Herr werner
2017-03-27 18:17:45 UTC
You're Not the Boss of Me! Why Libertarianism Is a Childish
Sham
Libertarians believe they're rebels, but they are really
political children who scream through tears.
By David Masciotra
Libertarians believe themselves controversial and cool. They're
desperate to package themselves as dangerous rebels, but in
reality they are champions of conformity. Their irreverence and
their opposition to political correctness is little more than
a fashion accessory, disguising their subservience tofor all
their protests against the political elitethe real elite.
Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying
empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt
force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers,
exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards
of a selfish society: I have always found it quaint, and
rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks
Americans are not yet selfish enough.
Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because theyve
politicized the protest of children who scream through tears,
Youre not the boss of me. The rejection of all rules and
regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the
ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent.
It is infantile naïveté.
As much as libertarians boast of having a political movement
gaining in popularity, youre not the boss of me does not
even rise to the most elementary level of politics. Aristotle
translated politics into meaning the things concerning the
polis, referring to the city, or in other words, the
community. Confucius connected politics with ethics, and his
ethics are attached to communal service with a moral system
based on empathy. A political program, like that from the
right, that eliminates empathy, and denies the collective, is
anti-political.
Opposition to any conception of the public interest and common
good, and the consistent rejection of any opportunity to
organize communities in the interest of solidarity, is not only
a vicious form of anti-politics, it is affirmation of Americas
most dominant and harmful dogmas. In America, selfishness, like
blue jeans or a black dress, never goes out of style. It is the
style. The founding fathers, for all the hagiographic praise
and worship they receive as ritual in America, had no
significant interest in freedom beyond their own social
station, regardless of the poetry they put on paper. Native
Americans, women, black Americans, and anyone who did not own
property could not vote, but taxation without representation
was the rallying cry of the revolution. The founders reacted
with righteous rage to an injustice to their class, but
demonstrated no passion or prioritization of expanding their
victory for liberty to anyone who did not look, think, or spend
money like them.
Many years after the nations establishment as an independent
republic, President Calvin Coolidge quipped, The chief
business of the American people is business. It is easy to
extrapolate from that unintentional indictment how, in a
rejection of alternative conceptions of philosophy and
morality, America continually reinforced Alexis De
Tocquevilles prescient 1831 observation, As one digs deeper
into the national character of Americans, one sees that they
have sought the value of everything in this world only in the
answer to this single question: How much money will it bring
in?
The disasters of reducing life, the governance of affairs, and
the distribution of resources to such a shallow standard leaves
wreckage where among the debris one can find human bodies.
Studies indicate that nearly 18,000 Americans die every year
because they lack comprehensive health insurance. Designing a
healthcare system with the question, How much money will it
bring in? at the center, kills instead of cures.
The denial of the collective interest and communal bond, as
much as libertarians like to pose as trailblazers, is not the
road less traveled, but the highway in gridlock. Competitive
individualism, and the perversion of personal responsibility to
mean social irresponsibility, is what allows for America to
limp behind the rest of the developed world in providing for
the poor and creating social services for the general
population.
It also leads to the elevation of crude utility as a
measurement of anythings purpose or value. Richard Hofstadter,
observed in his classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,
that many Americans are highly intelligent, but their
intelligence is functional, not intellectual. They excel at
their occupational tasks, but do not invest the intellect or
imagination in abstract, critical, or philosophical inquiries
and ideas. If society is reducible to the individual, and the
individual is reducible to consumer capacity, the duties of
democracy and the pleasures of creativity stand little chance
of competing with the call of the cash register.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker recently stepped on a landmine
when he suggested that the Wisconsin university system remove
from its mission statement any language having to do with
public service or meaning of life. Education should only train
people to work. Walker might have faced mockery and scorn for
his proposal, but any college instructor can verify my
experience of struggling to convince even a handful of students
to consider the importance of ideas not directly related to
their career choices.
Meanwhile pop culture, still having not recovered from
mistaking the Oliver Stone villain Gordon Gekko and his greed
is good philosophy as heroic, bombards Americans with reality
television programs about shallow and self-destructive rich
people whose mansions, jewelry, vehicles, and fashion choices
are treated with a religious reverence. Their lives are in
despair and disarray, but they find redemption through
consumption.
