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When you think of politics, no doubt you think of the right and left. The Conservatives and Liberals. Hannity and Colmes. Red versus Blue. No doubt, you think that's politics today - and it is. When you turn on the television, open the newspaper, turn on the radio no doubt what you see expressed in the opinions of people on the "left" or the "right" of the issues. You can't discuss policy making without at least addressing these views.

The history of the "left" - Liberalism - is a very confused one. The word "Liberal" refers to free market political systems, and it's still used that way today in the European tongue. Leftist movements in Europe, thus, are pretty much devoid of the term "liberal". We still use that term here in America, despite modern Liberals not really espousing any form of "liberalism". The Democratic party was formed as an offshoot of the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson, although no coherent part of it's original platforms seem to have passed through the Civil War. Modern Democrat policy making is almost entirely based on the rise of modern Socialism and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies. This mainly consists of programs that put human welfare above financial prosperity, and as such, that's how we'll characterize the left - personal rights over financial rights. Examples of what I mean by this can be found by the Democratic Party platform, here are some samples of core Democrat issues:

1. Affirmative Action: Not letting business owners decide the constitution of their staff is decidedly against property rights, but it's viewed by the Left as the only solution for years of embedded cultural racism. Putting occupational race quotas on employers limits their choice in the name of "civil rights".

2. Education: Reform in education to compensate for a faltering school system is what Democrats suggest, the reform coming more in the form of expansion than contraction, spurning the creation of more taxes. This is another example of putting an intangible aspect of the community's well being above individual financial rights.

3. Environment: In lieu of the looming "threat" of Big Business, the paltry poltergeist of tomorrow, the Left favors revoking development rights and instituting preservations to prevent environmental decay. They believe that without such regulations, the environment will be destroyed by human carelessness - the motive, of course, the pursuit for financial wealth.

4. Health Care: Democrats advocate a government-dictated health care system, funded exclusively by taxpayer funds, in an effort to increase treatment availability to the general public (universal health care). The demagoguery of medicine is that financial incentives are amoral in health care treatment, it being believed that finances in medicine limit care to those who can afford it. These arguments never establish the idea that government sponsored health care is any more affordable as a result, as criticisms that it can be in spite of the funding is generally labelled "hogwash". This also brings about the FDA's core drug regulations, as the health of the community cannot rely on private choices in administering medical treatments - some substances are simply too "dangerous" for government to allow private practitioners to issue.

5. Globalization: Staunchly against free trade, as Democrats believe anything crossing the border is a net loss to Americans and a danger to international labor rights and environments, the Left in America advocates both the restriction of individual rights to decide what to do with their finances overseas and the fixing the minimum/maximum wage/profit brackets for employees/employers.

6. Social Security: A decisively Left creation, Social Security offers financing for retirement out of the pockets of active working taxpayers. This is another example of using redistribution to benefit people at the expense of other's financial rights to do with as they please with their earnings.

As you can see, in the Democratic Party's views, there is a decisive favoritism for personal "rights" over literal financial liberties. In these systems, the government has more power to decide for you what to do with your money through taxes and wealth redistribution. This is not to say that these things are entirely consistent with that cause. In many of these places, the regulations themselves restrict almost as many personal rights as financial rights, telling people not only what they must give but how they must behave. For instance, anti-discrimination and defamation are two core legislative policies of the Left that they are not afraid to use against detractors of their systems.

So, what does this say of the Right? Republicans, like Democrats, favor that government make decisions for you to preserve your ability to "fairly" do other menial things - this time, instead of choosing what you can do with your earnings, Republicans want to choose what to do with your personal life. Financial rights over personal rights, would best describe the ends of Conservatism. Perhaps I can illustrate that point best by listing out some core Republican stances.

7. Religion: As a decisive stance against it's opponents on the Left, the Right proposes that religious instruction become a mandated part of regular learning. State funding of churches and church programs as well as legislation against amoral crimes such as homosexuality and prostitution are included with this spectrum of thought, a firm rejection to the Jeffersonian concept of a "wall of separation" between Church and state (some going to far to even deny that the premise ever existed), changes which Republicans contend is ultimately to America's benefit.

