The Single Greatest Political Issue

Written September 22, 2008

I call myself a single issue voter, but the truth (as for almost everything) is not quite that simple. The issue I care about is not one you will find on a poll or a list of what are typically termed “issues” in the political realm. Additionally, I care about a number of issues (just as many as the average guy, I guess) but there is one in particular that is critical to me in both domestic and foreign affairs.

This is the issue of life. Although I don’t believe life is the greatest good to be protected by government, it is among them. Any other great good is already well protected by the US government for its citizens. I would count among these liberty and the pursuit of happiness and perhaps a few others. These are fairly stable in America. Life is another matter entirely. And life is my “one” issue.

In America the main facet of this “one” issue is abortion. There are millions of human children being murdered each year and it has become a political issue of the worst sort. For example, madame speaker lied about her religion’s official beliefs on abortion in order to tailor them to fit her political agenda. When that kind of thing occurs an issue has become far more politicized than anything ever should be.

The right to life of any American (or human anywhere) far outweighs by an astronomical magnitude the “right” of a woman (or man, except that they never have a say) to kill her child – whether pre-born or not. (If they don’t want it put it up for adoption – there are more people who want to adopt in America than there are babies to be adopted!)

Non-abortion deaths are very different – not least because they primarily concern other countries. In other words, most other facets of this “one” issue are all about foreign, rather than domestic, policy. Let me give a short preamble first.

In the last 100 – 150 years there has been a dynamic and incredible rise in the standards of living across the entire earth. Modern medicine, technology, communications, industrial and agricultural progress has increased more in that time than the increase of the same across the entire previous recorded history of the human race!

People in first world countries live like no one who has ever lived before; those considered poor in America live like kings compared to the majority of the inhabitants of the world before the 20th century. Right now even a third world country has it better in almost every way than medieval Europe. We live longer, healthier, richer lives.

The condition of more than 99% of the world for thousands of years was great poverty. By comparison, the issue of poverty has effectively ended in America. In the rest of the world it is vanishing at a rate we might call slow, but compared to the previous entire existence of man it is vanishing with peculiar rapidity.

Additionally, this decrease of poverty and increase in the quality of life for humanity has had an exponential growth rate in the last 100 years or so (as time goes on it gets better at a faster pace). In 2008 it is showing exactly zero signs of slowing down. I don’t know what the world’s collective wealth and general quality of life will be in the next 100 years, but in the foreseeable future it looks more optimistic and promising than almost any other feature of civilization.

Now, let us contrast the increase in wealth and quality of life in the last 100 years to the behavior of humanity in the last 100 years…

There was no change or major divergence from the previous 6000 years…well, you might argue there was change – an increase in the worst of human behavior (if only because there was more people?)

While wealth and the quality of life increased dramatically for nearly everyone in the 20th century, warfare, democide and oppression actually reached all time highs. (Democide is defined as murder by government – something completely foreign to America).

Well over 100 million people were killed in the 20th century as a result of warfare. The conflicts of every other century look like minor conflicts in comparison, however ubiquitous they were.

(The exceptions would be the An Shi rebellion in the 8th century China, the Mongol conquests and other wars in China in the 17th and 19th centuries which almost rival the World Wars. But if you can only find about four or five events across 6000 years that merely rival several conflicts in the 20th century, then we can demonstrably say wars (and democides) did not diminish in either rate or scale).

The 20th century also saw the most horrific and devastating democides in the history of the planet such as during Stalin’s regime and the Cultural Revolution of China under Mao, not to mention the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot in which a full one third of the entire country of Cambodia was murdered by its government. Tamerlane would have approved, although he ‘only’ killed an estimated whopping 17 million compared to the astronomical 262 million for the 20th century’s total of democide (as distinct from the wars of the 20th century killing a ‘mere’ 100 million).

Wars, violence, democide and now terrorism are only growing at the dawn of the 21st century. Consider a slough of wars currently in Africa – Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo. Asia has, at a minimum, conflicts in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, not to mention other brewing hotspots (for example, the Philippines). The Mideast has or has had since the turn of the century hot wars in at least Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan (and now in Turkey with the Iraqi Kurds). In fact, currently every continent but Australia and Antarctica has some kind of conflict (for example, Haiti in North America; Colombia in South America; and the Balkans, Russia and Georgia in Europe).

America has troops in over 30 countries specifically sent to fight terrorism in those countries (and the news sources of the ‘most free society’ with the ‘most freedom of the press’ only reports on two – Iraq and Afghanistan). There have been almost 12,000 terrorist attacks in 55 countries since September 11, 2001 (distinct from conflicts within Iraq and Afghanistan). Last month (August 2008) there were 2005 Islamic terrorist attacks in 21 countries killing people of 5 different religions. Over 1000 people were killed and nearly 2000 were critically injured.

As opposed to wars (although there is overlap here), consider a sampling of countries involved with democide, ethnic cleansing and/or having problems with terrorism: Sudan, Algeria, Chad, Iran, North Korea, Nigeria, Philippines, Thailand, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, and Pakistan.

