Political Theory - Main Concepts

Concepts, characterizations, ethical judgments

1. Individual rights are foundational - the chief one is liberty

2. Individuals create communities of purpose:
- sexual: families - to control procreation and other sexual bonds
- economic: corporations - aim to control material production and consumption
- political: nations - aim to establish the law and its enforcement - the State
- noetic: science, religion, art, media - aim to control systems of knowledge production

3. Communities have rights derived from individual rights - and can come into mutual conflict

3a. The purpose - (τέλος - télos) - of politics is justice and peace

3b. The method - (μέθοδος - méthodos) or (τέχνη - tékhnē) - of politics is to exercise the law and authority

4. The purpose of the law is to arbitrate between the rights of communities and individuals

5. Libertarianism wishes that only individual rights exists

6. Liberalism aims to arbitrate all of the rights at all levels

7. Totalitarianism aims to fuse all communities of purpose into one

8. Authoritarians wish to subjugate the economic, sexual and noetic to the political authority

8a. Socialists wish to subordinate individual rights to the rights of the community

9. Fascism subordinates individual rights to the political authority

10. Wokeness postulates additional rights based on degree of oppression and sets them above individual rights

11. Any political ethics must protect rights at all levels

12. Methods of politics - who gets to exercise power - ie to rule:
- mob rule - leaders of a popular movement
- democracy - officials elected by the people
- aristocracy - the best of character, the nobles - possibly emerging in a public process
- technocracy - scientists, technologists and business people
- oligarchy - the richest
- nomenklatura - officials appointed by officials

13. Forms of government - ie the relationship of the rulers to the governed, status of the rulers
- republic - officials, office holders
- feudal lordship - lords, mafia dons, party bosses
- monarchy - king, the chief protector