Objective politics: Criticisms and responses

IVN (Independent Voter Network) has published a Dissident Politics article that advocates an objective-rational political ideology in place of the subjective-intuitive ideology that American politics is based on.

The article is here: http://ivn.us/2015/08/21/opinion-america-needs-move-past-flawed-two-party-ideology/. 

Criticisms of and responses to objective politics ideology (values or morals) are described below. This post is long, over 10,000 words, so scanning for criticisms of interest and the responses may make sense. The point of this post is to convey the strongest criticisms and defenses of objective politics, i.e., politics that is mostly objective-rational, to begin to replace America's current subjective-irrational/intuitive politics. For people who do not believe that two-party politics is mostly subjective-intuitive, i.e., based mostly on intuition, false facts, emotion, flawed logic and spin, this might not make much sense.

Summary of objective politics; Three core ideological values

As explained in the IVN article, objective politics is defined to rely on three core or fundamental ideological values, i.e., morals or principles:
1. Fidelity to unpsun facts, i.e., rejection of spin in favor of honest truth whenever unspun facts or truth can be found among all the lies and deceit;
2. Reliance on unbiased logic to the extent one can do that in spite of unconscious but powerful but normal human biases, e.g., motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, etc., that tend to distort both facts and logic unless a conscious effort is made to reduce that normal human source of subjectivity and error; and
3. Assessing and picking policy choices that best serve an objectively defined public interest, e.g., as described here, based on unspun fact and unbiased logic.

The point of rejecting subjective politics for objective is to (i) better ground politics in reality and logic so that policies are less wasteful and (ii) shift the balance of power from special interests to the broader public interest, which would reduce political corruption. Political corruption is defined as (1) illegal bribery or malfeasance in office and government operations, and (2) legal "institutional corruption" and use of legal or illegal spin* (discussed here) to improperly advance partisan agendas, deceive the public and/or as a basis to assess or justify policy choices. Obviously, Dissident Politics' definition of corruption is broad. It includes essentially all of subjective politics, including nearly all partisan rhetoric and the alleged "facts" and rationales that underlie most policy choices.

* Political spin defined: Spin is speech that consciously or not, is based on or includes one or more of (i) lies, (ii) deceit, (iii) misinformation, (iv) withholding, distorting or denying inconvenient facts or arguments, (v) unwarranted character or motive assassination, and, (vi) conscious or not, the use of fact or logic that is distorted by ideology, self-interest and or another innate cognitive bias.

Subjective vs. objective politics: The fundamental difference

Dissident Politics argues that subjective politics distorts fact and logic and therefore policy rationals to conform to the principles or values that subjective ideology demands. By contrast, the principles or values of objective politics are used to find unspun or "real" facts and apply subjectively unbiased logic within a larger intellectual framework of serving the public interest. With the possible exception of centrism, objective politics is profoundly different than any significant political ideology at play in American politics today, including liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, socialism, communism, capitalism, environmentalism, Christianity and Judaism. All the other ideologies are mostly or completely subjective and can be thought of as old, i.e., Politics v. 1.0. By contrast this new brand of objective politics strives to be as objective as possible with regard to (i) fact and logic and (ii) how to use fact and logic in service to the public interest, i.e., Politics v. 2.0.

Criticisms and defenses of objective politics

Criticism 1: Liberals, conservatives and most everyone else will never question, much less change, their own ideology, common sense and morals or values. Proposing an objective ideology for politics is an academic curiosity at best and an absurdity at worst.
Response: There is some truth in that criticism, but it isn’t the whole story. Critics on the left and right might see political values and policy choices based on unspun fact and unbiased logic in service to the public interest as necessarily far removed from what standard liberal and conservative values would arrive at. However, that isn’t true. While perceptions of reality (facts) between the left, right and objectivists would often would differ, it is not true that a policy choice arrived at objectively has to differ much from a liberal or conservative policy choice.

Objective political policy choices are independent of standard (subjective) ideology. Objective choices can be liberal, centrist, conservative or something else. There are vast differences in how the left and right usually see reality (facts) and apply their own values and versions of logic or common sense to those vastly different facts to get vastly different policy choices. Objective politics cannot be any more flawed than that. But it can be better, if one believes that unbiased facts and logic will usually be different and “better” for the public interest than facts and logic that unconscious human biases tend to conform to subjective values, common sense (logic) and ideology. There is no rational basis to judge society’s response to objective politics. Until recently, objectivity has not been described or advocated in mainstream political discourse. One version of objective politics, paternal libertarianism, has been initially tested in the real world. So far it has been very successful from the point of view of an objectively defined service to the public interest, e.g., objective policies are cost-effective and simple to administer.

Criticism 2: Objective politics ignores and cannot affect the power of special interests with money to unduly exert influence politics in their own interests. Any ideology is beside the point.

Response: Despite to overwhelming power of money in politics, this criticism misunderstands how objective politics would affect all aspects of politics, including its corruption* of both parties by special interests. It is true that special interests with money dominate American politics. The single most powerful influence in politics, or “political principle” is service to demands by “economic elites” and/or organized interests with money. Aside from some social issues, e.g., abortion, American public opinion is mostly irrelevant. Overall, American public opinion has no impact on federal policy decisions, i.e., public opinion has a “statistically non-significant impact”. In terms of affecting policy choices, service to special interest money is far and away the most influential political value there is in U.S. politics. All other political principle or values are minor or irrelevant.

* Political corruption objectively defined: 1. Standard illegal quid pro quo bribery, theft and/or other actionable malfeasance; and 2. Intentional or not, deceit of the public via lies, misinformation, unwarranted opacity, withholding of relevant facts, distortion of fact or logic, e.g., by biases or self-interest.

A key reason for proposing objectivity in politics, including a focus on objectively defined service to the public interest is to address political corruption (defined above). That includes special interest corruption, which dominates U.S. politics. Corruption of politics includes free speech that, intentional or not and conscious or not, is objectively untrue or ambiguous but passed off as truth. That can be fairly called spin or dark free speech. It can be legal or illegal. When unspun facts, unbiased logic and the public interest are the key focus of thought and debate, it will be much harder for any special interest, including individual politicians and partisan pundits, to spin their arguments as best for the public interest. Spin or dark free speech includes intentional lies that damage or destroy a candidate’s run for elected office. Dark free speech imposes significant costs on American society and its economy.

Incumbents and candidates for political office all say that their ideology, principles and policy choices are best for the public interest despite their radically different policy choices. They also all strongly argue that they are not unduly influenced by special interest money. Overwhelming evidence refutes that spin. In American politics, money talks and public opinion walks.

Criticism 3: Governing from an ideologically objective point of view is impossible because liberals, conservatives and others are not going to acquiesce in politics without human intuition or “soul”. Objective politics will cause gridlock.

Response: That criticism misunderstands what is being proposed. Objective politics will not govern anything if the concept doesn’t gain public acceptance and a way to translate support into political power. Very few or no hard core conservatives, liberals, libertarians, socialists or believers in other subjective ideologies will be persuaded by anything said in defense of objectivity, maybe other than to defend their own beliefs as objective while attacking other beliefs as subjective. On the other hand, if enough voters do support objectivity and that can be translated into political power, then the criticism will have been proved wrong. Like any other competing concept or policy option in politics, it will be judged on public acceptance and political power. Objectivity cannot be rationally assessed or criticized now.

