Thread by @gauravsabnis

"You say you're no longer a libertarian, but also say you're not a leftist, so aren't you by definition a centrist?"

I don't know. I've stopped trying to define myself by labels, and instead define myself by my ideals and principles. So this 🧵 is my politics. You decide labels.

I believe in inalienable human rights first and foremost, that I can derive from evolution and common sense. Rights to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to make a living, freedom of movement in public, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, and of course freedom to live.

Each of these should be unrestricted for an individual as long as they don't infringe on one of the rights of others. Your freedom of religion for example can't interfere with the rights of others, the way right wingers do.

There are two more rights that are derived from these

Right to Privacy. It doesn't really exist in the mammal kingdom. But homo sapiens have a privacy instinct, no matter where you go.

Right to Property. This doesn't necessarily mean land or just land. You have a right to own stuff that is yours. Stealing is bad. Also an instinct.

Right to Public Goods & nature. Something different animals drinking together at a watering hole also respect. Clean water is a right, clean air is a right, and access to commonly owned nature is a right as a result.

The state we set up has only one job. Protecting these rights for everyone who is not infringing on the rights of others. Which means also taking reasonable punitive and deterrent steps against those who willfully infringe on other's rights.

Which means police, courts, defensive army, and regulations to protect water and air and nature.

Which means a basic welfare state set up to ensure everyone gets to eat, live in a home for privacy, get healthcare to keep exercising their right to live, and education.

Right to education also comes from evolution. All mammals explicitly teach their young things to help them survive. Birds too. So by the very act of being birthed a mammal, you have a right to education. In a modern society, it means right to education till at least adulthood.

What about "economic rights" some may ask. I believe everything above covers it. You have a right to make a living. As long as you're not infringing on the rights of others, you do you. But selling oil stops being just your business when it pollutes our air and water.

I have zero interest or regard for nationalism or patriotism as anything that goes beyond common decency and empathy and kinship with those geographically closest to you. Countries are just fluid constructs. Convenient constructs that evolved from mammal packs over 100K years.

What this translates in practical terms is that I want a world with open borders, universal Bill of rights enforced everywhere, regulations to protect the environment and prevent artificial scarcity being imposed on a public good, welfare state with food, healthcare, education,

some basic housing if needed, and if possible from the economic surpluses, a universal basic income.

If the US cut its military budget to just 1999 levels, each family of 4 could get a UBI of about $6,000 dollars. That's just by cutting the Pentagon budget to 1999 levels.

So yeah, that in a nutshell is my politics.

As a result, I loathe fascism in any form, because its basic idea, basic definition, is putting collective fluid constructs like nation and religion ahead of individual human rights. Leading inevitably to bigotry based policies.

Which ends up in a system where the state stops being the one to protect everyone's rights and instead becomes a tool of majoritarianism.

This can happen in the name of leftism like in Russia and China. It can happen in the name of ethnofascism like in India and US.

I do not believe in a deity. God for me is the sun, gravity, evolution, nature. So when someone says "God has a plan", I'm like, yeah, that's what Charles Darwin was saying. That "plan" is evolution. Natural selection over long periods of time. That's all god is.

As a result, I do not believe religion should play any role in the state. Nor should religious entities get tax exemptions by default.

If a religious entity is set up for philanthropic purposes that help reduce the work of the welfare state in specific ways, ok. Not otherwise.

For example take the Sikhs and their seva based organizations. Happy to give them all tax exemptions, because literally all they do is feed people and help people. No one is pressing brochures about the guru granth sahib in your palms and the teachings of vaheguru at a langar.

Sikhs don't do seva as an inducement for you to join their religion. They do seva because their religion tells them to help others. Who could have a problem with that kind of religious activity? 🤷🏽‍♂️

In the eyes of the state, it is and should be just a philanthropic organization.

Yes to both.

I recognize historic imbalances in each society and the resulting monopolies or oligopolies over resources including the fundamental right to education. In India it's about caste. In the US it's about race. Outcomes speak volumes.

https://twitter.com/IndianSmog/status/1517043921511415808?t=lPCgpjx4ODRoLPxWKXVtLg&s=19

Gender equality follows from nature, as does gender fluidity. Nothing in nature treats cis males as the superior ones by default or the "normal" ones. Lots of species change sexual gender in a life times. Some have pretty females. Some have pretty males. Most are polyamorous.

Whenever progressive taxation and affirmative action have been tried in sincerity by progressives, it has resulted in reduced inequality in the outcomes. All over the world, the post -WWII history is one of a series of progressive triumphs and conservative blunders.

My grandmother once said that in her childhood, she would never have imagined that an unmarried atheist Dalit woman would become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and a black man would become the President of the United States.

Even smallest progressive measures have worked.

Sometimes I feel a Spock-like exasperation about the fact that conservatism or libertarianism is still a thing. The data are overwhelmingly in favor of the progressives. The problem with USSR or Cuba or China or North Korea isn't "socialism". It is authoritarianism.

Western and Northern Europe and large swathes of North America and South America and East Asia and Australia have showed that progressive or socialist policies, when enacted in democratic republics, generally make societies less unequal and also more prosperous.

Putin in Ukraine is basically demonstrating every single day that the problem with USSR was more Russian ethnofascism than it was socialism. Ironic since Stalin was from Georgia! But just like brahminism found Modi, Russian ethnofascism found Stalin.

If you have read this far and agree with most of my politics, let me draw your attention to something historic happening in Chile.

They are writing a brand new constitution. Whose Article 1 itself dwarfs all constitutions ever written combined.

https://twitter.com/carlosfischer/status/1513914023963676684?t=nuLc-F6CAIHTxZDDECrOLQ&s=19

Chile is this remote thin country known for being remote and thin.

But it has been an ersatz field experiment of various political ideologies! Feudalism, socialism, capitalist dictatorship, western European style democratic socialism, they've tried it all since WWII.

And now...

Now after a largely nonviolent bout of youth activism and large scale protests and a couple of historic democratic votes, while the rest of the world focused on the pandemic, Chile decided to rewrite their constitution. With the progressives in charge.

https://twitter.com/triofrancos/status/1516891100476149760?t=nuLc-F6CAIHTxZDDECrOLQ&s=19

I don't mean to suggest Chile escaped the pandemic. They suffered like everyone else. But even while they dealt with the pandemic, they kept working parallely on this widespread activism driven movement to address inequalities and flaws in their system.

And are doing a reboot.

Look at the level of sophistication of the debates they are having. While the rest of the world decides how to make public gestures and statements at #COP27, Chile is addressing these issues head on in their new constitution.

An example for us all.

reuters.com/world/americas…

While America prepares for its supreme court's inevitable overturning of a woman's right to choose what to do with her body, Chile is giving inalienable rights to humanity's link with nature.