Who Are the Real Liberals?

Imagine we have two groups of people. We have:

Group A, whose members: cheerfully support right-wing demagogues and people who make extended, friendly appearances on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network; defend ethnic profiling policies; promote the idea that the United States is "enlightened" and morally superior while it engages in pointless, bloody wars and kills people without the benefit of a trial; defend the use of torture; and talk about how some areas of the world need to be ruled by dictators rather than democratic institutions.

Group B, whose members view all of this as disgusting and unconscionable, defend individual rights consistently, and support a society where people are entitled to a certain level of respect as long as they reciprocate that respect.

Which group is more liberal? Laid out like this, the question seems foolish to even ask, but we're told over and over by members of Group A—the New Atheists, that is—they're the real liberals because they oppose Islamofascism, or something along those lines. We've heard it from the usual suspects; from Bill Maher, from Richard Dawkins, and a similar line of rhetoric from Sam Harris, who considers himself a liberal pitted against those unconcerned with the "deeply illiberal" Islamist agenda.

Bill Maher (Image from Wikipedia)

Discussing liberalism is complicated by a few factors. For one thing, right-wing politicians and mouthpieces have taken to using it as a way to attack anything they don't like. For another thing, American "liberals" have often been willing to defend deeply illiberal acts for a long time; President Obama is considered a liberal, and has increased the NSA surveillance state and radically expanded the drone war.

While, for political labels, dictionaries are often of limited use, we might as well start there in determining what liberalism really is. Oxford English Dictionary offers, among other definitions, "Supporting or advocating individual rights, civil liberties, and political and social reform tending towards individual freedom or democracy with little state intervention." This seems to me a pretty good definition; the label does come from the Latin word meaning "free," after all. Understanding liberalism as the advocacy of individual rights, liberal support for the welfare state and a social safety net should be seen not as being on the basis of some desire for an authoritarian government that distributes wealth however it wants to (as right-wing ideologues theorize), but rather a reaction to the fact that poverty and slavery, as philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer noted, are only "two forms...of the same thing." 

Glenn Greenwald (Image from Salon)

By my definition, most of the people who call themselves liberals today would not be real liberals, given that they're often willing to rally behind people like Obama and ignore the troubling, illiberal actions he's taken (and, of course, their frequent fetishizing of government itself, as I previously wrote about). However, there are relatively high-profile liberals, like Glenn Greenwald or Chris Hayes, who I would consider to be good representations of what liberalism really is, or should be.

"But no," say the New Atheists, "these people are apologists for Islamic theocracy, terrorism, etc. We, the New Atheists, really represent liberalism, given our firm commitment to individual rights and our desire to protect them from infringement by Islam." An interesting claim. Certainly, no true liberal could find much to admire in an Islamic theocracy like Iran or Saudi Arabia. But who, exactly, is defending those theocracies? Where are the liberals who have actually defended Islamic terrorism, for that matter? Glenn Greenwald is, no doubt, a thorn in the side of the New Atheist movement, and exactly the type of person the New Atheists think of as a phony liberal for his stance on Islam. But is there anywhere in anything he's written where he's indicating that he's all right with theocracy, with female genital mutilation, with beheading, with terrorism, with honor killing, or whatever other thing the New Atheists use to try to show us how barbaric Islam is? For that matter, does anyone seriously think that he doesn't view these things as awful?

The New Atheists have created a strawman, the Islam-apologist liberal, who just sees these things and shrugs his shoulders, saying, "Ah, well, it's their culture, who am I to judge?" In reality, if there's anyone out there who thinks like this, they're well hidden. They're certainly not Glenn Greenwald or Chris Hayes or any of the other high-profile people the New Atheists consider phony liberals. The truth is, it's entirely possible, indeed quite easy, to abhor the ugly things done in the name of Islam without acting as if it's some predictable result of the religion itself.

Defenders of Maher, Harris, Dawkins, et al. will often cough up the hackneyed argument that liberals are okay with the Christian right being attacked for its actions, but that they have a double standard when people try to attack Muslim theocrats in the same way, but there's no truth to this. Few liberals who criticize the Christian right say that Christianity itself is the problem; indeed, it's often pointed out how the bigotry and callousness of the Christian right goes against the teachings of the man they profess to worship.

This is the exact opposite of the attitude the New Atheists hold toward Islamic theocracy and terrorism; rather than pointing out how it contradicts parts of the Qur'an or goes against the actual life of Muhammad (which would both be valid points in a number of instances), they say it's because of the Qur'an and Muhammad that we see this sort of violence and theocracy. It's that assertion, and the insinuation that Muslims as a group should be viewed warily, that gets the New Atheists so much criticism, not their opposition to theocracy and violence, which is a completely uncontroversial position to have.