As far as gridlock goes, the federal government already is gridlocked. Nothing in two-party politics or rhetoric suggests any change. For the time being, gridlock rules. Adding an objective point of view to the mix changes nothing until credible evidence shows it got something unstuck, made matters worse or had no measurable impact on anything.

Criticism 4: Politics based on an objective ideology is not going to be perfect because humans are not perfect. Even if occasional mistakes do arise from ideologically-driven fact or logic errors, it is human to err and arguing that an objective ideology will not change that. Why even consider it?

Response: The two-party system and the ideologies and values it relies on to guide policy choices have not performed impressively. Consider where completely destroyed, bankrupt, poverty-stricken countries such as Japan and Germany came from since the end of World War 2 and where they are now. Despite infrastructure, public education, resource and financial dominance, American progress since the 1940’s was bought at the expense of a negative balance of trade every year since 1977, a current federal debt of about $18.2 trillion and unknowable trillions more in unfunded future debt obligations. Defenders of the status quo can claim exceptionalism or whatever they want, but a cold, objective look at U.S. progress since the end of World War 2 is arguably not particularly exceptional. Relative to other industrialized countries, America’s current situation may be as much or more a matter of regression to the mean than exceptional political ideology.

To err is human, but there are no compelling reasons to believe that performance of subjective ideology has been acceptable or that objective ideology could not do better. No one can argue that politics based on fact distorted by ideology and the unconscious but logic-destroying motivated reasoning it generates. If nothing else, logic argues that ideology constrained by fact and logic has to be superior to ideology constrained by great liberal or conservative principles and values. There is no objective basis to believe that objectivity will not be better than the corruption and subjectivity that America now relies on.

Criticism 5: There is no explicit basis in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Bible, Federalist Papers or any other significant relevant authority that supports or advocates an objective basis for political morals or ideology.

Response: That is true. There is also no explicit basis in any of those authorities that unequivocally rejects objective politics. Objective politics is just as constitutional as liberal, conservative, libertarian or communist politics. Nor is there a logical basis to believe objectivity would, in the long run, fail to equal or better the outcomes the two-party system delivers. Objective politics is on the same legal footing as any significant American ideology. What differs is not legal or moral authority but numbers of supporters and political power.

Criticism 6: American politics is not based on subjective ideologies. Liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, centrism, socialism, capitalism, and other ideologies are all based on fact and logic. Citing a few psychologists or other researchers cannot alter that basic fact. Looking honestly at the vast complexity and wealth of American society makes it clear that humans are mostly rational-objective and cannot possibly be mostly intuitive-emotional.

Response: This criticism is wrong. Evidence of that includes the certain knowledge, not just belief, of many liberals and some others that some or most conservatives are self-deluded and disconnected from facts and logic, while many conservatives believe the same about liberals and socialists. There are different sets of facts and different common sense (logic) that belief in subjective ideologies generates. The only way opposing sides can be correct is to believe that there can be two different, incompatible policy choices based on different sets of fact and logic that applies to disputed political issues. Unbiased reason is clear that for any given issue liberals, conservatives or both, along with their facts, logic and policy choices must be mostly wrong. Both cannot be mostly right.

Although many Americans would disagree, ideologies that materially affect American political thinking and debate, include (1) irrefutably purely subjective ideologies and the policy choices they create, e.g., Christianity and Judaism, and (2) mostly subjective* but narrow or issue-focused beliefs or “knowledge” of what best serves the public interest. Examples of narrow subjective beliefs include belief (i) for or against public sector labor unions, (ii) that climate science is immature flawed or a hoax and its climate change warnings should be should be rejected, (iii) that more and unrestrained free political speech is always better than less free speech and (iv) abortion, same-sex marriage or a personally objectionable constitutional amendment cannot ever be constitutional under any circumstance. This argument accords with clear evidence that people’s beliefs are often “poorly connected to objective facts” and that necessarily means that such beliefs are subjective. American politics is clearly more subjective than objective.

* What is “mostly subjective” depends on whether there is sufficient information or data to objectively assess the truth from the point of view of an objectively defined public interest. From the point of view of the typical liberal or conservative, none of the listed beliefs they agree with is subjective because their respective perceptions of reality (facts), common sense (logic) and their subjective definitions of what best serves the public interest conforms to their personal opinion.

Criticism 7: Objective politics focused on service to the public interest, at least as Dissident Politics described it*, is nothing more than liberalism or more likely, socialism or communism, in disguise. This description accommodates unlimited growth of government. The whole concept subordinates individual freedom and economic activity to the public interest, so socialist or communist tyranny will be the ultimate result. The concept of serving the public interest is a certain path to economic ruin. This concept is completely impractical and anti-American.

* Governing in the public interest means governance based on identifying a rational, optimum balance between serving public and individual or commercial interests based on an objective, fact- and logic-based analysis of competing policy choices, while (1) being reasonably transparent and responsive to public opinion, (2) protecting and growing the American economy, (4) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity, (5) defending personal freedoms and the American standard of living, (6) protecting national security and the environment, (7) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in commerce when possible, and (8) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, all of which is constrained by (i) honest, reality-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more than what is needed and (ii) genuine respect for the U.S. constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution and the law.

Response: This criticism raises separate issues that require separate responses.

1. Arguing that objective politics in service to the public interest as described here is liberalism or communism is incorrect. The public interest description expressly includes limits on government to only what is needed, i.e., right size government, and concern for fiscal sustainability, individual freedom and the economy. Those concerns are conservative principles or values. Government has grown under both liberal and conservative control. Conservatism has a dismal track record in defending its own values. By shifting focus from fights between liberal vs. conservative political ideology and values to assessing unspun fact, unbiased logic and the public interest (the “core values”), this proposal better defends conservative principles than conservatism itself. For people who accept objective politics, the core values force liberalism to defend itself on the merits instead of based on spin and deceit. Assuming that conservatives really believe in the superiority of their own ideology or values, perceptions of reality, and common sense (logic), this proposal supports them and their ideology by (i) leveling the playing field and (ii) not caring about what policy choice wins, regardless of whatever ideology a choice might be considered. Objective politics described here is ice-cold neutral to what subjective label applies to a policy choice that wins an honest, transparent, fact-and logic-based competition.

2. America has over 300 million citizens and residents and planet Earth has over 7 billion. From an objective point of view, arguing that the conservative value of unbridled personal freedom makes no sense. Individuals always cannot do whatever they want without impacting other people, e.g., an entrepreneur cannot build a heavy industry factory or strip mine in a residential zone and an individual cannot fish without regard to sustainability and catch limits. People who fly their radio controlled drones over a busy airport or a wild fire, will necessarily affect the rights of others, e.g., the right of people to be safe from drone collisions when landing in or taking off from that airport or when operating fire control aircraft over the wild fire. Somebody’s rights have to give or, sooner or later, there will be airplane-drone collisions. As human population increases, these concerns necessarily become more acute.

This proposal better defends conservative principles of freedom than conservatism itself for the same reasons argued above, i.e., it forces more honesty and objectivity into debate and, if conservatives really believe in their own rhetoric, principles, facts and logic, their ideas will win and policy choices will shift over time to what conservatives consider the proper ideology and governance principles. In that case, objective politics would just call those policies the ones that best serve the public interest. Objective politics operates without regard to any subjective ideology or policy choice other than impacts on the public interest. The concern is objective facts and logic, not subjective ideology.

