If popular media alone were an uninformed person's only source of information regarding the Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza, they would be confused at best.

On the one hand, they have heard that Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, which probably means they're not the best people in the world. On the other hand, they see Israeli tanks, fighter jets and other components of their well-funded high-tech military going up against what appears to be a rag-tag band of devoted freedom fighters, including boys armed with nothing but stones which kinda seems unfair. What is one to believe?

Here are 5 facts that will clarify the situation and help put it into perspective:

1) Who is Hamas - Hamas, the elected leaders of the Palestinian people, is an organization that has the single-minded goal of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamic republic. This is proudly and clearly stated in their official founding charter. Hamas does not, has never wanted and never will want peace with Israel. You can read Hamas' charter here. Per its very own charter, there is no possible long-term peace treaty that Hamas will ever accept with Israel, regardless of the specifics. This has nothing at all to do with anything Israel has done or can do in the future, rather it has only to do with the fact that Israel exists.

Hamas trains Palestinian citizens to hate Jews, trains children to use machine guns, glorifies suicide bombings that kill Israeli civilians, publicly executes any Palestinian who openly expresses a desire for peace with Israel, and generally promotes a culture of suicide, death and murder.


You can see a CBS News report on some their childrens' educational programs here. It is essential to understand that Hamas is not just some normal government that is innocently looking out for the well being of its citizens; on the contrary, it welcomes its own civilian casualties to further its goals. Hamas does not value its children -if it did, it would not use them as human shields, store munitions in schools and launch military operations from hospitals. While Hamas deliberately targets Israeli children and other innocent civilians, it knows that Israel tries hard to avoid such targets. By using children as human shields, Hamas tries to use Israel's own sense of humanity against them.

By any moral standard, Israel is clearly acting in self-defense when it destroys a store of rockets whose only purpose is to fire upon Israeli towns. When Israel does so they call ahead, drops leaflets and do whatever they can to warn civilians of an impending attack; however when these efforts fail and civilians are killed, Hamas considers it a strategic gain due to the resulting public outcry and international condemnation against Israel. Clearly the moral blame should fall on Hamas for the death of the children they use as shields.

2) Israel Wants Long Term Peace - Unlike Hamas, Israel desperately wants a lasting peace. If Israel were out to conquer its neighbors it could easily take over Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and others, just as easily as the U.S. could conquer Mexico and Canada. The reason they don't is the same reason we don't: They are a modern Democracy that just wants to be left alone to enjoy life.

3) Israeli Withdrawal - Under the delusion that Palestinians also wanted peace, in 2005, Israel fully withdrew from Gaza, forcibly removing every single Jew from the area and completely surrendering the territory to the Palestinians in hopes that it would end Hamas' rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

4) Increased Attacks - In response to Israel's massive gesture of peace (but in complete accordance with Hamas' founding charter), after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas increased its rocket attacks on Israel. Since the Israeli withdrawal, Hamas has shot over 3,000 unprovoked rockets randomly into Israeli towns.

5) The Accusation of Disproportionate Force - Many critics (and even media outlets) complain about 'disproportionate force', which is an utterly asinine concept. The disproportion they refer to is that despite the thousands of rockets that Hamas has fired upon Israel, there have been only 4 Israeli deaths vs. 400 Palestinian deaths as a result of the Israeli response so far. This certainly does seem disproportionate -but does that make it wrong? Is Israel somehow obligated to limit its response to firing the same number of rockets at random into Gaza's civilian centers? Would that proportionality somehow be more civilized? Is Israel supposed to kill only one Palestinian for each Israeli that was killed and stop there? Obviously this would be an absurd line of reasoning. Israel's goal is not 'tit-for-tat', rather it is to wipe out Hamas and eliminate the threat. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was not morally obligated to limit its response to the bombing of an equal sized Japanese harbor. Its justified response was all out war without regard to proportionality. In response to 9/11, when the U.S. led allied forces decimated the Taliban in Afghanistan, it did so with overwhelmingly disproportionate force in order to eliminate the dangerous regime, and this was a justified strategy. The next time you hear or read about Israel's disproportionate response remember that it is not a valid point.

With these points in mind, you can watch the news with an informed perspective and see through the spin.

