Key Changes I Would Like To See In Right-Wing Politics

I shy away from calling myself "right-wing" (the title of this blog notwithstanding) for a few reasons.  Namely, there are big areas of disagreement with me and most of the other right-wingers.  I'm pretty much anti-war, would like to see defense spending slashed, question the idea maintaining a standing military in the first place, want to see the government get out of marriage, and favor open immigration.

I'm certainly not left-wing though, partly because my opposition to war, the military, and strict immigration springs from different reasons than most leftists.  There's a certain crowd amongst the left that says they are anti-war but what they really hate is the American military, they really hate when a Western, relatively free country exerts itself militarily.  They have no end of excuses for dictators and terrorists the world round waging war.  These are people like Noam Chomsky or the people on Democratic Underground or Daily Kos.  I'm against war because it is costly, devastates economies, and destroys life and spreads misery.

Although in America we often think of war as a tool used to fight dictatorships and evil, more often than not war is the final stage of a simmering conflict that rose to the heights it did because of bad economic policy, specifically bad trade policy.  Pick any war, and you'll find trade barriers, embargoes, tariffs, etc. somewhere preceding it, allowing normal nation-against-nation bad attitudes to turn into outright war.  Nobody likes the French but we don't fight wars with them because they trade with us too much for war to be worth it.  Ditto China.  We *might* go to war with North Korea or Iran because, essentially, we don't trade with them enough (or at all).  A lot of people think war is about misunderstanding or hatred.  It ain't.  Those things can exist in abundance and war can still be a virtual impossibility because it would conflict with too many general and special interests.  No, war happens because, as the great economist Frederic Bastiat said, "when goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

And yet the "anti-war" crows for "fair trade," higher barriers to trade with China, etc.  The only trade embargoes they seem to want dropped are those against communist or Islamofascist nations.  For the record, I say we should open the borders and let the trade fly between us and Cuba, N. Korea, Iran, etc.  China is a textbook example of how nations that--according to common sense--ought to hate each other and being warring with each other, are instead cooperating with each other in the form of markets.

I'm against gay marriage bans because I'm just against the government being involved in marriage at all.  I don't want to be forced to recognize a marriage I disagree with, nor should the government prohibit two people from calling themselves "married" or whatever else they want to call themselves.

I'm in favor of open immigration, but not because I want to create a pathway to citizenship, or grow the welfare rolls to create a dependent class of Democratic voters, or sign up more people to join the labor unions.  I'm in favor of open immigration because there's no good reason to be against it.  Why shouldn't I have the right to hire somebody just because they live across some border?