3. Arguing that objective politics in service to the public interest as described here unduly restrains capitalism, economic freedom and/or economic activity is incorrect. This proposal better defends conservative principles of effective governance, capitalism and economic freedom than conservatism itself for the same reasons argued above, i.e., it forces more honesty and objectivity into the debate. Tipping the balance of power to the public interest from special interest dominance will impede unjustifiable economic interest demands, but that fully accords with effective governance or the belief that policies should win on the merits. It is not the business of the private sector to defend the public interest and it is unrealistic to even expect that. Shareholders and owners are there to make money, not necessarily to make the world a better place. Special interests take whatever their money can buy from the two-party system, regardless of the merits and of impacts on the public interest.

Despite that corruption, a betrayal of the public interest, it is the business of government to balance competing interests with an eye to maximizing benefits to all affected interests while minimizing costs and/or limits on freedoms. If conservatism or any other subjective ideology truly believes in the value or principle of real laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., a complete separation of economy and state, then that reflects a value or moral that conservatives must be honest about and then win public support for. Dissident Politics does not believe that most Americans truly understand what government based on laissez-faire capitalism is or its implications for how that would affect their lives. Nonetheless, if a laissez-faire capitalism policy for one or more issues wins an honest competition for what objectively best serves the public interest, then that is what objective politics would support. Again, where the best ideas come from is irrelevant to objective politics. What counts is finding those best ideas regardless of the subjective ideology behind it.

Criticism 8: Regardless of political or religious ideology, politics is a brass knuckles street fight with no rules, no ethics and no regard for impacts on anything other than electing or destroying a candidate, politician or a hated ideology, entity or group. The only limits are laws, which are usually ambiguous, easily circumvented, not routinely enforced and/or almost impossible to enforce due to the near-impossibility of proving illegality in court. White collar crimes are a perfect example - they are almost impossible to successfully prosecute in court. That is why insider trading is a fun, popular and probably profitable criminal activity. The risk of getting caught is low and the risk of being convicted is also low, i.e., the probability of guilt proven in court is: low (e.g., 0.01) x low (e.g., 0.01) = (i) very low (0.0001) or, (ii) because law enforcement agencies are budget-constrained, nil (~ 0.0). Ethics-related political laws are no different.

On top of that intractable mess, politicians or their partisans or surrogates routinely spread lies or misinformation to destroy opponents and deceive the public. Partisans deceive themselves (or just don't care) and ethics is so irrelevant that ethical considerations, e.g., conflicts of interest, are completely ignored. "There's no shame anymore. . . . We've blown past the ethical standards; we now play on the edge of the legal standards. . . . It's all about winning, it's not about governing anymore." Objective politics will have no impact on moral bankruptcy or policy choices. Objectivism, subjectivism, Christianity, atheism and everything else is irrelevant.
Response: It is true that ethics in subjective politics is mostly an obsolete, irrelevant concept. However, that is true for subjective politics, not objective politics. Politics based on the three core values as proposed here* is an entirely different beast. Based on modern knowledge of human behavior and cognitive biology, there are good reasons to believe that ethics in an objective framework will have real relevance and impact on both ethics and policy.

* Objective politics' three core values: (1) Fidelity to unspun fact or reality, (2) conscious reliance on logic as unbiased as humanly possible, and (3) a focus on the public interest over narrower interests such as political party, political ideology, politician self-interest and special interest demands backed by campaign contributions.

First, because two of the three the highest values or morals of objective politics are finding unspun fact and applying unbiased logic to those unspun facts, it will be harder in that intellectual framework to twist reality and common sense into seeing unethical behavior as ethical. With subjective politics, what is considered ethical is almost purely subjective, i.e., it usually differs greatly in the eye of the protagonist, target or beholder. All three of those points of views can see a given action the same or very differently, e.g., a subjective ideologue politician appointing bureaucrats with conflicts of interest to a government agency to serve the dictates or values of the subjective ideology with its subjective version of "facts" and "logic".

Second, because the third of three the highest values or morals of objective politics is service to an objectively defined public interest, the power of special interest demands and money to dictate political actions would (i) necessarily be constrained or (ii) the political actor would not hold service to the public interest in high regard, i.e., that political actor would be a traitor to one of the actor's professed three core values. That actor would thus not be walking the objective politics walk. That person would only be talking the talk.

An example helps to explain the situation. Under routine subjective two-party politics, politicians and bureaucrats often appoint bureaucrats and/or contractors with conflicts of interest or other issues that preclude suitability for the job. Political appointees are sometimes consciously chosen to undermine a political agency's core function due to ideological (values) disagreement with the agency's function. That passes for ethical, or at least acceptable, behavior under subjective politics, but not under objective politics.

For example, under the Bush-Cheney administrations, conservatives and republicans had staffed the now defunct federal Minerals Management Service with former coal and oil executives and employees. The MMS's mission was to administer and oversee licenses for coal and oil on federal land, in part to collect "royalties on behalf of the American Public" and partly to oversee safety. Given its conservative, pro-oil and pro-coal ethical framework, what did the MMS deliver to the American people? It delivered what one would logically expect. The MMS allowed private companies to take federal oil with little or no meaningful regulatory oversight, e.g., for safety. The conflicts of interest were overwhelming and MMS's ethical and regulatory laxity preceded and probably caused the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That oil spill and the extinction of the MMS in its wake is solid evidence that MMS's ethical and regulatory laxity was largely due to conflicts of interest that were acceptable to conservatives and their ideology and definition of what is ethical and what isn't. If those ethics were not ideologically acceptable to conservatives, then the unethical situation at MMS would never have degenerated to the breaking point it finally arrived at.

If the three key morals or values of objective politics as defined here, i.e., facts, logic and the public interest, are taken seriously, that sick MMS sort of ethical and incompetence situation could never have happened from within an objective politics intellectual framework. No matter how strenuously any ideologue or partisan denies it, the MMS story reflects the astonishing moral bankruptcy of the two-party system and its participants.

Criticism 9: Resort to an objective political ideology will not make disagreements go away. Nothing much will change. Arguing for a preferred policy choice and the underlying perceptions of reality (facts) and the common sense (logic) that ideology fosters are all matters of constitutionally protected free speech and human biology. Trying to suppress any of that free speech is both legally unconstitutional and biologically irrational.

Response: Objective ideology is not intended to make all disagreements go away or suppress any constitutionally protected free speech, regardless of how subjective personal opinions may be. Even with objective politics to reduce distortion of fact and logic, overwhelming agreement about facts, logic and policy choices will probably never happen. The biology of human cognition, i.e., its intuitive-subjective nature, insures that there will always be some level of disagreement. What objective politics will do is reduce disconnects between reality (real facts) and perceptions of reality (perceived facts) and the flaws that false fact beliefs generates.

Key reasons for proposing objective politics include (1) raising public awareness of the biology of human cognition, human biases and why intuitive perceptions of reality (facts) are surprisingly susceptible to (i) error or false fact beliefs and (ii) manipulation by special interests, and (2) challenging standard subjective political ideology or values as inferior to objective ideology or values of (i) fidelity to unspun fact and (ii) unbiased logic in service to (iii) an objectively defined public interest. If the a significant portion of the American public comes to accept objectivity in politics, there is every reason to believe that differences of opinion will appreciably narrow because the range of what passes for reality (fact) and logic (common sense) will narrow and so will differences in competing policy choices.

