Although not particularly interested in politics, I am from the liberal left, as evidenced here, I was a typical Independent-reading, Marlboro Lights-smoking centre-left student. In frustration with the anti-science of the left and an attempt to escape political correctness, combined with a better understanding of human nature, a better understanding of economics and likely also due to simply being older I quickly found myself betraying the left. The transition was so fast and so extreme, that for a period I found myself in the curious position of being simultaneously subscribed to a Marxist mailing list and a eugenics mailing list. I have been accused of being a racist and a fascist. I am neither, but how could I prove it? On 6 November 2007 I celebrated my 39th birthday by filling in some Web-based political questionaires. The Political Compass places me very slightly left of centre, Political Survey 2005 puts me slightly left-of-centre on the major axis and fairly right-wing on the minor axis, whilst my top result for the SelectSmart.com selector, British Political Parties, is Conservatives. I got carried away and took some US-based political quizzes. Moral Politics describes me as a moderate conservative, the World's Smallest Political Quiz descibes me as a liberal, Politopia claimed I would feel most at home in Centerville, The Politics Test concluded that I am a Social Liberal and an Economic Moderate so best described as a Centrist, The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz...IN 2D claims that I'm a Liberal-Leaning Centrist, The Political Quiz Show has me down as 67.5% liberal and 32.5% conservative, The Political Brew: Political Test rank me as a Moderate Liberal on both Non-Fiscal and Fiscal Issues, whilst Political Philosophy Quiz has me down as a Moderate Progressive, Economic Moderate, Authoritarian-leaning, Pacifist which makes me a Democrat and apparently I should vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008. To summarize, the Political Compass is the most comprehensive test, and I lie at the geometric centre of the imaginary British National Party-Greens-Liberal Democrats triangle. I am closest to the Liberal Democrats.
The trouble with ideologies is that they are wrong, and as a scientist I sought an approach that was both holistic and objective. By the former I mean a non-selfish approach, and by the latter an approach that is built from the ground up using empirical science. I now appreciate that politics should not primarily concern itself with dictating human behaviour (because that will fail), but should concern itself instead with recognising human nature (which will never change) and shaping policy accordingly. Of course nice middle class people who form policies aren’t racist, but that doesn't mean that much of the electorate aren’t. So instead of encouraging multiculturalism, it would be shrewd to limit immigration. In other words, better align ‘prescriptive’ with ‘descriptive’. The liberal left quadrant of the political compass is populated by smug students, who like myself, assumed that being liberal and left gave us both freedom and equality. In reality you end up with totalitarianism. Read on to see why. It is worth noting that I’ve tried to stick to British definitions.
One or two dimensions are generally sufficient, see Wikipedia: Political spectrum.
Contrary to popular belief, it is quite possible to use science to determine optimal political beliefs. Salter (2003) does precisely that. The key objective is to optimize the relative investment allocated to each of the following, which are listed in order of importance:
Note that the hierarchy is not political, it is a gene-based biological given. In the table below, the various political ideologies are listed in order of preference. Multiculturalism is split into two (you can’t have one without the other).
I’ve added ‘mean absolute error’, which is the difference between the ideology and the optimal ideology, universal nationalism; although note that Salter emphasizes that the numbers are merely indicative.
| Ideology | Self | Offspring | Ethny | Humanity | mean absolute error |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal Nationalism | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.07 | 0.03 | 0 |
| Multiculturalism for Minorities | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.07 | 0.03 | 0 |
| Multiculturalism for Majorities | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0 | 0.1 | 0.035 |
| Capitalism | 0.9 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 |
| Humanism | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0 | 0.3 | 0.135 |
| National Socialism | 0.4 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0 | 0.165 |
| Communism | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0 | 0.5 | 0.235 |
| Radical Christianity | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0 | 0.8 | 0.385 |
It is interesting to note that Radical Christianity came out worst, mainly for investing too little in one’s self and too much in humanity. The difference between Multiculturalism and the ideal is best addressed by National Socialism. This predicts that a multicultural society, such as the United Kingdom, is a catalyst for a far right party, such as the BNP.
The left wing are the radical, reforming, or socialist section of a political party or system, whilst the right wing are the conservative or reactionary section of a political party or system.