-YPR

Many Americans who don’t know much about Middle Eastern history or politics fall victim to two errors in reasoning regarding the legitimacy of Israel; I refer to these as the Displacement Myth and the Double Standard. They both can be cleared up if people are willing to take a fair-minded look at history, and go beyond the simplistic story of the Jews coming to Israel from Europe after the Holocaust, and with the support of the U.S., displacing the native Palestinians. What follow are historical facts that are accepted by mainstream historians -the problem is that many people don't care enough to learn the history, and instead accept the simplistic and fictional story perpetuated by either the ignorant, or those with ulterior motives. If people will learn these historical facts it will clear up a lot of the confusion about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Pre-Ottoman Period
It is historically accepted that Jews have had a long and intimate history with Israel. There is evidence of Jewish presence in Israel from the very birth of the religion over 3400 years ago. The term Jew originates from the ancient Jewish kingdom of Judah (later sometimes referred to as Judea) that was ruled by King David and King Solomon on this land. Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE at which time the Babylonians destroyed the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem. After the Babylonians fell, Judah changed hands several times, falling under the rule of the Persians, the Ptolemaics, the Seleucids, the Hasmoneans and the Romans. Throughout this period, regardless of whose rule it fell under, Jews continually inhabited Israel and considered it to be their biblical homeland with Jerusalem as its capital.

In 66 AD there was a Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire (The Jewish-Roman Wars) wherein upon their victory, the Jews formally re-established the nation of Israel. The Romans (under the emperor Titus) recaptured Israel from the Jews in 70 AD and destroyed Jerusalem and the holy Jewish temple for the second time.

There was another revolt by the Jews against the Romans in 135 AD in an attempt to re-establish the nation of Israel, but it failed. The Romans were fed up with the persistent Jewish uprisings. Upon their victory, to punish the Jews for their latest rebellion, avoid future Jewish uprisings and to sever Jewish ties to the region, the Romans (under the emperor Hadrian) illegalized circumcision, forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem, renamed Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, renamed the greater province of Judea to Palaestina and, upon the site of the twice destroyed Jewish temple, built a new temple to worship Jupiter.

The Byzantine Period followed from 330–638, and then the Arab Caliphate Period from 638–1099.

In 1099 the Crusaders conquered the region and ceased using the name Palaestina, and instead called the region Outremer. During the Crusades, Jews in Israel and other places were murdered or sold into slavery. At the fall of the Crusades, Jews were expelled from England, and for the next 400 years, violently persecuted and expelled from other European nations including France, Austria, Portugal and Spain (the famous Inquisition). As Jews were expelled and persecuted at various times around the world, many of them returned to their biblical homeland of Israel, which was then under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

So far, this brief history demonstrates several key points:

• Despite the many empires that ruled over Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, the Jewish people were the only ones who repeatedly established and re-established Israel as its own independent nation; all the others who conquered it simply considered it to be a geographical territory under the umbrella of their larger empires.

• There never, in all of the region’s ancient history, existed a unique Palestinian people, culture, language, kingdom or government. Palestine was simply a name given to the region by the Romans in an attempt to punish the Jews and break their bond to the region by giving it a name other than Judea, which was a name that Jews obviously related to. Palestine, as a geographical region, is akin to when people from Los Angeles refer to their suburb of the San Fernando Valley. This is an important fact that should be fully understood. Culturally, today’s Palestinians consider themselves to be Arabs, as do the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and Iraqis. All of aforementioned nations are part of the same single Arab culture, history and ancestry that occupied the vast expanse of the Middle East for centuries. In strict Islamic terms, all Arabs are part of the same family, the same umma. This is beautifully articulated by PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein (1977): "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."

• Contrary to what many believe, Hitler’s atrocities were not the first motivators that drove Jews to Israel. Jews had endured centuries of bigotry and harsh oppression by Christian Europe and others, which motivated Jews to continually immigrate to their biblical homeland and maintain a constant presence there. As described in the next section, the modern Zionist movement began long before WW2.

The Ottoman Period
The Turkish Ottoman Empire existed for over 600 years prior to the formation of modern Israel. At the height of its power in the 16th and 17th centuries, Ottoman territory included the entire Middle East, parts of North Africa, and much of southeastern Europe. During this period, the area that is now Israel was little more than a barren wasteland. Jerusalem was a desolate outpost in-between nations, and the area surrounding it was sparsely populated and inhabited by Arabs, Bedouins and Jews. Jews still comprised the majority of inhabitants of the city of Jerusalem.

