Why I'm Right Wing: Culture

We're in a time where the world has become very, very small as compared to the world only one hundred years ago. Then, it took weeks to cross the oceans and visit new places or move. Today, it takes hours. You can talk to a Chinese student from a cafe in Florida or debate politics with a socialist in Austria from your home in Nowhere, Mississippi. Business now crosses religions, cultures and races. Ideologies span the planet and even in to space, where rival nations plant their flags in orbit with satellites. It has become a hard choice between the idea of true equality between men and keeping alive the traditional cultural values both nations and individuals hold dear. Some nations have turned to multiculturalism. America, for the most part, has kept to its melting pot philosophy that's served it well.

The Importance of Culture

Despite the new interconnected world of spreading Western fashions and fads being seen in Syria, as well as spreading Eastern philosophies and views being spoken by the most famous of artists and stars, there is no doubt that an individual's cultural roots play a role in their lives no matter how assimilated they are to a Western or Eastern way of life. It is not hard to find evidence when you have North African Muslims in strictly secular France complaining about the government's “persecution” of their right to practice sexist customs. Nor is it difficult to find stories of those of Western upbringing who have tried to make a living in places like China or Singapore who detest the harsh, anti-democratic, anti-Western views and laws of the respective governments. Culture, as well as ideology, play a huge role in the ways people think and how they act in their home nations as well as any nation they decide to settle in.

Free to Be

In the hundred years between ocean steamers and supersonic jets, America has become more than just a nation of European immigrants as it was at the early part of the 20th century. Today, America boasts some of the largest assimilated minorities on the planet. Despite the rhetoric of those opposed to it, the War on Terror has yet to spawn a homegrown terror attack since its inception. Unlike Britain, which has had at least three Islamist attacks, both attempted and executed, since 9/11, the US has had only one known case of a homegrown cell, and that cell was of recent immigrants that may have already been trained by Al Qeada. For a country hated by many Muslim nations due to the idiot idea that the West is at war with Islam, a faction within a fraction of a minority of the Muslim population in America actually took the time to plan a terrorist attack which ended up being thwarted during the planning stage.

If America is the imperialistic, oppressive nation that it is said to be by the left and by our rivals, why is it that our populations have yet to reach out with revolutionary violence to free themselves? Why is it that in places like Spain or France or Russia that domestic ethnic terrorists strike, minorities violently riot and cultural animosities burn like bonfires, but in America the worst we have are angry letters to the editor or interest groups setting up press conferences to scream bloody murder? Its not because these groups are oppressed or bribed by the material wealth they receive for being good slaves to the capitalist state. Its because in America, these minorities are free to be who they are.

With the freedom to choose who you are, or to continue to practice who you are without political repercussion, is it no wonder that first generation immigrant families are usually struck with a schism between them and their children, who are more assimilated to American and/or Western culture? Being born into a mostly Western-rooted family, cultural assimilation was no problem because there was no assimilation needed. But I have known those from outside the Western sphere and seen the difference of their actions on the playground with their American friends on the playground and their actions when their parents came to puck them up from school. The difficulty of dealing with the wishes of your parents and that of the society you live and love is something many will never experience, but we can try to understand.

Ideological Assimilation and The War On Terror

When outsiders come to America from a non-Western state, it is believed the immigrants must give up on their culture and assimilate to the mall rats, the tight jeans, the “my kid is my friend” parenting, and so on. This is false. Those who wish for immigrants to culturally assimilate to American culture have their reasoning, but I do not believe it is required of our new American brethren. There are countless non-Western immigrants who hold to their tribal societal customs, to their non-Abrahamic religions, to their spiritual ancestries and fit right in with American society. Its not because they gave up who they were culturally, but became attuned to what it means to be an American ideologically.

By ideology, I don't mean conservative or liberal, but the overall American ideological spectrum that began with the Founders in classical liberalism and republicanism. Despite the common goal of American independence, John Adams believed in a strong federal government; Thomas Jefferson believed in a government closer to the decentralized organization under the Articles of Confederation; and Thomas Paine was a revolutionary through and through, supporting both the liberal American Revolution as well as the violent and eventually tyrannical French Revolution. In America, most of the population believes in one form or another of individual rights. While anyone can believe anything they wish without the fear of the government coming to get them, supporting ideologies like Communism, Fascism or harsh theocracies put them on the fringes of political belief and one shouldn't be surprised if there are those out there who will have an emotional response to those beliefs.

I believe its this ideological assimilation that creates the extra stability that other nations do not find with their extra-cultural minorities. Whereas in Britain, where the view is that not only must we respect Islamist views (something that should be up to the individual), but accommodate them, creates an overt form of self-isolation by those adhering Islamism because their ironic disdain of the nation that gives them the freedom to practice their xenophobia. Though, accommodation does not always end up with self-isolation, the policy of accommodation of views that are anathema to that of the prevailing ideology and culture, especially if that culture and ideology embrace individual rights, will no doubt create cultural schisms like the ones seen in the United Kingdom. And, of course, during a time of war against an enemy that exposes these schisms for political gain, any true conflict between the resident's cultural and ideological values and that of the nation he/she resides in will eventually create homegrown agents of the enemy that will be poised to strike deeper and harder than any foreign born enemy agent ever could and be more likely to succeed.

American Culture: The Very Important Individual

There is much to admire and much to dislike about American culture. Entire floors of book stores and libraries have books dedicated to the deconstruction and explanation of American culture and its flaws from a thousand different theories from a million different people, all assuming they are correct. I will add to this, and I will concede that I am not a trained sociologist nor did I really pay attention in my high school sociology class, so I am probably not as astute as others in their research and use of terminology, but I do believe my observations are accurate and worthy of consideration.