This proposal provides a point of view from which partisan arguments can be seen more objectively and, when possible, tested in an attempt to fairly assess and prove or disprove competing hypotheses or policy choices. Much of the basis for the bitter disputes between the ideologies of the left and right are unresolvable, significantly or mostly irrational and more harmful to the public interest than helpful. That must be logically correct if one believes that (1) ideology in politics exerts roughly the same effects on perceived reality and common sense as religious ideology has on religious reality and common sense, and (2) matters of faith, either religious or political, can never or only rarely be resolved by facts, logic and rational debate. The latter is a point that has been made by others, more than once, including in the context of political disagreement. The hope is that unbiased experimentation with up front definitions of key terms, e.g., the public interest, success and failure, could soften some of the intractability in the endless, subjective left vs. right ideological fights.

Criticism 10: Politics based on an objective ideology will not result in the creative progress that came from competing ideologies. Competing subjective ideologies coupled with normal human intuition drive progress and that is what made America great. Vigorous competition in an honest, transparent marketplace of ideas is a key driver of American greatness.

Response: An assertion that American politics is mostly based on competition in an honest, transparent marketplace of ideas* is false. Political ideas and disputes are argued based on spin and deceit, not on facts and merits that flow rationally from unspun reality.

* Defined objectively, the marketplace of political ideas has unspun fact and unbiased logic competing in support of policy choices. Fact checkers prove time and again that American two-party politics is based significantly, if not mostly, on spin or deceit. That accords with opinion by liberals and conservatives that the other side (1) is self-deluded or otherwise out of touch with reality, (2) has no common sense or logic, and (3) bases their politics on the wrong set of political morals or values.

Objectivity in politics cannot add to the existing distrust and contempt the two sides have for each other now. If nothing else, room for reasonable disagreement, which is astoundingly wide now, should decrease. “Reasonable” mainstream political disagreement includes, e.g., arguments that (i) climate change data and climate science itself is a hoax based on non-science and/or corrupt, self-interested scientists and (ii) climate science and its warnings about climate change is a rational basis for policy debate. Differences of opinion over climate change and many other issues cannot possibly get any farther apart.

One side has to be closer to the truth than the other. For some issues, e.g., universal background checks for gun purchases, it is possible that both sides can be more wrong than right. Given those drastic differences of opinion and their failure to shed more light than blow smoke, progress has probably come as much in spite of the two sides as because of them.

For those who disagree with that description of reality, consider where destroyed, bankrupt, poverty-stricken countries such as Japan and Germany came from since the end of World War 2 and what their governments have accomplished compared to the U.S. over the same time. If two-party U.S. politics and what it delivered was truly exceptional, then the American standard of living and its economic dominance would be far more exceptional than it is. At the same time, the two-party system started with massive advantages, including the U.S. constitution, world class innovation and higher and public education, natural resources, independent courts and world class infrastructure.

How well or badly something has been depends on the context. The two-party system will never hold their accomplishments up against a reasonable historical context like that. It makes both sides and their politics look bad and ineffective. If there were great insights and policies that the hot fire of competition between competing ideologies gave us from 1945 until now, it is hard to see the brilliance when compared to what other major industrialized countries starting with much less have been able to do for their people.

Success mediocrity and failure is in the mind of the beholder. The question is whether the mind is a subjective, intuitive partisan or an objective, rational partisan.

Criticism 11: This proposal pretends to be something else, but it is just an argument for the libertarian party and its ideology. Ayn Rand invented objectivism or objective politics in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Objectivism is the basis for libertarian political ideology that organizations like the Atlas Society, the Cato Institute and the Ludwig von Mises Institute base their libertarian politics on. Libertarians believe that their ideology is based on unbiased logic and reason based on “rational individualism” as the guiding principle. Logically, that means that libertarian perceptions of reality (facts) that are also presumably not distorted by their own ideology. This proposal is no different and offers nothing new.

Response: Whether what is proposed here is new or not, it is not libertarianism. No claim to novelty is being asserted because some or all of this proposal may not be new. Despite some similarity in (improper and/or misleading) labels, that perception of what is being proposed here is incorrect.

While libertarianism does claim to be rational or objective as a value, it is also based on the values of (i) firm to absolute belief in laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., complete separation of economy and state, and (ii) the overriding moral of personal liberty or rights, including essentially unrestrained free speech, regardless of impacts on the public interest, good, bad or indifferent. The kind of objectivism or objective politics is profoundly different from what is proposed here.

To be clear, objectivism or rational individualism, which are synonymous with modern libertarianism, is based on the key morals or principals of pursuit of happiness via individual achievement, individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism is not the same as an ideology based on the morals or principals of fidelity to unspun fact and unbiased logic in service to an objectively defined public interest. The two ideologies are about as far apart as the two sides in the endless left vs. right fights over climate change, abortion or tax policy. Any similarity is purely superficial and based on words such as objective and rational.

Libertarian ideology and the ideology proposed here are not even slightly similar in defining what it means to be objective or rational. One way to think about the difference is to view libertarianism as politics shaped mostly by individualist and capitalist values or morals, while the politics proposed here is shaped by fact, logic and public interest concerns with concepts of individualism, personal freedom and capitalism being included among competing interests or political theories.

Libertarian ideology limits policy choices to one that generally conform to concepts of individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism. The objective politics proposed here limits policy choices to one that generally conform to what objectively appear to best serve the public interest. For example, after a fair, unbiased analysis of available data, the objective brand of politics proposed here might conclude that, e.g., single-payer or socialized medicine best serves the public interest. To a libertarian, socialized medicine is not laissez-faire capitalism and therefore the idea will be rejected out of hand by most or all libertarians. That would be true even if unspun data heavily suggested that single-payer would be much less complicated and expensive and far more cost-effective than the current or even America’s pre-ACA health care system. In short, despite claims of objectivity, libertarian politics is more subjective than objective. It is not close to what is proposed here because its ideological constraints on policy choice are at least as restrictive as liberal or conservative ideological constraints, if not more so.

Libertarian ideology like other subjective ideologies distorts reality or facts and therefore the logic that flows therefrom. One staunch libertarian with the self-awareness to see this and the moral courage to admit it, put it this way: “My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true.” The objectivism here is based on understanding that reality could not care less about anyone’s ideology or perceptions of reality. Reality just is what it is, so basing politics on that is more rational than basing it on subjective ideals or principles. That is why the focus proposed here is on the public interest which reflects what the American people want their country to be, while special interests have to compete within that intellectual framework.

Criticism 12: Politicians are not going to sacrifice or even endanger their careers to serve some version of the public interest that no one has ever heard of. Politicians are just as self-interested as any other special interest or person. If re-election is at stake, politicians can and will often or always vote the wrong way, with little or no regard to impacts on the public interest. The whole idea is crackpot and too narrow in scope to merit consideration.

