HOME The CIRF 7... The Center for Individual Responsibility and Freedom's list of seven core policy changes for responsibility: Many in the world live in safe and comfortable surroundings with bountiful food, conveniences and comfortable shelter. But billions still struggle just to stay alive amidst suffering and deprivation. And many other forms of life face potential extinction as human impacts now threaten the health of the natural world that sustains us and makes our lives worth living. The main cause of the suffering for all life is human irresponsibility. We have the means to do much better. And most share a desire to do so. What we lack is the will to use our natural intelligence to think it through and the will to overcome the inertia or resistance from interests vested in maintaining existing policies. The following are seven key areas where CIRF advocates change. The goal is to enhance our creativity and prosperity while providing for the greatest happiness, or good, for the greatest number of people and for all life. An inherent challenge for any society has always been finding the optimal balance between freedom of creative expression and the responsibility that must accompany it. 1) Financial Responsibility… A guiding principle for responsible behavior is to live within means. This is as true for government as it is for the self. Acquiring excessive debt and deficit spending should be as reprehensible for government as it is for individuals. We have peddled the mantra that bigger is always better and more is never enough in order to feed consumerism. And we have ignored the dangerous trends of ballooning deficits and dangerous leveraging of debt. Unless corrected these indulgences will eventually destroy our economic welfare and burden future generations with the debt of our reckless irresponsibility. Balancing government budgets should be a fundamental mandate. 2) Responsible Procreation... No other issue is so fundamental to the future health and welfare of any society. Unlimited population growth is unsustainable… not only from the perspective of limited resources but also in terms of lifestyle quality. We cannot continue to irresponsibly increase our numbers without destroying the ecological balance that nourishes and sustains us without eventually creating social and political chaos in addition to further diminishing the quality of the human gene pool. Those who produce children without the means to provide reasonable care are essentially committing child abuse. Family planning would be a major priority in any responsible society. And it should include at a minimum the willingness of both parents to responsibly commit to the welfare of a child until maturity. Growth for the sake of growth is the mentality of cancer. The number of children born to women on public assistance has increased to where it now represents over half of all births. And according to the census bureau the fertility rate of these women is three times greater than women not on welfare. Thus it appears many game the system. Our aid programs are upside down... instead of promoting responsible procreation they appear to do the opposite. Irresponsible procreation is the world wide leading cause of poverty. 3) Educational Reform... While we spend about twice the per capita rate as other developed countries on our public schools, test scores consistently show US students at the bottom of the barrel. The causes of failure are many, but a leading contributor is our monolithic structure designed around the premise that all children are ready to learn the same material at the same times in their lives in similar learning environments. This defies all that we know about human nature. US students also spend about 20% less time in school than the students of Europe or Japan, and spend more of these fewer hours doing non-academic work. Most would agree good schools require good teachers and good students. Yet we have teachers unions that stand in the way of evaluations goaled to remove the incompetent. And we have bureaucratic laws making it almost impossible to rid the system of students who lack the cognitive ability to learn at grade level or have attitudes that not only undermine a constructive classroom environment but interfere with the progress of those who do want to learn. Forcing children to attend school against their will undermines practically all aspects of a good public educational system. It takes only one disruptive student in a class of 30 to destroy the learning process for all. An obvious way to break the hamstringing bureaucracy of government and teachers unions would be to open the system of education to the dynamism and creativity of a market economy. We should consider programs such as vouchers which would allow parents to choose freely from a varied range of alternatives and select those most commensurate with needs without incurring financial penalty. The diversity of the types of schools should reflect the diversity in the types of interests, abilities and needs of students. 