“…AND GULLIVER RETURNS”

--In Search of Utopia--

BOOK 9--SMASHWORDS EDITION

A LIBERTARIAN PARADISE

THE UNITED COLONIES

By

Lemuel Gulliver XVI as told to Jacqueline Slow

Copyright 2011 by Lemuel Gulliver XVI

ISBN 978-1-4580-3602-5

Dear friends—Obviously I wrote this series to be read from Book 1 to the end, but silly me! Readers often begin with what sounds interesting to them. This may leave them unaware of the characters, my friends and I. So let me introduce them. We were boyhood friends, as wild and as close as geese heading south for the winter. But our university educations split us philosophically like a drop of quicksilver hitting the floor. But like those balls of mercury, when brought together, they again become one. As have we.

Ray became a Catholic priest and moved far to the right of where our teenage liberalism had bound us. He calls himself a neo-conservative. We think he is a reactionary.

Lee slid to the left of our adolescent leanings, and somewhere along the line became an atheist. Lee is a lawyer.

Concannon, Con for short, retired from his very successful business. I guess his business experience moved him a bit to the right, to conservatism—a conservative just to the right of the middle.

Then there’s me. I think I’m pretty much a middle of the roader—except for my passion to save our planet by reducing our population before global warming, massive poverty and far-reaching famines decimate our humanity. Hope this introduction makes our discussions make a bit more sense.

By the way, as most of you know, we have put our photos before every bit of dialogue. This should make you more familiar with us. So the books read more like plays. Since most of you read the books in PDF or EPUB format it is no problem. But if you read them in RTF or TXT you will probably lose the photos. This will make the transitions of the conversations more difficult to follow. LG

Table of Contents

FREEDOM--RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

WHAT IS THE BEST GOVERNMENT?

SOCIETAL POSSIBILITIES

ECONOMIC SUCCESS

ECONOMY AND GLOBALIZATION

IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

OUR DEMOCRATIC VOTING

NO WELFARE STATE

TAXES

ACCUMULATED INCOME

EDUCATION

LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

THE ARTS

SCHOOL SPORTS

ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS FACTORS IN A SOCIETY

SOCIAL CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN OUR COUNTRY

WHAT IS SOCIAL JUSTICE?

MEANING OF DEMOCRACY

SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

FOUNDING FATHERS

WHICH OF YOUR 'RIGHTS' AID REAL FREEDOM?

LIBERTARIANISM

THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC BORROWING

RELIGION AND SUBSIDIES

CHARITY

LAWS ARE FEW BUT WELL ENFORCED

EXAMPLES OF OUR LAWS

GUNS AND GUN CONTROL

FREE SPEECH

EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT

SMOKING

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENT LICENSING

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

ELDERCARE

LEGAL SYSTEM JUDGE MADE LAW—NOT JUSTICE

LAW ENFORCEMENT

THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT?

 

It was an eight hour flight from Indus to Freedomville, the capitol of the United Colonies. The Colonies was a rather new country by international standards. It developed as citizens from one of the larger countries became much more vociferous about having freedom in their lives and minimum government. So part of the larger country seceded from the original nation. It was done without warfare, using only the ballot box and public opinion to develop the need for a new nation-- a nation founded on the principles of a limited government and libertarian freedom. So far the country has not experienced the problems that the US did in Civil War or that India did in its partition.

  There was an orderly crossing of boundary lines for those who wanted a 'nanny' government that was taking care of them from cradle to grave and those who wanted more freedom and a laissez-faire capitalism of free enterprise and a very limited government. This seemed to be what the American Tea Partiers of 15 years ago seemed to want.

 The confusing calls for liberty and equality in the American and French revolutions gave rise to people expecting both. The problem is, as political scientists know, that to the degree that you have one, you reduce the other. If people are free to develop businesses that make them a lot of money, the equalitarians want to tax them back toward financial equality through income and other taxes. They then use the money to give to the underclasses who have not been able to keep up. They do this with socialized medicine, required pension saving, and other welfare state measures geared to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. Our next trip will be to such a country. Northland is a Scandinavian country with principles based on equality. I’m sure we will find huge differences between the equalitarian country of Northland that we will visit in a few weeks and the Libertarian country that we are about to visit.

 Throughout history we have seen that most societies were unequal. It was usually the survival of the fittest. Then the fittest passed on their superiority by blood and we had monarchies. Then God blessed the kings by giving them the divine right to rule. Or in the more modern countries it was money, passed along with the power that it brings, that gave an aristocracy of 'argent.'

 The 18th-century revolutionaries didn't like the behavior of their masters, so they pleaded for equality. Their pleas prodded the peasants to pick up their pitchforks and rifles and eliminate the kings from their lives. Whether by guillotine or guns, the peasants won and their educationally accomplished leaders replaced nobles and the modern republics were formed.

At first freedom aided the businessman and farmers. Lower taxes and the rise of the 'natural aristocracy of men,' as Thomas Jefferson had predicted, produced the capitalists of the industrial age. But the revolutionary call for equality was heard from the pulpits, the sweat shops and the slums. As the 20th century grew into adolescence the call for equality again reared its head and unions forced industrialists to bow, if not to kneel. Equality was making inroads but it needed the government's long arm to sanctify the push for economic equality. As the 20^th Century matured into middle age social equality became more of a reality with Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King-- each tilting the American society toward equality. In India Mohandas Gandhi sought not only independence from its British oppressor but also a social equality among Indians. In Europe the welfare state reached its highest levels, particularly in Scandinavia. In China Mao led his revolutionaries for economic and social equality.