Response: That logic is flawed. True, objective politics alone will not change the self-interested nature of politicians. Maybe except for a few people like Mother Theresa, self-interest is just a part of human nature that is part of all humans to some degree or another. It isn’t always a bad thing, either. Nonetheless, objectivism in politics should make it somewhat more difficult to hide and justify at least egregious instances of political self-interest over the public interest. For example, when a politician votes based on self-interest, it is easier to get away with that when the underlying political issue has been spun, distorted and sold to voters as the best option, when objective assessments say otherwise. People’s political beliefs are often poorly connected to objective facts. In that milieu, it is easier to sell a self-interested vote as one that best serves the voter’s interests.

Criticism 13: Arguing that liberals, conservatives and other ideological believers are alike constitutes a false equivalence argument that liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist and other mainstream ideologies are the same in terms of how their biases affect fact and logic. Those ideologies do not have the same effects on facts and logic. Those ideologies do not have the same effects, good, bad or ambiguous, on facts, logic or their impacts on the public interest.

Response: Nothing in the proposal to move abandon subjective for objective politics states or is intended to imply that ideological biases have the same impacts of fact and logic. Some opinion and evidence suggests that conservatives and/or conservative ideology tends to resist objective fact and science more than liberal ideology. That may be objectively true. Of course, conservatives vehemently reject that. Conservatives argue that liberals are self-deluded, out of touch with facts and lack common sense or logic.

Sufficient subjective evidence to definitively resolve at least the relative degree of differences between ideologies or groups may or may not exist. This proposal acknowledges the bitter disagreement and the possibility that conservatives as a group, not necessarily as individuals, may very well be more, maybe much more, unspun fact- and unbiased logic-challenged than liberals. Assessing this partisan dispute in detail is beyond the scope of this proposal.

That dispute aside, there is no compelling reason to believe that all ideologies have to undermine fact and logic to the same extent for different people or groups. However, there is good reason to believe that all subjective ideologies undermine fact and logic to at least some extent. Social science is clear that we use reason or logic “to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment”. Besides an attempt to convince others, political reasoning is usually applied to justify personal political belief or judgment, not to critically assess its factual truth or logic.

Criticism 14: On balance, subjectivity is more cost-effective and responsive to the will of the people and therefore subjective ideology best serves the public interest.

Response: This argument is objectively wrong. Research data shows that the will of the American people in affecting policy is irrelevant: The “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact” on public policy.

False perceptions of reality (false fact beliefs) and the logic applied thereto cannot, except by accident, logically generate policies that are more cost-effective than policies based on unspun fact and unbiased logic. If the true nature of a political issue, i.e., the facts, are understood, then policies that address the issue can be rationally tailored to keep costs down while remaining acceptably effective.

An analogy is helpful. If your car’s air conditioner is blowing warm air but the mechanic replaces the condenser when the evaporator is bad, then the solution is ineffective until the evaporator is fixed or replaced, i.e., until the mechanic knows the what the problem is, solutions will be hit or miss with most or all of the expense being wasted. Failure to understand the true reality (facts) of a political issue, e.g., public health impacts of legal gun ownership and use, due to subjective ideological opposition tends to (1) generate needlessly ineffective policies and/or (2) delay or completely prevent a rational response when making a response is objectively rational based on available data.

This proposal is not an argument that objective politics will be perfect or that mistakes will not happen. The argument is that in the long run and on balance, objective politics based on the ideology (morals or values) of (i) fidelity to unspun fact, and (ii) application of unbiased logic to the facts in service to (iii) an objectively defined public interest, will be among other things more cost-effective and responsive to the will of the American people. There is no compelling rational argument that requires changing that conclusion, especially when American public opinion is irrelevant to two-party politics.

Criticism 15: The two parties and their publicly stated ideologies control policy choices and they both sincerely work to best serve the public interest as they see it. Explicitly or implicitly arguing otherwise is an outrageous, inexcusable insult to the people who have worked long, hard and sincerely in service to the public interest to make America into what it is.

Response: Nothing in this proposal to begin to replace subjective-intuitive politics with objective-rational politics is intended to impugn the sincerity of the efforts that millions of honestly sincere Americans who have invested effort and/or resource in whatever their own ideologies have led them to support. Honest participants see themselves as the champion of the American people and serving the very best in American ideals. This proposal is based on the belief that, most participating “average Americans” are sincere and mostly altruistic in their service or participation. Arguing for objective politics may be uncomfortable for many average Americans, but that is not intended to denigrate their efforts or question their motives in wanting to serve the public interest as they see it.

By contrast with participation by “average Americans”, this proposal is does question the sincerity and dominant motives of both major parties and most or all of their high level politicians and active hard core partisans/pundits and the major financial backers of the two-party system. Partisans include all of the partisan media/infotainment/misinformation industry. Most participants in the participant or elite group are arguably far less interested in service to the public interest than their interest in serving their own narrow, self-interests, e.g., re-election for politicians or ideological dominance and policy for ideologues. The evidence shows that the elite group ignores the will of the American people: The “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact” on public policy. For the elites, money, power and self-interest talks, while the will of the people, the public interest and ideology or morals other than service to special interests walks.

Criticism 16: Objective ideology based on the alleged “morals” of fidelity to unspun fact and unbiased logic to serve the public interest amounts to governing without any morals at all. Morals cannot come from something as abstract as an “objective ideology”. Proof of that is the fact that using fact and logic as the basis to serve an allegedly objectively defined “public interest” could lead to a liberal, centrist, conservative, libertarian, socialist, capitalist or other policy choice. It could even lead to policy choices that fits none of those ideologies or even more than one. That is no belief in anything and that is not just unacceptable, it is irrational and evil.

Response: Based on data showing that policies that what most average Americans want are not what they get (except by coincidence), demands by special interest money arguably constitutes the single most powerful “moral” or “value” that underlies far more policy choices than any other ideological source: “. . . legalized bribery has become part of the culture. [Members of Congress] rarely legislate; they basically follow the money. . . . They're spending more and more time dialing for dollars. . . . It's all about winning, it’s not about governing anymore.”

It is true that objective politics can lead to a policy choice that is liberal, conservative or something else. That isn’t a basis for criticism – it reflects the power and intellectual freedom that true objectivity has in politics. Objective politics will align with any ideology that just happens to want the same or roughly the same policy choice. Those alliances will likely change from issue to issue. If liberal, centrist and conservative ideologies constitute the three points of view, objective politics is a fourth point of view that can align with one or more of the other three. If there are more points of view, e.g., those three plus libertarian, socialist, laissez-faire capitalism and Christian, then objective politics is an eighth political point of view that can align with any or none of the other seven. That is nothing remotely like politics from any other major American political intellectual framework, group or ideology.

Criticism 17: Ideology such as liberalism or conservatism helps to elucidate reality, not obscure it. Objectivity will fail to see all possible alternatives based on the facts. Humans and their creativity are significantly driven by incentives and a strong faith in an ideology incentivizes believers to find the facts and use that to formulate the best political policies that conform to their ideology, while best serving the public interest.

Response: As discussed above, the data, including political policy choices, contradict this criticism in regard to both seeking reality or unspun facts and applying logic. Ideology does in fact tend to mask reality and distort logic. The evidence is clear that people’s beliefs are often “poorly connected to objective facts” and a strong faith in a subjective ideology is a significant driver of those disconnects from reality: “Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true.”

As far as facing reality goes, the mind set of the typical ideologue and maybe even average non-ideologue is to ignore or reject facts that undermine their ideological belief or values: “. . . we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm” our judgments or beliefs. Unspun facts are can be irrelevant or worse: People faced with unspun facts, e.g., about the health value of vaccinating their kids sometimes “. . . fight back against the new information. [They] try and martial other kinds of information that would counter the new information coming in.” That can happen because information that contradicts belief is damaging to self-esteem and defense of self-esteem can then trumps facts.  

Criticism 18: Our situation cannot be better than it is, especially in view of how hard it is to govern with three separate branches of federal government in the face of bitterly antagonistic competing ideologies, diverse, often opposing state agendas and special interests with money quietly acting in the background. Advocacy of objectivity in politics is a futile waste of time.

Response: There are good reasons to believe that America’s situation could be better than it is. It is true that governing, at least at the federal level is difficult and politics is complex. Despite the difficulty and complexity, there is no rational or objective basis to believe that America could not have done much better than it has. There is no rational basis on which to reject objectivity in American politics. Other countries have done comparably well despite constraints that are more severe than those applicable to America.

Compared to some industrialized countries, American progress since the end of World War 2 until now has been insufficient or too slow. By the end of that war, other major industrialized or large countries were destroyed, bankrupt, governed by insane or murderous leaders like Stalin or Mao, and/or constrained by cultures that were grounded more in past centuries or millennia than in the 20^th century. Viewed in that context, American progress arguably has been mediocre or even sub-par relative to the starting place of other countries at the end of World War 2. Based on well-being, individual wealth or other measures, the U.S. is well off, but not overwhelmingly exceptional, e.g., 5^th in overall human development, 17^th in public education, 17^th in overall happiness, and 37^th in health care (but 1^st in health care cost).

Advocacy of objectivity in politics is the most promising way out of America’s stagnant, corrupt, self-absorbed, ossified two-party political situation. The two-party system is offering nothing new. It has no response to the continued, accelerating shift from human labor farther up and down the economic food chain. Liberal blithering about training for STEM jobs is as absurd as conservative drivel about mindless tax cuts to grow the economy despite relentless economic forces that keep driving economic efficiency at the expense of jobs and the American standard of living. America’s two-party system and neither liberal nor conservative ideology has any real answer to that. The two parties are a morally bankrupt, ideologically blinded dinosaur hopelessly mired in its own navel gazing and pointless bickering over unresolvable ideological left vs. right arguments. Subjective politics is in far over its head and incapable of even recognizing its own plight. Trying defend that subjective, status quo cesspit doesn’t make much sense from an objective point of view.

This point cannot be overstated: Subjective ideological political disputes are not much different than subjective ideological religious disputes. To the extent that any dispute involves sacred or infallible beliefs or political (or religious) principles, morals or values, those things cannot be rationally debated. Matters of faith are just that - matters of faith. Debates of religious belief, e.g., creationism, vs. science, e.g., evolution, are not rational because the religious side is based on faith with fact and logic twisted to conform to that infallible belief. The same as rigid subjective beliefs in socialism vs. laissez-faire capitalism (separation of economy and state), which may be an even more irrational framework than science vs. religion disputes. In those kinds of political fights, because both sides argue over beliefs that are almost completely subjective. Those disputes are essentially unresolvable. Fact and logic usually have little or no impact because both are usually bitterly disputed. When an ideologue changes their mind in those fights, it is a very rare miracle.

Criticism 19: Who is going to define the public interest? By what authority? A one definition fits all approach will necessarily limit the thinking and creativity that comes from competition between different ideologies. An objective view sees ideology as defining the basic structure of society and will therefore place more emphasis on society at the expense of individual freedom, which will necessarily suffer. That will necessarily lead to far more government and spending than is needed. Not only will most people reject any single public interest definition, there is no evidence that such a thing can even work.

Response: Arriving at a definition of the public interest will be contentious. Believers in all ideologies argue that what they want and their ideologies best serve the public interest. Given that the authority behind this proposal is just as great as any other. Supporters can argue that the core values of objective politics* are better than the core values of any subjective ideology. Even with an accepted description of service to the public interest, differences of opinion among objectivists will not fully resolve. Despite differences in perceptions of reality, an objectivist focus on fact, logic and the public interest will (1) lead to smaller differences in fact perceptions and (2) be much less psychologically threatening to personal values that are based on fact, logic and the public interest than on subjective liberal or conservative values, which are easily threatened by anything outside what is deemed ideologically acceptable in the believer’s mind. Policy choices that fall outside ideologically acceptable bounds are usually and thus rejected out of hand without a second thought of the merits.

* The three core values of objective politics as defined here are fidelity to (i) unspun facts and (ii) unbiased logic in service to (iii) the public interest defined objectively. A potential fourth core value would be commitment to political practicality, i.e., doing what can politically be done, e.g., supporting or compromising with allies of any ideological group, to move policy choices closer to an objective ideal. If there is going to be any chance of getting anything done in the current political climate, political pragmatism is necessary.

As described before, the public interest definition can include fair regard for defending individual freedom and fiscal restraint. Regard for fiscal restraint would limit the size, scope and cost of government to what is affordable and best serves the public interest. An objective conception of how to serve the public interest necessarily balances competing interests. The point of an objective public interest definition or description is not to unreasonably ignore or weight competing interests. Instead it is intended to (1) shift the power and focus of governance from special interests to the public interest without ignoring major concerns such as personal freedom, fiscal sustainability and (2) rely on unspun fact and unbiased logic to give a fair and neutral assessment of what special interests want based on their public interest merits instead of being based on subjective ideological values or morals. That is a fundamentally different, neutral way of seeing and assessing competing policy choices.

For example, if the definition of the public interest includes due consideration for national defense, environmental protection and personal freedoms, liberal and conservative ideologues will read into those things the exactly same things they see now. In that regard, ideologue believers in any subjective ideology are lost causes for the most part. By contrast, objectivism provides a basis in fact and logic against which their other values are tested for impacts on the public interest. Instead of believing that liberal or conservative proposals are the only choice, objectivists would be more open to neutral assessment of any serious policy choice - that should reduce motivated reasoning or confirmation bias and the distortion of fact and logic that it causes.  

Switching from subjective to objective politics would enhance creativity, not reduce it. Less ideology should enhance creativity because ideological constraints on what is ideologically subjectively acceptable and what isn’t would be reduced or. Objectivists would operate from an intellectual framework (point of view) that is ideologically open to solutions that are conservative, liberal, capitalist, socialist or a combination of labels that subjective ideology would apply to various options. Instead of calling policy choices liberal or conservative, objectivism would be pragmatic and simply look to competing policy choices for real world and political practicality and cost-effectiveness in serving the public interest at lowest detriment to all affected interests. That mind set affords much far more freedom for creativity than, e.g., liberal or conservative ideologues who are generally limited to seeing or seriously considering only policy choices that fits within their ideological limits.

Results from the few real world political experiments that have been tried show that politics based more on objectivity than subjectivity can be highly effective in terms of simplicity, cost and effectiveness. That is objective evidence that successful politics can be based on fact and logic instead of standard liberal, centrist or conservative ideological belief or values. Critical analysis of expert political judgment shows not only that ideological biases are real, they tend to make policy choices less effective. By contrast, some analytical models routinely outperform the very best human experts by a wide margin. Those models make average human experts look shockingly inept, which is probably why the CIA relies to some extent on modeling to predict future trends.