Firstly, the most important observation I have made about American culture is its very particular notion that each individual is not only important, but extremely important in comparison to the whole of the people and the nation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to standing up for wrongs inflicted by governments or by other people, but it does come with a price when the goal is neither moral or legal, but material. The vast and bloated social safety net enacted over fifty years ago in response to the Great Depression as mutated in to something that exposed this quirk of American life.

Before the creation of the modern American welfare state, the American worker was mostly on its own. The rugged individualist persona talked about by conservatives was a reality back then. The farmer settling the Wild West; the railroad worker having to deal with workplace accidents as well as the occasional Apache raid; the independent business man having to build up his empire from scratch in a town no bigger than most football stadiums. Until Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and its expansion by Lydon Johnson's Great Society, the our culture was based somewhat on community and a lot on the hard determination of the individual to succeed.

Today, decades after the foundations of economic dependency were laid, the individualism persists, but in a culture now changed by that encouraged dependency and it goes well beyond simply being on the dole. Having the government at your back no matter what happens to you or what you do to yourself creates a underlying lethargy not only economically, for those who do not wish to excel at their job, but it also encourages protest against difficult education. The parents that were pushed to learn Latin, algebra and know every Founder and their views in middle school have children who don't know any Latin, are failing basic math and can't describe what federalism is in college.

Decades ago, kids were smacked across the knuckles for speaking out in class, or failed a class for not having proper grammar on an essay. Today, kids are more likely to swear at or threaten their teacher than to simply talk back, and grammar has become secondary to the ability of the student to “try”. It is hard to teach proper math, English and so on when a teacher is trying to not only instruct the child, but make sure the student doesn't feel bad when they can't get down the difference between there, their and they're in the twelfth grade. Its no worry, though, because the government will back you up if you can't find well-paying job due to your less-than-stellar marks, or your inability to pay your car payments or mortgage on time. Its about how well you tried and about how you feel about yourself. Its about being comfortable in your material life, despite that you didn't try, were badly taught or you just don't really care. You are simply that important to society that society must sacrifice treasure and time to keep you afloat in a world already hard enough without a few monkeys on the back of those who contribute.

Despite the self-defeating aspect of self-importance when coupled with dependency, Americans are some of the most productive and inventive people on the planet due because the self-importance being properly focused. It does not matter if you are black or white, Christian or Hindu, Hutu or Uzbek, if your faculties are well enough to come up with an invention or a system which people want to use or enact, you can and will be paid for it handsomely if you play your cards right. From inventors to computer programmers to evangelical preachers on television who require cash for miracles, each one has worked hard in some capacity to get where they are, even if to some their profession or conduct seems disingenuous. In a individualist culture, it doesn't really matter, as long as you're not breaking the law.

American Culture: Confidence, Humility and Endurance

One of the aspects of American culture that really angers the anti-American, anti-Western factions is that Americans who believe in American exceptionalism are very confident in that view, despite countless naysayers attempting to refute it. These people, myself included, have ample evidence of the righteousness of this belief (American supremacy countless economic, military and human rights categories) and do not believe a nation should feel sorry for its success, the American nation or any other. Nationalism, despite the proselytizing of the left, is not bad on its face, but its simply the extent and the intent of the promotion of nationalism that decides what exactly that confidence will produce.

In lieu of the benefits of national and cultural confidence, too much of it ends up harming both the national psyche as well as international image when things start going wrong. Every nation reaches out for greatness and every nation falls upon its own aspirations. It is the way of things and of human nature, individually and collectively. It is up to the citizenry, if give the tools to change their society, to bring back their people from whatever brink ambition has brought them to. Due to the tyrannical structure of many grand nations, such attempts were in vain. From the destruction of Alexander's pan-continental empire after his death to the drastic and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, history is filled with the stories of men and peoples confident in themselves and their grand schemes, but ending up introverted and chaotic.

Unlike Alexander's imperial court or Russia's esoteric council of party members, the American nation has been humble enough to examine itself and its action. With that we are able to prevent the worst of its own nationalism from enveloping the individualism and decentralized nature of the nation. Through the most despotic of times in our history: Abraham Lincoln's abuses of power and suspension of habeas corpus; Woodrow Wilson's idealist society of national unity at the cost of freedom; Franklin D. Roosevelt's fascistic New Deal and the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, not to mention the inhuman eugenic experiments performed on black soldiers. In the face of every instance of despotism and abuse, despite what good it ended up aiding (Union victory, defeat of the Central Powers, defeat of the Axis powers), our nation did not hold that those powers accrued and those wrongs wrought were in line with what America stood for. Despite the black times we endure and despite the harsh lessons we learn from our mistakes, the pride and confidence of an American does not come from just the tribal instinct we all have, but from the knowledge of the horrors we endured and inflicted, and that we are still free in the face of it.

American Culture: The Gods of Modernity and the Fetish of Action

There is no doubt of the change in American culture since the mid-20th century. The exponential explosion of technological innovation, the massive birthrate just after the Second World War and the welfare/nanny state set down from decades of leadership of the Progressives, shifted both ideology and cultural views of the new “Baby Boomers”. When the previous generation dealt with over a decade of economic hardship and political uncertainty, the new generation was born into the excesses bought with the blood of soldiers and workers during wartime. Cars, radios, new-fangled television sets; all things now abundant when even steel and gold were scarce less than a decade before. Growing up in such economic exceptionalism would affect any culture, American or not.

