Thoughts on the 2016 Election

I know it's still early, but clearly the frenzy surrounding the 2016 presidential election has already started. First, I'll briefly note that I think it's ridiculous that election season for the highest office in the country really lasts this long, and I'll also point out how that's true in no other developed country in the world. US presidential campaigns are absurd, overlong circuses that we've become accustomed to because a lot of us don't know any better.

With that out of the way, since election season has started whether I like it or not, I'll go ahead and make some observations so far. We'll start with the Democratic side. We have, firstly (and most prominently), Hillary Clinton. I've pretty thoroughly detailed why I don't like her, and nothing has changed since then to make me like her any better. We've heard some economic populist sort of rhetoric from her, but, unfortunately, there's no reason to believe it's anything but rhetoric. Her record is not that of economic populist, it's that of a corporatist. In the speech launching her campaign, she cited her husband, Bill Clinton and President Obama as good examples of presidents who carried on the legacy of the New Deal and helped create an economy that worked for the middle class. This ignores the fact that the top one percent's share of the national income spiked under Bill Clinton, he repealed New Deal legislation (probably helping to lead to the financial crisis in 2009), and signed a welfare "reform" bill that essentially shredded the social safety net. As for Obama, I've already covered that.

So as I predicted, Hillary 2016 does, in fact, suck. But, interestingly, she has a competitor that has surged in some polls, and may prove more troublesome to her than originally expected. That competitor is, of course, Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist senator from Vermont. While I still have my disagreements with Sanders, he's certainly far preferable to Clinton, and does offer a platform that, if enacted, would take some major steps in the right direction, in terms of economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy.

Predictably, the shills for the Democratic Party mainstream (Allen Clifton, for instance) have offered up a thousand reasons why the Democrats should nominate Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and even implied he shouldn't be running. Supposedly, he'll weaken Hillary Clinton and make a Republican victory more likely (just like how the fiercely competitive 2008 primaries left Barack Obama weakened and allowed John McCain to win the election, unless I'm remembering that wrong). To them, Hillary's nomination is inevitable--and, to be honest, I still think it's what will happen in all likelihood. But it isn't inevitable, and no one should settle for a candidate like Hillary Clinton, for all the reasons I (along with many more prominent people) have pointed out.

"But he could never win the general election!" Well, yes, he could, if enough people voted for him. Again, I consider Sanders a longshot for the Democratic nomination, but if he manages to win that, it hardly seems impossible that he could win the general election. He does describe himself as a socialist, as noted, but 1.) almost half of Americans say they would be willing to vote for a socialist for president, and 2.) much of Bernie Sanders's platform is widely popular, given the general sentiment that the middle class are being screwed over as Wall Street rakes in huge profits, meaning that some who might have first been unwilling to vote for a socialist could be swayed once they understand what Sanders's socialism actually entails (which is to say, basically the social democratic policies of the Nordic countries).

"But even if he won, he couldn't get anywhere with Congress!" How far has Obama gotten with Congress? Unless the Democrats have majorities in both houses (and probably only if they have a 60+ supermajority in the Senate), no Democrat will be able to get much done. The president has far more power than many people realize, given his ability to take unilateral actions in terms of foreign policy, choose how to enforce the laws, and make appointments to various positions. Were Sanders to get elected, he would almost certainly not be able to do everything he's proposed, but he would still make a far better president than Clinton.

There are a few other candidates for the Democratic nomination, but they're honestly so low-profile that I haven't looked too closely at them, so I'll skip over them. We can then move onto the Republican field which is, well, a total mess. The last number I heard was thirteen candidates, and that's likely to keep going up. They usually include at least fifteen in the polls. There's really not a clear frontrunner, either. If I had to guess, I'd say the nomination will probably go to Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, both of whom are completely terrible. The others aren't much better, with the exception of Rand Paul, who, as I've noted, says some decent things on some issues, but is still pretty awful on a number of other issues.

Mostly, the Republican field is so big and includes so many absurd candidates (Santorum again, Trump for real this time, Jindal, Huckabee) that it promises to be entertaining, though sadly there won't be anywhere near as many debates as there were last time. I don't have much to offer in terms of serious thoughts on the field, other than that it seems to indicate a total disarray and chaos within the Republican Party itself, which is nothing new. Whoever they end up nominating, it will very likely be another right-wing authoritarian corporatist who would ramp up the "national security" state, the war on drugs, and military interventionism.

I will note a serious concern that I have, though. ISIS, even though we haven't been hearing too much about it recently, is still very much a serious issue, and not about to disappear. It seems hard to fathom that it will be gone by that the next president takes office, assuming we continue our strategy of refusing to partner with Iran and Syria in the fight against ISIS and supporting Saudi Arabia as it fights against militants in Yemen who are also engaged in the fight against ISIS. If Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker get elected, there is real reason to fear that our intervention there will escalate and Iraq War III will go full-blown. We do have the opportunity to make a meaningful choice in this election. And the impact could be enormous.