8. Military: The Right favors curtailing your personal rights in two ways through military policy - through the reinstitution of conscriptionary draft measures (and renewal of mandatory basic training to all civilians of fighting age), and new bureaucratic powers to grant special government authority to go after suspected terrorists or other "hostiles", without due process.

9. Press: Viewing loss of family values as the core problem in American lifestyles, the Right believes in government control of the airwaves and other mediums of communications, like the Internet, to prevent subversion and indecency.

10. Drugs: While the Left targets medical drugs in it's regulatory legislation, the Right targets non-medical drugs and other intoxicants in it's prohibitionary legislation. This is to prevent perversions in lifestyles that lead to domestic violence and crime, which stem out of the black markets of the drug trade. This is typically minus the criticism that it's the prohibitions that lead to the violence and black markets. You simply do not have the right to consume what you want under the Right's watchful eye, as some substances are simply too "dangerous" for the government to allow public use.

11. Globalization: While the Left targets trade itself, while the Right targets immigration and domestic aspects of foreign trade. To bolster domestic trades against the increased competition of opening foreign trade channels, the Right uses tariffs as prohibitionary tools against successful foreign trading and subsidizes domestic industries to bolster their produce. This trade protectionism includes barring the personal rights of immigrants from getting jobs (and sometimes citizenship) and blocking some trades altogether to protect domestic corporate monopolies.

12. Marriage: Primarily dwelling from their views on religion, Conservatives in the Right tend to favor state-controlled marriages, to prevent perverse social relationships, yet another example of legislating the "best behavior". This comes in spite of criticisms that the state controlling something as sacred as marital contracts will only degrade the institution with every change in administration.

Libertarians differ from both Democrats and Republicans, the Left and Right, by making the single assertion that personal rights and financial rights go hand-in-hand. In as such, hinderances on financial liberties result in hinderances on personal liberties, and visca versa. The further these hinderances are perpetuated the closer each gets to the single state of Socialism/Authoritarianism where government takes both financial and personal decisions away from you.

This claim is bold in that it predicts Democrats and Republicans have no inherent core philosophy, thus the Left/Right spectrum is not alone adequate to explain politics today properly. If one point of a political chart is where government controls personal rights over financial ones, and the other is where the government favors financial rights over personal ones, and the two are not naturally contradictary as this idea suggests, then there is another entire axis - a limited government system which favors no special control over financial or personal rights (Libertarianism) and a system where big government favors total control over both personal and financial liberties (Socialism/Authoritarianism). A new axis, which is usually plotted Up (for Libertarianism) and Down (for Socialism/Authoritarianism), is necessary to discuss political ideas because without it, the aims of Left/Rightists are meandering and sophistic.

It's only in the Up/Down spectrum that we can say we are constituting core political philosophy, something the Left/Right lacks. Since Libertarianism operates on the premise of self-ownership, where we are our own property, thus all rights are in some way property based (in the sense that we are entitled to our own actions like we are entitled to our own property). Actions that were formally Left and Right can be considered coming closer if moving towards solutions that favor these ends - not farther apart - in ideological clarity. In similar although opposite ways, Socialism/Authoritarianism are both based on the premise that self-property is public, and likewise Left/Right viewpoints can both commonly contribute to it and eventually will become bound to the similar vision of a Totalitarian state. The types of Left/Right stances that contribute to each Up/Down axis reliant totally on how they effect rights. Either way it imposes the single question: are Left/Right issues adequate to describe the things that really trouble us today? If not, then this Up/Down axis is necessary to properly put them into perspective. Here are some samples of Up/Down political views in context of all the previous Left/Right issues we covered, perhaps to give you perspective on the importance and relevance of each view to modern political philosophy.

