2. When truth is personal, treat it as religion

The truth is universal in natural sciences. Scientists rarely debate their theories, instead they test the theories using objective observations and experiments, and settle with the one that best explains the reality. Politics is about people's behavior, which is by definition subjective, therefore there is neither universal truth nor objective ways to test political theories.

To illustrate this point, let's consider how to objectively evaluate Republican's policies against Democrats' policies. One might reasonably propose the following: Find two nearly identical cities, and let the Republicans and the Democrats each run one of them for 30 years, then we should be able to compare the final results and tell which party's policy is superior, right? Not quite. Before declaring winners, one must first define the criteria for success. Is success defined by the wealth, equality,  people's happiness or less pollution?  Even if we only look at a single measure, for example, the average income, it is still difficult to attribute the success to the ruling party's policy. For example, it may so happen that the economic success of a city is mostly due to random or external events, e.g., the next tech genius like Zuckerberg happens to be born there. Even if we could control and adjust all these random or external factors, the truth is still murky, for example a city's economic success might be driven by legalized gambling and prostitution. Is that still a success?

However, each individual would have a clear preference on which city he or she wants to live given the difference in policies and the corresponding results. If citizens can move freely between the two cities, most of them would be happy living in the city of their choice.  Just like in religion, the truth in politics is personal, not universal.  Paul's heaven can be Peter's hell. Therefore debating politics is like debating religion, the universal truth never comes out (unless one of the gods reveals itself in a dramatic manner) and it serves no useful purposes other than the entertainment values.

In religion, people have long accepted that the truth is personal, and the only practical approach is to respect each other's beliefs and ensure that everyone can freely practice the religion of his own choice. Trying to enforce a single religion or belief system to all the people always ended up with disastrous results in the known human history. Today, most countries protect people's religious freedom, and people of different religions can live peacefully together as long as they don't attempt the forced conversions. Religious organizations compete with each other peacefully based on their teachings and practices, such competition allows undecided individuals to find their personal truth by experimenting with different religions or belief systems. The followers of all religions can all be happy at the same time practicing different beliefs, as long as the choices are their own. Most people, including myself, would fiercely defend others' religious freedom even though we may not necessarily agree with the particular religious teachings.

We can all be in heaven if we practice politics in the same way as we practice religion today.

The fundamental difference between religion and government is that the government always enforces one set of rules to all people, without their unanimous consent. The current two party system is like forcing Christians and Buddhists to come up with one set of religious doctrines that both have to follow, which deprives both parties of their personal truth. There is no surprise that the current system is inefficient as they can rarely agree on anything; and neither side is happy with the results. 

Why can't the politics learn from the organized religion, so that everyone can practice their own political beliefs, and respect each other's rights to practice their own personal truth?  The ultimate political freedom is the right to freely form new governments, and the right for an individual to choose his/her own government associations. A necessary condition to achieve this without splitting up the country, is to strip the federal government of the monopoly on many powers, so that people can freely form new governments and enact laws and regulations that are consistent with their own political beliefs.  It is criminal to deprive a person's religions freedom; and it is immoral to deprive a person's freedom to practice his/her own political beliefs, and subject him to the forced conversion under the current political system.

In the upcoming blogs, I will layout more details of how to redesign our government so that people's freedom to form and choose governments is ptotected.