 But if there is, in fact, a natural aristocracy among people--those who remained down as others worked upward objected to their reduced riches and status. So the call for liberty, particularly economic liberty, became louder. Some capitalists just picked up their marbles and went to more friendly economic lands. But many more used their riches to change the laws in their favor. This was particularly true of the tax laws. The Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch of the U.S. are notable examples.

 As one might expect, allowing for the equality of the masses costs huge amounts of money. And one might also imagine that when the people with economic liberty are not paying enough taxes to support social and economic equality, something has to give. And we all know what gave. Rich individuals and countries lent money to those countries that were considered good risks. The politicians then saw an easy way to make both sides happy, just borrow! And as we all know, the recession of 2008 uncovered the political reality that at some point the piper must be paid.

As we saw, the equalitarians began losing some of their sickness and pension benefits and even some of their educational rights. The free enterprisers, too, were forced to pay more in taxes. Both sides had to begin to pay for the free rides they had been given. Here in The United Colonies the call was to foster liberty and forget equality. The reason we are here is to find out just how they are doing it now in 2025.

-"Well guys we have our baggage, now we have to look out for Tyler Walls, the governor's right-hand man. He is supposed to pick us up. That must be him with the sign showing Gulliver bound up by the Lilliputians. Some sense of humor!

“Are you Mr. Walls or are you a representative of King Bomba?"

"I would assume that the king is off with his Lilliputians trying to catch another giant!

“You must be Gulliver, I mean Commander Gulliver. Nice to finally meet you. I’ve been following your exploits for years. Well anyway, welcome to The United Colonies. Follow me men, the car’s right over here. I’ll get you to your hotel and pick you up in the morning and we can start our physical and political tour of our country.

We bedded down comfortably and slept well. At breakfast we were to meet Tyler again. We chowed down on the huge buffet breakfast and were ready to go by nine. Tyler was there to meet us with a minibus. We jumped right in with our questions about the libertarian country we were about to visit. After the modern countries of Kino and Singaling and the poverty-stricken state of Indus, we were eager to see a quite different, and I might say a selfishly directed, country.

FREEDOM--RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

-”Tyler, I am really interested in how your country came about and what directions it has been taking. Can you give us a little background on your emphasis on liberty rather than equality as your basis for justice?”

"You really jumped right into the pit. I know that you are a businessman Con, so I assume that you will understand our philosophy of freedom. Beginning with your American Revolution, people have usually thought of justice as being primarily about both liberty and equality. They assumed that when the French chanted ‘liberty, equality and fraternity,’ it was really possible. The equality goal that your Founding Fathers called for in your American Declaration of Independence was what justice was about when you wanted independence. But in your original Constitution 'equality' is never mentioned. It is all about liberty--freedom. So what your founders did was to jump from one possible element of justice, equality, to another possible element, liberty, as they moved from underlings of the British king to being free of his yoke. Both liberty and equality are not possible to have at the same time at a 100% level. To the degree that you have equality you tend to reduce liberty, and vice a versa.

"Let me give you a quick outline of the principles of our society. As you will see we emphasize liberty, not equality. You people in the West, especially in northern Europe, emphasize equality. Our emphasis on liberty gives us a libertarian society which is quite different from those that you are used to in the West.

"Liberty requires responsibility. Without the responsibility to allow others freedom you have only anarchy. Among the elements of responsibility that we hold dear are honesty and the respect for others' freedom.

“Since liberty is our major concern. People are not equal but they must be given equality of opportunity to find out who are superior in intelligence, creativity, or in their work ethics.

“We must therefore have outstanding schools to allow people to achieve to their fullest. Along with this, a person must earn his citizenship. Being born here does not guarantee one's citizenship. Citizenship can also be rescinded. You may remember some years ago that President Sarkozy of France suggested stripping certain people of their citizenship, people like major criminals and drug traffickers. He was met with a great deal of criticism because once you are a French citizen it can't be taken away from you. Our Constitution allows us to take away citizenship. We have a companion country where we can send noncitizens. They run their own show there!

“Third, people are responsible for their own lives and can end them if they want to. Society does not attempt to prolong people's lives or to control them.

“Fourth, we tax low throughout life and tax high at the end of life.

“Fifth, if people want children they are financially responsible for them and must pay for their educations through the university level.

"And last, as I said, if you are going to have freedom you must have responsibility toward others or you only have anarchy.

"We believe we are on the right track to a better civilization. And you may remember what Arnold Toynbee said, 'Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.' He also said that 'Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.' We think that you in America have reduced your efforts primarily to owning guns, watching electronic screens and nationalizing your religion. It's a blanket criticism and I know that many of you have crawled out from under the blanket. I think that you four may be among those who are not 'in uniform.'

LIBERTY NOT EQUALITY

“Now let me spend the rest of the day explaining how these principles work in practice. For the sake of clarity I will usually use your country to illustrate the kinds of problems that can develop when equality or a lack of responsibility create problems.

I had seen in your country people who call themselves libertarians but are not actually devotees of freedom. I've seen this in your Tea Party movement.

