Buddhist Politics 501

[Note: This is a chapter excerpted from my book "Zen Mind, Thinker's Mind: New Perspectives on Buddhadharma, Consciousness, and Awakening."]

According to the Pew Research Center’s party affiliation among Buddhists by political ideology survey in 2014 (http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/political-ideology/by/party-affiliation/among/religious-tradition/buddhist/), 12% of American Buddhists identify themselves as conservatives, 32% as moderates, 54% as liberals, and 2% “don’t know.” There is little reason to doubt the veracity of this survey because other such surveys provide similar results.

Left-wing Buddhists not only outnumber right-wingers by more than a 4/1 ratio, but many of them are now devoted to combining Buddhism with a “progressive” political agenda. At his blog Hardcore Zen (hardcorezen.info), Brad Warner comments on this phenomenon:

"What bugs me is when it appears that liberal, left-leaning Buddhists are trying to mix Buddhism with their political agenda in precisely the same way people like Pat Robertson mix Christianity with their conservative political agenda. This just makes us all look bad to everyone except lefty types who already agree with whatever cause is being espoused. Nobody is going to be convinced to change their views on militarism or global warming because they saw a photo of a bunch of weirdos in costumes they associate with cult members holding a banner outside of the White House. It is an exercise in vanity, which can only serve to help entrench people’s previously established views."

In contrast to Brad Warner, I have no problem with Buddhists pushing a political agenda, I just have a problem with their “liberal” agenda, which is contrary to what the Buddha taught. This liberal agenda is based on the forceful (socialistic) transference of wealth, which amounts to theft, a violation of a fundamental Buddhist tenet. At her blog ThoughtCo. (thoughtco.com), Barbara O’Brien comments on this:

The second Buddhist precept often is translated “do not steal.” Some Buddhist teachers prefer “practice generosity.” A more literal translation of the early Pali texts is “I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.”

Because this theft of money entails force and violence—the government will imprison you if you don’t pay what they demand—the left-wing agenda of wealth transference not only violates the second Buddhist precept, but also the first: non-killing, which extends to include non-violence. As the website Clear Vision (www. clear-vision.org) puts it:

Buddhists have always interpreted this [the first] precept to mean, not merely a prohibition of murder, but of all kinds of violence against human beings and animals.

What left-wingers fail to grasp is the difference between voluntary communal activity and coercive statist socialism. While the former is non-violent, the latter isn’t. The State typically devolves into an authoritarian, Leviathan monster that fascistically and Orwellianly dictates how people live their lives and spend their money. It becomes a monolithic corruptocracy, wherein politicians, who are bought off by big-money special interests, enact legislation that delimits the (putatively guaranteed) constitutional rights of the country’s citizens, who, brainwashed by public schools, left-wing universities, and the mainstream media, willingly obey, and even worship, their Big Government masters.

Because American Buddhists are big on compassion, on helping the poor and needy, they typically support government aid programs such as welfare, food stamps, and housing subsidies. But these programs, over the decades, have proved to be an abysmal failure, and rather than helping the downtrodden, they have, in effect, enslaved them, making them dependent and dysfunctional. For example, in 1960, 80% of black children were born into two-parent families, but now, a half century after the War on Poverty was begun under President Lyndon Johnson, that figure is down to 30%. In other words, the welfare state, initiated by Johnson in 1964, has decimated the black nuclear family. It has done so by incentivizing black women to have lots of kids sans a husband, because the more such children a woman has, the larger her welfare check will be. The black man, meanwhile, divorced from a supportive family structure, often turns to crime and ends up in prison. But mindless left-wingers continue to want to waste billions of taxpayers’ dollars on social programs that not only don’t work, but exacerbate the problem. Cities such as Detroit and Chicago are sobering examples of the urban plight perpetuated by the failed social programs of the left over the past fifty years.

The modern left has essentially lost its mind, degenerating from classical liberalism (which virtually mirrors modern right-wing libertarianism) into a post-modern potpourri of agendas that derive from classical and cultural Marxism. These include, but aren’t limited to, anti-capitalism, political correctness, censorship of the right, and oppressor/oppressed power politics (which focus on class, gender, and racial distinctions). Fundamentally, the modern left is about authoritarian social engineering enforced by a quasi-fascist Big-Brother State.

The “Right-Wing” Solution

If modern left-wing politics, which forcefully and violently sacrifices the putatively sovereign individual to the dictates of the State, isn’t the political solution for Buddhists, then is “right-wing” politics? Not if one considers the mainstream Republican Party to represent such politics; for, in truth, their political agenda differs only marginally from that of the Democrats. A true right-wing, or true Republican, agenda would be about reestablishing America as a true constitutional republic, wherein the constitutional rights of individuals have primacy over, rather than being subordinated to, the dictates of mob-rule democracy, wherein the brainwashed masses are able to vote them away.