In the 1800’s, a group of Jews began a movement to try to re-establish their ancient nation of Israel (the modern Zionist movement) to, once and for all, escape the persecution they endured for centuries throughout the world and create a final safe-haven for the Jewish people.

The Turkish Ottomans were an extremely corrupt culture. Bribery (baksheesh) was rampant and everything was for sale for a price. The Zionists capitalized on this, and went about purchasing large tracts of desert and swampland from the Ottomans. Taking advantage of their religious fervor, the Turks sold this land to the early Zionists for often ridiculously inflated prices. The Turks were more than happy to accept the Zionists money for what was at the time largely useless, uninhabited land. The Jewish settlers drained the swamps, built the roads, farms and towns, and eventually established the new city of Tel Aviv in 1909.




It is important to once again stress that the Zionists paid for the opportunity to peacefully migrate to the largely empty, desolate deserts and swamplands, and began to build homes and farms there. At this time, there was little or no conflict with the local Arabs, on the contrary the Jews developed the empty land, employed many locals, and this prosperity attracted Arabs to populate the region from neighboring areas. Even though Jews were flowing into Palestine at this time, there was virtually no 'displacement of Arabs', since the area was still largely raw and uninhabited. Many Arabs moved in from the surrounding lands that are now Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, and as a result of the successful Jewish settlements, found work, built homes, made money and for the most part got along well with the Jews. At this point there was still no major Arab-Israeli problem yet.

The British Mandate
When the Ottomans were defeated by the British in WW1, the Zionist movement was already well established. The early Zionists were pioneers in farming and agriculture, and were literally terraforming the barren dessert into rich, inhabitable land.

Palestine at this time included the region across the Jordan River (Eastern Palestine was renamed Trans Jordan by the British). Trans Jordan made up more than 75% of the total area that was once Palestine. Britain's original idea was to separate Trans Jordan from the rest of Palestine, and in so doing, establishing the country of Jordan as an independent Arab nation leaving a smaller Palestine as the Jewish nation. In accordance with this plan, the British established and gave the kingdom of Jordan to King Abdullah of Arabia, who ultimately established an autonomous kingdom exclusively for Arabs where Jews were forbidden by law to settle. On the Jewish side, the Balfour Declaration was issued by the British on November 2, 1917. The letter stated the position that was agreed at a British Cabinet meeting on October 31, 1917, that the British government supported Zionist plans for a Jewish nation in the region of Palestine. Note that through the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish nation was agreed to diplomatically, not by force like most other countries' violent origins.

As more Jews flowed into the British mandate of Palestine (with Jewish immigration vastly accelerated by the refugees who survived WW2 seeking a safe haven) the problem of Jews vs. Arabs began to escalate. The problem was not one of displacement, for no one was kicking the Arabs out of their homes. On the contrary, the Zionist settlers were one of the primary causes for the Arabs of surrounding areas to immigrate to the newly thriving region. The problem was one where the Arab neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq) did not respect the rights of Jews within their laws and their culture, and commonly regarded Jews as second-class citizens. The growing Jewish presence and the increasing buzz about a potential re-establishment of an independent Jewish nation was totally abhorrent to their Arab neighbors. This was for purely anti-Semitic reasons. In addition to that, Israel’s burgeoning prosperity and modernization was making their impoverished Arab neighbors look bad.

From the Zionist perspective, after centuries of persecution throughout the world, they felt they had a right to peacefully migrate to Israel as a return to their ancient homeland. They were not kicking anybody out of their homes, on the contrary they were building new homes and cities where there were none, on land that they rightfully purchased or were otherwise granted, and they were employing Arabs and motivating more to move in. The problem was not of displacement, rather one of a bigoted Arab rejection of a Jewish presence, just as if a black family were moving into a white neighborhood in Mississippi of the 1950's. Many ignorant people around the world believe that Jews displaced Palestinians to take Israel. This is the Displacement Myth.