"I think it is evident that people are unequal in their intellectual capacities, their educations, their knowledge, and their awareness of their own situation and the situation of their own country and the world. Look at the ignorant Christian minister who was threatening to burn the Koran, he thought that the Arabic word Allah meant a different entity than the Christian word of God. Of course he was mistaken. Allah is this the Arabic word for the same entity. It didn't seem to matter to him because he went on and burned it anyway. Then a number of equally stupid Muslims, in retaliation, attacked people from the West in Afghanistan and killed several.

"Look at the ignorant Muslims who burned down embassies of both Norway and Denmark because a Danish newspaper had published cartoons which were offensive to them. They didn’t realize that Norway and Denmark are different countries. Look at the ignorant voters in your country who vote in representatives who don’t have a clue as to how to solve your nation’s problems. They often expect more social welfare perks while they want their taxes reduced."

-"I think we all realize that, but we often have not identified it with our psychological drives and our values. Tyler, when we visited Kino and talked to Professor Wang (1), we got a good idea of the differences in values that people have. And we began to realize that most of those values are based on assumptions that are not provable. Then when we visited Singaling and talked to Dr. Chan (2) we saw how the differences in psychological motivations push us in certain directions. Dr. Chan emphasized the drive for power that motivates most of us. Certainly in the illustrations you gave, whether they be differences in religions, race or in social class, we can see how one's own values and physical makeup can give them a feeling of power--and with that power a feeling of superiority.”

"True. Selfishness, or self-centeredness, is a basic for our human race. When we can amass enough money to live better, most people welcome the luxury. As a Chinese beauty queen recently told me ‘It’s better to cry in a limousine than laugh on a bicycle.’ Everyone has his or her own carrot and stick. The stick may whip us out of the poverty of the ghetto. The carrot is nearly always money or other avenues of power. And when power comes, wealth usually is its guardian angel.

“So you see if we are selfish, an equalitarian social philosophy is the anchor dragging down our liberty-- at least our liberty in the financial area.

"In order to have real freedom in a functioning society there are two pillars that are essential. One is that you must be responsible for not impinging on another person's liberty. Then to allow everyone a chance to succeed you must have equality of opportunity. As we go through the day I'm sure that I will be coming back to these pillars of our society again and again."

-"Tyler, what are our concerns here? Are we looking for world peace? Are we looking for the form of government that makes people the happiest? Are we merely looking for a government that pays its own way?”

"You tell me. What we have here in The Colonies is a system based on freedom. We like it. We are not trying to solve the world's problems, we merely want to have a place where it is safe to be free and where we must be responsible for ourselves.” -" I

 -"Since the George W Bush days, non-thinking but fundamentalist Christian groups have taken over many of the legislatures. One of their big pushes has been to either outlaw or reduce abortions. And in some it was to allow the teaching of creationism."

-"I don't know what it is about your country. You talk so much about freedom, like freedom of speech and the freedom to own guns, but you don't give a woman the freedom to abort an embryo when she doesn't want to be a mother. Your male-dominated conservative religious legislatures seem to think that a fertilized ovum is a person. I can understand that if they are Catholic they might believe this because Pope Pius IX in 1854 decided, having been told by God, that the mother of Jesus had been conceived without original sin-- her Immaculate Conception.

-" I wonder why God waited until the mid-19th century to tell His flock that the soul slid into the ovum along with the sperm. That might have been put in the Gospels, or better, in the Ten Commandments.

-"Lee, Christian thinking that abortion is very bad, if not murder, has been the overwhelming Christian position since the earliest days. It is true that some, like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, used Aristotle's ideas that the early embryo had the soul of a vegetable so theoretically abortion could have been performed. But this thinking was very far from the norm.”

- “Actually, in those early days the major concern was the rights of the father, not any rights for the fetus. But from what I know about it, while some said that it was murder to prevent a child from being born, it was Pius who clarified the issue on the soul--if you happen to believe him."

"It seems to be okay to shoot children and adults because of your passionate concern for gun ownership. It certainly is okay for your own young men and those of other countries to be killed in wars or police actions. I would assume that even if you believe that an embryo or fetus has an equal value to a child or an adult, an adult death would equal the death of an embryo. But taking it a step further, I can't understand why you would want unwanted children in your society. There is no question that there are more criminals, more disinterested students, and more prison inmates among those children who were not wanted. If nothing else, stopping abortions seems to increase your need for tax money, yet you want to reduce your taxes. Is my logic somehow faulty? Or is there another reason for having unwanted children? Is it so that you will have more hateful killers for your armies?

RESPONSIBILITY

"In our country we are only concerned with liberty. But we have a strong requirement for responsibility. You know the saying ‘your freedom ends where my nose starts.’ We have all the freedom we want for ourselves but if we interfere with another person’s freedom or safety we are curtailed from expressing ourselves. For example we are allowed to take drugs, drugs that would be illegal in your country, but if your drug taking somehow affects others, we stop you. So if a person has a traffic accident because of being under the influence of alcohol or another drug he is severely punished. In his own home or in another place where he does not negatively affect others, he can take all the drugs he wants. But I will get more into both the freedom and the responsibilities that we think are essential to our society as we progress in our discussions.

"We don't have many laws telling people what they can't do. But we do have laws that keep our government running fairly smoothly and that require responsibility from our citizens. As you know we are a big business country, like Singapore, and our responsibility laws protect our customers internationally from being cheated.

"What we are for is liberty and equality of opportunity. What we are against is a leveling of society where those who have underperformed are given things anyway. That's definitely a communistic idea, giving 'to each according to his needs.' I'll go into these in more detail as we move through our day. But suffice to say, the emerging idea of democracy has gone from the simple idea of giving an equal vote to each of the male citizens, as it was in ancient Greece, to an extremely complicated and costly idea of giving to everybody according to their needs. In fact it seems that the idea of democracy is now being equated with a society based on equality. The idea of freedom has been allowed in the economic realm in most countries, but equality has ruled the social realm. And since the neediest require finances to meet their needs, it is those at the high end of the scale who must pay.

"I heard one of your venture capitalists say that 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.' I'm assuming he meant that freedom and equality or freedom and the social welfare state are no longer compatible. As I remember it was Peter Theil.

"As I'm sure you can surmise, our nation is the exact opposite of a welfare state. The welfare state is actually a reasonably recent concept of governmental responsibility. If you are not aware of the rise of the welfare state, it was in Europe that it all seemed to start. In Germany it began when Bismarck decided to give pensions to older workers in the 19th century. This was just a few years later than the publication of Karl Marx's book Das Kapital. Eventually in Europe socialized medicine became the rule. Then there was pressure to take in people from other countries who were threatened by their regimes-- thinking that not only people in your society were equal but that people in other societies were equal to you. America followed the Europeans with Social Security during the Great Depression, and then later with Medicare.

"Do you remember the old story about the ant and the grasshopper?"

-"Ya. The ant worked hard all summer, he built his house and brought in food for the winter. Meanwhile the grasshopper played and had fun all summer. He vacationed all summer long. But when winter comes the ant is comfy and cozy but the grasshopper has no food or place to live so he freezes to death.”

"The moral of course, is to be responsible for yourself. But in your socialist equalitarian countries the story is much more likely to end this way. When somebody reports that the grasshopper is shivering and dying in the cold, the news networks do a big story on him. The grasshopper has a press conference where he asks why should some people be warm and cozy while others are freezing to death. People in the Western world send money and food supplies to all the grasshoppers who are freezing. Kermit the Frog guests on Oprah's program and reminds the world that 'it isn't easy being green.' Miss Piggy is interviewed on 'Good Morning America' and reminds the world that 'all we animals are equal.' Demonstrations are televised in front of the ant's house. Politicians respond to the indignity of the situation. They raise the taxes on ants and any other animal that has prepared for the winter by working hard. The ant is fined for not having hired green bugs to build this house. He takes it to court but left-leaning judges find that he was not being democratic. The grasshopper sues the ant in civil court and wins because new laws have made the ant's actions undemocratic and prejudicial. The ant pleads that the new laws violate the ex post facto clause of the Constitution. But the judges rule that the Supreme Court in the 18th century had decided that James Madison's intent, that the clause should apply to civil cases, was not what Madison really meant. The ant loses again. The grasshopper takes over the ant's house and his food supplies. But he doesn't take care of the house, he eats all the food and as the warmth of summer entices him to play in the sunlight, he leaves the house which he had not maintained, and heads for another summer of fun. The ant's now rundown house is taken over by spiders that terrorize the neighborhood that was once a fine middle-ant neighborhood. The ant, deposed from his home, died in the snow that winter. The grasshopper died from a cocaine overdose at a 'rave.' I guess that the moral of the story is that when somebody different from you appears to be leading the good life, It definitely isn't fair and is t-ant-amount to a criminal act and demands a punishment."

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

-”But what about equality of opportunity? I thought you were against equality."

"I'm sure you know enough about semantics to realize that using a term alone and using it in a phrase might alter its meaning somewhat. 'Equality before the law' or 'equality of educational opportunity' both use the word 'equality' but have quite different meanings when put into those two phrases. I'm sure we would agree that as desirable as 'equality before the law' may sound, it seldom actually happens. The financial ability of the litigant will affect the quality of the lawyers hired. Then the skills of the lawyers are not equal and the prejudices of the judges will probably sway the decision. We cannot have equality of opportunity in education because teachers and curricula vary. The best we can do is to try to equalize education. You want to have as close as possible an equal starting line.

"In spite of these obstacles equality of opportunity in education is essential, so we must strive for it. But what happens when you have equality of opportunity--people achieve at different levels. This gives us exactly the inequality I have been talking about. And relative to semantics we realize that the meaning of a word can change depending on the speaker or the context.

“Equality of opportunity means that you have an equal starting line. Both the liberals, who want equality throughout life, and conservatives, who recognize our inequality, want equality of opportunity. But like I said, when you have an equal starting line, at the end of the race the racers will be scattered. We recognize this inequality and give everyone the freedom to achieve as high as he or she can. This is diametrically opposed to the equalitarian ideas we have seen in Europe, and to a degree in the U.S. You may start the race with equal opportunity but if you don't finish in a dead heat the liberals want to equalize the participants. They try to equalize people at the finish line.

"Here is an example. People in your countries are told repeatedly that smoking is bad for their health. That’s the equal starting line. But some people choose to smoke. Some of them get emphysema, heart attacks or lung cancer. Then socialized medicine, like Medicare, is required to try to save their lives--because they are all equal, according to your societies these people were equal all their lives no matter how many stupid things they have done. Let’s take it a step farther. Smokers are much more likely to be lower social class citizens. Because of this, they haven’t earned as much money or paid as much in taxes. So the non-smoking people, usually the higher earners and higher taxpayers, have to pay for the smokers.

