Politics and Scientology...

With so many things happening in the political world these days, I thought I'd answer some questions people have about Scientology and politics.

First and foremost, the Church of Scientology is apolitical. In my 30 plus years as a Scientologist, I have not read or heard of any political stance the Church has taken. It simply leaves this subject up to individual Scientologists.

So what about Scientologists? What are their political views?

You would have to ask each one. I have seen the complete spectrum of political views held by Scientologists. From very liberal to very conservative and everything in between.

My own personal political views are along these lines:

• I believe government is there to help put order into our environment (roads, bridges, etc.)
• I believe government is there to protect us (from attacks, terrorism, crime, etc.) and therefore should be strong enough to achieve this.
• I do not believe government is there to preach morality to us.
• Generally speaking, I believe in less government, not more.
• I believe that if you reward production, you get more of it. If you reward non-production, you get more of that. I believe governments should follow this principle.
• I believe in replacing all forms of income tax with a National Sales Tax as laid out in the Fair Tax bill. This is explained very nicely in the best-selling Fair Tax Book.
• I believe America is the greatest nation in the world with no country a close second and this is why millions continue to flock to it.
• I believe in maintaining America's sovereignty.
• I believe in the separation of religion and state but not the removal of expressions of religion in the public sector.
• I believe in the inherent and enduring strengths of our Constitution.

I have other political views but this is a good idea and you've been good enough to read this far.

Comments

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

This is a really interesting post. I think primarily because Scientology is non-political, but yet Scientology encourages observation of the world around you and increases intelligence, a lot of the Scientologists I know hold some of the most interesting political views I've ever come across. Lots of people have really thought about the subject, and it can be interesting to talk about. And it's almost never some sort of "my side is right" talk like I often get in good-old "two-party" politics--I've had a lot of great real communication my friends who are Scientologists about political things.

I know that I've certainly thought about this a lot. :-) I have some various different ideas, but recently I've started to wonder if a government shouldn't just be looked at as an administrative body with certain responsibilities. That is, we need to have roads, courts, etc. so somebody really ought to administer that system. You set up an organization called the "roads organization" and another called the "justice organization" and so on.

I suppose a problem comes in in that the "defense organization" would have the power to hurt or control people, and would thus tends to gain power over the other organizations in the world we live in now. And then you'd need some system to prevent that from happening, and something to handle failures in the "justice organization", and so on. It would tend to then become what we call "the government" today.

Of course, I think if it were all cleverly designed, a government could be set up in such a way, but it'd definitely require some planning! :-)

-Max