Criticism 20: If humans are subjective, that presumably includes being spiritual or religious, it is obvious that politics has be based on the high principles, ideals and morals that underlie political and religious ideology. Asking people to forsake those principles or morals is asking people to be something they are not. Objective people cannot deny their own biases and intuitive biology.

Response: Humans are spiritual or religious and they have been that way for at least tens of thousands of years. In a way, ideological politics is a religion with political and/or religious ideological values, morals or principles acting as sacred and/or infallible ideology or values. The objectivism proposed here does rely on an ideology consisting of three or maybe four high ideals or beliefs, i.e., (i) unspun fact, (ii) unbiased logic, (iii) the public interest and (iv) maybe recognition of human fallibility and thus a willingness to compromise or at least objectively test competing options when feasible.

This does ask people to accept these three or four ideals or values, but not necessarily to be something they are not. For people, e.g., people 16-30 years old, with no rigidly fixed political ideology, they can adopt this intellectual framework for their politics instead of something else such as liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism or socialism. In that case, those people would just be what they choose to be. For a centrists, independents and other discontented people, what is proposed here may resonate and these principles can integrate into their belief systems and how they see politics. That does not ask anyone to be anything they are unwilling to be. For hard core ideologues, this objectivism proposal is dead on arrival, so they are definitely not going to be something they are not. Ideologues’ political principles or values are set in stone and no proposal, rational or not, is going to change that.

People willing to accept objective politics will, by definition of objectivity, need to accept their own humanity and the biases and values that are built into human cognition. Because all humans are subject to unconscious bias and self-delusion does not mean that that aspect of human character has to dominate. People can and do learn to recognize this aspect of their own character. Objectivity dominates some important human endeavors and people who operate in those spheres either learn to deal with their own tendencies to err in fact and logic or they more or less wash out. That is true for the “hard sciences” and much of finance and economics. Physicists who ignore objective data because they dislike its implication tend to not do well in physics.

That does not mean those activities are perfect. Failures and mistakes happen all the time, but those are generally due to reasonable circumstances, e.g., a lack of complete understanding of a topic such as cancer progression or the nature of dark energy. And, reliance on objectivity does not preclude acting on intuition or subjectivity. Some contributions or major advances come from intuitive leaps even when the underlying theory is not understood or wrong. Sometimes, what appears to be “common sense” or rational, e.g., the rational man theory in economics, turns out to be incorrect, but intuition and the action it provokes can lead to advances. The objective politics proposed here acknowledges (i) the complexity of politics and (ii) that subjectivity cannot and probably should not be entirely replaced.

What is proposed here is a “reasonable” shift in emphasis from intuition and subjectivity to better ground politics in more the objective values fact and logic than what subjective ideologies rely on. The goal proposed here is not perfect politics. The goal is politics that is more rational, more cost-effective and responsive, while being more honest and transparent. A core belief behind this proposal is the perception that two-party politics is based mostly on spin (lies, deceit, unconscious biases, opaque narrow self-interests, etc.) in service to narrow interests. It is not based enough on truth in service to the public interest.

Criticism 21: People’s political common sense is tied to their political ideology or values, perceptions of reality (facts) and logic (common sense). There is no way to change that.

Response: There are ways to change what passes for values, fact and logic or common sense. Although not common, it does happen all the time. It boils down to changing people’s political ideology, perceptions of reality (facts), political values and common sense (logic). That is precisely what every political ideology tries to do every single day. All people and groups try to convince all others that they are right: “we reason [apply logic or common sense] to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our [political] judgment. ” When one of those people or groups succeeds in changing someone’s mind, that constitutes a change in political ideology, values, common sense and probably perceptions of reality. People’s ideology and values can and do change over, e.g., some Americans are slowly drifting from the center to the extremes of the left and right, which implies that ideology, perceptions of facts common sense and/or values are also drifting.

Evidence shows that what generally passes for common sense among liberals and conservatives differ a great deal. That is why the two sides tend to see the other as irrational or incoherent to the point of talking nonsense. Liberal political ideology has been described as placing value on people or government helping others while conservative ideology values hard work and self-discipline. Conflicting perceptions of political reality are often expressed as metaphor. That reflects the different “common sense” that unconsciously flows from different subjective ideologies, principles or values. Conservative ideology tends to see government as a parent, which “has a great deal to do with conservative common sense in general, as well as with what conservatism is as a political and moral philosophy.”

Because of that, what is generally perceived as common sense to one ideological or moral point of view is often or usually seen as wrong or nonsense to another. In other words, common sense (logic) is subjective. Just as with common sense religious beliefs, political common sense is a powerful source of false fact belief and a basis for endless, unresolvable disputes between competing ideologies and the usually incompatible common sense that drives the misunderstandings. That is largely why liberals and conservatives generally talk past each other. Hard core ideologues on opposing sides rarely change opposition minds based on their version of facts, logic and common sense. That makes sense given the strength of their different subjective faiths.

Criticism 22: This objective politics proposal is just an attack on religion, which is constitutionally protected. It is constitutionally invalid.

Response: This proposal is not an attack on or rejection of religious values for personal spiritual needs. Spirituality undeniably is a part of innate human nature and is important for most people. Spirituality or religion in some form has been part of human behavior and faith for at least tens of thousands of years, if not much longer. Any per se rejection of religion in American society is pointless, counterproductive and not what objective politics is intended to do. Freedom of religion remains untouched because, as argued before, defense of personal freedom and governing according to the constitution and the law, all of which protects freedom of religion, are among the factors on which service to the public interest depends.

That said, this proposal does question the role of all subjective values, including religious values, in government to the extent it conflicts with the morals or values of fidelity to unspun fact and unbiased logic in service to an objectively defined public interest. Those are the ideological bases or values for the brand of objective politics proposed here. To the extent there are conflicts between objectivism as defined here and subjective religious faith in politics, this proposal is one of many competing constitutionally protected intellectual frameworks or ideologies for how to see the world and do politics. In that regard, objectivism has just as much moral and legal authority as any religious ideology that is competing for political dominance. There is nothing even close to unconstitutional about objective politics.

Fact and logic is absent in politics

IVN (Independent Voter Network) has published a Dissident Politics article that describes the unacceptably low impact of unspun fact and unbiased logic in mainstream two-party politics. Irrefutable fact and logic evidence shows that two-party political rhetoric and thinking is overwhelmingly dominated by distorted or denied facts, misinformation and flawed logic.

The article is here: http://ivn.us/2015/08/05/opinion-facts-logic-awol-two-party-politics/.

State's rights proposal

IVN (Independent Voter Network) has published a Dissident Politics article that proposes experiments in states' rights as a means to try to reduce partisan animosity and distrust, thereby possibly reducing federal government gridlock. The article is here: http://ivn.us/2015/07/29/end-washington-gridlock-time-experiment-states-rights/.

Governing for the public interest

The usually conservative-biased, reality-challenged Wall Street Journal editorial page occasionally publishes an opinion piece that makes more sense than not. That tends to happen when the author sets rigid conservative ideology aside at least somewhat and looks at reality mostly for what it is and then applies relatively unbiased logic. It can also happen when reality and ideology mostly overlap or align.