“The same is true of education. People who have more intellectual abilities or work harder to learn--are more likely to succeed in some field. They started with schooling as equal as possible. Obviously all teachers are not equal and not all parents spend an equal amount of time or an equal quality of time in helping their children learn. Not all parents have tried to enrich the education their children by bringing them to libraries, museums or by traveling. So opportunity is never equal, but we try.

“But in any case, whether starting equally or unequally they finish unequally. In the various academic and vocational fields some will be superior in philosophy, some in physics, some in engineering, some in economics. But they will definitely not be equal. As they live their lives some will be creative, some hard working, some well-educated, some will make good decisions some will make stupid decisions. I'll get into our education system later. I think we need to look at how we have arrived at our national direction first."

--"I would like to hear more about your equality of opportunity.”

"We try to ensure that an outstanding education is available to all of our young people. As I mentioned, parents pay for the education of their children. Most are educated in our public schools, but private schools are available. As opposed to your country, all teachers in public or private schools must be certified by the state. We have a responsibility to the children that they are getting equivalent educations. In some schools one teacher teaches the same children from the first through the sixth grade. This is how they do it in Finland and have been very successful.

"I might mention here that our only foreign aid goes to increasing equality of opportunity in different countries of the world. You probably know that in sub-Saharan Africa less than one in five girls make to secondary school. Nearly half are married by the time they are 18. One out of seven is married by 15. But girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than are women over 20. So the young girls are being doubly endangered-- both their mental abilities and their physical health. As you know, there is much more prejudice against, and subjugation of, girls and women in our world. While it is worse in the Third World countries, it exists in all countries.

"I recently saw an estimate that if the euro zone would merely close the gender gap and allow women into the areas where they were confident, their gross domestic product would rise by 13%. But look at Italy’s record. They are 87th in the world in terms of equal employment for women. There are 121st in wage parity, they are 97th in the world in terms of allowing women to take leadership positions. All in all, Italy ranked 74th in the world relative to its treatment of women. Of course it does allow men to hold their ‘rightful’ places as superior not only to women but to about everybody else in the world.

"Even for the Italian women who work, they spend an additional 21 hours of work in the home. This is more than for any other Western European women. American women average only four hours a week of extra work in the home. Only 45% of Italian women work outside the home compared to 80% of Norwegian women and 72% of the women in UK.

"Even in your country women are showing their superiority. Your college enrollment is 57% female. There are more of them in universities, and more getting graduate degrees. This is also true in northern Europe. Women are less likely to be unemployed. They are marrying later and having fewer children"

-"Women are the hope of the world. They live longer--and seem to be smarter. I dare say that if women ran the world we would have a whole lot fewer wars.”

"I would agree commander. Equality of opportunity has allowed women to achieve what they had not been allowed until fairly recently. But it is not just educational equality of opportunity that holds back countries, just about anything that limits people's freedom is a brake on progress. Just look at Russia. It is a country that wants to be accepted as an equal in the West. In properly rights it ranks 119th in the world, on judicial independence 116th, on the reliability of news services 112th, on professional management 77th. There is definitely a link between the Russian mafia, with its fingers in property pies around the world, and the Russian government. You can't progress in a country fueled by crime. And how can Russia become great when many of its most talented people leave?"

-”If it weren't for their natural resources their country would be dying."

"But back to equality of opportunity. We don't extend equality of opportunity to affirmative action. I know that recently Chinese were allowed to be classified as blacks in South Africa. This gave them special treatment such as getting business loans more easily. In your country women and ethnic minorities were given preferential treatment for many years through affirmative action laws. Our laws are designed to eliminate ridiculous prejudices and if they have occurred they can be taken to arbitration. But we don't try to somehow equalize things long after any equality of opportunity has been denied.

"But not all rights or wishes fall under the guise of equality of opportunity. If we had any Muslim women wearing the full face-covering veil someone might object. But we have none. If someone wanted minarets by a mosque it might be OK because they are pretty. But if a muezzin mounted it and began calling the faithful to prayers with his chants, I'm afraid there would be lots of objections. And remember our principle of responsibility! When you interfere with another's liberty, like one's liberty to sleep, you've gone too far.

-"The muezzin chant is rather romantic and colorful about noon, but at 5AM it really irritated me. It was bad enough when it was only his natural voice, but now so many mosques have those hyped up loudspeakers and you are called to prayer with a 500 decibel chant, I find that the sound is more than my tympanic membrane can handle. Heavy metal 'music' affects me the same way. I guess I just like my peace and quiet."

"I agree with you Con, the way that the ideas of modern democracy have developed, so that every possible kind of freedom and equality can to be included in the idea, has bastardized a concept that really only means that the people can vote. In our country we laugh at what people are calling their 'rights.' Whatever they seem to want they think is a right. Another source of our merriment is when we see illegal immigrants and low-level workers claim that they are taxpayers when the only tax they pay is a bit of sales tax on their beer."

-"Well, Tyler what do you think is the best kind of government?”

WHAT IS THE BEST GOVERNMENT?

"Well for one thing I would certainly not recommend your American style of government. For one thing, because of your extreme politics, in Washington half of your people want the executive to fail. Winning your political battles is far more important than winning for your country. Then you have the lobbyists advocating not only for the preservation of the existing corporations, but getting them unfair subsidies and tax breaks that make it difficult for newcomers to enter the scene. This is an affront to the equality of opportunity in the business world."

