This is the
last post for 2014, and I thought it might be a good time to re-introduce the
Spherical Model. I’ve done this from time to time, since the blog title is
obscure when you don’t know what it’s about. This is just an intro. For more
full information, go to the SphericalModel.com website. And there’s also a
best-of-the-blog collection, Part I, Part II, and Part III. But for now, here’s
a first step.
_________________________
Back in
2004, during our homeschooling decade, I was looking for a way to explain
political ideas. And I began to ask questions, like: Is there a better way of
looking at political ideas than right or left?
Because
there is nothing innately conservative about the right or innately liberal
about the left. In fact, the directional terms come from the seating
arrangement of European parliaments, in which conservatives favored retaining
the monarchy while liberals were in favor of people’s power.
So the
typical line model we use to describe political ideas as right and left is just
a seating arrangement. Yet we’ve come to think of this line as a spectrum.
Political
conversations tend to describe the far ends as extreme, assuming there’s some
virtue in being balanced in the middle. And we refer to our nation as center
right—just a little more conservative than exactly center.
But what are
the extremes? Do we assume communism or socialism at the extreme left, and
fascism at the extreme right?
That can’t
be right, because communism and fascism are both totalitarian statist
tyrannies, just slightly different flavors. Nazi means “national socialist
party” and the communist Soviet Union’s name was Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics.
So if Nazism
and communism aren’t diametric opposites, then what are the logical extremes?
How about
total government control, or tyranny, versus total lack of government control,
or anarchy?
That’s
better. Then freedom is that perfect balance in the middle.
But wait;
there’s a problem with this model too: It’s common in history for people
suffering in anarchy to turn for relief to total government control—anything
for security. But in this model, as a people move to the left, they have to pass
through that balanced freedom section. You’d think that it would be very common
for someone to stop and say, “Hey, this freedom is good. Let’s stop going
leftward and stay here.” Yet that pretty much never happens. But going directly
from chaos to state control is historically
common.
Plus, notice
that there’s not that much difference between the tyranny of the state and the
tyranny of anarchy. Total government control means the state has all the
power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere
citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant.
Anarchy, on
the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than
the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t
give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you
have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you
have to yield power to them.
In other
words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest
and best armed—just like a tyrannical government.
So maybe
government tyranny and anarchic tyranny are pretty close to the same thing. When I show this, I use a ribbon, labeled at the ends, and fold it in half, so it looks something like this:
Tyranny
and freedom are really the opposite extremes.
Not bad. But
it puts all those different kinds of tyrannies in the same location, and maybe
there are differences.
A simple line
doesn’t give us the dimensions we need.
So, how about if we use three
dimensions—a sphere? If we draw a line at the equator, we can separate freedom
(northern hemisphere) from tyranny (southern hemisphere). And then we can draw
a longitudinal dividing line, with more local interests in the western
hemisphere and larger interests—from state to nation, to international, in the
eastern hemisphere.
I call this the Spherical Model.
I call this the Spherical Model.
Political Sphere |
Down in the
south, you can see that one side of tyranny is the chaos of anarchy, and the
other side is the totalitarian control of government tyranny. It’s easy to get
from one to the other—which is what much of world history has shown us. You can
have communism, socialism, and Nazism as separate patches in their
quartersphere, based on how much control they exert on their people (southern
direction), or how far they plan to expand (toward the eastward extreme of
world domination).
Up north in
the freedom zone, location is mostly a matter of whose interest. Free people
don’t yield power to a governing authority beyond the appropriate interest.
Families make their own decisions about the care, upbringing, and education of
their children. Communities on up to cities and counties decide on local law
enforcement and protection needs. States (or provinces) deal with their
particular infrastructure and laws. Only very limited powers are granted to a
nation—as are enumerated in the US Constitution. And that sovereignty would
never yield to an international power, but would cooperate with other free
sovereignties concerning international issues.
If we identify ideologies according to level of control exerted onto free
people, and also their level of interest, we can identify location on the
sphere. And that will tell us how close we are to thriving in the northern freedom
zone.
We can use the spherical model again for economic ideas: the north will be the prosperity of free enterprise, and the south will be the poverty of controlled economy. Those differences have direct relationships with political ideologies, so we can overlay the economic sphere right over the political sphere and see how things interrelate.
Economic Sphere |
We can use the spherical model again for economic ideas: the north will be the prosperity of free enterprise, and the south will be the poverty of controlled economy. Those differences have direct relationships with political ideologies, so we can overlay the economic sphere right over the political sphere and see how things interrelate.
Social Sphere |
And what about social ideologies? Again, we can use the same sphere; the north will be civilization, and the south will be savagery.
The
political, economic, and social spheres all have their own set of principles
for reaching true north. We can take on the economic and social spheres another
day, but I’ve started with the political sphere because it’s the easiest to see
as the alternative to the right/left model.
So, if we
want to be north on the political sphere, there are some questions that let us
know whether we’re heading in the right direction:
- Is the policy being debated
something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the
right to delegate to his/her government? For example, a person has the right to protect
his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his
neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job
for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power
of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a
person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain
production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor
was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his
neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That
would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore the person cannot delegate
the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him—that would
place him too far south on the sphere.
- Does the policy infringe in any
way on God-given natural rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of
Rights? Does
the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a
particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does
the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy
constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person
of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime
for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to
claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the
Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then
government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people—which
is too far south on the sphere.
- Is the idea being debated a
proper role of government: some aspect of protection (including national
defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and
interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency to
protect the value of wealth, the judiciary that guarantees the protective
laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea
is outside the Constitution—and is too far south on the sphere.
- Is the perspective appropriately
local? It is
important that any issue be handled at the most local level possible. Parents should decide the means,
methods, and curriculum for educating their children, for example. An
issue that affects a state should be handled at the state level, not the
national level. National decisions should not be ceded to some
international body. An inappropriate interest level is too far south on
the sphere.
Next time
someone suggests you are (or an idea is) far-right extreme, check to see
whether their position is more accurately some level of southern statist
tyranny. Missing the possibility of the entire northern hemisphere of freedom is
common. Most of world history shows an oscillation between statist tyranny and
anarchic tyranny, or from one statist tyranny to another. Change the discussion
by changing the terms and then dealing with principles. Then move north to
freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment