Stardate 20020610.2116

(On Screen via long range sensors): Time for everyone to pile on Eric Raymond. He lists ten reasons he's not Liberal and ten reasons he's not Conservative and I agree with 18 out of 20 of them.

But part of the problem is that the terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" are nearly useless now. There isn't any consensus as to what they really mean, or rather the consensus for each has been created by their opponents as ugly caricatures. I gave up on both words a long time ago, and I used to refer to myself as progressive until that term got coopted by some lunatics whose program I found repulsive. The technical meaning of "libertarian" (one who believes in liberty) is also decent, but Libertarian has also been coopted by lunatics. One of the participants in my forum coined the term engineerist to describe me, and I'm happy with that.

Engineerists are socially liberal, economically conservative and politically libertarian. Note the use of lower case letters on all of those words; I'm "socially liberal" but damned well not "Socially Liberal".

Social liberalism to me means tolerance of differences, a general attitude of leaving other people alone and not judging them just because they act in ways I would not. Social liberalism embraces the idea that left to themselves people will follow different paths, and this is a Good Thing.

Economic conservatism to me means that I prefer to let the private sector handle things unless I'm convinced they cannot, and that private wealth is also a Good Thing. I think there should be a social safety net, but it should only keep people alive, not keep them comfortable. It's not that I want to punish them, just that we can't afford any more than that. I don't go all the way to Economic Libertarianism which declares that all government control over the economy is automatically evil, if for no other reason than because government regulation is the only solution I've ever heard of which can deal practically with the problem of the tragedy of the commons. (Libertarians will tell you they have an alternative, but I've looked at it and I don't believe it.)

I'm politically libertarian because I believe that governments should be constrained, and given only as much power as they absolutely need in order to achieve the goals they are intended to serve. More than that is tyranny. I believe in constitutional guarantees of civil rights, and I believe in constitutional limits on the power of government. I believe that government should serve the people and not the other way around.

We Engineerists are intensely pragmatic. We don't try to come up with overriding philosophies ("wealth is evil", "Government regulation is evil", "America is evil") and then judge everything based on it. Individual cases are taken as they come, and the only criterion for any given proposal is practical: will it work better than the alternatives?

I suspect that the majority of people would classify me as being more Conservative than Liberal, and that's part of the problem. There seems to be more than one kind of Conservative. In particular, there is a strain of Conservatism which is based on fundamentalist protestant Christianity, and as an atheist I find its policies intensely distasteful. A lot of the Eric's anti-knowledge, anti-liberty, anti-free-speech comes out of that lot, and I want nothing to do with them.

Engineerists believe in freedom, and if we have any kind of aphorism, it's this: "Leave me alone!" The world is best served when as many people as possible make as many decisions as possible for themselves.