SOCIETAL POSSIBILITIES

-"So you think that yours is the best possible type of government. Can you give me some options that you thought about when coming up with your ideas for a government?"

 

"There are so many options for a society, so it is highly unlikely that everyone will agree on one. You will always have an economic side of a society and a social-political side of a society. Each one has a possibility of behavior along a very long continuum. For example on the economic side you can have a range from totally free laissez-faire capitalism, or should I say ‘a free enterprise system,’ to a system that is totally communistic--'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' Along that range we have socialism, 'from each according to his ability to each according to his work.' That would come closer to the communist end. Further to the right we would have the union versus business possibility with negotiations, strikes, and lock-outs as part of the economic reality.

"On the social-political side, on the far right you could have an absolute monarch or a pope in total charge of the program. On the far left you would have anarchy. Somewhere in the middle we would have equalitarian democratic behavior and further to the right we would have representative government, a republic, where the more important people would be the rulers. They would probably be elected by the people or by power elites like business leaders or military commanders. A number of problems can pop up along these continua. For example we would have ultimate freedom or anarchy versus the constriction of freedom and possibly regression. We might have a feeling of loving humanity versus being uncaring. We can have the political question of whether we should be warlike or peaceful. And naturally we can have liberty, or possibly fascism, on one end and equality or communism on the other. There are so many psychological, political, economic and social possibilities that can be discussed or that may find their way onto one of these continua.

"So we have at least two continua, one economic and one social-political, both of them with the left end based on equality and a right end based on the inequality and superiority of one or a few. In various societies these continua may intersect at different points and give that society the philosophical underpinnings to push it toward a specific reality. Here in our United Colonies the continua intersect on the right side. We believe that people are unequal based on intelligence or work effort or physical abilities. We believe that it is right and just that the more unequal can keep what they make. And the citizens of each generation must start anew to prove their worth. But I'll talk more about that later.

“Other countries, notably those in Scandinavia but also those in the more developed states of the EU, emphasize equality as being the primary constituent of justice. Their taxes are very high and they, at least theoretically, treat their inhabitants equally. Their continua intersect on the left side of the middle.”

  -"I have my opinion about liberty being essential. I never really thought about it too much. What philosophical underpinnings does your nation use to come up with its libertarian values?"

"I will try to indicate some of these values and our thinking about them, but tomorrow you will meet with Professor Kelsi Connor. She is the world's authority on the ideas of justice being based on either equality or liberty. We realize that you can't have both completely in one society. One has to be sacrificed for the other either in the economic or the social areas. To the degree that you have one or the other, those continua that I mentioned intersect at quite different spots. We like to talk about freedom and a free society, but depending on the concept of justice that your society has you will tend to find it 'just' if you are on the top, but unjust if you are on the bottom. There is no way that everyone can be happy.

“People like to talk about civil rights or human rights but those rights come from the society in which they live. The United Nations would like to think of us all in the same society. They make their pronouncements about human rights that nations can accept or reject. Most accept them legislatively but ignore them in practice. So the citizens don't have as many rights as they're told they have. I laugh at you Americans criticizing the Chinese government for not allowing more freedom of speech. Certainly freedom of speech has been listed as a human right by the United Nations--but so has the right to a job. China has done a better job than you have in getting people employed and increasing their wages. Based on what your politicians say in America, your people are most concerned about having a job. I daresay that if you take some of your unemployed Americans, and last I heard that was about 9%, and asked them whether they would rather have a job or free speech-- they would choose the job.

"I remember hearing about a group of lawyers from America going to China to try to increase their human rights. I was thinking at the time that if China were to use the American common law system they would have to take about half of their people out of the science universities and put them into law schools. Then they would need jobs for the lawyers, so those who could not be elected to run the government could work as lobbyists to influence the government. And because of their free-speech, lawyers could enact more pro-lawyer laws like they have in the US so that they could sue for medical malpractice, smoking illnesses, and all the other evils that their society might have. But China was already making great strides in eliminating corruption and making their society run smoothly. So they didn't really need your American lawyers!

"But enough about rights, let's talk about politics. Pundits and politicians tell the people what they want to hear. Some will talk about 'liberal.' Some will talk about 'conservative.' But they can't include all social and economic factors in the single term. For example Norway offers very conservative treatment towards ship owners. Their taxes are low. Their state regulation is low. But on the other side of the economic spectrum, the farmers, the government gives a great deal of money to them because they have only about one growing season in a year. So economically the treatment of farmers is quite liberal.

"In the US gun sales and manufacture are given a great deal of freedom, so this is conservative. But teachers, with their unions, are given a great deal of equality. So their economic treatment is quite liberal. On the social side, all of your students are entitled to a free education. Theoretically this starts them equally. But in actuality the rich people send their children to high-level private schools or they live in rich areas where the public schools pay more for teachers and get better teachers. The richer parents are also more likely to be pretty concerned with their children's educational progress and their entrance into the better colleges.

"The result of the reality of parents' wealth on the one hand and the increasing poverty on the other, means that we can't categorize the US as either liberal or conservative economically. In the great recession of 2008 the government bailed out the big banks and industries. This could be seen as the government aiding the economic conservatives. At the same time it extended unemployment compensation to the unemployed at the bottom of the society. This was definitely economically liberal.