Nor are the "illiberal liberals" the New Atheists love to rant about uncomfortable with actually criticizing theocracy and violence; Greenwald has written that:

Of course one can legitimately criticize Islam without being bigoted or racist. That's self-evident, and nobody is contesting it. And of course there are some Muslim individuals who do heinous things in the name of their religion...Yes, "honor killings" and the suppression of women by some Muslims are heinous...That some Muslims commit atrocities in the name of their religion...is also too self-evident to merit debate

Greenwald has also harshly criticized the government of Saudi Arabia, which is, of course, an Islamic theocracy. So, no, the liberal critics of New Atheism are not uncomfortable with indicting Islamic theocracy and terrorism. They dissent from the New Atheist viewpoint on how this reflects on Islam and Muslims as a group. Thus, the insinuation that they are not "real liberals" because they don't like the New Atheists is nothing but another self-serving lie on the part of the latter.

On the other hand, though, we do have some serious questions to ask about the supposed liberalism of people like Maher, Dawkins, and Harris. Maher and Harris have endorsed the use of ethnic profiling against anyone who "looks Muslim," in obvious violation to the longstanding liberal idea that everyone should be treated equally before the law, regardless of race, religion, etc. All three of them are big fans of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a so-called human rights activist and former politician in the Netherlands. Hirsi Ali worked closely with Geert Wilders, an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, right-wing fanatic who wants to ban the Qur'an and immigration from all Islamic countries to the Netherlands.

Of course, I guess that's not much of a disconcerting fact for the New Atheists; after all, Dawkins has called Wilders "a man of courage, who has the balls to stand up to a monstrous enemy." Hirsi Ali, meanwhile, has made an extended appearance on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network to talk about the dangers of Islam, has referred to it as a "destructive, nihilistic cult of death" and "the new fascism," and has promoted amending the US Bill of Rights to allow anti-Islam legislation.

Then, of course, we have Maher and Harris's eager support of Israel. As usual, they're all too ready to overlook the forty-year-long military occupation the Palestinians have endured and Israel's aggression in the Middle East to claim that somehow the US and Israel have the moral high ground over groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. By doing so, they help give cover for yet another blatantly illiberal policy, this one far worse than their proposed ethnic profiling.

Harris is exceptionally bad; he's defended torture openly, and promoted the installation of "benign dictatorship[s]" in Islamic countries, acknowledging that it would require "crude" means such as "economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both." In fairness, these are Sam Harris's views alone, not Dawkins's or Maher's. But neither of them seems to be dissociating himself from Harris over said views.

So, ultimately, the New Atheist claim to represent real liberalism is yet another complete and utter lie. There is nothing about liberalism that demands you have some particular animosity toward Islam, and it's entirely possible to abhor Islamic theocracy and terrorism without blaming it on Islam, just as it's possible to do with Christian or Jewish theocracy or terrorism (both which do, in fact, exist, contrary to the prevailing narrative that only Muslims still do that sort of thing) without blaming it on Christianity or Judaism. And, in terms of the actual views that separate them from Greenwalds and the Chris Hayeses, Maher, Harris, et al. are anything but liberal. If the New Atheists want to say that liberalism doesn't work in fighting global jihadism (or whatever other catchphrase they want to use), so be it. But they don't have a shred of credibility in claiming to represent "true liberalism" and lecturing others about what that term means.

Supporting the PEN Six

If you've been following the news or been on Twitter recently, there's a good chance you've heard about the PEN Charlie Hebdo controversy, but in case you haven't, I'll summarize briefly. PEN American Center, a literary society, decided to award its annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo; in response, six writers decided to withdraw as literary hosts from the organization's gala this May. The writers have written out their rationales and made them public; their arguments basically hinge on the magazine's ugly portrayal of Muslims, which, as I've noted, a journalist who used to work with Charlie excoriated them for (well before the massacre happened).

Teju Cole, one of the six writers (Chester Higgins Jr./
The New York Times)

These writers, in my view, made the right decision. The award should not go to Charlie Hebdo. I've heard the argument that since the award is for "courage," it doesn't matter if you don't like Charlie's content. I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that one. Saying something is courageous always implies at least some appreciation for the action being taken, which is why we don't describe the 9/11 hijackers as courageous men even though they knowingly sacrificed their lives for their cause. As has been pointed out, no one would be all right with this award being given to a KKK or neo-Nazi publication that had continued to put out its vile material in spite of threats or violence from its opponents. Am I saying that Charlie Hebdo is the equivalent of the KKK or the Nazis? No. But I think a lot of their content, as their former associate Olivier Cyran has criticized them for, has only contributing to the horrifically Islamophobic climate in France. That deserves no award, regardless of how willing they were to continue in their work in the face of violence and threats.