Unfortunately, reality usually does not align with either liberal or conservative ideology and thus ideologues typically unconsciously distort reality and logic. To fix the disconnect 'problem', ideologues typically distort reality to better fit the ideology. There is nothing new or unusual about that. It is just human nature or how cognition works, or fails to work, in the human species. Sometimes when ideology does aligns with reality, the result is clarity and sound logic.

Clarity - When ideology and reality aligned

A July 2, 2015 opinion by Allysia Finley, a WSJ editorial writer, approvingly described an effort in California to foster the presence and power of moderate democrats in the state legislature. The basis of Ms. Finley's approval is a coalition, Govern for California, that is focused on, among other things, counterbalancing California's overly powerful public employee labor unions. In this case, Ms. Finley sees reality fairly accurately because her rigid anti-union conservative ideology aligns well with reality for this issue in California.

Acknowledging governance has social impact

What is surprising about Ms. Finley's opinion is her concluding remarks: “The California legislature controls nearly $120 billion in state tax revenues, the education of nine million students, and health care for 12 million low-income citizens. It’s hard to find an investment or charity with as much of a social impact.”

An approving reference to the “social impact” of governing is very rare for a conservative. Of course, this is in the context of a state government and an anti-union effort. Conservatives tend to accept state governments more than the federal government. The typical conservative attitude is anti-government even at the state level. The faith (ideology) is that government in general is bad and/or necessarily wasteful compared to what the private sector usually delivers. That faith blinds anti-government ideologues to the reality that government, even at the federal level, is necessary, but not sufficient, for a healthy economy, an increasing standard of living and a secure homeland. What is also necessary is acknowledgment of the role governments at all levels need to play to afford the best service to the public interest.[1]

An argument for smarter, right-size government & governance

This is not an argument that government, taxes or regulations need to generally increase at the state or federal levels. Every situation needs to be assessed on its own merits. A key point of Dissident Politics is an argument for non-ideological,[1] rational politics based on a better alignment between reality and perceptions of reality, e.g., via a reduced use of spin in politics. Ideology (and self-interest) is a major factor in the massive disconnects between unspun reality and perceived reality. Ideology often badly distorts both reality and logic.

Politics based on distortion cannot logically be the most economically efficient or the most effective at serving the public interest. If there is a flaw in that logic, what is it?

Footnote:
1. In this context, non-ideological politics means not conservative, not liberal and not centrist. It means pragmatic politics focused on service to the public interest (as defined before) in part by shrewdly but properly balancing special interest power, e.g., public unions in California, against legitimate public interest needs. Logically speaking, what is pragmatic could be a policy or law that would be considered conservative, liberal, centrist or something else, so long as it appears to best serve the public interest. That is the ideology of non-ideological pragmatism.

Is the debate over guns pointless?

The matter of guns, gun violence and the endless gun regulation debate flares up after each mass murder. The body count this time is nine innocents. This debate is now routine. A massacre occurs, both sides reiterate their arguments, the press moves on, emotions cool and nothing changes very much. Meanwhile, about 31,000 Americans die each year from gun violence (11,000 homicides and 21,000 suicides) and another 71,000 are injured. Like it or not, empty debate followed by little or no change has been society's response over the last decade or two.[1]

Given that, it is fair to argue that the current debate over the slaughter in Charleston, SC is mostly pointless. To the extent any societal response occurs, changes are at the state level and new state laws tend to expands guns rights more than restrict. Despite the NRA and gun advocates belief to the contrary, federal law under President Obama has expanded gun rights. Meaningful new regulation, e.g., universal background checks to try to prevent insane people from getting guns, is nowhere on the horizon. That appears to be a consequence of deep public distrust in the federal government coupled with a polarized, corrupt congress.

Since congress is hopelessly gridlocked on this and most other issues, it is unrealistic to expect reasonable new federal legislation that might have some impact, assuming there is anything that can be affected for the better. With hundreds of millions of guns in American society, criminals, haters and most insane people can usually get guns if they want them. Maybe it is too late to do anything in service to the public interest. If that is true, calls for any additional gun regulation are pointless.

Gun advocates, the NRA and gun manufacturers use every mass killing incident as a rationale to reduce gun restrictions so that good guys with guns can shoot bad guys (with guns) who are doing bad things. That logic will probably never be dislodged, especially by the endless arguments the two sides ineffectively throw at each other. On this issue, as most others in politics, the two sides are simply talking past each other with little or no policy impacts.

Where's the data?

There is a discouraging aspect of this issue. Federal funds for research on the public health impact of gun violence cannot be obtained in practice. Researchers fear career damage from venturing into the political morass. Research is at a standstill and has been halted since 1996 due mostly to conservative opposition. The American public cannot truly know or assess the overall impact of guns on public health. This situation reflects the profoundly corrupt nature of politics[2] under the two-party system. Special interests including the NRA and gun manufacturers have effectively blocked federal funding for gun violence research since 1996, presumably because they fear the data may show guns and gun use to carry costs that are far higher than the benefits. Some of limited data that is available suggests that at least in domestic settings guns are a harmful influence: "Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."[3]

Under the circumstances, the current debate over gun violence is pointless on three grounds: First, both sides in the gun debate point to the same data and draw opposite conclusions about what policy choices make sense - neither side budges. Second, even if most Americans were to prefer an arguably reasonable new law, e.g., universal background checks, special interest money effectively blocks that. Finally, since rigorous, unbiased research is not available to the American public and policy makers, the debate is based on assumptions about public health impacts that are simply not known.

Footnotes:
1. Dissident Politics (DP) is not arguing here for any additional new gun law or restriction. DP is arguing (1) that the current debate is empty and pointless and (2) for an honest debate that is based on transparent research, unspun facts and unbiased logic to fairly assess the good and bad public health impacts of guns in American society. It is possible that even without the corrupting influence of gun money on the two-party system, most Americans would want to keep the laws more or less the same despite the knowledge that the costs, about 31 thousand deaths and about 71 thousand injuries plus associated medical and law enforcement costs, are acceptable. That could be true even if unbiased research shows the costs are high and the benefits amount to very few or no lives saved, very little or no crime prevented and much personal satisfaction or feelings of security with gun ownership. That is a possible outcome. Americans more or less now accept about 88,000 alcohol-related deaths and about 480,000 cigarette-related deaths each year, so logically, Americans might be willing to accept a high-cost, low-benefit gun situation.
2. Dissident Politics defines political corruption to include serving special interest demands at the expense of the public interest. That definition accords with U.S. laws that were passed over 100 years ago. Corruption of governments by special interest money is a millennia-old phenomenon. Under the current two-party system, special interest money has sufficiently more influence than service to the public interest that the system is fundamentally corrupt, in DP opinion. Research supports the opinion that special interest money in politics has far more influence on policy than what the American people want or the public interest would reasonably require: “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.”
3. Calls to restart federal funding on this issue are likely to fail. That too, reflects the domination of the public interest by special interest money. Given the power of the NRA and gun manufacturers, it is very unlikely that federally funded research can be restarted any time soon. Maybe the best that can be done is to identify public interest funding for rigorous, unbiased research on the true costs (murders, injuries, suicides, etc.) and benefits (personal security, psychological well-being, bad guys shot dead or incapacitated, etc.) of gun ownership and use in American society. Only that kind of analysis will reveal the scope of the public health impacts, good and bad, of gun violence. If the costs are shown to be very high relative to the benefits, which is probably the case, that just might foster an informed, but commensurate, societal response.