"So the economic and social continua, that I mentioned, can intersect at an infinite number of points along the two continua. We might have a society that is economically conservative but socially liberal. Or we might have an intersection that is economically conservative and socially conservative. The other options are being economically liberal and socially liberal or being economically liberal and socially conservative. Let me briefly look at each of these possibilities, realizing that each of my illustrations can be widened or narrowed at any point along the intersection.

"Let me start where we are in the Colonies. We are economically conservative and socially liberal. This is a libertarian viewpoint. Economically you're on your own. It's sink or swim. No one has responsibility for another person's welfare. If a person made the wrong choices in life that person suffers from them. We keep the government minimal and keep the taxes low. If you have a baby you pay, you even pay for your child's education. You have freedom to choose, but you have the responsibility for your choices. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

"The second option is being economically conservative and socially conservative. In this approach you have the freedom to achieve economically but the values of society, commonly religious values, keep the people in line. It may be to a reward of heaven or the pains of hell. It may be the social rewards of recognition versus the social denigration of criticism. The social conservatism might reduce drunkenness and promiscuity, and possibly corruption in business. The costs to government for a legal system and jails is reduced because of the 'ideal' behavior of the people. I remember reading some years ago that your libertarian congressman, Rand Paul, was against abortion while being very economically conservative. This illustrates the point I'm trying to make relative to being a libertarian in an economic sense but conservative in social terms. Your former president George W. Bush was also in this mold. He thought that abstinence education would curb illegitimacy. It didn't. But the scientific facts don't usually change people's philosophical beliefs.

"Another option would be being both economically and socially liberal. Here people would have the freedom to do what they want and society would still take care of them. They can have children without being able to care for them. Society would give them money or will take the children into foster care. The people can become alcoholics or heroin addicts and society will provide for their treatment and care. Everyone is equal so everyone is entitled to be taken care of, even if they don't take care of themselves. You might imagine that some people who are paying most of the bills for those who don't take responsibility for themselves may get a little upset. Recently this has become more true in our world and conservatives have been moving up in the political minds of the people.

"The last of these four options would be the economic liberal but socially conservative approach. In this model the people should behave in a certain way in the society, and if they do this society will take care of them. Here again there is the assumption that people are equal and should be taken care of. But they also are not capable of determining their lives. The smarter or holier people must do that for them. Some totalitarian ideas fit this model. Soviet communism and the Catholic Church are both examples of organizations that require strong commitment to the ideals of those in power while recognizing that those on the bottom of society need to be taken care of.

 "These four models illustrate four intersection points along these continua that I mentioned. One question is which is the most just. But another question is who is to decide what justice is? If we leave that up to the people we might very well have 7 billion different ideas of what is just. But like I said, Dr. Connor will take you on the intellectual voyage looking at whether or not we are actually equal. And if we are not actually equal, should we be treated equally? I remember what Milton Friedman wrote 'A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.'”(3)

“All right let's get back to political science. What is the best government?”

“I don't think there is any best government for everybody. We humans have so many varied potentials and interests that there is no way that we can all be content with our government. Probably the best proposal, at least the one that I like, was that of Plato in his Republic. The rule by an educated oligarchy, the rule of the best educated thinkers, seems to me to be the best. It seems to me that China, and probably Singapore, come closest to that today with its elites from its one-party or an intelligent Prime Minister doing the ruling. The worst governments seem to be those dictatorships in Africa. There is no concern at all for the people other than to rape them financially. I think that the multiparty approach in the Scandinavian countries is a pretty good approach. But even there you see every few years the swing toward liberalism or toward conservatism. So there seems to be no path that keeps the whole electorate happy. And I'm not sure that keeping the whole electorate happy is necessarily the best government. Possibly the best government is the one that advances the society the fastest economically and educationally. I would have to say that I'm not so excited about your approach to democracy in America either. So many of your legislators are really uneducated and don't seem to be capable of thinking. They seem to be stuck at the level of 10-year-olds.

“For an advanced group of educated people, I think our approach is pretty good in today's world. I certainly don't see any society that is working too hard to hold down the financially elite. Socialistic China certainly has allowed the birth of billionaires. The ever backward Russia seems to cater to the rich criminal elements. India certainly encourages the competent, as does your country. So freedom, at least economic freedom, is certainly a reality in today's governments-- even those that support the equalitarian welfare state.

ECONOMIC SUCCESS

"At least in today's world, economics seems to rule supreme. The financially successful are looked up to more than any other group. I don't know if riches will always be the jeweled crowns of our societies. Maybe someday intellectual achievement will be looked upon as supreme. Maybe we will go back to the days when our race looked up to warriors as the fittest of rulers--and the heroes to emulate. We might even revert to the days when professed holiness was the highest of callings. But today success is related primarily to accumulating wealth through some special kind of talent.

“We have to be aware of the continual changes in the economic realm. When jobs are no longer needed they need to be eliminated. At the same time we need to look into the future and see where the opportunities for employment will be. For a number of years the opportunities have been in internet technology, robotics, nanotechnology and the environmental fields. These, of course, require high levels of education.