With the continued influx of Jewish settlers and the growing talk of a Jewish nation, tensions between Jews and Arabs were climaxing in the British mandate of Palestine. The British did not want to make enemies of their strategically important Arab allies who were nervous about the growing Jewish presence, so as a concession to them, the British restricted Jewish migration to Palestine down to a trickle. At one point prior to the end of WW2, they even turned back boats of Jews fleeing Hitler, sending many people to their deaths upon return to Germany. This upset the Jews to say the least, and Zionists rose up against the British on several occasions.

The Hand-off to the United Nations
After several violent Arab/Jewish/British confrontations, the British decided to turn over the problem to the United Nations. On May 15, 1947, the UN appointed a committee, the UNSCOP, composed of representatives from eleven states. To make the committee more neutral, none of the largest world powers were represented. They were debating between a one state solution wherein Jews and Arabs would live together in one nation, and a two state solution whereby Palestine would be divided, yet again, into two separate nations for Jews and Arabs respectively. This newly proposed Arab state would be in addition to Jordan and 21 other existing Arab nations around Palestine.

On August 31, after three months of hearings and general survey of the circumstances, UNSCOP released its official conclusions. A majority of nations recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states (the two state solution aka the Partition Plan). On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted strongly in favor of the Partition Plan. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.

The 33 countries that voted in favor of the partition, per UN resolution 181 were: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Belarus, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, South Africa, Ukraine, United States, USSR, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Keep in mind that the original Israeli land mass that Britain was originally going to grant to the Jews via the Balfour Declaration was much larger than the Israel defined on the UN Partition Plan, but the Jews were willing to take it. Under the Partition Plan, Gaza and the West bank would go to the Arabs, under the false belief that yet another nation of their own was what the local Arabs truly wanted. This was a false belief because these same Arabs already had Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc. and didn't really care about another arbitrarily defined nation. To this day, while there are 22 Muslim countries in the region, there is only 1 Jewish one on the planet. The Arabs control 99.9% of the Middle East lands, while Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the landmass - virtually a drop in the bucket - yet somehow the myth of tiny Israel displacing Arabs still persists.

The Nation of Israel Rises Again
After the United Nations vote, the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan, and upon the day that Israel declared its independence, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it. The Arab League Secretary, General Azzam Pasha declared jihad, a holy war against Israel. He famously said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades". The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini famously stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!"

During this war, the Arab leaders told their citizens to leave their homes to make way for the attacking Arab armies, and that they would be able to return soon after they destroyed the Jews. Arab history admits this shameful fact, but not loudly. This accounts for a massive amount of Arab refugees who ultimately became the Palestinian people of today.

Miraculously, the Israelis triumphed in their war of Independence. And they did so without military support from the United States, for the U.S. was not yet the strong ally of Israel that it is today. Israel received its weapons from Czechoslovakia and France, and was strongly outnumbered. In this and the many wars waged upon Israel by its Arab neighbors that followed, Israel took the Sinai from Egypt, and Gaza and the West Bank from the very same Arabs that rejected the UN Partition Plan.

Today’s Palestinians
Used as a diplomatic weapon against Israel, the Arab refugees that left their homes when Israel was attacked by its neighbors were never accepted and assimilated into the many countries of their Arab brethren. They were interned in Jordan and Syria, and as the recently dubbed “Palestinian people”, have become the tragic pawns of the Arab world in its PR war against Israel. They have been isolated, impoverished and filled with rage that is always channeled by their leaders towards Israel. When a Palestinian questions his own government and courageously expresses a desire for peace with Israel, they are literally hung in the streets.

Israel has repeatedly been willing to return lands towards the creation of a Palestinian nation, so long as that nation agrees to recognize Israel's right to exist. Israel always has been willing to accept Arabs as their peaceful neighbors, but the current struggle emerges from the fact that Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups refuse to recognize and accept Israel’s right to exist.

The Double Standard
This section is in response to those who question Israel’s right to exist –those who believe that Israel is an ‘illegal entity’ that should be dismantled and handed over to others.

