The Blog of Russell Hasan, Author of Philosophy Nonfiction and Fantasy & Science Fiction

Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Thoughts on Gender and Gender-Neutrality

Some men -- a lot of men -- seem to have a particular view of gender, namely, that women and queers have a gender, but men don't really have a gender, because being a man is the gender-neutral posture, it is the default, whereas being a woman is an active, positive gender, which comes with gender issues, and being queer is a gender, which also comes with gender issues, but if you're a man, and if you're a "normal" man, then you can exist without having to worry about gender issues because you have, or should have, no gender issues, since you have no "active" gender at all, you are the gender default.
And I disagree with this view, and I regard the truth with respect to this matter to be objective and to apply to all genders, and to not revolve around the particular point of view of which gender you belong to. And my position is this: agender, which means, someone who has no gender (which is how I self-define) is the default, is the true gender-neutral position, but, if you self-identify as a man, then you have a gender, masculine, and you have all the baggage and gender issues that come (1) from gender, (2) from having a gender, and (3) from being a man -- and this is true not only for trans men but for cis men also. Women, then, have their own feminine gender, which also has the issues that come from gender, but then adds the female-specific gender issues of being a woman, while subtracting the gender-specific issues that men face. And then each queer person has whichever gender they have, and then have whatever issues attach to that gender.
Therefore, the belief of some men who feel gender anxiety in the modern world and feel that if queer rights and the queer agenda gets sunk then they won't have any issues with their own gender anymore, they won't have to worry about gender or be aware of gender or think about gender, because gender is a women's issue and a queer issue, is false. Gender is as much a masculine issue as it is a feminine or queer issue, it's just that the particular gender at issue is male, not female or queer. As such, men who suffer from masculine gender insecurity and get gender-baited into political opposition to women and queers are "barking up the wrong tree," they are looking in the wrong place for the solution to their problems.
I, however, am 100% agender, so I truly have no gender trouble, because I am that lucky unique person who legitimately has no inherent gender whatsoever. I am the default, true neutral, a perfect shade of gray that possesses not the slightest hint of either pink or blue. Agender is not a gender, rather it is the absence of gender, and it obtains its categorical status as its own specific category of gender identity only in relation to other genders which themselves contain positive gender contents against which to compare itself to. And I think that a lot of people, at a subconscious level, are aware that some sort of default neutral gender posture does exist, or should exist, but they get confused into thinking that the default is male instead of agender, they confuse the two, they mix the two up. The use of color as metaphor is informative -- blue is not a neutral color; gray is a neutral color. You can think of blue as male and gray as agender. So, to help fix this widespread problem, I have written this short blog post to help clear up any confusion with respect to this issue regarding gender. Thanks for reading it!

Monday, June 1, 2020

What is the Libertarian Axiom? Politics, Reimagined

Most libertarians would point to the principle that one should never initiate violence and use force only for self defense as the core axiom for liberty—the axiom that I call NVP, the Non-Violence Principle. Here I write to propose a second axiom, based on some recent conversation with my fellow Libertarian Party members.
I know one LP member who opposes big government except for public education to give poor kids a leg up. I know another who opposes big government except for Social Security for retirees, on the belief it isn't fair to deny someone benefits they paid into for decades. I know a third who opposes big government except for welfare and food stamps for the very poor. This person is convinced that a Marxist revolution will happen if all welfare is cut. I have also heard a Libertarian talk about the "real" pain and suffering of the poor that is alleviated by welfare, as if the pain caused by big government is not equally real.
These people, and I now suspect most Americans, understand libertarian economics, but they think that theft (in the form of taxation) is justified if it is for a good, worthy cause. Each person has his own pet cause that he wants government to fund, even while wanting taxes cut to pay for anything else.
I propose a new axiom: that the ends never justify the means. I term this the Anti-Marxist Axiom. If you believe this, then theft is never justified, even for the noblest purpose, and even if the rich have more money than they need. My justification for this axiom is moral, not pragmatic, and, in a weird way, Kantian. Kant's signature contribution to ethics is the theory of the Categorical Imperative, which I interpret to mean that, for something to be good, it must be right at all times and places universally. If there is an exception to an ethical (or political) principle then it was not rational or true, it was merely an expediency of the moment. To be a coherent theory, libertarianism needs the Anti-Marxist Axiom, otherwise it is just a rule of thumb to be compromised or abandoned when someone feels justified in doing so. If you use evil means to achieve good ends, logically the result will not be ethical, because you conceded to evil in order to achieve your goal.
If you want to fund a good cause with taxes then you conceded the validity of statism. If you accept that people make and earn money, and thereby morally deserve to own wealth, and then say that you can take someone's money away from them to spend as you see fit, even for a good cause, you have conceded and condoned widespread systemic theft. It should not then surprise you that a bunch of crooks, literally thieves, actual criminals, will run for office to acquire this opportunity and then will raise taxes on you to pay for evil things while spouting all sorts of virtuous good causes to justify it. There is a saying "power corrupts, and power attracts the corruptible." (Attributed to Frank Herbert.) I can say something similar: theft attracts criminals. This is a necessary and sufficient explanation for why big government is evil and will always become evil even if it begins as good.
Absent this axiom, you will find good cause after good cause, requiring tax raise after tax raise, and more and more theft to pay for your virtuous plans, until, from a libertarian starting point, you inevitably collapse into socialism. Either you have a universal, absolute axiom, or you face a very realistic slippery slope--even if sliding down it takes a nation 200 years.
Libertarians should consider abandoning their pet causes and commit to the Anti-Marx Axiom, to protect the purity of our principles. Libertarianism as a political theory needs an axiom, a self-evident principle to justify itself. If it does not have a principle then it is not a theory, it would be a mere pragmatic movement, or merely a feeling that government is bad. NVP is a good axiom, but many libertarians feel justified in making exceptions. The axiom that the ends never justify the means says there are no exceptions. If people want compromise, let them vote for the establishment. If they want principled politics, then they should vote for us. But how can we be a party of principles if we don't know what our core principle is?