1. Affirmative Action

The Upside:

Libertarians will tell you that government control of business, especially as a tool to remedy social ills, is a total misapplication of government's primary design and purpose. Government is there to institute the security for people who own themselves to make these decisions for themselves, the Founders trusting it to us as a free people to take it upon ourselves to intellectually tackle social problems, like racism. Unfree people have no history of ending racist tendencies and the segregation caused by special privileges and race interests, such as Affirmative Action, breed racial antagonism. The reality of race quotas in a society that is already very protective of it's labor seems to curb no amount of actual discrimination. For an example of Libertarian views go no further than Larry Elder, a Libertarian radio talk show host and coincidentally a black American, who spoke out on this issue only to be met with heckles - from other black Americans - of being a racist "Uncle Tom" (among a myriad of other slurs to absurd to bear reprinting) with no apology. This is an example of the antagonism bred by such platforms, which was originally intended to solve the situation of ghettos and public segregation of black America, and as such it seems that even today Affirmative Action is a decisive failure if not an unintended impediment to it's own cause.

The Downside:

Socialists and Authoritarians usually take it upon themselves, for the ends of the state, to solve the race problem by not only instituting quotas but advancing all regulation on hiring practice, usually assuming control over all trade and making all hiring decisions through internal policy. Where it cannot do that, it will exert control over trade unions and other mechanisms of the market to offer the "incentives" (read: dictates) to hire in line with race quotas. Whenever a Socialist or Authoritarian state is moved to address the issue of race labor, it can often lead to over-the-top Totalitarian solutions such as genocide, enslavement, and deportation - where it does not, it always leads to some kind of cumbersome burden on general industry and society in the form of rising racial resentment and hatred. Socialism and Authoritarianism both are unique in that they share the common goal of dictating who and what is hired, virtually irregardless of Affirmative Action. However, it is entirely rare that you will find a nation progressing to either of those two very similar ends that lack some kind of Affirmative Action race quota policy (sometimes with disasterous, racially oppressive results).

2. Education

The Upside:

The Libertarian view of education is a simple one, private education is the only institution that ties to schools an inherent necessity to produce good education. The affordability of education is already low, price per student perpetually rises while classrooms get larger. More teachers hired are victim to sloth in educational standards, instruction via pre-defined state curriculum out of teacher's guides; the skill of a teacher is becoming more limited to recitation than a real understanding of the lesson. These circumstances are all the result of teacher's wages, and likewise the entire school board's funding, not being based on educational success but instead on educational failure. It's failure that lobbies for taxpayer dollars, and failure which elected officials commit themselves to "fixing", through the form of heavy taxes. This by no means is the limit on eductional absurdity, drop-out rates are on the rise as more find more incentives to stop learning. Religious discussion in schools are restricted due to it's connection to the state, and private schools are a solution to that problem that both the left and right would be forced to agree upon, if either ever considered private schools as a viable alternative.

Instead, the Left/Rightists lobby criticism at the reform.

"Private schools aren't ready", and no, they are not. The state held monopoly over education has made the private school a limited necessity brought about by the rich who seek advanced education, and has nowhere been applied to the general public in open competition with public school systems.

Only those who can afford education will get it", and that's true, although by far private education would be more reliable and affordable than the existing public education system is. If fewer kids who enroll slip through the cracks, and overall, more students learn, then it serves the public better than the "public" system. There is every suggestion that it does just this.

"It's a risk." Yes it is a risk, as are all investments. The time and productivity that would be necessary to drive a private replacement of the public school system would be immense, due to the scale of public education and it's domineering over the private markets. It would require the full attention of the state to make the conversion the right way. Libertarians view this attention to real school reform as a necessary part of responsible government, and it can be said with confidence that any state official who would fail to take the possibility of privatization seriously is already being irresponsible enough.