There is a group of people I would like to applaud for their courage, though, because I think they have done and said some important things: the writers withdrawing from the gala in protest, the PEN six, as they've been called. These are people who have the integrity to refuse to go along with the uncritical deification that's happened to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. From what I've read of their comments, I've been pleased with how well the problems with Charlie's content has been noted. We can, as the writers have said, think that a horrible injustice was committed when the Charlie Hebdo journalists were killed, but that doesn't mean we have to view their work as deserving of praise. Alas, as human history shows again and again, being killed is often enough to get a person forever viewed as, in Marilyn Manson's poetic words, "a martyr and a lamb of God."

It was against this unjustified glorification of these "martyrs" and secular saints that these six writers laudably stood up, even though they had to know in the process they were throwing themselves into the New Atheist viper pit where not just their decision but their character and integrity would be shamelessly attacked, which is exactly what's happened. We've had Salman Rushdie, for instance, childishly attacking them as "pussies" and Sam Harris saying they should be ashamed.

Their arguments have been distorted by those who claim they've equated or compared Charlie Hebdo with the Nazis. And, unlike the Charlie Hebdo journalists (if one can be generous enough to call them that), they've suffered this not as a result of mocking and denigrating a group of people, but just for voicing their own opinions and acting on their own principles. Once again, the New Atheist movement and its leaders have shown their own vile, fascistic intolerance of anyone who deviates from the acceptable viewpoint—an intolerance they claim ad nauseam to be victims of, with "PC liberals" as the supposed aggressors.

But, even as the sanctification of the Charlie Hebdo "journalists" goes on and those who speak against it are spat at by the likes of Harris and Rushdie, those who, like myself, find the scene deplorable can at least take some comfort in the fact that there are people willing to stand up against it. The PEN six deserve to be applauded for their actions. We can hope that, at some point in the future, that will be universally recognized. Until then, at least we have our dissidents.

Peeple Are Dumm

I find myself altogether too frequently impressed by the creative ways in which people around me make idiots out of themselves. I'm not talking about circles where one would expect this, either—I don't just mean I've seen it on the Internet (though I certainly have); I've seen it from my classmates (at a highly rated private university), some of whom are in the school's honors program. And I don't mean that I see people misspeak or say something stupid by accident, but expose themselves to be really, genuinely stupid, in overpowering ways.


The stupidity of the masses is genuinely amazing. In advanced, developed countries, large numbers of people continue to cling to irrational beliefs, prejudices, and fears when the evidence necessary to dispel them could hardly be any easier to obtain; when presented with it, they generally refuse to be disabused of their idiocies. Examples of this principle are abundant, particularly in the United States; a recent poll, for instance, found that eighty percent of Americans believe that ISIS poses a serious threat to the United States. Based on what, exactly? Where are the experts who have argued that? Where is the evidence?

America has a worldwide reputation for stupidity, but this sort of ignorance is by no means confined to the US; take Israel, where ninety percent of Israeli Jews endorsed last summer's murderous offensive against Gaza. Or Germany, where they've given Angela Merkel almost ten years in office so far so she can push austerity policies that are disastrous for the rest of Europe (hardly a result that can be in Germany's long-term interest, either, for that matter). And, again, let's keep in mind that these are advanced, developed countries we're talking about. Ignorance alone is one thing, but these are examples of people actively holding beliefs and making decisions that any rational, intelligent person should be able to understand are ridiculous. And yet, even otherwise intelligent people will hold to beliefs like these.

Think back through history; is there any time where ignorance, superstition, bigotry, and barbarism didn't abound? Any time where the average person was perceptive, skeptical, and wanted to advance humanity rather than hold it back? I can't think of any examples, to be honest. The genuinely creative and intelligent people of history have always been not only a small minority, but frequently a persecuted one. The same still holds true today. In advanced countries, we may not kill or prosecute people for heresy anymore, but that doesn't keep us from marginalizing and attacking them.

I'm not trying to say I'm any different than the rest of humanity, or immune from the stupid tendencies I see in others; but I know I make an effort to at least be rational in what I believe and how I behave, and often I feel that the people who are willing and able to make that effort are in short supply. I don't see myself as some sort of genius, but I can't help but see the majority of people as being easily led around and unable or unwilling to critically examine a lot of the things they believe and act upon.

For humanity to truly achieve its full potential, the intelligent, capable minority has to be free to achieve its full potential, unfettered by the foolishness of those around it; the unthinking masses, on the other hand, have to somehow be kept at bay. The achievements and discoveries of the minority will benefit them in the long run; until then, they can be kept occupied by the necessary chores that somebody has to do, but nobody really wants to.

To be clear, I'm by no means endorsing the sort of plutocracy we see today; clearly enough, American capitalism does not reward the most capable or innovative, the best and brightest minds society has to offer—rather, in enriches a small number of people who profit off the work of the masses, and then frequently hoard their money or spend it on frivolous things. The rich are no less stupid than the poor; all too often, their money makes them stupider, if anything.