During the violent years of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the heating up of Cold War hostilities across the planet, the Boomers, now young, idealistic and in college, took it upon themselves to attempt to share the wealth and enlightenment they inherited from their parents. The previous generation, according to the militant offspring of the Greatest Generation, were greedy, vile and heartless people doomed to narrow views on the world outside. The theories of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim and other such stalwarts of socialized society professed the love of the worker and the need to strike back at the established capitalist system so that those on the bottom could climb their way to the top together, as one unified movement of oppressed people. No doubt, the Boomers were right to take to the streets and take on a war fighting of a Soviet-backed movement that used terrorists and mass murder to kowtow a unsure and frightened peasant population. No doubt that every American soldier who fought willingly was a horrid baby killer and every black man drafted was just being enslaved once again by the privileged white aristocracy lead by that fascist warmonger Lydon B Johnson (and with more irony, it is LBJ that expanded the New Deal to include massive social programs like Social Security, which Boomers now want to cash in on).

Of course, I mock the Boomers and the hollow communist revolution they wished to create. Their beliefs at the time deserve to be mocked and their intentions deserve to be rejected without guilt. America's darker and less justified actions throughout history up to the 1960s are well known. The Trail of Tears, institutional slavery and racism, imperialist ventures in the Western Hemisphere and countless coups and counter-coups against rival client nations; all was known, criticized, analyzed and proselytized. Yet, it was not known as well, at least to those supporting a vast, leftist shift, the crimes of the nations they supported: USSR, China, Cuba, North Vietnam. The Gulags of Russia, the cultural and economic revolutions in China that cost tens of millions of lives, the jailing of homosexuals and the murdering of dissents in Cuba, the corralling and murdering of non-communist intellectuals in North Vietnam; all this was known from the mouths of those who escaped the inhuman suffering, but apparently, the revolution in America did not need the lessons of the revolution from elsewhere. The extreme view by the militant Boomers had of the American lifestyle of the 1960s would soon change from communist anti-materialism to religious worship of all things prosperous. But, the politics of collectivism and the euphoria of revolutionary fervor would not leave so easiily.

Fast forward to today. The Boomers are now starting to reach the age of retirement and more now than ever do we here the calls of the self-importance I described before, but wrapped in a veil of collective aid. The comparison of today's government induced economic recession to their parent's legendary economic desperation is laughable if compared literally, let alone as an analogy, but the Boomers who hold to the philosophy of governmental paternalism cannot fathom a world in which the government remains action-less in the face of people landing on hard times, even if their ideas of how to help ended up harming the economy. In the afterglow of the victory over fascism and the New Deal era, the common knowledge passed down by historians and enamored economists was that the New Deal was national and economic salvation. While government investment in infrastructure and targeted aid programs are not necessarily bad and do, in fact, stimulate economic growth in some areas, the blind experimentation of FDR's “brain trust” touched on everything from forced inflation to nationalizing all utilities to jumping on and off of the gold standard. The experimentation lasted until the threat of Germany and Italy became the obsession of FDR and the economy became secondary. Ironically, the country's industrial war footing (and the fact that at the end of World War II all other major nations were decimated) pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. It is from this reading of history that the current leadership of the nation and the loudest voices of the paternal citizenry cry out for action. Action alone is not worthy of consideration if the action is not backed by sound reasons why it should be enacted, yet we are told from those who lived the Depression as children and those who promote the welfare state that inaction is akin to slitting our throats.

Alas, action is narrowly defined in this age of modernity. Its apparently a sin to subtract the standard of living at all, even if it would mean the future stability of our economy and our society. In the debates on what to do with the worsening economy, restraint and discipline were seen as mantras and dogma by the cult of action while broad, rash action to a creeping crisis was deemed pragmatic and heroic. In an apparent offering to the gods of modernity, the American people and their leadership offered astronomical amounts of treasure (treasure based on credit and/or created out of thin air) to prevent any need to commit to true sacrifice and banking on the hope that this investment will pay off and that they will have not to explain to their children why each of them owes over one hundred thousand dollars to the nation's debtors. Its quite a gamble, and its one that isn't surprising for a generation that was born into excess, rebelled against such excess, then re-embraced it with the stipulation that it never disappear no matter the consequences.

Generations Beyond

I spent all my hardy development years in Canada, but I can say with confidence that I experienced most of the same things a normal, city-based teen would experience in any modest American city. Canadian culture, aside from the extra sprinkling of paternalism lent from Canada's British imperial legacy, is very much influenced by the media broadcasted from the neighbor from the south. A good chunk of Canadian shows are direct spin-offs of American shows: Canadian Idol, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Canadian Edition, etc. There isn't much on Canadian television, or Canadian news media for that matter, that isn't made by Americans, about Americans or influenced by Americans.

As I grew up, you could feel the near infinite room for creativity and discovery. Our world was one of interconnectivity with cell phones and computers. We had near unlimited capability to expand our horizons in a short period of time, yet with all that we had you could feel the utter aloneness glowing from computer screens and online diaries. With the new inventions and gadgets that make our lives as fast and as easy as possible, we have not found the miracle that also gives us the ability to step back from the snowballing amount of tasks heading straight toward us as we push more on to ourselves.