Left: Equality of outcome
Right: Equality of opportunity
Like all animals, humans have evolved to both compete and cooperate. In this sense, the political Left and the political Right both have something to offer. Women seek high status men plus reliability as a secondary consideration for long-term partners. Thus evolved right wing man and left wing man.
Right wing man competes for status, and cares little for others around him unless he can use them to enhance his own status. He lacks compassion and tends to market himself badly. A high risk/high return strategy.
Left wing man is a lower status man, but more reliable. If a man wishes to attain a mate of higher value than his status would normally allow, he first has to deceive a woman about his reliability in the future, and to do this effectively he has to deceive himself. He sincerely believes in the bogus notion of egalitarianism, is willing to cooperate with others and possibly even wears sandals. A low risk/low return strategy.
Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
A conservative advocates favouring free enterprise, private ownership and socially conservative ideas.
Egalitarian means believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Any form of egalitarianism worth the name must consider equality good in itself, not good merely because it signals or promotes some more fundamental value. Firstly, evolution does’t do equality, and secondly, people have no right to be as tall as other people, or as intelligent, so there is no correlative duty to make them so. If one considers the differences between how society treats a paedophile and someone like Mother Teresa, and how even a so-called egalitarian thinks that society should treat them, it is clear that egalitarianism seems wrong descriptively as well as prescriptively. In practice modern democracies tend to give one man one vote, but there is no evidence that this is optimal, and should prisoners, the mentally ill, children and children vote, and where should we draw the line? For a trait to evolve by natural selection, three conditions must be present: 1) the trait must be heritable; 2) the population must exhibit variation in expression of the trait; 3) the trait must affect the fitness of an individual (e.g. number of offspring). If, say, intelligence wasn't both heritable and unequally distributed across the population, it wouldn't have evolved in the first place.
Fascism is an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Firstly, given that men and women do not differ in degree but differ in kind, the fundamental assumption that feminism rests upon (equality of the sexes) is profoundly wrong. Secondly, and worst still, the sex that feminism seeks to protect and promote is the already privileged. Ergo, feminism is illogical. For more details, see my Feminism FAQ.
An important issue, see my immigration web page.
A liberal advocates favouring individual liberty, free trade and moderate political and social reform. This sounds reasonable, but giving people autonomy will surely only work in practice if people are essentially ‘good’ (we don't give prisoners their freedom). Unfortunately, people are not essentially ‘good’ (they care about nothing except their genes).
Libertarianism an extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.
Nationalism is an extreme form of patriotism marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries. Due to human nature, universal nationalism is the most natural state of affairs in world politics. From Wikipedia, "White Nationalism (WN) advocates a racial definition (or redefinition) of white national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism." Multiculturalism has failed, Europeans have achieved the most in terms of inventions, discoveries and the arts, whilst currently behave more altruistically than any other race, and are in relative decline. Yet, currently, Black Power is considered acceptable, yet white nationalism not so. Ergo, White Nationalism should not be dismissed.
Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. The intuitively reasonable assumption that wealth distribution is a valid goal turns out to be incorrect. Wealthy people are not just desirable, not just a necessity, but are essential for the survival of an economy. If there is no concentration of wealth, then no new investment can ever occur, thus stifling growth and stagnating the economy. If conditions change then such societies are unable to also change, and they perish. A world with rich and poor is a normal healthy world. Ergo, to strive for income equality is illogical. Besides, Reisman (2005) showed that socialism is totalitarian.
Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe in equality? Yes and yes? How could any intelligent, educated and compassionate person say no? How could any student say no? All good students simultaneously embrace socialism (promoting equality) and liberalism (promoting liberty). That way we have both fair processes and fair outcomes. We have both equal rights and equal outcomes. There is only one snag: the above only works in one special case: when everyone is equal. In 1956 the US psychologist Leon Festinger introduced a new concept in social psychology: the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956). When two simultaneously held cognitions are inconsistent, this will produce a state of cognitive dissonance. Because the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, the person will strive to reduce it by changing their beliefs. Any suggestion that people are not equal creates cognitive dissonance, ergo we apply self-deception and fool ourselves into believing that everyone is equal. The problem is that evolution doesn’t do equality. As Dawkins observed, ‘the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.’ Thus was born ‘equality’, aka egalitarianism, which leads to oppression. The table below gives two examples of why liberal/left politics are actually authoritarian. The liberal left’s unreasoned and unscientific embracement of egalitarianism is misguided and actually harms those they are trying to help. The new left support political correctness, mass immigration and feminism, which means they’re working against those they set out to help: working class men (who are already the least privileged group in society). In other words, the liberal left are actually attempting to intensify the major disadvantage suffered by the major disadvantaged sub-group in all societies, and to heap more privilege upon the already privileged. This is self-evidently obscene. The left are—quite literally—working against themselves, with the ‘progressive project’ moving precisely backwards. This is particularly sad, because the left includes the most intelligent and compassionate members of society (that is, those in a position to make a difference).
| Egalitarian assumption | men and women are equal | all races are equal |
|---|---|---|
| Perceived problem | pay gap between men and women | blacks underachieve |
| Actual cause | men and women are differently motivated | 15 point IQ differential |
| Egalitarian reasoning for the cause | sexism | racism |
| Egalitarian action | ‘liberate’ women from men | ‘liberate’ minorities from whites |
| Result | oppression of men | oppression of whites |
Injustice, Inequality and Evolutionary Psychology by Bruce G Charlton.
The wealth of a nation is largely determined by three factors: the intelligence of the population, the extent to which the country has a market economy and natural resources (Lynn and Vanhanen 2002, 2006). Intelligence (which, by adulthood, is 80% heritable (Lynn 2006) and the availability of natural resources tend to be fairly static. It would appear, then, that the best policy is to embrace a market economy.
Neocons are from the Left. See The Neocons: An Illustrated Progression - washingtonpost.com.
On average, democratic countries are more successful than non-democratic countries. Although this is likely mainy due to the fact that the former are more likely to employ a market economy. The populations in democratic countries tend to be happier. A multi-party democracy is divisive, it may be better to force people to vote on policies rather than politicians. Besides, why should unequal people have equal say in matters that govern everyone equally? Democracy is not suited to countries with a population of low intelligence.
Political correctness (the dictatorship of virtue) is a major threat to both science and liberty and is accurately described by Browne (2006) as ‘an ideology that classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism, and which makes believers feel that no dissent should be tolerated.’ For more details, see Political Correctness.
Both the academic left and the religious right compromise science. Unlike the religious right, the academic left is willing to admit to evolution up to a certain point, but stops short of allowing for any evolution of human behaviour as it conflicts with their politically-driven ‘blank slate’ agenda. Especially in Europe, the left do more harm than the right. See Gross and Levitt (1998) and Sokal and Bricmont (2003) for two excellent accounts of the crimes against science committed by the academic left.
See Barth (2000) and Reisman (2005).
Even a superficial analysis of the Euston Manifesto highlights some serious problems:
The preamble to the Euston Manifesto acknowledges that the left has lost its way. Whilst this is true (they’ve actually understated the issue, the left are working against themselves), the reasoning by which they reached this conclusion is wrong-headed. The Euston Manifesto strikes me as a list of excuses to invade Iraq! I’d prefer a King’s Cross manifesto: if the state were to provide the same level of support to men as it currently provides women, the state would pay for prostitutes for men.
The world is suffering from unsustainable population growth, dysgenics, the shrinking of the (only compassionate and innovative) European race and the depletion of natural resources. Things can only get worse.
1) Multiculturalism fails both in theory and in practice, plus the immigrants' home countries lose their brightest people.
2) Neoconservative democratization of the world is failing (witness Iraq), whilst the average IQ of most of Africa is not high enough to sustain a democracy.
3) Colonialism would fail because the natives would resent being ruled by another race/culture.
The ideal solution may be full repatriation followed by global nationalism.
We can’t change human nature in any radical sense, so it is better not to try. They key is to identify those who are inherently disadvantaged (hint: it’s not minorities in a multicultural state, nor is it women). Unfortunately, the majority of people—including those of good will and those in power—fail to appreciate this to the detriment of modern human society.
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