Why I am a Trade Unionist.

My political views are somewhat eclectic, because I have tried to adapt and adopt political ideas that fit objective reality (yes there is such a thing).

First my history:

I was raised by my parents as a moderate Democrat, but by the time of my first presidential election in 1980, I went with Anderson over Carter and Reagan. After suffering under the authoritarianism of the US Army, for a time I was an Anarchist and then a Trotskyite Socialist. I couldn’t stomach Bolshevistic Communism, with which most of the people in the Socialist movement seemed to be in love. I saw the error of my ways and beliefs, however, when I began to consider the dismal results of Communism wherever it was tried. The bottom line on this political philosophy is the unspoken motto: "let us do evil that good may result". More could be said about the evils of Communism, but for now I recommend a book called "The Black Book of Communism". (And as of this writing there is new evidence coming out that Mao Tse-Dong is responsible not for 50,000,000 dead Chinese, but closer to 70,000,000 dead Chinese.) All told the various forms of Socialism (Communism predominately) are responsible for the more than 100 million dead human beings in the 20th Century alone.

As God brought me back from my ten year moral backslide, I began to look at the world more realistically. For a time I have leaned toward the Republican party (In fact, Bill Clinton's allowing the giving of our nations military secrets to Communist China pushed me firmly into that party for awhile.), and the founder of the party, Abraham Lincoln, has some very good things to say about Labor. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive Republican and was the first president to use the military to enforce bargaining between the owners and labor. (The other thing to note about A. Lincoln and T. Roosevelt is the advocacy for people of color--it must be remembered that many of the founders of the Republican party were abolitionists--in the case of T. Roosevelt, he was the first American President to invite a Black man to the White House as a guest instead of as a servant.)

So I am somewhat a Progressive Republican like Teddy Roosevelt, but I am still conservative on social issues where they pertain to God's Law. One of the things that put me at odds with my conservative friends is that though I, like them, believe that capitalism in its purest sense is the superior economic system, I believe, unlike some of them, that in a Fallen World (as taught in the Bible) there is a need for checks and balances in the free market system. As a Christian, I can see that the answer is in a good Christian ethic which will bring proper justice and compassion into the bare brutalism of the marketplace. Unfortunately, many who claim to be a Christian suddenly lose their faith when it comes to money. The trade union concept is the imperfect solution to provide this check and balance. We can see an historical example in the case of the leading industrialists of the United States in the time of the Industrial Revolution (especially during the nineteenth century)--some of these industrialists claimed to be Christians and yet had no problem with paying their workers so low a wage that they could barely survive. In some sense, Unionism in America is God's Judgement on these Christians who thought so little of their workers.

One final note about the Republican Party:
Even just before the time of Teddy Roosevelt and since then, one trend in politics in this party that has really served to destroy the character of the Republican Party is the take-over by mainstream members who are bought out by Corporations--some have labled these as Neo-Conservatives. I differ from these people in morals and in economic theory--they are for huge monolithic monopolistic mega-corporations, whereas I am for small business and labor unions and I hold that it is more important to hold the moral high ground and they will do anything to get elected. (To be fair, the Democratic Party is bought and paid for by Big Business also and has shown a recent trend toward screwing Labor.)

I am an advocate for a reformation of our political system that would enfranchise more political parties than the current two. If I had a political party, it would be a cross between the Libertarians, Constitutionalists, and the Progressive-Conservative Labor Party, and some elements of the Republican Party.

I may sometimes register as a Republican, to advance certain policies, but I have no love for that party. I would say that I am a Labor Partyist, but I have no use for the Communists. The perfect system is a true free-market economic system regulated by trade unions. Today we do not actually have a true free-market system--we have competing monopolies.