Like the Boomers, we have been born into a time of abundance. iPhones, Sidekicks, internet on planes, entire movies streamed to your phone, books downloaded, directions computed; we live in a world where your entire day and night for a year can be recorded and stored in your pocket. Our cars vary from gas guzzling, yet extremely safe SUVs to hybrid electric sedans to cars that run on clean burning natural gas. Our news is twenty-four hours to your TV, your phone or your computer. Blogs now take precedent over the soapbox. The internet ins the next level of political organization and debate. Our generation is at the forefront of major social and cultural change in this country.

We must not give in to the easy preachings of the paternal Boomer's self-indulgent faux altruism or the sad cynicism and loneliness of our own experiences with society and modern culture. Its pretty corny to say, but we must look back past the Boomers to those who gave birth to them: the Depression surviving Greatest Generation. Whatever you may say about their ideology, their politically incorrect ways, their God-fearing nature, that generation of Americans dealt with real tragedy and triumph on a scale we should never wish to see. But, because we may not want to experience their hardship, it does not mean we cannot take the lessons of frugality, determination and sacrifice. We cannot believe, as the the unsuspecting Boomers believed, that our standard of living will simply be there for us no matter what and that if there's a threat to our lawns, our music players or to our material wealth, the government will back us up and keep us there.

The future of this nation relies on the generations beyond the one in charge. Those generations ahead of us rely on us to make sure they have the tools and the materials to continue the American way of life and the liberties afforded to us by the blood and toil of past generations. To keep our way of life we cannot sacrifice principles for materials, we cannot accommodate tyranny for an image of correctness, we cannot give in to the howling of know-nothings just because we don't like the sound they make. If you take the time, you will know American culture's bounties and busts If you take a look, you will know the grand history and the dark times. If you try, you'll be able to see where we went wrong and where we went right. America's greatness does not rest upon its racial make up, nor does it depend on the religion of its population or the balance of its cultural diversity or any other aspect the left theorizes about. It is because we believe in the importance of the individual and have buried it so deep inside out national being that we can have some of the largest, conflicting, yet most peaceful cultures on the planet. America's greatness rests upon the idea that its liberty-loving society is the greatest in the world because of the adherence to the rights and liberties of all men no matter their culture.

Anyone can be an American, just as long as they believe in freedom.

Why I'm Right Wing: Thirsting for Complexity

No longer was I thinking of things as simplistic moral decisions where the world could be perfect if we all chose to do the right thing. No longer was it peace vs war, capitalism vs prosperity, rich vs poor, and so on. Due to the catalyst of 300 and the new ideas that flowed through my mind, what I knew as the world was turned into a more diverse, confusing, yet strangely more satisfying experience.

The World Rearranged

I used to crave fairness and justice as defined by a world that was supposed to be perfect. Resources are to be split by need. People are to be nice to each other and respect each others decisions and lifestyles. Nations are to be one, unified human race devoted to understanding and tranquility. Of course, a world that is supposed to be perfect always disappoints when something horrible happens. Those who believe in a future utopia have a hard prejudiced against those who don't, most noticeably Western conservatives and capitalists. It is Western conservatives and capitalists that usually get the blame for the horrible things of the world, poverty and war being the top. These utopians are the radicals and the radicals are the fringe of ideological thought. Radical theory is highly suspect and not very deep most of the time. I was part of that fringe. I had simple answers for complex things. I had complex answers for simple things. Quite the paradox.

Mainstream political thought is much more practical since it concerns itself with more real-world and current issues than radicals. When a bridge collapses radicals will blame capitalism or global warming or the white race; conservatives and liberals will argue over if the private sector or the public sector should rebuild it and how much more funding infrastructure should get, if it should get it. Radicals will attempt to inject grand plans into solutions to problems that deserve hard focus, like attempting to mutate society during financial chaos. Mainstream ideologies will try to solve the problem within the realm of the problem, for the most part, though that's not always the case.

The Gay Marriage Debate

Going from radical to mainstream opened up a whole world of new issues and ideas. For example, as a radical, the gay marriage debate was easy: gays can marry. There was no thinking about it. It was a simple fact that I believed that gays should be allowed to marry and everyday that they couldn't marry showed the utter hate of gays by the right wing establishment. I didn't consider that marriage wasn't a right, or that each state has its own marriage laws and regulations, or that the Constitution has no provisions for regulating marriage federally. All that didn't matter. There was only the goal.

After escaping radicalism, the gay marriage debate goes like this: the people of each state have the right to determine their social laws. Gay marriage is not like interracial marriage as sexual orientation has never been deemed a protected class by the Supreme Court under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, so the federal government cannot intervene as they did during the Civil Rights era. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments give the states all powers not given to the federal government or restricted by the Bill of Rights applied to the states through incorporation. It would be a stretch for Congress to attempt to usurp this power through the Commerce Clause, as marriage isn't exactly part of interstate commerce (except in Las Vegas, but I digress). Therefore, unless a constitutional amendment forcing gay marriage on all states is passed by Congress and ratified by two-thirds of the states, the question of gay marriage will be left to the people (through referendum, like Prop 8 in California) and/or institutions (like the courts in Massachusetts) of these states.

Now, because each state is deciding this question on its own it would be impossible for each state to approve gay marriage, let alone approve in it in identical processes. States like California, Connecticut and Massachusetts have had the courts rule that the traditional marriage is a violation of the state's equal protection clause. This has created a huge schism, one larger than the one already present, between gay marriage advocates and traditional marriage advocates. The courts have always been a very controversial way to solve social problems, Dredd Scott and Roe v. Wade are just a few of these cases. While being a major religious and cultural institution that cannot be thrown away at the whim of judges, the legal privileges associated with marriage and the denial of those privileges to gay unions in a majority of states make this a major issue that cannot be ignored.