Nor am I endorsing some kind of fascism, where the law is imposed by some ruling caste. The best and brightest minds of society—the Da Vincis, and Beethovens, and Shakespeares—should by no means have to spend their time running a country and handling the mess of economic and political issues that inevitably comes with such a task. That would be neither the best use of their time nor likely to produce good results.

Rather, what is needed is a system that liberates the best minds from control or hindrance, whether economic or political, by the masses (or by any sort of "elite" that consists, in reality, of the least elite people imaginable, such as in the US today). In the United States, an exceptionally open society in many respects, there are still a number of factors that hinder the ability of the best and brightest to realize their full potential; in a number of ways, society has either imposed equality where it should not exist, or made "superiors" out of people who are not, in fact, superior in any meaningful sense of the word.

For example, the vote of an ignorant bigot counts every bit as much as the vote of a well-informed, thoughtful, and tolerant-minded person; in numerous instances, this artificial, legal equality has resulted in idiots and demagogues winning elections, or, in referendums, the imposition of pointless and moralistic restrictions. I don't ask that we give more weight to the votes of the more intelligent or better-informed, because any criteria for evaluating these qualities would open the door to abuse and unfair exclusion or devaluation; rather, I ask that we give no one the power to impose their morality on anyone else, and to restrict the actions of others based on their own prejudices. It is no coincidence that those most committed to giving the best minds the opportunity to realize their full potential (Emerson, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Wilde) have been the greatest opponents of government power. 

None of this is to try and say that the masses of humanity should be disregarded or despised; there are certainly times when the masses have been willing to take up admirable causes or embrace important ideas, and that is an important fact to acknowledge. But we should not have to wait for the bulk of humanity to embrace the idea of individualism, of allowing each person to flourish unfettered by the factors that today make that more difficult, for that principle to be put into effect.

On Libertarianism, and Why It's Not So Great

I want to start this post by noting that it isn’t intended to express some deep-seated animosity toward libertarians or libertarianism. Compared with mainstream liberalism or conservatism, libertarianism is a breath of fresh

Ron Paul (image source)

air, due to the willingness of many libertarians to attack policies like the drug war, the surveillance state, foreign interventionism, and so forth in ways that liberals and conservatives often won’t. On issues like these, people like myself who are further to the left, in the vicinity of Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald, should be ready and willing to make common cause with libertarians, because there’s plenty of area for agreement. I also recognize that, as with any critique of an ideology as broad as libertarianism, some of the generalizations I make will not apply to all libertarians. With that noted, I’ll proceed.

First, I want to be clear when I use the term libertarian. It’s a term with an interesting history, and was first used politically when an anarchist communist applied the label to himself; in many parts of the world, it’s a word that remains closely connected to traditional anarchism. In the United States, however, it’s used in an idiosyncratic manner, generally to apply to people who claim to support free markets. It’s even been used, rather farcically, by people who will happily tell you what a great president Ronald Reagan was, but here I use it just to refer to the Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard brand of libertarianism, which is, to its credit, strongly critical of Reagan and other Republicans, as much as it is of Democrats.

The idea really at the heart of libertarianism is, of course, liberty. But what kind of liberty, exactly? Upon examination, we find it be a very narrow conception. The Libertarian Party platform defines liberty as that “in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.” We then have, as Marx put it, “the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself…based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man…The practical application of man’s right to liberty is man’s right to private property.” We have the liberty of the individual-as-property-owner, making libertarianism a thoroughly bourgeois ideology.

The libertarian may object that his ideology only says that property (and life and liberty) are what the government (or society) should protect, not what we should personally value most of all, and that each individual is free to choose his own way in life; but society inevitably influences its members, and when property is the fundamental value of society, it becomes the fundamental value of individuals within that society, inevitably.

This commitment to, and fetishization of, property gave birth to the idea of “self-ownership”—the idea that one is the owner of their own person. This is the libertarian justification for a right to bodily integrity. In reality, individual autonomy is a simple fact, and because of individual autonomy, in order to foster this autonomy, property has come into being. Libertarianism stands this reality on its head, claiming that because of the laws of property, individual autonomy is philosophically justified in coming into being. Plainly enough, each person is their own body, no more, no less—without physical matter, a body of some sort, there is no person. In libertarianism, however, we have the individual-as-property-owner as distinguishable from his physical body, in possession and ownership of his physical body. It’s on this philosophical basis that a person has their right not to be killed or physically injured by others, and to do what they please with their own body.

With liberty and property being understood as essentially the same, we come to the third fundamental right—life. The Party platform defines this right, in practice, as “the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others.” In other words, the right to life as another property, protected from other members of society, but nothing else. The right to life, then, does not mean the right be helped to stay alive when afflicted with illness, injury, or poverty, unless those are directly inflicted by another person. The right to life is ultimately the right not be killed or maimed by another person, i.e., the right to be protected from one’s fellow-citizens, rather than any sort of genuinely right to life as such. Thus, the libertarian philosophy is strongly opposed to government welfare programs, healthcare programs, economic regulation, etc. The ill effects of not having these are explained away, or justified, by use of convenient fictions.

