On politics

I've been making a lot of posts about politics recently, and I think I should offer some caveats. Mostly, I should say that if pressed I don't actually believe any of the political arguments I make. I don't believe in rights (I have no idea what the basis for rights would be), if I were to design a community it would be unspeakably intrusive and repressive by our standards, and I think democracy is a terrible idea because people are stupid. Yet I get upset by stolen elections and violations of 'human rights' and government intrusion and repression. Basically, I don't believe that there are any right or wrong answers to political questions (or any other questions, for that matter), just answers that are right or wrong in my community. Politically, I happen to be a part of the liberal community. I (grudgingly) attribute this to my upbringing in a moderately liberal household in an uber-conservative city rather than my superior reasoning skills. I like John Rawls not because his ideas are actually derived from pure reason but because my community values reason and so I like that he attempts such a reason-based justification (though of course that is impossible) and because his conclusions happen to largely coincide with the values that I was taught. When I am honest with myself (and I usually am to an unhealthy degree) I acknowledge that my political positions are based on emotion rather than reason, and are in fact at odds with my beliefs. However, I like politics and enjoy a good argument, even if I know the core premises of the entire debate are faulty (If it weren't for assumptions for the sake of argument I'd have no assumptions at all... and no beliefs). Therefore, I'm going to keep ranting about politics, but feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt. Thankfully I didn't have this blog during the election...