We're Not So Bad

For all the differences between the devoutly religious and Ayn Rand-type social Darwinists, they seem to have a certain narrative in common: that human nature is selfish, unsympathetic, and downright cold. For the capitalist social Darwinists, this is the justification for sweeping away all sorts of social welfare programs and having an every-man-for-himself style free market--it's only natural, after all. For the fervently religious, it's why people need some kind of divinely sanctioned morality to live by, lest they succumb to their sinister inner nature and care only about themselves.

It's not just these two groups that have this conception, either; the popular consensus really does seem to be that human nature is pretty brutal. For liberals, it's why we need economic regulations. For conservatives, it's why we need to be tough on crime and value deterrence over rehabilitation. Even I've put out a couple blog posts that paint a less-than-glowing image of human nature.

And it's not that this conception is entirely wrong; sure, people can be selfish, cold, brutal, and downright monstrous. We see examples of that all the time in the news, from ISIS to Israel-Palestine to the chilling dispassion of those running large corporations to the lives of their workers and customers. But what we overlook is that we also see people working together for their mutual benefit, and even going out of their way to help others, on a daily basis. Often it's something small--holding the door for another person or letting them switch lanes in front of you in a traffic jam. But it's not insignificant.

And, although I've used the term "social Darwinist," it's really not quite appropriate seeing that Darwin himself called the human capacity for sympathy toward others "the noblest part of our nature." Zoologist and evolutionary theorist Peter Kropotkin also argued that mutual aid is the most important factor in evolution:

Peter Kropotkin (from Wikimedia)

"There is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species; there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defense...Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle."

So it's not just some idealistic idea that the human species has a natural capacity for cooperating and sympathy with one another; rather, those things really are every bit as natural as competition and cruelty.

And, for that matter, people as a general rule do better for themselves when cooperating, rather than competing. That's why workers form unions and businesses form cartels--in each case, they understand it's better to cooperate with each other than to compete. Certainly, competition can drive people to do better; but cooperation actually enables them to do better.

The growing gap between the rich and everyone else can be traced, ultimately, to the fact that it's gotten increasingly easy for the rich to cooperate for their benefit and increasingly hard for everyone else to do so: while banks are allowed to become "too big to fail" and corporate lobbyists often find friends in Congress willing to make a deal with them, workers are forced to compete with each other for jobs without the benefits that unions used to offer. It isn't that the rich have simply come out on top through some grand competition; rather, they've stayed ahead by working together, while everyone else has had to compete with each other.

The point of all of this is that people do cooperate completely of their own accord all the time; so, no, the Hobbesian war of all against all is really not something that happens in real life, under normal circumstances. So the people who want to model the economy on that should understand that what they're proposing is not "natural" anymore than our current economy, or an entirely socialist economy, or any other. The people who are sure that without religion or morality we would all be murdering each other in the streets should ask themselves why, then, there are so many instances of people cooperating for their mutual benefit when morality and religion didn't come into play; or, for that matter, why there are so many examples of altruism among animals when they presumably have neither, at least in the human understanding of the words.

We do have the capacity to establish societies based on cooperation and mutual aid, rather than competition; they are not doomed to fail based on human nature, as so many have asserted. We also have the capacity to continue on our current course, where the few cooperate and the many compete, for the benefit of the former and detriment of the latter. Cooperation will continue either way; but who it will benefit is to be seen. The choice is ours.

Why I Like My Fiancee

Obviously, this is pretty different from my normal blog post, but I want to talk about my fiancee. Granted, for whoever's reading this, this post may be of limited relevance, but it is, after all, my blog--and maybe this post will be of relevance to you in one way or another. Who knows? Anyway, I want to talk about why I like my fiancee.

One of the biggest reasons I like her is because I can have a smart conversation with her, about a variety of topics. We have a lot of common interests, so we have a lot of conversations that would be interesting with anyone, but they're made even better by the fact that they're with the person I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.

Another big reason is that she has a sense of humor. She says a lot of things that I find really funny, and it's always easier for me to like someone if I find them funny. I can't imagine being with anyone without some kind of sense of humor, but thankfully my fiancee not only has one, but has one a lot like mine.

Also very importantly, I can tell she cares a lot about me. She goes out of her way to be nice to me, and always likes to spend time with me. I like my fiancee because I can tell she likes me, and wants the best for me. I want the best for her, too.

A little more superficially, but still worth noting, is that she's beautiful. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but I can't imagine finding her to be anything but beautiful. Looks aren't everything, or even the important thing, but they don't hurt.

But, honestly, and most importantly, I like her because she's her. Sometimes  you find a person who it just feels right to be with, and for me, she's that. Perhaps, dear reader, that's what you can take away from this--ultimately, when you find the right person, you'll know it, even if it's hard to express. And I do know it.

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.