The most prominent of these fictions is the notion of voluntary exchange. For instance, it may seem at first glance that an employer maintaining unsafe working conditions and paying his employees starvation wages is causing them to suffer unfairly, but this is all right because the employees “voluntarily” work there. Perhaps there were no better jobs available and they would starve to death if they didn’t make money, but nonetheless this “voluntary” decision makes the suffering inflicted by the employer acceptable.

We’re furthermore invited to believe the fiction that one can acquire property as an isolated individual, without affecting anyone else, and that the individual who becomes enormously wealthy is somehow doing so without impacting the rest of society. The problem with this is that there is, in fact, a finite amount of property in existence—one person possessing wealth means that everyone else has that much less. And, of course, enormous wealth is generally accumulated by profiting off of workers who “voluntarily” receive less than the full product of their labor.

One could, alternatively, rely on the more pragmatic (but equally unconvincing) argument that, whatever undesirable by-products a libertarian economy might have (such as low-paid workers and unsafe working conditions), it would on the whole produce a better society than the alternatives. This is hard to disprove, given that there are not a plentitude of libertarian societies one can point to; Murray Rothbard cites ancient Ireland as one, but for obvious reasons it seems a bit hard to see an ancient civilization with a mostly pastoral economy as providing the perfect model for the industrialized countries of the twenty-first century, even if we really believe Ireland did follow the principles of libertarianism (which is questionable) and that it really was, as Rothbard claims, a great society.

It does seem a tad hard to believe that libertarianism would really be better than the alternatives, however, when countries that deviate so heavily from its doctrines (at least economically) do so well; the highest-ranking countries in the world on various metrics, in numerous lists, are consistently countries with expansive social welfare provisions and public programs. If it’s true that government intervention in the economy causes more harm than good, it’s a bit hard to explain why the most successful countries in the world by numerous metrics are the ones Bernie Sanders, and not Ron Paul, wants to emulate.

I would lastly like to challenge the notion that America was founded on libertarian principles, which is constantly claimed by libertarians. The easiest way I can think of to do this is to list a few “un-libertarian” quotes from the Founding Fathers:

“All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of publick Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

—Thomas Paine

“[T]he consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property..[a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

—Thomas Jefferson


“In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”

—James Madison

This should be enough to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers were certainly not, as a group, opposed to any sort of redistribution of wealth, as the libertarians are. Libertarianism can boast a sort of heritage from the bourgeois classical liberalism that is often seen in the writings of the founders, however, and it has radicalized all the most problematic elements of that philosophy so as to render it no longer even realistic. With all this being said, libertarianism is still refreshing in how willing it is to deviate from ideas that both liberals and conservatives often stubbornly cling to; but one wishes it could do so without finding other ideas to cling to just as stubbornly.

Dictators, Disease, and Destruction (and how we might boost all three in one fell swoop)

Those who follow politics closely may have heard talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new deal trade that the Obama administration is doing its best to sell. Obama is seeking to fast-track the deal, meaning that whatever agreement is ultimately hammered out would be put to a simple yes-or-no vote in Congress—no amendments, no filibusters. So, what is this thing, and why should anyone care?

From Wikileaks

In short, the TPP is a proposed between a whole bunch of countries that would impose a lot of new rules on those countries. It's called a trade deal, but it doesn't have a whole lot to do with trade, when you get down to it—it's more about creating the best possible atmosphere for huge, transnational corporations to make an even more obscene amount of money than they already do. As for the average people living in these countries? The deal's a little nastier for them.

For instance, the TPP gives businesses the right to sue any country that's signed onto the deal if the government of that country introduces any law or policy that could interfere with that business's profit. This is a pretty big concern given the minor issue we have with our climate currently falling to pieces and the fact that a lot of environmental legislation that desperately needs to be enacted would cut into the profits of companies that are polluting the atmosphere; if a country enacted one of these laws, under the TPP, they could be sued by one of those polluters for "unfairly" cutting into their profits. Not exactly the best way to address the climate crisis.

There's an even more immediate impact to be felt due to the provisions when it comes to prescription drugs. Prescription drug companies have a huge role at the negotiating table for the TPP, and, not surprisingly, aren't big fans of the fact that people in developing countries are buying cheaper versions of their drugs from someone other than them. The TPP "fixes" this "problem" by having increased "intellectual property" protections; in short, higher drug prices for people in developing countries. Some would say that making drugs harder for poor people to afford is not too likely to get us closer to a disease-free world, but don't worry—according to President Obama, those people are just conspiracy theorists who don't understand how great the TPP really is.

