These things I *could* believe

I don't subscribe fully to any coherent political ideology (if indeed any political ideology can be truly coherent), but following is a brief list of things I'm beginning to suspect are true:

The free market is a powerful evolutionary system for generating Good Ideas.

Important policy decisions should be made on the basis of empirical study and rational thought

The rule of law applied equally to all is a Good Thing

Freedom of speech for everyone is a Good Thing

Political representation is a Good Thing

Individual negative freedom is a Good Thing

Agonistic pluralism is a Good Thing

Democratic nation states are a reasonably effective way of getting certain necessary jobs done

What consenting adults do with their time is not the business of anyone else

Privacy is important

All healthy human beings are fairly smart but not infallible or perfectly rational

Wars are complicated and always morally ambiguous

A large majority of healthy human beings possess a basic sense of fairness and morality

There can probably be no such thing as a genuine meritocracy

Equality is a Good Thing

Education is a Good Thing

Equality in education is an especially Good Thing

I might go through each of these and explain exactly why I think each of them.