During the 20th century humans saw the horror of wars and attempted to stifle it in various ways at various times. Here is how they fared:

John Keegan (possibly the most important military historian today) argues that it was precisely the method Europe used to try to prevent a second version of the ‘Napoleonic Wars’ that actually caused The Great War (the most ironic backfire in history?) Europe set up a system to prevent war after Napoleon (which mostly worked for most of the 19th century). Basically, all the powers (among them Austria, Prussia, Russia, the Ottomans, France, England, the Dutch, etc.) decided that whenever one power became greater than any other, all those others would combine in alliance so that the strongest would not feel secure enough to start a war. This whole diplomatic system failed in 1914.

Then Europe tried again with the League of Nations. It began in 1920 (just after WWI) and failed when it didn’t even slow the onset of either Hitler’s war or Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And ironically as well, the League of Nations failed primarily because it attempted to curb Hitler in the ways it probably would have been effective to curb Kaiser Wilhelm (appeasement).

In other words…Europe set up a system to prevent war in the 19th century. After this failed in 1914 they set up a new system designed to prevent the kind of things from arising that specifically set off WWI. This new system also failed because the causes of WWI and WWII were different kinds of causes (the methods of stopping them needed to be different because of different circumstances). Do you see the pattern? After each major war (Napoleonic, WWI) they set up something to prevent the war that had just ended – but the next wars are each begun under different sets of circumstances, so their systems were destined to fail. They needed to adjust to what the world had become like; they didn’t need to set up a system they should have used before the previous war!

But after WWII the new system roughly succeeded. The Atomic Age was different.
We avoided a hot war with the Soviets through MADness. It worked to prevent at least one major conventional war (we now know that the Soviets seriously considered invading Europe for resources in the ‘80s but decided against it because they thought we might use nukes to defend our allies).

Now the Atomic Era is gone after the Cold War, and a new system is necessary.
MAD is now marginal in effectiveness for America’s current wars. How could we use the threat of nukes against terrorists? They would probably ask us to use them against the moderate Arab nations in which they often hide (because they seek to destroy those nations too!) Once again, the system we use to prevent warfare has been rendered futile.

And so we have come to our current situation: the problem of the small amount of radical terrorists who want to destroy America, Israel, moderate Muslim nations and restore the Caliphate…and then want to spread the Caliphate and their version of Sharia law across the whole earth.

The system we are using right now for the War on Terror is actually working. It has four basic facets –
1. Stopping their flow of money and capital (so far a very successful part of the war on terror)
2. Intelligence measures to discover and stop operations (hard to say exactly how successful, but clearly better now than ever for America)
3. Small teams of commandos designed to take out key cells and bases of operation (so far quite successful in nearly all of the countries involved)
4. Ending the worst state sponsors of terrorism: Iraq and Afghanistan (Iraq is now hugely successful and Afghanistan is at a turning point).

Those who want to alter this system do not understand that it is working remarkably well. Changing a working system is a patently bad idea (of course reforms and revisions are necessary from time to time as conditions change). But the fundamentals must be sound if it has largely succeeded so far. But it needs to continue in order to finish the job.

Long story short, violence, conflict, war and democide are still nearly pandemic and showing no signs of decreasing as we enter a new millennium.

My issue is ending these things by whatever means necessary – including, but not limited to force. In short, I label this issue “life,” meaning I want to promote the right to life around the world. I want those who are murdered innocently to be protected from those who want to murder them indiscriminately. I want rogue nations (such as Iran and North Korea) to feel threatened by powerful, but peaceful ones (such as America). I want genocidal regimes (such as Sudan) to feel very scared that someone will actually do something to stop them (the UN has so far been ridiculously impotent).

To me the issue of health care, immigration, even taxes or most anything else (while still important) is of secondary nature. The principles underlying things such as health care, immigration and taxes are really just issues about quality of life and wealth – which as we have seen just get better and better no matter how the government tries to slow their progress! If whatever the government legislates or mandates for health care, immigration or taxes decreases one’s personal wealth or quality of life, it will be insignificant in the long run as the progress of technology simply creates more wealth to be had and improves drastically our collective quality of life.

The same can’t be said about people being killed in vast numbers – that reality is not going away. So the issues of which the underlying principle is about preventing human deaths (such as security measures, having a strong and effective military, having a commander-in-chief who understands conflict) are examples of those I consider most important. It is not my intention to give an exhaustive list of what issues this might consist of (I’m not sure if I could!).

In a nutshell, my point could be expressed:

1. Poverty and an extremely low standard of living have been pandemic throughout all of human history.
2. Violence, democide and war have also been pandemic throughout all of human history.
3. The level of wealth and quality of life increased in a truly unprecedented way during the 20th century.
4. During that same time the level of violence, democide and war has not subsided, has not shown signs that it will subside in the foreseeable future and most of our major attempts to inhibit such things have failed.
5. Therefore, the two ‘big’ problems (poverty and war) are no longer (if they ever were) equal in consequence and significance. One of them nominally matters; one of them actually matters.
6. Therefore, what ought to be focused on by our and every freedom loving government is stopping violence, democide and war worldwide. That is the significant problem of our age.

I do not believe we should do nothing about the economy or poverty in America or around the world. But if the 20th century has shown us anything, it is that the government must focus and put its primary energies on ending war and democide, not on making our life just a little bit better each year. Let the market make us richer and live better, that’s the one that’s been doing so for over 100 years, not the government!

I hope more statesmen in America and around the world begin to concern themselves more with preventing conflict around the world than simply making us richer or better off. Let the market do that – isn’t that what we pay them for?