As appealing as I'm sure the deal sounds from what I've said so far, there's still more that's worth mentioning. Two of the countries whose governments are helping to negotiate the TPP are Brunei and Malaysia, both countries that harshly punish any same-sex acts; Brunei punishes homosexuality with death by stoning. This means that the TPP, in effect, offers trade benefits to countries that are punishing LGBT citizens, sometimes with death. Sort of makes you wonder how sincere Obama's commitment to LGBT rights really is.

Aside from basically just flat-out lying about what the deal will do, the White House has defended it by saying that, because it's good for businesses, it'll be good for the workers too—that's right, it'll trickle down. Let that serve as a reminder that Republicans have no monopoly on this stupid justification. In fact, it's been used by both parties for decades to justify their economic policy; Democrats may use debates over relatively minor tax increases as an opportunity to paint themselves as the anti-trickle down party, but the major parts of their agenda—trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP, repealing New Deal legislation, appointing Wall Street insiders to high positions—testifies otherwise. Neither of the major parties stands for the economically exploited, and that's something we would do well to keep in mind.

Obama's Not-War On ISIS

"What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it."

—GWF Hegel

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages (edited by me)

I've already addressed the Obama Administration's Totally-Not-War-Or-Anything-Like-That against ISIS a couple times before, but it's particularly pertinent to do so now, once again. President Obama has requested from Congress another Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), or what we might refer to as a declaration of we're-still-not-calling-it-war. Obama conducted an entire offensive in Libya without congressional approval, and our "counterterrorism" against ISIS has now been ongoing for six months without any such approval—so why is that the president now feels it's appropriate to ask for a new AUMF?

The answer is not exactly a comforting one. It's clear that Obama isn't admitting wrongdoing, as he's continued to maintain his current not-war is authorized by the 2001 AUMF. He could just be offering Congress the chance to have its voice heard just to be polite, but that seems a tad dubious. So what possibility is left? In a word, escalation.

As we know well by this point, Obama has given us his guarantee that there will be no "boots on the ground." This hasn't proven to be very meaningful so far (unless the over-2,500 security personnel and military advisers in Iraq are wearing sneakers, maybe), and the proposed AUMF doesn't do much to strengthen it. We have a vague promise that there will be no "enduring offensive ground combat operations," which is essentially meaningless when one takes into account that (by pure coincidence, of course) the president is the one with the authority to decide what "enduring" and "offensive" mean (and presumably what "ground" means, too, given that the boots worn by US military personnel in Iraq are apparently not on it).

Of course, as I've previously noted, even if Obama does maintain his "no combat troops" pledge, that doesn't mean the next president will—and, conveniently enough, the sunset provision on the AUMF would be in 2018, well after Obama's successor is in office; whether that's a Republican or Hillary Clinton, we have some reason to be worried.

As Noam Chomsky, among others, has noted, it's US involvement in the Middle East that's helped to create the scourge that is ISIS—the idea of a war (erm, I mean "counterterrorism offensive") to rectify that problem is, of course, completely nonsensical. As if to remind us the dangers of US involvement in the Middle East, the government of Yemen was recently overtaken by a coup. The culprits are the Shia Houthi, who have been alienated by the policies of Yemen's US-backed government (both before and after the 2011 revolution). The Sunni community within the country, feeling threatened by the Shia insurgency, has increasingly turned to al-Qaeda (you know, that group that we thought was the worst thing ever, before ISIS came into being).

Even if we were to devote the resources (i.e. lives and money) necessary to defeat ISIS, there's no reason to think that that wouldn't have the effect of creating some other horrible terror group, just as our war to get rid of Saddam Hussein ended up creating this nightmare. There's no pretty solution for the ISIS problem, but greater US involvement is no solution at all. If you live in the US, now would be a good time to call your representative and urge them to vote "no" on the AUMF that's been proposed. Before you write this off as pointless, keep in mind that it succeeded back in 2013, when Congress was scared away from approving Obama's plan for airstrikes on Syria.

The new war (whether we call it that or not) is not going to be to the benefit of the general populace of the US, Europe, Iraq, or Syria. It's hard to imagine ISIS can be defeated in any way but through war, but it's not our war to fight and we are not helping anyone by getting involved in it. Even if the fearmongering about ISIS were anything but blatant lies, this would be exactly the wrong thing to do in the course of addressing the problem. If Congress approves the AUMF as it's been proposed, it perpetuates the same policies that have created the current situation.

How Political Incorrectness Was Stolen

I've always detested political correctness. Even before I was old enough to actually understand politics, it always came off to me as a stupid set of rules written by people who thought that no one should ever have to be offended, and that even innocuous speech and behaviors should be deemed "offensive." My impression of it over the years has hardly improved; it’s always seemed like—and still seems like—an excuse to get outraged over stupid things, act victimized, and prevent any sort of enlightened discussion on serious issues from actually taking place, often while promoting shallow, empty catchphrases that are more problematic than helpful.