4) Immigration... Most importantly immigration issues should be framed holistically in terms of long term population stabilization and the economic well being of all. Importing cheap labor to do work that could be more productively automated hampers technological growth and eventually burdens social institutions. Importing the technologically gifted elite from a less developed society can hamper development in the countries that need it most. And importing people without planning for the future with respect to long term sustainable growth including ecological sustainability of resources and preservation of open space is irresponsible and will inevitably further burden our progeny. Thus, just as quality parenting and education are primary determinants for creating a successful future it is important to assure immigrants possess qualities that enable them to be a part of that success. If it is considered desirable to increase our population in terms of the above considerations we should expect those who join us to have at least a good working knowledge of our language, culture, and government, and the basic training and professional skills necessary to creatively and synergistically contribute positively to the overall quality of life. 5) Voting Competency… Allowing and encouraging people to vote regardless of awareness of issues makes about as much sense as allowing all to proliferate with abandon or all to immigrate without restriction. Leaders reflect the awareness and wisdom of those who elect them. If we desire wiser leadership we must make changes to create a wiser electorate. Nowhere does the word democracy appear in the Constitiution. In fact the right to vote was given to white male owners of property. Obviously these are lousy measures of voter competency. And it certainly dispels the notion that democracy is somehow inherently part of the founding philosophy of the United States. Of course we could continue the effort to increase the awareness of the electorate. But after 200 years of trying to do this we must face the reality of limits. Ignorance and apathy have only not decreased, but appear to be growing. In the current political atmosphere it would be very difficult to deny the right to vote to someone based on demonstrated incompetency. But a reasonable alternative might be to weigh votes in proportion to scores on a competency test (i.e. voters scoring at the ninetieth percentile would cast votes weighing three times those scoring at thirtieth percentile). In the interest of fairness any test should be designed to gage an understanding of the technical, economic, and political challenges facing the political leadership. Voting is a right, but like all rights it must be shouldered with the responsibility to exercise with reasonable competency. Just as we do not encourage drunks to drive we should not encourage the apathetic and ignorant to vote their incompetency and thus endanger all. Adding to the risks of voter incompetence is an increasingly pervasive media vulnerable to manipulation and control by huge accumulations of wealth. Economic disparities have significantly increased over the last few decades in many Western societies resulting in larger accumulations of wealth in the hands of fewer people. Coupled with a media capable of steadily increasing penetration leaves voters even more vulnerable to subtle fabrication and appeals to the emotions. 6) Equal Opportunity… "Affirmative Action" programs were initially implemented as forms of outreach for those who had been disenfranchised as a result of circumstances beyond their control. This reasonable policy was conceived to further equal opportunity for all by leveling the playing field. However, due to political pressure from vested interests many such efforts morphed into preference programs based on race, ethnicity or gender. Preferences based on characteristics not related to performance violate equal protection guarantees of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and inevitably chip away at the ability of a society to function efficiently and effectively. If a meritocracy or a performance based society is our goal, we should be blinded to differences not impacting performance and resist the political pressures that make our institutions vulnerable to the influences of wealth and social connection. Affirmative action must again be goaled to extending equal opportunity to all so that as many as possible can produce and create at levels commensurate with their ability. 7) The Drug War and Governmental Intrusiveness… Acts between consenting adults should not be the concern of government. The extension of nanny state bureaucratic regulation to interfere with such acts runs counter to the concept of free enterprise, results in colossal wastes of public resources, violates expectations of personal privacy, fuels the fires of corruption, and impedes the assumption of individual responsibility. The drug war in itself has bloated the US prison population to the extent that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. If acts between consenting adults are to be regulated, it should be done reasonably and equitably, and in accordance with the equal protection and due process provisions of the 14th Amendment and the freedom of expression guarantees of the First Amendment. The policy arbitrarily stigmatizing some drugs while subsidizing the production of others (aid to tobacco farmers, etc.) which have much worse health and social impacts makes a mockery of justice and human intelligence. Government regulation should be goaled to assuring complete and accurate information regarding drug efficacy and risk should be accurately stated and displayed and available to all. It is the responsibility of the individual to proceed accordingly. If private and public institutions hired, fired and promoted based on demonstrated performance the issue of drug abuse would self correct to a level of insignificance. 6.26.11.a