The Downside:

As a necessary structure of all Socialist/Authoritarian regimes, education must be state driven, and as much of the core curriculum should be dictated by government policy as possible. Depending on the particular government, this can mean any one of a number of things for our children. For example, in our system, where the government owns the schools, religious discussion is barred on the virtue of our Constitution preventing Congress, which heavily controls the system through legislation, from making law any religious preference or recognition. This is a contradiction that is caused by the system itself - likewise, history shows us more. Other governments have used education to not only force religious preferences on the children (equally as wrong as barring it, ultimately showing how the system itself is wrong), enforcing superstition and folly to breed nationalism. Whether it be the topic of religion, as that example gives, or world/national history, math, english and other basic teachings the Downside lobby wants government to rule educational standards and policies, including how it approaches all these topics.

The public education system of the United States, forgiving these examples, is not degrading as fast as foreign systems, nor is it as oppressive as many of them. However, it is degrading. Socialist/Authoritarian regimes accept this degredation as an excuse for higher taxes, public debts and ultimately as the burden government requires if it expects to breed the perfect new generation (to support their regimes). American motives, not as foul, can only be corrupted to these ends if it does not make the serious internal inquiry to the legitimacy of private education alternatives.

3. Environment

The Upside:

Libertarians believe in having a healthy environment, however, instead of the big corporations, government is the focus of the reform. Businesses do often pollute the environment, but the most grotesque cases of pollution are government actions either to cause the pollution directly or to give incentives to these businesses to pollute. When a business does not face the costs of pollution to their own land and they don't have reparations to pay for the land of others, that's when they'll pollute the most. When government protections are in place and there is a lack of clearly defined property rights, that's all the incentive needed to stop pollution. Government is issuing a license to pollute by mismanaging it's lands and shifting responsibilities to disinterested, irresponsible, unaccountable parties in office.

It's the tragedy of the commons for overused public places, like parks, to degrade in quality - and that won't be rectified until government stops giving incentives to the public to come overpopulate parks. Most government oversight positions are secure regardless of mismanagement, and that breeds irresponsibility you wouldn't see in a free market, where pollution is punished by civil lawsuit and court order. In government, mismanagement is not punished, it's rewarded by being the argument to requisite more funds from the taxpayers.

Modern environmentalist policy is an example of the solution which causes the problem, the environmentalists doing the environment the most damage by holding on to the single incorrect belief that government is the solution. Government is not the solution to good environment, it's dictates only increase the externalities that cause greater abuse.

The Downside:

Socialists and Authoritarians differ, government is the solution to all problems and it is necessary to prevent big businesses from destroying the world. Everything must be controlled by a central government agency, with the dictate to protect the environment (probably with other aims as well). Whether this dictate functions or not is irrelevant, as it's not the "irresponsible" private businesses responsibility to decide for themselves what to do with their wastes and lands. Free of that responsibility, they are also liable for few fair penalties that would deter them from such actions.

The more government controls all business for all ends, the more Socialists and Authoritarians believe environmental quality will improve. Whether more pollution and waste occurs under the government's watch is irrelevant, taxes, not businesses, will pay for those damages, and no Socialist or Authoritarian government will have any qualms raising taxes.

4. Health Care

The Upside:

The people being able to seek medical treatment is vastly important to any great nation. Libertarians believe the best and most moral way of procuring results in medicine is private markets. Through the private market, medicine becomes more affordable, is developed faster, and technology improves at a rate to compare. They address criticism of this approach by illustrating government absurdities, such as long waiting lists, patient maltreatment, and waiting for drug approval instead of offering it as a treatment choice. Hospitals being built and maintained by government also tend to have higher pricetags. In the end, this means instead of paying for health care out of reasonable user fees, we all pay for inadequate health care out of unreasonably burdening taxes. Universal health care is not possible to provide in any affordable or practical way. And the longer we have to wait for care, the more people will die as a result. Free market health care is a solution to this problem typically not explored by narrow-minded advocates of big government, and Libertarians believe it should be.

The Downside:

Socialists and Authoritarians make the drive for big government to assume the powers of health care. This is to provide for the general public, despite big government having no history of success in doing so. If the policy says anyone gets quality health care for free at any time, then it's hailed as good, ignoring that the policy merely stating this is in no way a guarentee of it really happening.

