are conservative Christians and none are members of the Workers World Party. Each of us recognizes the complexity in the world, respects each other’s rational judgment, and knows we all, in the end, are looking for the same outcome.

Michael