Who then are the libertarians rebelling against? The most
powerful sector of the society is corporate America, and it
profits and benefits most from the deregulatory and anti-tax
measures libertarians champion. That sector of society also
happens to own the federal government. Through large campaign
donations and aggressive lobbying the very corruption that
libertarians help enable by defending Citizens United and
opposing campaign finance reform they have institutionalized
bribery, transforming the legislative process into an auction.
Libertarians proclaim an anti-government position, but they are
only opposing the last measures of protection that remain in
place to prevent the government from full mutation into an
aristocracy. By advocating for the removal of all social
programs, libertarians are not rebelling, as much as they are
reinforcing the prevailing ethos of bootstrap capitalism. The
poor are responsible for their plight, and therefore deserve no
sympathy or assistance.
When children yell youre not the boss of me they believe
they are launching a rebellion against the household
establishment, but they are conforming to the codes of behavior
visible among all children. Libertarians are attempting to
practice the same political voodoo transforming conformity
into rebellion without realizing that their cries for freedom
coalesce with their childlike culture.
The philosopher Charles Taylor explains in his book, The Ethics
of Authenticity, that the search for self-actualization is a
noble and important enterprise in life. Authenticity is
important, and people should not compromise their principles or
passions to placate expectations of society. Taylor complicates
the picture by adding the elemental truth of individuality and
community that personal freedom is empty and meaningless
without connections to horizons of significance. That
beautiful phrase captures the essentiality of developing bonds
of empathy and ties of solidarity with people outside of ones
own individual pursuits, and within a larger social context.
Neighborhoods, religious institutions, political parties,
advocacy organizations, charities, and social justice groups
all qualify as horizons of significance, and the connections
that arise out of those horizons inevitably producs politics of
communal ethics and public responsibility, in addition to
private liberty.
Encouraging and facilitating connections of love that
revolutionize individual freedom into motivation for social
justice, and reform politics to adhere to the truth of Cornel
Wests insight that justice is what love looks like in public
represents real rebellion in America. Defending and championing
selfish indifference to collective interest and need conforms
not only to the mainstream American practice of social neglect,
but also to the most basic and brutish impulse of humanitys
mammalian origins. The rebel searches for higher ground. The
conformist crawls through the shallow end of the swamp.
Sham
Libertarians believe they're rebels, but they are really
political children who scream through tears.
By David Masciotra
Libertarians believe themselves controversial and cool. They're
desperate to package themselves as dangerous rebels, but in
reality they are champions of conformity. Their irreverence and
their opposition to political correctness is little more than
a fashion accessory, disguising their subservience tofor all
their protests against the political elitethe real elite.
Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying
empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt
force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers,
exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards
of a selfish society: I have always found it quaint, and
rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks
Americans are not yet selfish enough.
Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because theyve
politicized the protest of children who scream through tears,
Youre not the boss of me. The rejection of all rules and
regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the
ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent.
It is infantile naïveté.
As much as libertarians boast of having a political movement
gaining in popularity, youre not the boss of me does not
even rise to the most elementary level of politics. Aristotle
translated politics into meaning the things concerning the
polis, referring to the city, or in other words, the
community. Confucius connected politics with ethics, and his
ethics are attached to communal service with a moral system
based on empathy. A political program, like that from the
right, that eliminates empathy, and denies the collective, is
anti-political.
Opposition to any conception of the public interest and common
good, and the consistent rejection of any opportunity to
organize communities in the interest of solidarity, is not only
a vicious form of anti-politics, it is affirmation of Americas
most dominant and harmful dogmas. In America, selfishness, like
blue jeans or a black dress, never goes out of style. It is the
style. The founding fathers, for all the hagiographic praise
and worship they receive as ritual in America, had no
significant interest in freedom beyond their own social
station, regardless of the poetry they put on paper. Native
Americans, women, black Americans, and anyone who did not own
property could not vote, but taxation without representation
was the rallying cry of the revolution. The founders reacted
with righteous rage to an injustice to their class, but
demonstrated no passion or prioritization of expanding their
victory for liberty to anyone who did not look, think, or spend
money like them.
Many years after the nations establishment as an independent
republic, President Calvin Coolidge quipped, The chief
business of the American people is business. It is easy to
extrapolate from that unintentional indictment how, in a
rejection of alternative conceptions of philosophy and
morality, America continually reinforced Alexis De
Tocquevilles prescient 1831 observation, As one digs deeper
into the national character of Americans, one sees that they
have sought the value of everything in this world only in the
answer to this single question: How much money will it bring
in?