5. Globalization

The Upside:

Libertarians approve of free trade across borders. Tariffs, if used as a revenue for the state, should not be used as tools to prohibit foreign trade or prevent it, and thus should be uniform and equal for imports and exports. Treaties are positive for diplomacy but free trade agencies today typically set the trade to their terms, which is in fact demonstrating a limitation of trade. The World Trade Organization, for instance, is better than no organization, but itself not particularly a very good standard. Trade agencies typically orchestrate monopoly deals to benefit big corporations. Government should not recognize exclusive trade deals any more than it should enact prohibitions which create exclusive trade deals.

Free trade is beneficial to the economy of both the domestic and foreign markets - if both sides didn't have something to gain, the trade wouldn't happen. That rule should predominate all in dictating trade policy.

The Downside:

Socialists and Authoritarians share varying views of the negatives of trade, seeing foreign nations as competition and an excuse to hoard wealth. Tariffs are not used as legitimate tools to create state revenue, instead, they are used to force favorable political situations and business deals, benefitting a few at the expense of people in general. The easiest power of government to abuse is foreign trade policy, because citizens everywhere stand to benefit from certain specific regulations. This is not to say society at large will benefit from such use of authority, and whether it does or not is not usually addressed.

Advocates who move closer to this side, advocate things like trade restrictions, closed borders, immigration deportation, regulation, prohibition, subsidies to domestic producers, and extravegant and expensive loans to close trade deficits.

6. Social Security

The Upside:

Libertarians believe that retirement is best secured by private pensions. Social Security programs are redistributionary, as such, they are not a real investment. When that money is taken it's not put into any fund to accumulate, it's immediately spent to existing Social Security beneficiaries. As time goes on, a system like that can only suffer major operating expenses and as populations grow, huge financial burdens. Unless our population goes backwards, Social Security will become increasingly unmanagable. All the while the heavy taxes will prevent any private saving.

Libertarians don't believe in welching on government debts. Social Security funds would be converted to private savings and paid off over time, however, the system should end because it discourages positive retirement savings for a low quality and perpetually indebted government retirement pension.

Critics say this system doesn't work, and of course that aspect of any wing of political policy will always be debated. Libertarians contend it's not the business of government to have functions like Social Security, more importantly emphasising that such systems simply do not work. Our flounding Social Security program, which is quickly becoming our government's leading expense (matching the interest on our national debt, which Social Security can only contribute to), needs to be removed before it destabilizes our entire federal economy.

The Downside:

In the cradle to grave system that Socialists and Authoritarians ultimately work towards requires Social Security and all programs like it. Viewed as a necessity to help the elderly, it's non-existant earnings and increasing costs are viewed as reasons to issue more funding, not less, for the programs. Government controls wealth in these systems, that includes retirement pensions.

7. Religion

The Upside:

Libertarians believe in freedom of all forms of choice that do not harm others, we all own ourselves, so we should all be given the choice to believe or do what we will. This means that the people have the right to choose what to believe, and should never mandatorily be made to profess a belief in any religious institution.

The Downside:

Socialists and Authoritarians have varying views on religion based on their particular movements. Some believe in banning all religious worship, seeing it as detrimental and challenging to the power of the state. Others see it as the only way for a state to function, organizing the state in a fundemantalist manner. Oaths of allegiance to god, funding for religious institutions (or special privileges like tax breaks), establishment of recognized religion, outlawing contending religious press and publications, legislating religious moralities - these are a few of the many institutions of fundamentalist regimes. Of course, always in the favor of the chosen faith, seeing that as the solution to human ills. Even some Socialist systems will advocate forced tolerance, where religious are mandated seperately or put on par with each other through restrictive regulation to create a more "fair" religious playing ground. Some might even advocate a religious quota in schools and workplaces. Whether explicitely against religious institutions or for them, the government is viewed as the policy maker for religion, not the citizen.