Complex Argument

During this change, with my thirsting for complexity, I came across a different kind of talk radio. On Sirius Satellite Radio, there is a loud, arrogant and intellectual host named Andrew Wilkow. Mr. Wilkow, a veteran of many radio stations and styles, calls himself an “individual patriot first, conservative second, republican third.” He loves punk rock as well as his country. His voice is kind of grating, he yells constantly and at the end of every segment he says that he is right and they (liberals) are wrong. Yet, unlike Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, Andrew Wilkow will spell out exactly why he is right point by point. It may take a few minutes, or it'll take an entire thirty minute segment, but Wilkow makes sure you know exactly why he believes what he believes. For months, until my roommate's subscription to Sirius expired in early 2008, I listened to Andrew Wilkow's show, and while I did not agree with every single point Wilkow made, his delivery always sated my need for complex argument.

Nearly a year after, after a move from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, I was trolling the internet for debate. I ended up on one of many political Facebook groups and encountered a young British student named Jamie. Jamie was a leftist. Jamie was smart. Alas, Jamie was a very insulting kid who used his smarts to try to prove how smart he was. Jamie failed to prove how smart he was because Jamie used his university given tools of intellectualism wrong.

Unlike proper scientific and academic methods of learning, researching to find a conclusion to a question, Jamie constantly had a conclusion first and used logical tools like reductio ad absurdum to reach it. Jamie taught me (in his own special, rude way) about reductio ad absurdum when I mistook it for a different logical tool. Reductio ad absurdum is taking someone's argument to its conclusion to show its absurdity. Jamie took one of my arguments and applied it, but only after modifying my argument to a less detailed argument so his application of the tool would be successful.

My argument was that abortion is deserving of doctor oversight because of the emotional and subjective point of view of the patient. Abortion is a major medical procedure, no matter if you believe that the fetus is a child of God or you believe that it isn't a person, and no other major medical procedure other than abortion has be ruled by the government to be solely the choice of the patient. A patient cannot request a heart on demand if their heart is perfectly healthy, just because they don't want it, so why should a patient be able to abort a perfectly healthy fetus on demand just because they don't want a child? Jamie modified this detailed argument to “I don't believe in the right to an abortion and that's what the law should be” and then took that argument to its absurd conclusion where everyone's medical choices are at the whim of government.

Liberal Fascism

Before Jamie was banned from the debate group for insulting other debaters, he and I argued over the proper placement of fascism on the political spectrum. It is common knowledge in schools and in many circles that fascism is a right-wing ideology. This is based on fascism's nationalism, militarism and use of culture and tradition as rallying points. There is no question about these aspects of fascism and their place on the right-wing of politics, but those are not the only parts of fascism. Fascism is also economically collectivist like socialism and communism, which puts it on the left-wing of the political scale. I tried to argue this with Jamie, but he constantly accused me of using the book Liberal Fascism by conservative author and pundit Jonah Goldberg as my basis, though I had never read it at that time. Goldberg isn't exactly a model intellectual, and from what I had read from creditable reviewers, his book does delve into partisan attacks, but those same reviewers found his arguments against early liberalism (called Progressivism) solid and fact based. Jamie refused to listen to my argument due to its closeness with Goldberg, so I stopped debating Jamie, but not before he had gotten me interested in Liberal Fascism.

According to the book, fascism's intellectual roots can be traced back to left-wing intellectuals like William James and Bernard Shaw. Shaw coined the term “Liberal Fascism” to describe a American-style fascistic ideology that has the same economic goals as Italian or Germanic fascism, but was lighter on the police state, though not by much. In fact, the first Western nation to implement fascistic policies was the United States during World War I. President Woodrow Wilson, a man who subscribed to fascistic ideas of united culture and who was quite racist, reorganized the economy into cartels under federal control, arrested and jailed antiwar activists, foreign communists and ethnic Germans, as well as created the nation's first secret police who went so far as to have people arrested for what they said in the privacy of their own homes. This was four years before the rise of Mussolini and nearly two decades before Hitler came to power.

Ideology

After reading Liberal Fascism, I became very interested in ideologies, the history of ideologies and their proper placement on the ideological scale. It became very important to know what the principles of a debater, as those principles govern what they are saying and why they are saying it. A simple reading of a debater's post doesn't tell you much unless its specifically autobiographical. Someone can be against the Iraq War for several reasons, but one can't know unless the author is adding in his or her principles in to their argument. Without ideological detail, in the case of the Iraq War, the argument could easily be that of a pacifist or a socialist or a liberal or an isolationist or a libertarian, and so on.

Ideology is very, very important in the world of politics. Listening to those who aren't as involved in politics, it would appear that people act politically based upon slights done upon them. Religious conservatives aren't trying to bring God into science class, its those damn liberal elites that pushed God out! Liberals aren't trying to change the millennium-old institution of Judeo-Christian marriage, they are just preventing conservatives from imposing their view of marriage on everyone else. Islamists aren't using terrorism to attempt to create a worldwide caliphate based upon 7th century Islamic law, they are just fighting against Western imperialism and interference. In all these instances, ideology plays a major role in the decisions of those activists (and terrorists) who are trying to reach their political goal.

