True Reaganite Conservative Republicans Should Be For Net Neutrality and Regulations on Large Corporations.

   If there's one group of people whose collection of opinions utterly confuse me, it's American Conservatives.  This is not to say that the Conservatives represent the only irrational political ideology popular in America today; in fact, truly absurd belief systems are the lifeblood of contemporary American public opinions.  That being said, American Conservatism (and it's 'special' cousin Neoconservatism) will always hold a special place in my heart.  My favorite is when Republicans, who ride under the banner of Conservatism, strongly oppose policies from their opponents that logically should be heralded by their ideology.  This peppers the two-party system in the United States no doubt, but it always seems more blatant with the GOP.  But to fully understand why I feel this way, we must delve deep into the theory and scholarship upon which the platform of American Conservatives originates.
   If we pull back all the specifics of Conservatism, and just take the barebones thesis, it can be understood where the idea came from.  Early Conservative theorists like Edmund Burke explained his as support for policies and systems which bolstered the culture and tradition of the nation in question.  The reason, according to Burke, was that human culture, religion, and society itself were the edifices that supported human progress, and the purpose of the state should be to keep those institutions strong.  Why? Because people are naturally inclined to do bad things, but our social institutions like Churches and established cultural norms were there to reign in those actions.  Burke preferred the reliance on societal institutions over state institutions because states, and their rules, were designed based on pure logic and reason and therefore didn't take into account the complexity and dynamism of Human civilizations.  Cultures and traditions, however, have been forged by a process of Empiricism, basing a complex set of enforced norms on the experiences of the individual traditional societal edifices and what works best situationally.  Of course, at the time of this ideology's creation, the structures of society being spoken about was the English Monarchy and the old Aristocratic rule of Britain.  Burke's writings against revolt against these institutions are best exemplified in his writings condemning the French Revolution.  Reflections on the Revolution in France identified the issue in post-revolutionary France as an inevitable result of completely abandoning the traditional and societal institutions that were part of the French identity (among them, the French Monarchy).  Burke argued in the Revolutionaries' quest to abolish the system that oppressed them, they got rid of the forces that genuinely keep both the leaders and the population in check (namely, the Catholic Church and the Monarchy).  As a result, the State turned to tyranny, terror, and failure.  For these reasons, Burke, who was known at the time as a big supporter of limiting the power of the Monarchy, professed that the central themes in our traditions need be kept strong.  Mainly he spoke of the Church.  Burke believed that the establishment of a State religion was one of the main duties of a government, as well as codifying a national set of moral guidelines.  These legal conditions would not supplement, but rather supplant a set of laws derived from, what Burke would describe as, an a priori metaphysical set of theoretical principals that ignore the complex reality and culture of the people.
     While the specifics of what Burke would want in his moral codes is not entirely relevant to the understanding of Conservatives in America.  Since Conservatism itself is about bolstering the traditions and cultural norms of a society, the specifics of what each nation's conservatives believe would be different.  We can look at the beliefs of American Conservatives on a general level, as well as the original justifications of Burkean Conservatism, and get awfully confused as to where their beliefs come from.
     The first core tenant that comes to mind when thinking of the positions of American Conservatives is the support of the free market.  There is no dearth of conservative politicians and pundits, most notably President Ronald Reagan, who swear fealty to free market economics and the deregulation thereof.  The idea behind this is that in a free market with equal competition, the best product at the most efficient price will be produced because suppliers compete with one another to make the best product.  The confusing thing, however, is that it's not hard to figure out that "free-market capitalism" is not just a natural condition of markets.  Thinkers like Adam Smith advocated for the free-market as a system of organization because at the time composed his writings, production was fundamentally different than it is now.  Those who created a good typically then owned the good, whereas the majority of workers nowadays are given a wage for their work, rather than ownership of their product.  This is not the only example as to why Smith's prescription for how to achieve free competition is not universal, but it's important to note.  The truth is, free markets cannot exist without support.  There needs to be a state that works to keep the free market both free and a market.  If there were no State control on the economy, there would be no free market.  Private property, for example, does not exist in nature, humans have to come together to agree upon it.  If there were no state (which is, at it's simplest form, a group of people who agree on a set of rules to help one another), one producer could simply shoot a rival and take their share of the market.  Although it seems strange conceptually, if there was no State around to enforce Private Property ownership, someone could come along who did not recognize your right to own something, and simply take it for themselves.  In this way, contemporary States must create and enforce laws that allow all competitors in the market play on an equal level so as to ensure the cheapest and best product wins out in the end.  It is this principle that has guided many Conservative policies, but from a Hayekian perspective.  Arguing that putting any restrictions on economic interactions would be "meddling in the free market", conservatives in America began promoting deregulation of the markets.  The issue was that this "free market" began to be viewed in a Social Darwinist manner; conflating 'fair competition' with 'survival of the most profitable' .  These things, realistically, stray away from the theory of Conservatism itself.
    That brings us to 2015, and a current issue fiercely divisive in American politics- net neutrality.  Allow me to provide some quick backstory.  Net neutrality is a standard that has been a part of the Internet since its inception.  What it means is that Internet service providers cannot offer different speeds to different data.  For example, even if Netflix wanted to pay an extra few million to AT&T so that they'd make Netflix run faster, AT&T wouldn't be allowed to, because that would be treating Netflix's data differently.  This is currently a legal requirement, but before February 2015, it was just the standard for Internet Service Providers.  When there was a move from the ISPs to try and change that policy by offering "fast lanes" to companies who could pay more, the Obama administration, along with an overwhelming amount of Internet content providers (website owners), lobbied the FCC to prevent it by declaring the Internet a public utility.  This prevented corporations from ending their Net Neutrality.  The Conservatives in America lost it.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) called it "Obamacare for the Internet", whatever that means.  The overwhelmingly advertised argument from the 'right' was that regulating the Internet was bad because it interfered with the "free market" because it told ISPs what they could and couldn't do in order to raise profits.  