The disasters of reducing life, the governance of affairs, and
the distribution of resources to such a shallow standard leaves
wreckage where among the debris one can find human bodies.
Studies indicate that nearly 18,000 Americans die every year
because they lack comprehensive health insurance. Designing a
healthcare system with the question, How much money will it
bring in? at the center, kills instead of cures.
The denial of the collective interest and communal bond, as
much as libertarians like to pose as trailblazers, is not the
road less traveled, but the highway in gridlock. Competitive
individualism, and the perversion of personal responsibility to
mean social irresponsibility, is what allows for America to
limp behind the rest of the developed world in providing for
the poor and creating social services for the general
population.
It also leads to the elevation of crude utility as a
measurement of anythings purpose or value. Richard Hofstadter,
observed in his classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,
that many Americans are highly intelligent, but their
intelligence is functional, not intellectual. They excel at
their occupational tasks, but do not invest the intellect or
imagination in abstract, critical, or philosophical inquiries
and ideas. If society is reducible to the individual, and the
individual is reducible to consumer capacity, the duties of
democracy and the pleasures of creativity stand little chance
of competing with the call of the cash register.
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker recently stepped on a landmine
when he suggested that the Wisconsin university system remove
from its mission statement any language having to do with
public service or meaning of life. Education should only train
people to work. Walker might have faced mockery and scorn for
his proposal, but any college instructor can verify my
experience of struggling to convince even a handful of students
to consider the importance of ideas not directly related to
their career choices.
Meanwhile pop culture, still having not recovered from
mistaking the Oliver Stone villain Gordon Gekko and his greed
is good philosophy as heroic, bombards Americans with reality
television programs about shallow and self-destructive rich
people whose mansions, jewelry, vehicles, and fashion choices
are treated with a religious reverence. Their lives are in
despair and disarray, but they find redemption through
consumption.
Who then are the libertarians rebelling against? The most
powerful sector of the society is corporate America, and it
profits and benefits most from the deregulatory and anti-tax
measures libertarians champion. That sector of society also
happens to own the federal government. Through large campaign
donations and aggressive lobbying the very corruption that
libertarians help enable by defending Citizens United and
opposing campaign finance reform they have institutionalized
bribery, transforming the legislative process into an auction.
Libertarians proclaim an anti-government position, but they are
only opposing the last measures of protection that remain in
place to prevent the government from full mutation into an
aristocracy. By advocating for the removal of all social
programs, libertarians are not rebelling, as much as they are
reinforcing the prevailing ethos of bootstrap capitalism. The
poor are responsible for their plight, and therefore deserve no
sympathy or assistance.
When children yell youre not the boss of me they believe
they are launching a rebellion against the household
establishment, but they are conforming to the codes of behavior
visible among all children. Libertarians are attempting to
practice the same political voodoo transforming conformity
into rebellion without realizing that their cries for freedom
coalesce with their childlike culture.
The philosopher Charles Taylor explains in his book, The Ethics
of Authenticity, that the search for self-actualization is a
noble and important enterprise in life. Authenticity is
important, and people should not compromise their principles or
passions to placate expectations of society. Taylor complicates
the picture by adding the elemental truth of individuality and
community that personal freedom is empty and meaningless
without connections to horizons of significance. That
beautiful phrase captures the essentiality of developing bonds
of empathy and ties of solidarity with people outside of ones
own individual pursuits, and within a larger social context.
Neighborhoods, religious institutions, political parties,
advocacy organizations, charities, and social justice groups
all qualify as horizons of significance, and the connections
that arise out of those horizons inevitably producs politics of
communal ethics and public responsibility, in addition to
private liberty.
Encouraging and facilitating connections of love that
revolutionize individual freedom into motivation for social
justice, and reform politics to adhere to the truth of Cornel
Wests insight that justice is what love looks like in public
represents real rebellion in America. Defending and championing
selfish indifference to collective interest and need conforms
not only to the mainstream American practice of social neglect,
but also to the most basic and brutish impulse of humanitys
mammalian origins. The rebel searches for higher ground. The
conformist crawls through the shallow end of the swamp.