In the case of religious conservatives, its quite obvious what drives their push for Intelligent Design to be taught in science class. As for liberals and marriage, that's different, as its much more than simply giving legal privileges to gay couples who wish to be legally united. Modern liberalism holds that we cannot simply tolerate those who are different than us, but that we must accept those who are different than us no matter the reasoning. Toleration and acceptance are not the same thing. A racist can tolerate a black man in his neighborhood, but he does not have to accept him no matter how ignorant his views are. Religious conservatives can and do tolerate gays all over the country. In fact, many religious conservatives love people they know to be gay as they love any of their fellow man, but it does not mean they have to accept being gay as acceptable. This gains the ire of many liberals who believe every American must accept gay as normal.

Sometimes ideology outpaces pragmatic politics. In the case of gay marriage, during the height of the campaign of the California gay marriage ban amendment , a lesbian elementary school teacher brought her students to her wedding without notifying the parents of these children. This happened during a time when gay marriage advocates denied outright that they were going to try to force schools to teach gay acceptance if gay marriage survived the vote. After the incident, gay marriage advocated defended the teacher's actions despite their earlier proclamations. The same goes for conservatives and Intelligent Design. When a Kansas school board voted to oust the controversial theory from their schools, accusations of anti-Christian bias were thrown, even though before the reversal of intelligent design it supporters that said the implementation of the theory had nothing to do with religion, but with academic freedom.

We should not ignore ideology in any capacity. It governs our presidents, our senators, our representatives, our mayors and our own beliefs. For an honest debate to happen, principles are not to be toyed with or tossed out of the equation simply because they interfere with our arguments. To ignore the deep rooted beliefs of our friends and our enemies is a mistake we have made many, many times and will make again, but the individual reader can take it with them as a life lesson.

Do not dismiss principle and belief. You may be dismissing the key to solving a future puzzle of our time.

Why I'm Right Wing: The Spartan Code

I had known little of the Spartans, other than what I looked up prior to the movie's release. I had always been smitten with that grand last stand. At the time, I was a anarchist revolutionary, and what anarchist revolutionary wouldn't love to go out fighting against a horde of enemies in defense of what you believed. One could imagine a million men, dressed in the jackboots and uniforms of cookie-cutter fascists, charging against the small, but strong lines of the world's last hope for anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchical freedom. Oh!What a sight, at least in the mind of an anarchist, anyway. 300 wasn't an anarchist-friendly movie, though, unlike V for Vendetta, which was adapted from an anarchist theory-laden graphic novel.

Anarchism

Individualism and anarchism have a unsteady relationship. Many of the branches of anarchism are collectivist as many branches of anarchism are born out of socialist thought, but because of their anti-government beliefs individualism plays a major role in most of its theories. Schools of thought like anarchist-communism barely consider the individual's position, as the individual must contribute to the collective, though he is not obliged to be part of the community as statist communism compels the individual to be. Individualist anarchism is an American-born ideology (think Thoreau, the lone rebel in the cabin refusing to conform) that is anti-capitalist, but puts the individual's liberty far higher than that of the community he is in.

This may come as a surprise to those who haven't researched history of ideologies. Socialism did not begin as a statist movement, but as a collection of different factions with a slew of different theories on collective social change. It was at the First (socialist) International where the Marxists, the most statist of factions, pulled a large, democratic coup against the anti-government socialists and took over the International's major organs. From then on, anarchism was relegated to the fringes of the fringe ideologies of the time. Though, please note that right-wing anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, is not a branch of the original anarchism, but the radical wing of libertarianism. People like Murray Rothbard or Ludwig Von Mises were never part of the First International or any socialist international, but came to their anarchist conclusions separate of the left-wing anarchists.

At the time of the movie's showing, I was an individualist anarchist. I was for the individual's liberty over that of the community or the state. I did realize that an anarchist could not live on his own, that human beings are social creatures that crave community, I also held that the individual's liberty cannot be violated by the group no matter what. I believed in total free speech, total freedom of action as long as it didn't hurt anyone else, freedom to arm oneself, and so on. Looking back on it, any hope that in a society where individual rights are absolute against the rights of the community would survive long is utopian, but much of anarchism is utopian. It was my belief in the right of self-defense and my love of revolutionary acts that would be the vulnerability that a new set of ideas would latch on to.

A New Set of Ideas

300 took on my anti-nationalist, anti-war, anti-brutish manly men views. It said that you must die for a greater good that is traditional, something that's been around for hundreds of years, something that isn't revolutionary at all. That was new.

The movie literally beings with a description of a extreme social Darwinist tradition of tossing away unhealthy Spartan babies. From there, it teaches the viewer that at age 7, Spartan males are taken away from their mothers to be entered into the eleven-year indoctrination program called the agoge (ah-go-gee). In the agoge, Spartan kids are taught how to fight and how to survive. They are taught about pride in their people and that to die as a Spartan warrior in battle is the greatest accomplishment in life. To an anarchist, even a little nationalism is fascistic. The Spartans' nationalism is Hitler-esque fascistic. I should have been appalled at the eugenics, the culture of violence and the hyper-nationalism. I was condemning the United States for much less. I was condemning the United States for everything. Yet, this culture was both alien and addictive. It was reaching into a place in my head that held the need for a greater cause. For years, that meant giving up civilization, whole systems of governance and commerce. For a kid, that's nothing. The militarism, the nationalism, the cultural pride over the barbarians, I'd heard it all before, but it had never been shown to me in such artistry or with a deeper presentation than mindless patriotism, as far as I could remember. I could of seen a movie or read a story deeper than 300 before then, but completely dismissed its views due to my closed-minded, childish brain.