8. Military

The Upside:

Libertarians see the need for a military in self-defense or in response to a serious and imminent threat to national sovereignty. As such, historically, Libertarians are skeptical to war aims. For example, after 9-11 the Al Qaeda group was shown to be responsible for the terrorist attacks, their harborers, the Afghani Taliban and militant sections of Saudi Arabia. Libertarians advocated war efforts in these areas to shut down Al Qaeda's terrorist functions.

Then, the War in Iraq happened, diverting manpower from the Al Qaeda hunt for international criminal Osama Bin Laden. Iraq, while a dictatorial power that endorses terrorism, was led by an administration that was not on good terms with Al Qaeda and not known to harbor them. Iraq's WMD argument was used as justification, however, even if they had WMD's you could not define Iraq as a serious or imminent threat. It had a third world military that was merely compromised of old Soviet arms, the inability to deploy it's weapons outside neighboring countries, it's landlocked and in terrible financial crisis. Libertarians viewed this threat for what it was - a distraction from the aim of catching known criminals who still threaten us on a regular basis.

Vietnam, likewise, is viewed as a wasteful war, but WW2 is viewed as totally justified. This is because WW2 involvement began with acts of serious aggression and it's campaign against Germany was a response to a power that really was a serious and imminent threat. If Germany expanded to Western and Eastern Europe, it could become a serious threat, given it's militant and imperialistic policies. Iraq is no Nazi Germany when it comes to manpower, rife with interal conflict and the inability to travel beyond it's borders, Iraq is a joke when compared to real threats like the diplomatically-dealt-with Cold War Soviet Russia.

In a Libertarian system, the military is the security needed to conduct peaceful society. As such, excessive intervention and wasteful campaigning or imperial land grabs are fruitless. It compromises military integrity and eventually overburdens us by requiring deployment in all parts of the world. The only land mass Libertarians care about defending, excepting honoring our reasonable alliances and defending those truly downtrodden in times of exceptional circumstance, is the land mass of United States, and her occupied territories. Libertarians are not in favor of a weak military, nor pacificism, but most military expense is humanitarian or an effort of needless campaigning, especially when tied to United Nations obligations. Thus, Libertarians advocate withdrawl of troops from unnecessary foreign placements, withdrawl from the U.N., consolidation of the military budget in peacetime, and a legislated bar on any future draft or conscription. In the modern military, fewer people do more, and vast armies are not as necessary given our high technological superiority to all but rival powers. Unless our sovereignty is challenged by on-shore invasion, the draft is not necessary, and it's existince harkens back to a draconian age of dictatorial tyranny. Ending it as an institution would benefit not only our military - who should only be populated with honorable, highly paid soldiers - but our civil population as well, who do not need to be warlike if foreign policy is in times of peace.

The Downside:

In Socialist/Authoritarian systems, a military is not only the means of controlling and acquiring new resources, protecting national interests, and extending territory but it's a way to control interior commerce. The military's might is often a way of establishing national pride, and martial values are taught to be ways of civilizing the masses, required military training being seen as a virtue, not a vice. Conscription (such as through the draft) is needed to supply the massive military endeavors overseas, usually in open war. The ends of military use are as varied as these systems, but one thing is for certain, the military is not isolated and it's through military force that the health of the nation is propogated. War, in this situation, being something of an end in itself.

9. Press

The Upside:

Libertarians, in the short, believe in total privatization of the press. That means no government regulation and likewise no government incentive. Family values are best dictated by who holds the tv changer and who holds access to the computers or radios. Consumer choice is something the market provides, especially through pay services like digital cable, where families can select every channel and sometimes even bar certain programs. These solutions are explicitly non-federal, and would encourage responsibility in broadcasting. You don't like it - don't subscribe. The idea that certain television shows and networks should be public is absurd. Newspapers, televisions, computers, radios and other communication devices are all things voluntarily used, the model being embraced is one of private subscription, not one of public abuse.

The Downside:

On the other hand, the Socialist/Authoritarian camp for whatever ends want to see no freedom in press. Where it does, it does merely for it's political aims. Government should, at all times, be watching what goes on. Networks should be free... of course, approaches to communications depends on the medium and the specific brand of Socialism/Authoritarianism at play. Both agree that government should determine your programming and often fund it with your taxpayer dollars.