Conservatives like allowing people to make as much profit as possible because of the theory that if everyone puts their own success first, the society as a whole will be furthered.  The only issue is that Republicans are either lying about their motive, or they don't understand Net Neutrality.  Net Neutrality, like anti-monopoly laws and others, are regulation that are meant to preserve a "free market" for competition.  The whole reason Conservatives love competitions is that if a better product comes along, consumers will switch to it, incentivizing companies to make the best product.  However, if there were no Net Neutrality, this narrative would be impossible.  Imagine if there was a video-content provider developed by a few entrepreneurs that happened to be better designed and more user-friendly than Youtube.  With Net Neutrality, the only difference between the two websites would be the quality of their respective service, ergo the superior website will be the one consumers use.  However, if "fast lanes" became the norm for companies with more money, Youtube would have the resources available to pay for the fastest website possible, and the newly created providers would not be able to afford that service.  This would mean that Youtube, based solely on the fact that they are already a big website, would win the game of capitalism over the newer, better site.  In a "free market", there has to be a minimized barrier to entry, and if market forces create an artificial one (e.g. having enough startup capital to pay the ISP to speed-up your website) to prevent new additions to the market, a true Conservative would want to use the State as the enforcer to protect the institution of the free market, especially since it is so integral to our national identity.  Conservatism, in a State where the culture is comprised of worship of the "Free Market", should advocate for things like Net Neutrality because they are the kind of regulations that enforce the tradition of a "free market".
     What's unique about American Conservatism is that the United States was founded based on Classic Liberalism, and our national traditions are largely derived from the enlightenment thought and ideological concepts expounded upon by foundational Liberal thinkers like Locke, Kant, and Smith.  That's why the dogma of our conservative friends relies on the fundamental belief in the ideas of Adam Smith.  However, Smith was not writing about all economic systems, he was writing about the one he lived in.  In that society, producers could naturally have equal competition, and because the idea of wage-labor wasn't the norm, people took ownership of everything produced.  That lead to Smith, as well as Locke, proclaiming that there should be a state establishment of private property.
    Nowadays, there are new challenges facing the "free market", and it is the political influence of the corporations we allowed to grow too large.  These corporations can make unlimited sizes of political contributions, and exercise great influence over democratic institutions designed to keep the free market free.  The ideology wielded in this fight is the American Conservative notion that since we have a free market that promotes good ideas, we should let what the market decides happen, because there is a conflation between "unregulated" and "free".  Hobbes was wrong about freedom, it is not infinite in a state of nature.  In nature, one does not have the freedom to do things that are only afforded to people who live in a prosperous, cooperative society.  An individual in nature does not have the right to fly in an airplane, because the pure nature cannot create an airplane.  Only people living within States can do that, because of the "free market" that the State establishes.  'Unregulated' means that individuals and corporations, not the government, are the ones to stifle the "free market".  Free markets have to be forced to be free.
   For that reason it baffles be when Conservatives take the stage and claim that the government needs to allow the marketplace to determine what happens, and that the government needs to get out of the way for businesses to innovate.  Another great example of a policy that should be Conservative but is somehow a Liberal one is progressive taxes.  For this proof I'm going to have to reach into by bag of Burke's beliefs.  Again, Conservatism is about the State and the people working to preserve traditions that contribute to the greatness of the nation.  That being said, nothing is more American than upward mobility.  Every politician has the story in their back pocket of an immigrant grandparent who, after washing dishes for 50 cents an hour, had a child who could eschew the poverty of his or her family and go on to start a business, send their children to college, and raise their socioeconomic class by virtue of hard work.  In fact, many go so far as to say that it's only an American concept, and that the Exceptionalism of America rests on the fact that we can make a better life for ourselves if we work hard.  That being said, those who claim to be the preservationists of tradition are the American Conservatives who promote policies that, in practice, only serve to make the rich richer.  When pressed on that reality, Conservatives talk in idealist terms, saying that income tax rates should be equal for all people because we all have a due burden, and it should be an equally proportionate for everyone.  They talk, only in these situations, with an a priori theoretical ideal.  Which is funny, because the Conservative notion of preserving traditions is based on the claim that we should reject exactly that kind of thinking.  A Conservative who wants to find what's best to preserve the tradition of upward mobility should accept the fact that providing more social services geared toward that end should be sought, and the funding should come from those who were benefited by the system the most.  Upward mobility is not possible in a state of complete deregulation, or even in a state of very limited regulations.  Things like workers rights, or government assisted loans, or state-funded higher education, or financing medical care for the poor are all implemented so that the poor Americans have the opportunity to achieve riches if they work for it.  They always say that we're unique in that regard, but why? It's because we have (or at least had) a government that worked to promote upward mobility through post-New Deal policies like the GI bill, or federal housing subsidies, or even Land Grab policies (which were horribly unethical toward the Native people of this land) that were designed to give those who had little, the ability to have much.  The idea of taxing the richest more, so that the poor can have the extra money needed to advance, should be a conservative idea.
     Lastly, how could I have left out religion.  The early Conservatives put state-endorsed religion at the top of their list.  Modern American Conservatives typically have the influence of Classical Liberalism to prevent them from going that far, but they still have the more religious ideology.  Burke himself said that the power of the Church over people must be enforced by the state so that the Church can guide people to live better lives.  Conservatives in the United States use Ecclesiastical justification for nearly every aspect of public policy from abortion, to same-sex marriage, to climate change.  Oddly, however, they don't take the Christian core tenant of acceptance and charity toward the poor and the sick very seriously.  It would seem to me like a belief system that involves reliance on preserving tradition as well as an assertion that the USA is a Christian country, and that Church doctrine should inform our morality as well as our legal system should favor redistributing wealth toward the poor.  But, they never do that.  I wonder why.  No I don't, it's politics.  Ideology is weaponry and it can be morphed and utilized to prove whatever people's predispositions are nowadays.  All ideologies are guilty of this, but that's a story for another day.  If you are a Conservative, support a progressive tax and Net Neutrality.

