{"id":25074,"date":"2015-10-10T01:43:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T08:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/?p=25074"},"modified":"2015-10-08T20:44:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T03:44:20","slug":"politics-is-destroying-your-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/politics-is-destroying-your-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Is Destroying Your Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Libertarianism.org<\/a> | Politics is nothing to be proud of. We shouldn\u2019t believe in it, shouldn\u2019t get excited about it. Shouldn\u2019t think it\u2019s noble or, worse, fun. On a good day, politics is a silly game with negative externalities. A waste of countless hours and countless minds\u2014hours and minds that could\u2019ve gone to productive, radical, world-changing, and life-improving pursuits. Politics, on a good day, is lost opportunities. On a bad day, it\u2019s livelihoods and sometimes lives destroyed. It\u2019s violence and ignorance and fear.<\/p>\n

Strong words demand definitions, though. So what do I mean by \u201cpolitics?\u201d I mean the act of deciding for others via the mechanisms of the state. Choosing for others, and then getting government to make them go along with our choices. Granted, when we make decisions via those mechanisms\u2014by, say, voting\u2014we expect the outcome will apply to ourselves and not just to other people. But it\u2019s misleading to say we are \u201cdeciding for ourselves\u201d when we vote, because if what we vote for is something we would\u2019ve done anyway, we could always choose to do it independent of a vote. If I think contributing money to a cause is worthwhile, I don\u2019t need the state to make me do it. I can cut a check any time. By voting, by shifting from the personal and voluntary to the political and compulsory, we call for the application of force. A vote is the majority compelling the minority to comply with the majority\u2019s wishes. Thus politics is a method of decision-making where choices are moved from individuals choosing privately to groups choosing collectively, and where the decisions those groups arrive at are backed by law and regulation. It\u2019s this last aspect\u2014the backing by the force of law\u2014that distinguishes politics from, say, five friends voting on where to go for dinner.<\/p>\n

Most of us have at least a sense there\u2019s something wrong with politics. Watch cable news, listen to talk radio, sit through weeks or months of campaign ads, and it\u2019s impossible to avoid the unseemliness of political practice. It\u2019s off-putting and makes us, or ought to make us, question the character of anyone enthusiastic about it. But its pernicious influence extends beyond those who embrace politics as a vocation or hobby. Politics represents a corrupting influence in all our lives, a stumbling block in our paths toward living well. No matter how minimal our participation.<\/p>\n

Politics accomplishes this by undermining our ability to practice well the art of good living. One way is indirect: politics contributes to an environment where learning the skill of living well becomes more difficult than it would be otherwise. An important prerequisite to living well is a certain amount of material security\u2014if we\u2019re just scraping by, we have no time for higher pursuits. We\u2019re used to common libertarian claims, grounded in economics, that a system where decisions are made politically\u2014whether through the democratic process or by legislators and bureaucrats instead of by individuals\u2014will lead to less wealth and innovation, and thus give us fewer resources to lead the kinds of lives we would decide to lead in a world of choice and plenty. In this way, a politically controlled environment becomes less compatible with maximally good lives.<\/p>\n

But politics doesn\u2019t just make the world around us worse. It makes us worse, as well. When we participate in politics\u2014by seeking office, by voting\u2014we take part in a system where we attempt to decide for others while they attempt to decide for us, and where those decisions, whoever makes them, are backed by violence or, at the very least, the threat of violence. It\u2019s a system where the participants say to each other, \u201cI know what\u2019s best for you, you need to do what I say, and if you don\u2019t, these men with guns will threaten you or take your money or lock you in a cage or kill you.\u201d Such a system encourages us to deal with each other in ways beneath the standards of behavior we ought to reach for, and it encourages us to see each other not as friends and companions and fellow seekers of the good life, but as enemies and rivals and obstacles in the way of finding happiness. Read Entire Article<\/a><\/p>\n

By Aaron Ross Powell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libertarianism.org | Politics is nothing to be proud of. We shouldn\u2019t believe in it, shouldn\u2019t get excited about it. Shouldn\u2019t think it\u2019s noble or, worse, fun. On a good day, politics is a silly game with negative externalities. A waste of countless hours and countless minds\u2014hours and minds that could\u2019ve gone to productive, radical, world-changing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[865],"class_list":["post-25074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}