10. Drugs

The Upside:

In a free market, drugs control themselves. This isn't fictionalized - demographics of drug use in free markets change from irresponsible, violent people to upper crust recreationists. Upon prohibition, drugs urbanize as the black market grows to replace the legitimate market. This is the core source of violence, evident by the failed experimentation of prohibiting alcohol, which created the same result. Drugs would not be as urbanized if sold in pharmacies. Likewise no criminal element would be funded by them. The black market monopoly would not profit off the backs of addicts. Drugs would be more pure, and thus, less dangerous.

The Downside:

In a closed market, drugs, like most goods are heavily restricted. The public are not free to pick and choose. This is either through open prohibition or through high taxation and regulatory institutions. Whether this feeds black markets is irrelevant because the argument most commonly used by Socialist/Authoritarians is that the bans are based on moral causes, as such the illegalities and violence that come with them are the results of the amoral users of the substances, often being used as arguments themselves to further prohibition. The criminal element grows, and the passive crime of using the drug moves into the aggressive crime of violently procuring it's market. There is money to be made either way, and only the omnipotent state will seek to end the trade. If not end it, then it will socialize it - either way it will control it in one way or another. That's merely the way of this end of the political specrum.

11. Globalization (see #5)

12. Marriage

The Upside:

Far be it from protection as a family institution, marriage is a contract, bound to specific terms set by society. No state or government or people should be forced to recognize a union they find unprincipled. But they have to, tax laws and state licensing all tell them to. The state sees itself as the method to legitimize marriage - and it's the state that conversely forces all of us to recognize the state's standard. Marriage is a contract whose terms should never be determined by politicians. As such, marriages should be liberated from state control, and church organizations and other such social groups should determine the terms of marital contract between the two parties. When government does it, sections of society find themselves accepting or being denied the marriage defined by government.

The Downside:

When you don't own yourself, the public owns you, likewise it's the status quo that acts on marriage. And only through government can the status quo be forced on all citizens. To protect family values it's seen as necessary for government to control marriage, taking from the hands of civil society and religious institutions the importance of marital tasks and terms, and putting it into state control. Some advanced totalitarian societies may even force marriages and civil unions between people as prerequisites. Either way, the uniform view of Socialists/Authoritarians is this: government solves the marriage questions. No doubt with exorbitant licensing fees and tax provisos.

The Up/Down axis of the political chart adds two primary positions - one of limited government control, one of unlimited government control - to a government of mixed policies that add wings of control and limitations. The Left/Right line does not characterize the Up/Down spectrum alone, as many issues that are Up or Down might fall into Left or Right categories pretty indiscriminately. Go through closely the overview I've given above. You can see the Downside having many Left and Right aspects to them, and the Upside having many Left and Right aspects to them. While the modern American Left is typically more openly Socialist, it is no moreso than the Right being openly Authoritarian.

The New American Myth is a representative of the Upper spectrum of politics. It's this view that requires government get smaller and it's scope of powers limited to a core philosophy of inalienable human rights and self-ownership. This is not possible without the Deconstruction Era, an era of policy to make government smaller and limited in this manner. As such Left and Right issues will be discussed in this series of essays, but the decisiveness of bias is merely rhetorical, since neither the Left nor Right is making government institutions smaller over time. Liberals have no scope of control over Conservative government, and Conservatives no measure of control over Liberal government. If both grow with nothing to check them, they will collectively lead to Socialist/Authoritarian models. If you don't agree with Libertarian policy to counteract this, then this series may not be for you. If you are interested in hearing more, check back for futher Deconstruction Era Essays.

The Deconstruction Era Essays are a series of Essays based on discussing reforms of the current U.S. government to be a more classically Liberal free-market body - the DEE provides a platform for thought into the political hypothetical. Each edition will mark progressive updates to the evolving e-novel, The Little Black Book of Bills.