In my opinion, the sociopolitical ideology that best reflects Buddhist ethics is libertarianism (or right-libertarianism), which subscribes to the credo of self-ownership and the non-initiation of force. This credo or ethos perfectly meshes with the Buddha’s vision of personal, interpersonal, and social morality, exemplified by his five precepts. Although libertarianism (which developed in the 1950s) is often categorized as “extreme right-wing,” in reality, it closely resembles nineteenth-century classical (or neo-classical) liberalism, as opposed to modern social (progressive) liberalism.

Integral Dialectical Politics

I think the best way to explain the relation between right-wing libertarianism and left-wing social liberalism is via Hegelian dialectic, wherein the former (which represents the pole of individualism/capitalism) is the thesis, and the latter (which represents the pole of statism/socialism) is the antithesis. Because individualism/capitalism subsumes statism/socialism (meaning the former allows for the latter, but not vice-versa), the synthesis that results is an individualist/capitalist system that sublates (or subordinates but preserves) the State and allows for voluntary collectivism. In other words, in a moral, or “integral,” society, the State still exists, but its function is limited to providing national security and protecting and preserving individual rights (including property rights).

Voluntary socialism or collectivism is fine. In an individualist-capitalist system, individuals can freely form communes or collectives if they so desire. But in a statist-socialist system, you cannot set up a John Galt-type capitalist community that is independent of the State. Big Brother will insist on regulating your town and taxing your townspeople.

The most persecuted minority is the individual, and the only social system that frees individuals from the dictates of special interest groups (which typically seek to divide and conquer through the weapons of class, gender, and racial distinctions) is laissez-faire (or free-market) capitalism. Free-market capitalism is based on the “trader principle,” wherein independent agents voluntarily, rather than coercively, agree to exchange goods, services, and monies. This social system is the only one that morally coheres with the Buddha’s five precepts and prescribed practice of right livelihood.

If ‘‘liberal” (really liberal-fascist) special-interest groups want to implement their social-engineering programs (which amount to dictatorial theft and control), instead of doing so through the agency of the domineering State, they should do so by setting up their own private Marxist or quasi-Marxist collectives and communes, rather than by forcing those of us true to Buddhist principles to participate in their socialist agenda.

The Evils of Democratic Governments

More than coincidentally, perhaps, while seated on the john during a bathroom break in the midst of writing this article, I just happened to grab a book, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation by W.Y Evans-Wentz, from a box of many, open it to a random page, and see the apropos quote below. I took this as a sign that I was to include it in my article, so here it is:

"Plato, the greatest of Greek Sages, spent many years in an attempt to define Justice, or what the Hindu Sages call Dharma. He recognized the evils of democratic governments, wherein it is not the right, or justice, which always prevails, but the will of the philosophically untrained vulgar majority; and that it is fallacious to assume that the minority are always wrong. It is with these conditions in view that the Gurus teach that the great man is he who differs in every thought and action from the multitude. Accordingly, it has ever been the lone pioneers of thought, the sowers of the seed of new ages, the Princes of Peace, rather than the Lords of War, and the minorities (who may be the disciples of the Sages), that have suffered martyrdom and social ostracism at the hands of the majority, who impose their standards of good and evil upon the helpless minority.

"It is therefore very unwise to accept without question, as is nowadays customary in many modern states where sound moral principles prevail, the verdict of the people, whether expressed by a jury in a court of law or through the ballot box, as to what is justice, right or wrong, good or evil. So long as mankind are more selfish than altruistic, the majority are unfit to dominate the minority, who may be much the better citizens. As both Plato and the Wise Men of the East teach, the democratic-majority standard of judgment as to what is moral and immoral conduct is unreliable."

The fundamental point that well-meaning Buddhist Democrats need to grok is that, in a moral society, the majority has no right to vote away the sacrosanct rights of the individual, and sacrifice him or her to the normative dictates of the collective. For example, the government should not be able to outlaw drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless “crimes.” It should not be able to force individuals to buy medical insurance, pay income tax, or vaccinate their children. Those who, a la Hillary Clinton, believe that “it takes a village” should realize that participation in the “village” must be voluntary, not compulsory. This is so because America, first and foremost, is a constitutional republic, and only secondarily a democracy, which means that the democratic (voting) process should be limited to electing officials (or representatives) and should not infringe upon the constitutional rights of citizens. When Buddhist Democrats understand this, and its relation to what the Buddha taught regarding ethics, they will understand Right Politics.