Sometimes it's worthwhile to clarify where you stand and detail your positions. It doesn't change anything by itself, but it may help to make you a more effective activist by giving you a greater appreciation of your own values and how they can be applied in practice. And by extension, it may help other people see where they stand, and possibly consider issues that had not yet occurred to them. So this is my attempt to elaborate in the greatest possible detail what I'm about.
I. Motto: Liberty, Equality, Opportunity (LEO)
A value is a thing you consider worthwhile in itself, and is not a consequence of some deeper agenda. In my case, values boil down to three things that pretty much cover everything I see as good and desirable - Liberty, Equality, Opportunity. All three are necessary to truly serve humanity, because pursuit of any one or two without the remainder leads to destructive perversions. The French motto of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" misses the mark a bit, since the third part is kind of just a restatement of the second. I think the real third part has to be Opportunity - the facilitation of disruptive creative genius.
Liberty in the absence of Equality and Opportunity is nothing more than chaos - oppression via lack of services and protections rather than any specific policy. It is the Law of the Jungle, and not something anyone wants to see who has any direct experience of it. Unfortunately, a lot of very stupid libertarians who've lived their whole lives under the protection of American law believe that the ideal circumstance would be one where Liberty is the only value. People that deluded would die pretty quickly if they got their wish, but so would a lot of innocent people, so we can't allow it. This is the caustic society where order, reason, and morality are considered tyrannical while the brutality of an unexamined life is deemed pure.
Liberty and Equality without Opportunity is stagnation - a place where people are more or less comfortable, but those who have a disruptive idea are punished for it rather than having a chance to prove it could be beneficial. This might not sound so bad compared to some alternatives, but people in this condition are totally defenseless when circumstances suddenly change and are ill-equipped to adapt. They would soon become subordinate to more dynamic societies, and both their liberty and equality would be conditioned upon the amoral interests of those outside influences. In this society, stability, conformity, and lack of passion are virtues.
Liberty and Opportunity without Equality is a brutally competitive, cruel environment where predatory cunning and bureaucratic politics cultivate an arrogant and unaccountable aristocracy who view themselves as being inherently superior to everyone else. They would feel no obligation to protect weaker people from the predations of other aristocrats, and rationalize that power earned through practical merit need not be restrained by morality. Any form of merit that doesn't accumulate political power would be viewed with suspicion and contempt. This is the warrior society where the ruthless are rewarded and the truly constructive have to compete for the favor of the privileged.
Equality in the absence of Liberty or Opportunity is just the equality of universal slavery - the condition of ancient peoples living under absolute God-Kings. They avoid the rage of injustice only by accepting a mutual existence of suffering and despair, and meanwhile their rulers live short, paranoid lives desperately clinging to power in an impenetrable web of conspiracies and dynastic intrigues. The ordinary never know comfort, but can ignore fear in the absolute certainty that their lives will be miserable. The mighty never know discomfort, but also never know security.
Equality and Opportunity without Liberty is just the short, temporary rule of an enlightened King soon to be deposed, or change his mind in a fit of madness, or else become an object of veneration in a multi-generational cargo cult who will never grasp what was behind their relative prosperity. It is an oasis of precocious civilization in a millennia-long desert of misery and oppression characterizing both his antecedents and descendents, and the people who live in it are just puppets acting out a play of freedom they will never actually possess or understand, thinking that their prosperity flowed from one man rather than from themselves.
Opportunity without Liberty or Equality is just extremism - the will of an individual or group who is not currently in power to disrupt the system in order to seize it and place themselves at its zenith. It is a measure not of the individual's access to prosperity, but of the vulnerability of institutions to being overthrown by the ruthless. In the absence of Liberty and Equality, opportunity is merely the chance to turn the tables - to become the oppressor, the problem, the destroyer. It cannot create in the absence of the other two values.
At the nexus of Liberty, Equality, and Opportunity is a sweet spot where competing interests and pressures are balanced, allowing both individuals and institutions to make decisions in the relative absence of deterministic forces. This allows people to be who they are rather than being suffocated in a web of objectification and necessity.
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II. Liberty
1. Legalize all drugs, and regulate the more dangerous, hallucinogenic, and addictive ones for public safety and economic balance.
2. Minimum necessary force in police altercations. This is considered a matter of common sense, but is not currently a matter of law - it should be.
3. Problem-solving and public safety approach to criminal justice rather than punitive.
4. Travel restrictions of any kind except upon indictment on criminal charges are unconstitutional. No-fly lists and travel embargoes are void absent an explicit suspension of habeas corpus and/or a declaration of war.
5. Except for rights concerned with voting in US elections, the Bill of Rights applies to all people, regardless of nationality or location, whom the United States government interacts with.
6. The US government will not directly or indirectly support the violation of rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by other governments upon anyone, anywhere.
7. Capital punishment is illegal and immoral.
8. Forced labor is illegal and immoral.
9. Prison officials are both civilly and criminally liable for violence occurring on their watch by or against inmates under their control.
10. Collective labor bargaining is a right.
11. No private entity, business, or organization may attempt to thwart, discourage, or subvert the reasonable freedom of expression or exercise of voting rights by any members, employees, dependents, or the general public.
12. Prostitution should be legal, regulated, and unionized. Not one cent of taxpayer money should be spent criminally punishing "vices."