Welcome to True Absurdity

          “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”  Albert Camus once said this.  I'm not usually the kind of writer who begins by quoting dead French philosophers, but sometimes I succumb to laziness and allow myself to become one big cliché.  While this quote doesn't nearly do Camus' entire philosophy of absurdism justice, it provides a nice introduction to the project of this blog and my petty little opinions on the world.  I suggest anyone who has not read The Myth of Sisyphus to stop reading this blog immediately and look up a PDF copy online.  Also, Kierkegaard technically wrote about absurdism first, but I doubt you care.
          I've read most of the great existential philosophers (although I wouldn't technically call Camus an existentialist), and they all leave me feeling pretty bummed out.  I often ask myself why I even bother thumbing through Sartre (another of the great dead French philosophers) if all I'm left with is the reminder that beyond our make-believe world lies a pretty bleak reality devoid of meaning and value.  That's why The Myth of Sisyphus holds a special place in my heart.  Ignoring for a second the very obvious fact that we tend to like certain ideas simply because they make us feel better, Sisyphus truly is the book/essay/whatever that changes all that for me.  Embrace the absurd; embrace the fact that we are all going to die and be forgotten and that none of this matters.  Live your lives, frolic from time to time, while keeping in mind that none of our values do not exist a priori.
          Sadly, you can't get that kind of insight from the average American.  The average American is too busy drinking Starbucks and watching Fox News to pick up a book that isn't Fifty Shades of Grey or The Bible.  The select few who do get the chance to go to college or think for themselves are all too often met with the total bummer that is realizing that everyone else is still talking about whether gay people should be allowed to get married or what happened to that goddamn Malaysian airplane.  
          Today there is nothing more useful in our national consciousness than the constant reminder that while our politicians have the IQ of a potato, our national bestsellers are about little kids who went to heaven, and there's actually an ongoing debate about whether or not children should be given vaccines, absurdity is everywhere and we should love it.  
        This blog is called True Absurdity.  I will be writing long-winded and largely irrelevant commentary on politics, news, philosophy, music, literature, culture, hell I might even throw a sports post in there once or twice, all with the unflinching focus on pointing out the absurdity of it all, while keeping a jovial tone about how fantastic it is that our world is so ridiculous.

Welcome to True Absurdity

tl;dr- It's a blog, I rant about shit, but I like to keep it positive; read more dead French philosophers

-David Benjamin