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Are libertarians left or right?

Are libertarians left or right?

Are libertarians left or right? This is not an easy question to answer, for several reasons. First, no one definition exists of what is a libertarian. Ask twenty libertarians, by which I mean people who self-define as libertarian, what is a libertarian? and you will get twenty different answers. Being libertarian might mean you consider yourself a member of a libertarian movement, or a Libertarian Party, of that you believe in one of the many different types of libertarian philosophy, like Austrian or AnCap. Second, when you ask are libertarians left or right, you assume that left and right are the only two options. Many libertarians think of themselves as neither left nor right.

What is left? what is right?

Many libertarians say that the left vs. right analysis is a false dichotomy. The famous libertarian Nolan Chart was designed to be a visual explanation of this fact. These libertarians do not choose to see things as left vs. right. They see left as social freedom plus economic control. And they see right as economic freedom plus social control. Libertarians want economic freedom plus social freedom. This is why libertarians sometimes say they are fiscally conservative, socially liberal. In fact, this became an old pun. Libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially awkward.

However, libertarians exist in the GOP who self-define as being on the right, are pro-life, support the conservative Republican movement, and support Donald Trump. The conservatives and the libertarians share many positions. We support free market capitalism. We take pride in the United States of America. And we hold a belief that the rich are good for society. Libertarians and the right hold a strong desire for tax cuts. Also, we both express staunch opposition to gun control legislation. The libertarians on the right may hold even more in common. They oppose immigration. They say abortion is murder.

However, points of disagreement exist between libertarians and the right. Many libertarians support legalized abortion. And many libertarians want open borders and free and open immigration. Libertarians are usually antiwar pacifists. In contrast, most conservatives on the right want a strong military. Libertarians are isolationists. Isolationism has grown in the right under Donald Trump. But previously, conservatives had wanted a strong foreign policy that would aggressively police the world. The Afghan and Iraqi Wars under George W. Bush are examples of right foreign policy.

Furthermore, most libertarians support legalizing marijuana. That position is almost universally hated on the right. Some libertarians would even go as far as legalizing sex work and all recreational drugs, things like cocaine and opioids. As you might expect, conservatives turn pale at the thought of such things.

What is libertarian?

Are libertarians left or right? In fact, you can have many different answers to that question. My own answer is that some libertarians are right, but most are neither left nor right, and a very small minority are left. The ones on the left are sometimes referred to as left-libertarians. The left-libertarians have carved out their own special niche. But they are a small minority within the movement.

Libertarians are right in some ways. And we are left in a few ways. Also, in some ways do not fit neatly into a left vs. right analysis. We simply do not have a place in the world seen from the left-right Democrats vs. Republicans point of view. We have our own unique worldview, where we are the alternative to both liberals and conservatives.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Can Donald Trump Win in 2020?

The short answer is: no, and it's because of the coronavirus. In chess, when a player can take two of your pieces on his next move, if you move one to safety, then the other is lost, and this is called being forked. Donald Trump is forked. If he eases social distancing to save the economy, your grandparents die (along with up to a million other people), and the voters will blame him. If he doesn't, the economy dies and we all lose our job and starve to death. There is no winning move for him to make.
Voters won't understand, or won't care, that it is not his fault and the virus is to blame.
Ironically, the Democrats were weak foes whom I believe Trump would have beaten easily, but in the coronavirus, Trump faces an enemy as tough, as resilient, as crafty, and, yes, as contagious as he is. It is precisely the type of opponent he is ill equipped to handle and was not ready for.
I'll be voting Libertarian and have no skin in the RepPa vs. DemPa game, but right now this is Biden's election to lose.