Unlike the founding of many of the world’s fully accepted nations, Israel's founding was not a violent, murderous undertaking wherein Jewish conquerors came in on boats, killed the natives, took their gold and stuck a flag in the ground. While blood was undoubtedly spilled, the Israeli independence was relatively civilized by any reasonable standards: the Jews rightfully purchased land from the Turks and developed farms where there were deserts and swamps; the British peacefully agreed to the creation of the Jewish homeland in their own territory via the Balfour Declaration; the nations of the world deliberated at the United Nations and peacefully voted on a resolution between the Jews and the local Arabs; the UN agreed to grant the Arabs yet another nation of their own (Jordan) to co-exist peacefully alongside the new state of Israel.

Yet Israel’s formation and legitimacy is being challenged today by standards unlike any other nation on Earth, and this is simply unfair.

Below are certain historical facts that represent the Jewish ties to the land of Israel. Even though biblical history does not, in and of itself, give the Jews any legal claim to the land, it gives valuable perspective. The relevance of these ancient Jewish ties to the land of Israel is for the purpose of comparative analysis, so that Israel may be judged according to the same standards that the other nations of the world are judged:

1) The only independently governed nation that ever existed in the geographical region of Palestine was the Jewish nation of Israel. Ever since King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago, Jerusalem was the cradle of Jewish heritage and Jewish civilization. It is historical fact that Jews have maintained an unbroken presence there for thousands of years.

2) For thousands of years following the ancient Jewish nation of Israel, regardless of who conquered the territory, the Jewish people have maintained strong religious ties to Israel and have always considered it to be their homeland. When considering the Old Testament as a purely historical document, Jerusalem is mentioned over 800 times in the context of the 'promised Jewish homeland'. By comparison, the Koran does not mention Jerusalem even once.

3) Three times a day religious Jews specifically face Israel to pray, and have been doing so for thousands of years. By contrast, Muslims in prayer face their holy land of Mecca, and if they are in-between Mecca and Israel, turn their backs to Israel. Again, even though none of this in any way represents a legal claim, these historical facts are significant.

With these facts in mind, let us compare Israel to the founding of some other countries around the world: The English and Europeans that conquered, inhabited and established the United States had no prior claim to the land, no history there, no continuous populous there, no case for occupancy whatsoever. They simply took it. The Spanish and Portuguese that conquered, inhabited and established the various countries of South America had no prior claim to the land, no history there, no continuous populous there, no case for occupancy whatsoever. They simply took it via the sword and gun. Eastern Europe and Asian nations share similar histories. The history of most of today's independent, recognized, and respected countries, will reveal a violent conquest. None of them have the ancient ties, justifications and claims that the Jews have to Israel, yet their independence and existence is not continually called into question.

People critical of the Zionist movement have told me that it bothers them that Israel was formed by Jewish people who were “not originally from there" -and this is largely true. But the United States was formed by Europeans not from here. Canada was formed by French not from there. South America was formed by Spanish and Portuguese not from there. Furthermore, all of the above examples with the exception of Israel, were taken by force. Clearly there is a double-standard being applied, that specifically counts on people's ignorance of history to unfairly judge the Israeli right to exist. In the context of the rest of the world, the way Israel is judged is totally disproportionate. Not only did Israel have undeniable historical ties to the ancient Jewish homeland, but how their independence came about was quite benign when compared to other nations.

-YPR

This letter was written for my sister and niece who are both in their early 20's, and have each, on several occasions, expressed a reluctance to vote due to a lack of confidence in their own wisdom. The irony is that they are far more intelligent than their friends who don’t for a moment question their readiness to dictate how best to guide our nation. The following is intended as a primer for my young-adult family members and other voters who are looking for a way to cut through some of the confusion. -YPR

As you get older, you will develop a certain political profile. Most people’s politics are built subconsciously – that is to say, their politics is primarily based upon what ‘feels right’ without ever going through a methodical, analytical process of building a political ethic from the ground up. Most people don’t examine the rudimentary questions like ‘What is the proper function of government?’, and ‘What are the reasons for the historical triumphs and failures of various systems of government?’

Regardless of whether you end up being conservative or liberal, I want to encourage you to form your political ideologies consciously rather than by gut feeling, and base your votes on the principles that you consciously derive rather than on the personality and marketing of the candidates.

Most young voters (and a fair amount of older ones) in our modern American society base their votes on the personality of the candidates, i.e. which one inspires them, which one sounds more intelligent, which one they 'connect' with, etc. I call this the emotional approach to politics as opposed to the principled approach, and it is irrational, dangerous and increasingly prevalent.