“I remember a number of years ago when the British railroads were running on electricity but were still required to have firemen whose only job was to put coal into the boiler. Of course there was no boiler. Unions had, as usual, held back progress while keeping useless jobs. Then there was the conservative government that moved into power back in about 2010. They found many useless jobs that required elimination. I remember one that paid a person $60,000 a year to encourage people to play musical instruments. Then there was the guy who was paid $25,000 a year in a part-time job where he had to carry the sword in the processions for the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. There have al ways been these highly paid political appointments that drain a government's finances.”

- “We've had those kinds of political jobs in the state of California for eons. Retired politicians were put on committees that met a few times a year and were paid very high salaries."

-"But I think our major problem is in keeping employment high. We sure had a worldwide recession about 15 years ago, about 2010. But how do you keep the excess capacity of a producing country to not feel an economic downturn? How can the workers avoid being laid off and the machines idle while prices are dropping and there are few buyers. It appears to me that the world has far too many unskilled or low skilled workers. There is not room on the assembly lines for all of them. So commonly workers are treated very poorly. I think of the Burmese refugees in Thailand packing fish for only a few pennies a day and living in what most of us would consider unlivable conditions. Sweat houses not only exist in third world countries but we find them in our own country.

ECONOMY AND GLOBALIZATION

"Meanwhile the rich keep getting richer. In the US recently the average worker’s pay went up 2% while the average CEO salary rent up 23%.Moreover the average CEO pay for the top 200 firms in the US was $11.4 million a year.(3a)

“Farm subsidies for not growing food or cotton, government subsidies to produce ethanol and to search for more oil, tax breaks for businesses for employment no matter where in the world they employ people. I don't want to appear antibusiness or anti-globalization but there is this moral streak in me that sees injustice and seethes. I know that our government pushed for globalization, thinking we would profit more than anyone. But 'lo and behold' the Chinese and Koreans outsmarted us. The Germans outsmarted us. The Norwegians outsmarted us. Even the Somalian pirates had done better than we had during the recession.

“But I see other social factors that have oozed into our world as we have forgotten our individual wellbeing and joined the pack of treasure hunters seeking our fortunes. As the world becomes more globalized people tend to identify themselves with racial, ethnic, religious or to causes rather than identifying themselves by the political boundaries in which they live. So being Muslim, Catholic, black, Hispanic, Pakistani, Somalian, a Tea Party member, a Greenpeace adherent, a PETA member and so forth become more important than being Americans, Swedes or Spaniards. National identities have been losing ground as more asylum-seekers and manual laborers immigrated into the once ‘pure blooded’ nations. Is this a better way of framing our world? Certainly we need some kind of identity, but must these identities be so divisive?"

-"People criticize China because it does not ‘democratize’ quickly enough. If democratize means free speech no matter how inflammatory, they are right. If it means giving the people a better life quickly, no country has done a better job in this short period of time than China. Of course, for Americans who had been traditionally the major world power, China is a real threat to our national and individual power drives. So it is natural, psychologically, to criticize them in whatever way possible. It is the only way to try to keep our superiority feelings once our actual superiority is crumbling."

-"The Chinese are becoming even more successful because they are highly educated and don’t have the welfare state burden anchoring them economically." (3)

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

-"True Con, but Tyler I know that your country is pretty far to the right. That scares me. In my country the right-wing lunatics today seem to want states rights, individual freedom and yet a government by a Christian God. But if they ever read their Bibles they would find that Jesus taught that government and religion should be separate and that we should take care of the poor. They don't seem to put the two together.”

"Whoever said that people are rational?”

-“Tyler, I am sure you have heard of Dambisa Moyo from Zambia, with her PhD, she is one of the world's leading economists. She might agree with you. She is very much against giving aid to Africa. She is also against the protectionism that some countries use to keep out African products. Did you know that for every hundred dollars worth of coffee sold at the retail level the Ugandan farmer who raised it gets only 66 cents"

"As a matter of fact she spoke to our people about a year ago. We agree wholeheartedly with her."

IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

-" Do you allow immigration or are you a closed society?”

"People can come and visit but they can't stay. As you may know all of our transactions from workers pay to purchases are done by a type of debit–credit card. When people come to visit they can purchase a temporary card with a certain amount of monetary value. If they run out of money they can have more added to the card. But when the stay is completed, which is usually a maximum of three months, the card is automatically invalidated. So it would be difficult for somebody to stay illegally when they couldn't be paid anything and they couldn't spend anything.

"Of course people are invited to visit or to work here. Their cards are usable as long as they are in the country legally. Some of these people are invited to stay indefinitely. Some might even become citizens."

-“But if they have children in your country while they're working here. Are they then citizens?”

"Yours is the only country I know that allows for citizenship because the person's mother happened to be in your country for a day or two, or even an hour or two. Everybody knows that it has been common for Mexican women to cross the border to give birth to their children who then become American citizens. But did you know about the richer Chinese women who are becoming maternity tourists. They visited the States about the time they are to deliver. The child then becomes an American citizen, and since America allows dual citizenship, the child is also Chinese.

"The number of children with at least one illegal Hispanic parent is now 4 million. 73% of all children of illegal immigrants are now US citizens. They occupy 7% of all school places in the elementary and secondary levels of the US. And one third of them live in poverty. So we can assume that their parents are not paying much in taxes to take care of the children they have in school. (4) Your deeply held belief in equality for all has put you in grave financial straits.

"But you in America just see part of the problem. More than half of the world's refugees are in Asia and another quarter in Africa. They invade neighboring countries that may offer them jobs or they try to make it to an equalitarian in country, such as those in Europe."

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