Q:A Liberal Capitalist Party? What makes you different from the Republicans?

A:

Political observers may disagree to the extent to which they have done so, as most religious policy arguments are made with at least some pretense of secularity. As a summary of such diverse republican values in this regard is beyond the scope of this essay,  I will simply state the liberal capitalist position: We believe that the separation of church and state is crucial to American success.

Throughout history man has attempted to create Utopias based on various notions of virtue. All of them have failed. And it seems the more their creators struggled to purify them, the more cruel and unvirtuous they became. The Taliban were trying to create a virtuous society. The Soviets were also trying to create a virtuous society (using a different definition of virtue). But such experiments always fail, and they always fail for the same reason: because the only way to create a society that agrees on any one definition of virtue is to point a gun at the head of every dissenter, and to be ready and willing to pull the trigger. This constant, coercive social policing has a morally corrosive effect on both sides of the gun barrel. The dissenters feel justified in any crime or destructive behavior - after all, they are being oppressed. And the moralizers swiftly degenerate into mere bullies and power-tripping sadists. The result is ruin.

Liberal Capitalists believe that a tolerant, pluralist society is our only hope of civil peace and long-term survival as a nation. As no accord on the great spiritual mysteries of life has ever been reached based on geography or nationality, we agree with the founding fathers that such things are best left to the conscience of the individual. Where these issues genuinely impede on public policy, we turn to federalism for livable solutions. But we believe that the the enumerated Constitutional duties and the protection of individual liberty and civil rights are the only proper areas for public governance. It is not within the power of government to create a vice-free world for any constituency, and attempts to do so do more harm than good. Please see our forums for our evolving positions on various specific political issues in this regard.

A second point of disagreement with the GOP is their gradual abandonment of small-government  principles. For many years, the Republicans claimed to want to reduce the size and invasiveness of government after the explosion of government growth following adoption of the New Deal. These efforts have been gradually curtailed over the last decade, and have been decisively rejected by the current administration. The new Homeland Security department, enormous increases in entitlements, unprecedented levels of government spending, and invasive new powers leveraged from the War on Terror are not the products of a party of limited government. The Republicans have discarded the mantle of Ronald Reagan, and the Liberal Capitalist Party eagerly takes it up. We believe that "government is not the solution, it is the problem". Liberal Capitalists will work to reduce the size of government, and will seek non-governmental solutions wherever possible.

The last general area of disagreement that I will discuss here concerns the War on Drugs. For nearly sixty years, our government, lead primarily by the Republicans, has been waging a relentless and incredibly destructive war on it's own citizenry. The drug war costs American taxpayers 30 billion dollars a year. Twelve percent of African-American men age 20-34 are in prison. And our government has leveraged public sentiment over the violence of the drug war to enact the most outrageous state intrusions into private life. Forfeiture abuse, bank reporting laws, corrupt officials, racial profiling, and most tragically, the destruction of human lives by drug gang violence and a racially unjust and vindictive legal system are just a sample of the miseries we inflict upon ourselves in the fruitless pursuit of universal American virtue.

Liberal Capitalists believe that the only acceptable goal in warfare is total victory. But no serious observer has even suggested the possibility of victory in the drug war for decades. This is simply not acceptable, and requires a rethinking of premises. There is more than one way to win a victory. One way is to totally destroy or capture the enemy, in this case our own family, friends and countrymen. Another way is to capture his territory.  By legalizing recreational drugs we take this lucrative market out of the hands of murderous and amoral criminals, and entrust it instead to law-abiding fellow citizens. Just as our liquor store owners, bar owners and retail clerks obey society’s dictates regarding sale of alcohol to minors, so they can be trusted to keep drugs out of our children's’ hands too. Legal drug sales would also produce sufficient tax returns to finance drug education programs and addiction treatment to reduce drug use. We understand that many will have serious reservations to this proposal, and it is certainly not in our nature to propose sweeping, one-size-fits-all solutions. We believe rather that federal legislation should be crafted returning jurisdiction of this matter to the states. Then different localities will be free to experiment with alternate levels of legal control, generating some data and hopefully discovering a policy mix that achieves society’s reasonable goals of maintaining order without the many awful unintended consequences of the War on Drugs.

Liberal Capitalists respect our Republican colleagues, and look forward to working together on such issues as tax reduction, free market initiatives, entitlement reform, and the War on Terror. In other areas, such as those just discussed, we assert our own principles, and propose alternate solutions.