The True Political Spectrum

In America, we're taught that there is a political that has the democrats on one side and the republicans on the other.  Democrats are said to be on the left, and republicans on the right.  Democrats may be referred to as left-wingers, and republicans as right-wingers.  People who try to mix both beliefs are called centrists (meaning in the center).

In reality, there is not much different between these two "sides."  When you boil down all their beliefs to the bone, they both revolve around the idea that some person or group of people have the right and authority to rule over you and to claim ownership of your life and property.  We call this belief authoritarianism.

The opposite of this belief in authoritarianism is voluntaryism.  It is the belief that all people own themselves and that no other person can have a higher or better claim on the ownership of their body or property than the individual can.  It is the belief that all the ways people interact should be voluntary.  Neither force, nor coercion, nor threats should be used to make someone do what they don't want to, or to stop them from doing what they want to do, as long as they are not harming anyone else or violating another person's rights.

All governments are authoritarian.  But some are more authoritarian than others.  North Korea is one of the most authoritarian governments.  They control much of their citizens lives, such as the books that can be read, the movies they can watch, the news they are told, where they can work.

The American Constitutional government is a less authoritarian government.  The Constitution was written to clearly define what government was allowed to do and to put limits on how much the government could interfere in the lives of it's citizens.  Unfortunately, the government has claimed more and more power for itself over the years and is becoming more authoritarian every year.  America does not have the limited government that the writers of the Constitution intended, and the actual government is much closer to the oppressively authoritarian government of North Korea than most Americans would like to admit.

America claims to be the "land of the free," but it is more accurate to say that it is the "land of the people who are more free than some people in the world and less free than others."  The only truly free society is one follows the principles of voluntaryism.