13. No mandatory drug test shall apply to any employment where it is not plainly in the interest of public safety, nor shall any attempt be made to coerce "voluntary" testing.
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III. Equality
1. Free education through college is a right.
2. Strict teacher-student ratios ensuring equal quality of education.
3. Childcare is a right.
4. Lifetime free healthcare - including preventive care, contraception, abortion, dental, vision, nutrition, prescriptions, emergency visits, surgeries, checkups, and exercise planning - is a right.
5. Paid time off to vote is a right.
6. Paid family leave is a right.
7. Paid sick leave is a right.
8. Profit-sharing is a right.
9. Redress of grievances in court is a right, and abdication thereof cannot be demanded as a condition of employment or provision of services, nor can it be resigned prior to the formal initiation of a dispute.
10. Parties to a legal dispute or criminal proceeding are entitled to equal legal representation: Equal in personnel, budget, and information sources.
11. Taxes and monetary fines are to be equal in relative financial impact, not in absolute dollar amount or in percentage. A $500 speeding ticket is a dire blow to a struggling family, while to a rich one it is chump change, and thus applying the same fine for speeding to both violators would be to make the former subject to speeding laws while the latter can ignore them with impunity. A 10% tax on a family earning $20k per year is felt in terms of meals and electricity, while a 30% tax on a family earning $200k wouldn't be felt at all. Taxes and fines must be equal in practical human impact, not in numbers. Progressive taxation and progressive fines for infractions are non-negotiable.
12. Employers may not discriminate on any basis other than factors logically involved in the practical ability to do a job with reasonable accommodation.
13. Any animal species that can pass a standard, broadly accepted test of self-awareness (e.g., the mirror test) is recognized as having inherent rights and may not be hunted, slaughtered, raised in captivity without adequate accommodations, or invasively experimented upon except where individuals pose an imminent threat to public safety (involved in attacks on humans, or spreading infectious diseases).
14. Religious establishments must pay taxes.
15. Rights only apply to individuals, not to collective institutions they comprise such as corporations.
16. Extend the RICO Act to apply to any corporation that deliberately subverts the public interest on behalf of profit.
17. Equal access to all medical services, including abortion. If necessary, build new abortion clinics nationwide with public money and protect them 24/7 with troops.
18. The 40-hour work week and overtime laws may not be subverted by any means.
19. A minimum wage tied to the local cost of living.
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III. Opportunity
1. Those who benefit from opportunity have an obligation to magnify and return that opportunity to their fellow countrymen by paying reasonable taxes without trying to evade them.
2. Employment is a right, and provision of employment opportunities is a public responsibility. If incentives fail to motivate the private sector to hire at adequate compensation levels, then the public sector must expand to take up the slack.
3. Science must be taught in all US schools, rigorously and competently, and any teacher or administrator who attempts to obstruct or corrupt the curriculum on behalf of a religious or corporate agenda should at very least be reassigned to duties with less responsibility and lower pay.
4. The government must vigorously enforce anti-trust, banking, and insider trading laws to protect consumers, employees, and investors from predatory business practices that stifle innovation and obstruct financial mobility.
5. Some modest level of lifelong education should be supported, including job training, cultural enrichment, wilderness areas, and actually public community colleges (i.e., free of charge).
6. Above a generous level, inheritance taxes should be 100% and adequate measures taken to prevent their collection being circumvented by cheap tactics (e.g., transferring wealth just before death). Dynasties do not serve the American people, and stifle social mobility.
7. Trade policy must be reformed to benefit both the United States and its trading partners. The people of China do not benefit from being slaves in post-apocalyptic factory dormitories anymore than Americans benefit from wasting their dwindling wages buying the crap imported from those deathly Victorian work houses. Wherever American dollars go, the financial movement must be structured to improve the lives and conditions of average people, and that will benefit everyone both domestically and abroad. If the Chinese government won't cooperate, fuck 'em.
8. Massive re-prioritization of public spending away from the military and toward investment in civilian innovation via agencies like ARPA-E, and individual programs such as NASA's CCDev that hold the promise of radically transforming both an agency and an entire industry. The radical modernization of America's communications, transportation, manufacturing, and energy infrastructures would power a whole new century of unexplored possibilities and open up new vistas to discovery and new ideas.
9. Flood America's ghettoes with educational, artistic, technical, and economic opportunities until the social problems that plague them are simply overwhelmed. Once areas become gentrified, do the same in the new ghettoes that pop up. Chase the problem everywhere it goes with ferocity and relentlessness until poverty really is a choice rather than something imposed on people due to lack of options.
10. Maximally broad-based educational curriculum nationwide. All the things that have been cut due to budget cuts over decades, reinstitute with a vengeance - music, art, civics, debate, clubs, etc. - and add even more things so kids can discover their talents and passions.
11. Equalize the budgets of the Pentagon and the Peace Corps, preferably at some point between their current respective levels. Task both with helping countries (including ours, of course) become more energy efficient, economically robust, environmentally sustainable, democratic, and secure.
12. Invest massively in both human and robotic exploration, characterization, development, and colonization of space. Intimately tie these missions into educational curriculum so that kids follow them from the moment they begin school all the way through college, so they have an intuitive sense of the possibilities out there and the relatively small scale (and thus, precariousness) of where humanity is today.
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I'm sure I could come up with more, but that's fine for now.