The emotional approach to politics is very apparent in today’s public discourse. Rather than seeing, hearing and reading intelligent debate about the relevant competing principles like capitalism vs. socialism, protectionism vs. free trade, the merits vs. the consequences of a minimum wage, etc., the public is instead obsessed with emotional concepts such as likability, charisma, inspiration, and nebulous concepts such as ‘hope’, ‘change’, ‘patriotism’ and ‘the middle-class’.

Rather than being influenced by marketing techniques, and rather than focusing upon the caricatures put forth by our candidates with their carefully scripted and spun images, instead, a simple analysis of a candidate’s record should take place in order to predict as accurately as possible what he or she will do in office. The principled approach to politics does not require you to hear a single lofty stump speech, TV commercial or wind-filled debate, or require you to attempt to make a character judgment of a human whom in truth, you will never really know the soul of.

All the campaign speeches, commercials, debates and most news stories are as manipulative and as credible as late-night television infomercials. The fact is, politicians and their supporters will say just about anything to get elected, so why listen to their nuanced sales pitches crafted by their professional writers, when instead you can simply evaluate their record? Why listen to the supposedly ‘neutral’ news media and subject yourself to their subtle spinning of the facts as they try to steer your towards seeing things their way? Why care about the irrelevancies that are deafeningly amplified to the forefront of importance? Why listen to the cacophony of personal boasts, personal attacks and promises of global salvation? Why give any weight to what a candidate looks like or sounds like?

When a violinist is auditioning to be in a fine symphony orchestra, they are required play onstage behind a black curtain so that the judges will be able to make their selection based purely on the music they hear, without being distracted by the appearance of the musician. There is a lesson there for voters.

Let’s face it - you don’t really want to vote for the black guy because he’s black, or the white guy because he’s white, or the woman because she’s a woman, or the war hero because he’s a war hero, or the handsome one with the deep reassuring voice simply because he is handsome and has a reassuring voice.

A more rational approach would be to eliminate these distractions from the equation and just vote for the candidate who will steer the country in a better direction than the other guy. But to know what direction is better than another, one first must educate him or herself to determine where he stands on key political issues. This is the principled approach to politics, and it requires that before ever even considering an actual candidate, one must first establish their own political principles. Once a principled person knows where they stand, he or she can then determine who to vote for by simply comparing their own principles with each candidate, based solely upon the candidate’s factual record.

As a teenager, I was encouraged by my father to figure out where I stood on the key political issues and why. Once I did that, voting became very easy for me, since I no longer had to sort through all the spin that virtually all political campaigns rain upon the public.

In each part of this multi-part letter, I will present a single political subject for you to consider. The subject of this first letter is one of the most basic political subjects of all: big government vs. small government.

Developing your position on this, along with the subjects of subsequent letters, will give you a well grounded set of political principles that will guide you past the confusing, irrational, manipulative politics of emotion that is plaguing today’s culture.

Big Government vs. Small Government
Let me begin by clearly saying that I am a small government guy, but I will try to lay out both sides of this foundational debate as I see them.

It sounds simplistic, but the two competing ideologies of big government and small government have dominated political debate since the very birth of our country. These two competing ideologies are at the root of dozens of sub-issues - that is to say, if you sit somewhere on one side of the spectrum vs. somewhere on the other side, it will likely dictate your position on each and every one of these sub-issues. Because of this, it is essential to figure out if, in general, you are a big government type of person or a small government type of person.

Big Government
Some people believe that our government should generally be bigger than it currently is –a government that assumes greater roles in people’s lives in areas such as healthcare, education, the arts, housing, food, the employer/employee relationship and a multitude of other areas. Socialism, in its purest sense, is near the extreme end of the big government side of the spectrum - and socialism is not a bad word, just a certain philosophy that, to varying degrees, many individuals believe in and many countries aspire to.

This type of system looks to government as the solution to many of society’s problems: as the caretaker of the needy, as the educator of the masses, as the doctor of the sick, as the benefactor of the arts and many other roles. Of course, all these things cost money, and so this form of government also requires each citizen to be beholden to the government in the form of higher taxes.