George Carlin (Image from Reuters)

Ever since I discovered them, I’ve been a fan of George Carlin’s numerous takedowns of the hypocrisy and frivolity of the PC movement; it’s in that vein of anti-PC thought that I’ve always fallen. Historically, I consider myself to have pretty good company: Carlin, Marilyn Manson, who’s always been just as ready to offend PC liberals as he has the Christian right, and Hunter S. Thompson, who always represented the spirit of political incorrectness in his very existence. The stated goals of political correctness—moving toward a society where we tolerate our differences with one another and no one is unfairly discriminated against or made to feel inferior—were always ones I supported, but the victim mentality of the PC movement, their constant and usually unjustified outrage, their readiness to glorify people who say and do things that have reason to be offensive, just not to their side—those were always enough to turn me off.

But it’s because of my disgust for that sort of shallowness and hypocrisy that a disheartening truth has become clear to me, after a barrage of events to back it up—the uncritical deification of the dead Charlie Hebdo journalists, Salman Rushdie’s vindictive attacks against those who criticize “our fallen comrades,” Bill Maher’s claim that liberals are “bullying” him, and then, of course, Jonathan Chait’s empty-headed bad joke of an article; there is a new breed of political correctness: Political Incorrectness. People like Maher, who I once thought of as almost an heir to Carlin’s anti-PC individualist legacy, have revealed themselves to be no more eager to have a rational discussion, no less willing to play the victim, and just as ready to exploit good ideas as an excuse for loathsome garbage, than the PC crusaders they so despise.

Political correctness, to this new movement, is a convenient accusation to lob at anyone who challenges their mendacity—take when, back in May of 2013, Maher had Glenn Greenwald on his show, and after Greenwald threw a mountain of facts at him rebutting his claims about Islam, Maher eschewed rational argumentation in favor of accusing him of holding “a silly, liberal view that all religions are alike, because it makes [Greenwald] feel good [to think so].” Similarly, when, last year, Brandeis University decided not to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree because of her statements on Islam (such as that the West should fight a war against it using military force and that it’s a “nihilistic cult of death” that it “legitimates murder”), Sam Harris immediately responded by deeming the university’s act a capitulation to “PC-bullying.”

Harris also wrote off criticism of his support for ethnic profiling as being largely motivated by political correctness, and lacking substantive critique; Rushdie, too, has claimed that because of the “intimidation” of political correctness, we are unable to address the major problems associated with the War on Terror (presumably, he’s not referring to the very true, but largely unmentioned, fact that the United States, being the world’s leading terrorist nation, has no business waging a “War on Terror”). Like Jonathan Chait in his recent article, Harris, Rushdie, Maher, and the rest of the “Political Incorrectness” movement readily write off whatever arguments or actions contradict their “Politically Incorrect” views as being motivated by PC standards, regardless of who’s behind them and the rationale that’s offered for them.

As can be seen from these quotes, though, it’s not enough for the champions of “Political Incorrectness” to just dismiss criticism of their views as PC bullshit; rather, it’s crucial that political correctness of almost any incarnation is now a type of “bullying” or “intimidation” (or fascism, depending on who you’re talking to). One of the most annoying traits of the PC movement (particularly among self-proclaimed feminists on sites like Tumblr), for me, has always been the victim mentality underlying it, so it’s particularly disappointing to see these proponents of “Political Incorrectness” succumbing to the same self-indulgent nonsense. The downright whininess of the “Politically Incorrect” is, at times, farcical, such as when Sam Harris complained to Cenk Uygur about (perish the thought!) being called a “douchebag” in an article on Salon (we can only hope poor Sam has gotten the help he needed in recovering from that degree of PC bullying). The “Politically Incorrect” crew throws around accusations of bullying, authoritarianism, and censorship almost as readily as online “Social Justice Warriors” throw out accusations of racism and misogyny. What makes this particularly ironic, of course, is the standard line from the “Politically Incorrect” that what they really want is an open discussion and that their opponents should “just stop being so sensitive!”

Even worse, though, is that the “Politically Incorrect” crowd is really not that great when it comes to “politically correct” issues like the LGBT cause, religious tolerance, women’s equality, and so forth. Not long ago, Bill Maher cited how “Facebook has now decided we have to choose, in our profile, from 56 different genders” (which, if he’d checked, he would know are largely just slightly different terms for the same things, and are really just various prompts you’ll get if you select the “custom” option and begin typing, rather than some long list you have to scroll through) as an example of liberals being “obnoxious;” in a stand-up routine, he went on to mockingly list options like intersex, bigender, and genderfluid (apparently Bill Maher is unaware of the various societies throughout history—all, no doubt, ruled by PC fascists—that have recognized more than two genders). And, even taking into account that he’s a comedian, it’s a bit hard not to detect misogyny in some of his routines, as he talks about the "feminization" of society, where sensitivity matters more than facts.

