Blurring the Spectrum

Every so often, I ask myself why I identify as far left. After all, I'm all for efficient government, I value personal freedom, and I have a weird fascination/relationship with the United States and nuclear power. These are points commonly espoused by the Libertarian Right, but I've changed the phrasing (efficient versus small government, personal versus total freedom) so that I don't appear as in their camp. With this background, it should come as no surprise that I agreed with everything Jim Scarantino said in his column about reforming the Republican Party.

To be fair, Jim Scarantino isn't the average republican, and that's the point of his column. He subscribes to an older, different notion of that party, and his credentials align him more with Eisenhower than Reagan. This a a perspective on a Republican Party with a clearly demonstrated right to rule; a right earned through competent governance and not dependent on moral or divine authority. And this party, this return to form that he argues for, is a party I can agree with in many ways. Step 9 of his plan is especially appealing:

Make direct amends to such people wherever possible. Give Iraq back to Iraqis, move all Katrina victims out of formaldehyde-poisoned trailers and rebuild their homes, improve veterans services, and repeal some tax breaks to pay for the nation’s needs.

This is something a responsible party would do. Combined with advocating for freedom from control and low-cost government, it would be the beginnings of a conversion. But there is a divergence here - I think those policies are good, but I think they are good policies for a party of rule, and for the nation. They are not partisan positions. Lawrence Lessig, who is as close to a political guidepost as I currently have, "thinks there are allies to be found among the "intellectually honest" right." But Lessig is speaking from a position on the left, but he is speaking towards a consensus position; "He points out that the need to raise money from industry provides an incentive to grow government and maintain regulation as a kind of leverage to extract donations from industry. He's made battling earmarks, a conservative cause célèbre, a Change Congress core mission".

Lessig and Scarantino overlap here on what should be the center, and it should be a center made up of the "intellectually honest" on both sides of the aisle, or even among those who don't fit nicely on the conservative/liberal political spectrum. And so I can support Scarantino's desire to reform his party into one that protects freedom (our venn diagrams of beliefs overlap here), and I can be happy about a Republican Party that takes that form. It would be a much more pleasant opposition party.

But I will have to diverge from that perspective, because I think that government can do more than just guarantee freedoms. I think that government can work towards social justice, and I think that it serves an important role in the mediation between business and individuals, and I think that the protections government can offer, which come at the expense of both personal and business freedoms, are fundamental points essential to living in society with other humans. I'll end with a Lessig quote that contains a Reagan quote:

"There's a speech that Reagan gives in 1965," Lessig says, "where he talks about how democracy always fails because once the people recognize they can vote themselves largess, they just vote themselves largess and the fiscal policy is destroyed. Well, Reagan had it half-right. It's not as if it's the poor out there who have figured out how to suck the money out of the rich. It's exactly the other way around."

I can agree with anyone that there are problems in government. But, as is always the case, the trick is figuring out where the problems fall, and here is where Scarantino and I begin to disagree.

Another Lessig Bit

A great overview of Lawrence Lessig can be found here. The page setup is a bit irritating (hint to The Nation - use margins!), but the article is great. Here's my favorite bits:

"There have been all sorts of DC-based organizations that have tried to crack this nut, and I think they've hit the limit of what the 'Let's send out an e-mail to our 100,000 members and tell them to write their Congressmen' model can do," he says. "We have an opportunity--and it won't last long--to take advantage of the uncertainty that Congress has about how the Net actually works. They don't get it right now. And while they've learned how to ignore 1,000 e-mails, they haven't quite figured out what to do about fifty blogs talking about various legislation or meet-up events. So there's an opportunity to leverage the technology and the irrational insecurity of members of Congress, who look at any objectively insignificant resistance as something to be dealt with immediately."

and

This information will be displayed in a map, which Lessig believes will show in stark terms just how "broad and deep" the consensus for reform is. Take, for instance, the ultimate prize for Lessig and reform allies: public financing of Congressional campaigns. A 2006 poll showed overwhelming support among voters (75 percent) for such a system. The Fair Elections Now Act, introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter, has attracted eight co-sponsors (including Barack Obama), and Hillary Clinton is on record as supporting public financing in principle if not the Durbin bill specifically. While McCain supported full public financing as recently as 2002, he retracted that position last year. This is not to say we're anywhere close to having public financing enacted--the interests opposed to it are substantial--but it is by no means a fringe idea.

and

"When I was thinking of running," Lessig says, "the biggest pushback I got was from all these senior politico types who are like, Look, you can never sell process reform; nobody will ever buy it; if that's your message, you cannot win. And my response is, Well, we've got to figure out how to sell it, for Chrissake! It's not like we have a choice."

Lessig Roundup

I rarely do short posts full of links, but with this being a blog it seems a shame to not take advantage of the medium. So, here we will have a few links to the best of Lawrence Lessig that I have so far found on the internet.

This was my introduction to Lessig, and clocks in at under eight minutes, so I'd go here first.

In this video, he explains remixing video and music as youth culture, and as the modern way in which youth interact with the media around them. It's good, and is the one I'd recommend to people uncertain about where to stand in the piracy debate.

In this hour-long lecture, Lawrence Lessig discusses his new focus on corruption, as he starts out on day one, and manages to do a fantastic job of examining a fundamental flaw in the current American political system. This is what won me over to his ideas, and I found it to be the most inspiring political statement I heard all of last year.

Lawrence Lessig has shown up in at least two of my posts about Barack Obama, so his endorsement speech makes sense here. It's a very compelling argument for using personal character as a standard, when the candidates positions are very similar, and so it hits upon points that I was unable to make in my analysis of positions.

Lastly, what makes all this relevant, and relevant now, is that Lessig is considering a run for representative from California, and even if that doesn't happen, he's started a movement to change congress.

Lessig is the inspiring academic of the now, and should he decide to run, he will fast become my favorite politician (sorry Heinrich). This is an exciting era, and the chance for a progressive to step out of the ivory tower and into the fray is especially exciting.