At the extreme, you can see how this type of society is not very attractive to highly productive individuals, for the burden is upon them to support the non-productive members of society (i.e. if you work, you pay high taxes; if you don't work, you get free stuff). Not only is it unattractive for highly productive people to immigrate to such a society, but it causes a disincentive for people raised in such a society to ever become productive; after all, why take the risk of starting a new business if you don’t get to keep the rewards? Why not let someone else do the heavy lifting? A more socialistic type of society actually attracts the unproductive. In European countries that have more entitlements than their neighbors, they are seeing an influx of immigrants who are coming for the sole purpose of living off the welfare state.

While most Americans on the left don’t believe in 100% pure socialism, they do tend to want our government to move in that direction. Think of it as a sliding scale: the more government entitlements, the higher the taxes on the productive members of society, the less incentive there is for individuals to take risks and be productive. Because of this fact, you see higher unemployment rates in more socialized countries such as France and Sweden, because with all the government handouts that exist, life without a job actually isn’t all that bad. Conversely, working hard isn’t all that great because you have to pay so much of your salary in taxes.

On the plus side in such a society, nobody goes hungry, nobody is homeless and everybody gets a free education. Beyond the economic trade-offs of this system, there is the matter of individual liberty. Obviously, the more beholden you are to your government, the less personal freedom you have. To illustrate this, let’s look at some extreme examples: if the government were responsible for feeding everyone, then people would not get as much freedom in their choice of food (think of an American grocery store compared to one from the old Soviet Union). If the government is responsible for providing all the jobs, you wouldn’t have as much choice in your career path (you’d have to choose from a list rather than open that poodle grooming salon that you’ve always dreamed about). If the government is responsible for your medical care, you can’t choose that holistic doctor who is doing that groundbreaking new procedure that you read about. The more socialistic societies generally place a greater value on 'civic duty' and a lower value on individual rights such as free speech (In Canada you can get sued for saying your opinion if it is offensive to another party), the right to bear arms in self-defense, and freedom of religion in more extreme cases.

Small Government
On the other side of the spectrum are the classic libertarian philosophies akin to those of our founding fathers: smaller government that is limited to essential functions (national security, a justice system and perhaps some decent roads). This philosophy holds that a government should guarantee, above all else, that its citizens have the basic right to live free, work as hard as they choose, and pursue their own happiness –to live their life on their own terms for better or worse - so long as they do not harm anyone else in the process. This form of government, in its pure form, does not guarantee success or grant entitlements such as healthcare, education, welfare, a job, a minimum wage, a hot meal or a descent home. These are things that each person must either work for and earn, or receive from voluntary charitable contributions. However, this system tends to attract productive individuals and encourages new ones to emerge, for in this society productive individuals get to retain and enjoy more of the fruits of their own labor. This society gives people the freedom and incentive to succeed based upon their individual effort and ability.

The concept of limited government is based upon an attempt to, above all else, prevent oppression from government. It is based upon a theory that a society of free individuals will always be better off if they are allowed to flourish without the oppressive hand of kings, dictators or other tyrannical regimes holding them back.

As I said, these two competing philosophies represent a spectrum, somewhere within which we each lie in our personal beliefs. Each individual voter should look in their hearts and figure out where they sit on this spectrum. While few people are on the extremes, it is fair to say that most people are clearly either ‘big government’ types who want to move us in a more socialistic direction, or ‘small government’ types who want to move us in the other direction. Which are you?

In just about every election, you will find that one candidate’s philosophy is clearly more ‘big government’ and the other is more ‘small government’.

Taxes
A basic extension of the above subject is taxation. Are taxes a necessary evil or a tool for social progress?– Those who believe in a bigger government generally believe that raising taxes is totally fine in order to pay for more government services. Small government types prefer smaller taxes and fewer, more basic government services. Small government types believe that, in general, it is always good to reduce taxes.

Once you figure out if you are a big government type or a small government type, you will find it surprisingly easy to make sense of out which candidate to vote for and which ballot measures to support, by simply seeing if they propose to expand or reduce the size of government.

-YPR

Upcoming Letters:

-Gun Control
-Abortion Rights
-Energy Policy, including Nuclear Power and Domestic Exploration
-School Choice (Vouchers)
-Foreign Policy
-Capital Punishment
-Immigration