Harris is worse; his ideas about “conversational intolerance” are completely incompatible with the view of a society where no one is made to feel unwelcome based on personal creed (as long as that creed tolerates others and harms no one). His advocacy for “benign dictatorship” being imposed on Muslim countries by the West as a means of transitioning to democracy shows an undeniable belief in an almost inherent superiority of Westerners, to the extent that even a Western-imposed dictator is better than a Middle Eastern Muslim democracy (until, of course, we can properly civilize the Muslims).

Then, of course, we have the late Christopher Hitchens—not a just a saint for the New Atheists, but for many of the “Politically Incorrect” as well (no surprise, given the overlap). With him we run into a gold mine of awful views, from his support of the Iraq War to his view that Native Americans really should get over the whole “genocide” deal because it was one of those unfortunate things that happens in the process of advancing as a species. Hitchens said and did the sort of things that even some of today’s conservatives would back away from.

With Manson, Carlin, or Thompson, while you might not exactly get that “let’s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya” feeling, there's always the sense of a sort of “you don’t screw with me and mine, I won’t screw with you” attitude—that as long as someone else isn’t hurting anyone, there’s no reason to bother them. The Manson-Carlin-Thompson dream society is an essentially libertarian one—not libertarian in the Ron Paul free market sense of the word, but rather a society where people are free to be who they are, and aren’t under the thumb of big business, big government, religious institutions, or the thought police. In the end, they're on the side of the “little guy,” whoever it is, in the present or the past, that's getting unfairly kicked around (or worse) based on race, class, or personal creed. The same, I’m afraid, just can’t be said for the Mahers, Harrises, and Hitchenses of the world.

In the end, though, there really is a defining feature of “Political Incorrectness” that makes it vastly worse than the PC values and attitudes it’s supposed to save us from: it consistently, with few exceptions, ends up defending the worst aspects of Western foreign policy. This stands in stark contrast to the old-school political incorrectness I’ve mentioned. Between Carlin’s scathing quips about how the US likes to bomb brown people, Thompson’s unequivocal condemnation of George W. Bush for “killing brown skinned children in the name of Jesus and the American people,” and Manson’s comparison of America’s role in the Iraq War to a large-scale version of the Columbine shooting, it’s very clear where each of them falls on the foreign policy debate: with those who hold the Noam Chomsky-esque view that American foreign policy is largely murder on a massive scale. And why not? Isn’t the idea that when the government disintegrates innocents halfway across the world, it’s somehow more noble than any other instance of murder, just an example of a particularly awful sort of political correctness? Isn’t calling out the crimes of the government we live under challenging the standard on what it’s “acceptable” to say in perhaps the most important way possible?

But, unsurprisingly, the “Politically Incorrect” see it differently; this is obvious enough with Harris or Hitchens, given their readiness to use whatever force necessary to eliminate the Islamic extremism they claim is the real threat to civilization; given his unfettered praise of Obama, one can’t expect anything too impressive from Chait on the foreign policy front, either. Steven Pinker, another “Politically Incorrect” “intellectual,” asserts that democracies like the US “tend to stay out of disputes across the board,” disregarding all examples to the contrary and asserting there has been a “Long Peace” since World War II. Maher is probably the best in this respect, given his opposition to the Iraq War and that he even went as far as to compare the drone war to terrorism—but, as illustrated in his scuffle with Glenn Greenwald, that doesn’t keep from ultimately defending the idea that we Westerners are far more civilized than Those People (i.e. Muslims).

For all the stupidity of political correctness, it is at least on the right side of this issue; while the PC warriors may be obnoxious, one rarely finds them defending Western foreign policy or trying to stick up for the human rights record of the US or UK. The PC left is not only annoying, but certainly also hypocritical at times. But issues like these are trifles compared to the monstrous crimes that have occurred as part of US foreign policy, and which the “Politically Incorrect” would often like to gloss over or even defend. By giving cover to that sort of barbarism, “Political Incorrectness” earns itself the scorn and disgust of anyone concerned with human rights. It’s this issue, ultimately, that’s prompted me to focus so much on figures like Maher and Harris recently.

Anti-PC individualism, as espoused by Carlin, Thompson, Manson, and numerous others, has been buried by people claiming to represent it but using it as a façade to promote a completely different set of ideas. We need someone who condemns the stupidities of the PC movement on the one hand—a movement that really has gained a disquieting amount of influence—but who stands just as strongly against the violence of Western foreign policy and the lies than enable it from people like Harris and Hitchens. I don’t know who might fill that role, but whoever it is, now would be a great time for them to step into the spotlight.

[Later note: Originally, I cited California's affirmative consent law as an example of political correctness leading to a bad policy. However, I have since reevaluated my position and consider my former views on the law to have been based on a poor understanding of it, and I have concluded that, while there may be some concerns in how it's enforced, the law is fundamentally sound.]