Suddenly, the values I had fought against for years started to dig into my mind. Confidence, pride in nation and citizenship, masculinity, the warrior mind; these things slowly began to make sense in a way deeper than just biological and cultural normalities, things I rejected as a far leftist. After I watched the movie, these ideas ate away at such ideas as gender being a social construct or nationalism being a way for the most powerful to divvy up resources and labor. Within a week, I bought a book that summarized Spartan history and culture. I was intensely interested in how Spartan culture really was and surprised at what I found.

Sparta

The Spartan empire first expanded before its warrior culture was established. It invaded its neighbor Messenia and enslaved its people. These slaves, or helots, became the underlying labor force of the Spartan nation. The helots outnumbered the Spartans by at least 3-to-1 and because of continuing rebellions and the risk of external invasion during uprisings, the Spartan lawmaker Lycurgus developed what became the Spartan code.

According to the code, only Spartan males could be in the military, though Spartan females were trained in combat as well. Spartans males could not have any other profession than warfare and could not attain full citizenship in Sparta without serving the city-state in war for a number of years. Manual labor and artisan professions were left to the helots and the free, non-citizen class known as the periokoi respectively. Periokoi were outsiders who were free from the slavery of the helots because of service or necessity, but would never attain the full rights and responsibilities of Spartan citizenship.

The Spartan system of indoctrination and education was called the agoge. Around age 7, Spartan children would be taken and put into groups that were overseen by full Spartan warriors. They would be trained in warfare, but also in survival. One of the legendary parts of the agoge is tossing the trainees into the wild to survive on their skills as hunters and as thieves. If they were caught stealing, they would be punished harshly. Not for the crime of thieving, but for the crime of being caught. The agoge wasn't totally militaristic, though, as future warriors had to also know things like music, singing, dance, philosophy and, most importantly, the ability to have one of the sharpest wits in the entire Greek world. The word laconic, the style of speech that is blunt and quick witted, is rooted in the Greek name for Sparta: Lakedemon.

The Spartan culture appears fascistic (enslavement, militarism, etc), but the government of Sparta was anything but. In fact, the multi-layered, multi-system government appears to be more in the shape of a republic than a monarchy or autocracy, as most Greek city-states were or mob rule as it was in Athens. In simplistic terms, at the top was a dual kingship, created out of the resolution of a power struggle between two great Spartan houses years before the code was created. The kings, while powerful, balanced each other with their powers. One could not simply overrule the other. Below the kings were the ephors, a council of five respected Spartan elders who were a check on the dual kings and advised them. Below the ephors, was a council of male Spartan citizens who, like any other city council, debated laws and requests from the kings. You can find a more complex chart of Spartan governance here.

Parallel Peoples

A militaristic people with a republican-style government was something I never considered. On the left and in libertarianism, militarism and liberty never mix. On the left, a republican state and militarism equal a fall into a cult fascism. While Sparta fell into disarray many generations after the 300's last stand, during its greatest imperial expansion its system of governance never faltered as the Wiemar Republic or the Roman Republic did. During the time of Sparta's greatest commitment to its values and governance, it remained a large and impressive power in the Greek world.

The Romans, after encountering and then conquering the Greeks, took on many of their values and ideas, and it created a Greco-Roman civilization. One of the major influences on this civilization was the Spartans and their loyalty and pride. While not a historic parallel, the American nation and its people have similar qualities to the Spartans, the Greeks as a people and the Roman Republic. The Founders were highly influenced by the Romans and Greeks in philosophy, politics and cultural values. Cities and veteran groups were named after Roman and Greek heroes. The freedoms and responsibilities of American citizens are taken from the values of writers like Plato and Cicero.

Like Sparta's early imperialism, America's revolutionary creation imbued its people with a more aggressive, militaristic quality than other nations. Our Constitution declares the ownership of firearms is an individual right, just as important as the right to speak freely, believe freely or the right to be free of torture or unlawful imprisonment. No other major power has such a explicit right written into their national foundation. Despite the protests of the more “enlightened” peoples of America, our military founding is part of our culture.

Inspiration

Just before a major combat scene, Stelios, the quick witted Spartan that dared the Persians to “fight in the shade”, talked about experiencing the perfect death, I could feel the elation he felt at the thought. I could justify the thought. I could explain the rationality behind the thought. I agreed with the thought. What came over me?

Thinking about it now, thinking about all my years as a hardcore revolutionary anarchist, I was looking for a real cause to believe in. Then and now, I believe the world is screwed up six ways 'till Sunday. Tyrannic nations are abusing their people. Economies are rising and falling. The poor are poor. The rich are rich. Torture, hate, genocide. It's still all there no matter what I believe. I could be a peace-loving, long haired, pacifist who never hurt a fly, Saddam Hussein would still have been torturing his people in rape rooms and throwing them off buildings if Bush hadn't deemed him a danger to America and the world. It was that very thought that converted me.

If we hadn't gone to war, torture and rape and human created hell would still be inflicted upon the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein. The ideology behind the war didn't matter anymore. The so-called theories behind the war didn't matter. The fact that the White House screwed up in selling the war didn't matter. It didn't matter in the long run because the Iraqi people were free and we had an obligation to see that they had every chance to keep that freedom. This wasn't what liberals and libertarians call neo-conservatism, the idea that we should be implanting democracies by force, I do not hold to that, but because we were already there, and because our honor and Iraqi liberty was a stake, we had to win the war. We had to finish what we started. It wasn't about social justice or a perceived moral right that could not be violated. It wasn't about being right about failure and ignoring success. The code was in me now. The code became my new filter.

Of course, the Spartan code is a 2500 year old belief based upon survival in a world where city-state governments fought each other over and over, where your enslaved manual labor outnumbered you several times over and where vast foreign empires swooped down and destroyed entire people's with a point of the finger. The code breaks almost every one of our laws. It is genocidal, eugenic and hyper militaristic. Yet, like the movie, the essence of it, the heart of it, took me over.

The Essence of a Code

300 was just a movie, but aren't movies just our stories put on a large screen based on someone's visual imagination? Wasn't the story of the 300 itself just a movie in the minds of young Greeks and others for millennium until it was put to the screen? These stories inspired hundreds of generations to all sorts of things with their lives or the lives of others. We tend to dismiss inspiration from fictional stories today, yet it remains a major part of everyone's life. Whole religious are made from what others consider fictional stories. Hell, Scientology, a religion that talks about on alien souls, is based on the writings of a science fiction author. The past eight years, radical liberalism has been running on the story that our last President stole two elections. I highly doubt anyone can fault me for citing 300 as inspiration, especially when its based on an actual historical event.

My change from anti-imperialist anarchist to national security libertarian with a warrior code took around five months from the day I saw 300 to the day I came to the conclusion that the morals of past decisions didn't matter as much as the result of their execution. It was only the beginning. My life was changing at that time, not just politically, but personally and professionally. This isn't special, of course, as such metamorphosis is natural in rational adults. But, these changes would led to my current beliefs and to my expanded and complex political ideology.

In short, this egocentric autobiography is going to get a lot longer. Beware.

Why I'm Right Wing: The Inevitable Masculinity

The year is 2007. The time is winter. The place is Los Angeles, California. And for the first time in my life, I am living away from my parents for more than a few weeks at camp. I am living with a family friend and working as an unpaid intern at the Dr. Phil television show. For the first time in my life, the only person I really have to rely on is myself.

At this time, I have reached an odd point in my life. The comforts of the wonderful life my hard working parents gave my sisters and I are now 3000 miles away in Eastern Canada. My atrophied high school and college social life had flourished the year before. No longer did I feel unresponsive to going out on my own or with new friends. Yet, this was an entirely new place, and other than the live-life-to-the-fullest personality of the friend, I would have to rebuild a new social life in Los Angeles for the three months I was there.

At home, I had been around women all my life. My dad worked countless hours to bring my family a comfortable, affordable life. For most of my life, my mom had been a mother first and a private-sector worker second. My sisters, younger than I, were home all the time after school. Most of my hours were spent around them. It was no surprise that my personality wasn't exactly the ideal example of the male gender.

Fights, harsh pranks, talking about hot chicks and dirty jokes; all were stunted due to the feminine-majority home front. At the time, I believed I had to hide my masculinity. That I had to not be a guy. This was a fear I created in myself. But don't take this as a condemnation of a female majority, female influenced home setting. Nurture, while a significant part of the development of a human being, is not the final straw. One may have to put away the boxing gloves when that new sibling turns out to like Barbie over brawling, but the urges and motivations to be a guy despite the situation are still there. In the right setting, as I had with my family, healthy development is part parental and part individual discovery.

Such a discovery came in Los Angeles. At the time, I had started to write and talk to my friends about breaking from the situation at home. In words harsher than necessary, I would condemn my parents blanket rules that put my sister's “weakness” under the same scope as my need to be a guy. Being the child, and not the parent, I did not understand a parent's need to protect all their children, from strongest to weakest, even if it means protecting one from the other. I understand that now, but at the time, with a mind just escaping from the shackles of childish notions, it seemed a bias that “harmed” me. Was I ever wrong! During my internship I would strike up a very close, long distance friendship with an old pen pal from the Internet (who would eventually become my wife). Little did I know that my long schooling in the ways of women would aid me in the long run.

For months I had been waiting for the movie 300 to come out,and in early March it finally hit theaters. The fantasy/historical epic chronicled the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans and their Greek allies stood against hundreds of thousands of invading Persians. The movie, based on the graphic novel of the same name, wasn't very historically accurate with the depiction of the courageous last stand, but as the novel's creator said, the point was to get the “essence” of the Spartans, not to ruin the story with loads of truth. I waited in line for a few hours with the family friend to see the movie, and I had no idea this comic book adaption would be the catalyst for a plethora of twisted feelings, urges, ideas and dreams. It would take a two hour movie to unravel something I had taken over two decades to create. Something I created on a faulty fear.

Why I'm Right Wing

I've been asked why I believe why I believe countless times. Debate rivals, friends and especially family have asked me “why?”. Its a good question, as only two years ago I was an adherent to Anarchism and anti-capitalism. My views were radical, to say the least, and I argued issues based on out-of-the-world theories of anti-hierarchal society and city-state nationalism. I had the entire world figured out in my head and on paper. If only those were good enough to live on.

The last time I really explained myself was two years ago. My future wife's friends were asking about my views after she had tried to explain them. I typed out a few pages on the basics of Anarchism, anti-capitalism and anti-hierarchal society. I don't think they fully got what I had put down, but even I had very little understanding of the entirety of anarchist theory, and I did not expect people not really in to ideological theory to get something I only knew superficially.

I hope this new and improved explanation will be better understood since I have come to understand the complex nature of markets, politics and ideology in much greater detail than I did two years ago. I hope through this essay I am able to spell out the “why?” of my conversion and answer any questions for those who knew me before, and those who know me now.