Julien Thomas Schuessler, 20, was charged with a hit and run, reckless driving, failing to maintain lane control and was released.
Schuessler, posted a video at 2:24 p.m. the day of the primary election, and shows him intentionally pulling off of the road and slamming through a Trump sign. When asked why he would intentionally pull off the road to hit a Trump campaign sign in such a dangerous maneuver, the driver said:
“I did what I felt was morally right. Spread love, not hate.”
‘…it is not always important that individuals reason well, it is sufficient that they reason; from their individual thought, freedom is born.’’ Montesquieu
Once again, the irrational jackals looking for their pound of blood and flesh have pounced and pummelled into oblivion any remaining shred of rational thought they possessed.
This time they’re outraged! Really, really, outraged! 25%, no, 33.33% more outrage. So salty they are with Trump – ooo, that son of a bitch – Campbell’s is jealous with all the salt they use.
I’m not going to rehash what we already know and what led to this. The transcripts of what he said are available on the Internet.
Suffice to say, for me, there are no winners here as all sides have some culpability (white supremacists, Antifa, the media and the town); though, unpopular as it is it say, I do think the police stand down order, Antifa’s provocation and the media’s deliberate distortion of the facts on the ground hold the bigger slice of blame here. I worry less about a bunch of idiots congregating to spew venomous rhetoric (hey, sounds like SJW) and more about the principles of freedom of speech and expression and the right to assemble.
This is a cornerstone of our Western values that can’t be compromised and must be protected.
And like these events sometimes show, the issue becomes what possible negative outcomes are there for free speech, expression and assembly.
Here, there’s no question it is the progressive left who are a bigger threat and danger.
There have been logical fallacies a plenty. From it’s ‘okay to punch a Nazi’ to ‘if you defend their right to free speech that makes you a Nazi’ to ‘Antifa is justified in provoking’ and so on. It’s been said, I am told, Antifa are the new liberators.
If so, we’re doomed.
I think noted pillar of reading comprehension Kevin Durant spoke on behalf of all illiterates everywhere when he said, ‘…I don’t agree with what he (Trump) agrees with.’
You’re not helping.
Do we really know what Trump ‘agrees with’? Based on the full transcript of what I read I’m still not sure.
Though one must wonder if people like Durant get flustered at the abnormal amount of times prominent Democrats and progressives call for the assassination of Trump. It kinda unnerves me because murder, you know? I mean, we all know the left embrace violence, but come on, dudes! I musta missed all those times Republicans suggested Obama be killed. Alas, until Trump invites the KKK to the White House in the same manner Obama invited BLM soon after the murder of five officers, I’m gonna keep this one on ice for now.
Nonetheless, no need to keep perspective.
Let the virtue signalling commence!
Hoo-boy.
Off the charts!
It’s like watching teenagers with lobotomies interpret Thomas Paine’s argument with Edmund Burke.
I just read the CFL in Canada began a ‘Diversity is strength’ campaign in response to Trump’s alleged hate for diversity. What is it with these vapid slogans? Are they some sort of Linus security blanket for people? All that was missing was Justin Trudeau as a spokesperson (heaven forbid you call Justin a spokesman) dressed in drag for an exclamation point.
Yes, because the left love diversity of ideas. And I think the word he was gunning for was pluralism.
‘Diversity by other means’ is the very definition of discrimination. Google? What they do in the name of diversity? Discrimination. The Liberal party of Canada and their degenerate style of identity governance? Discrimination.
If one group is negatively impacted through punitive measures (however subtle), in order to prop another you have…discrimination.
Even a muppet understands this. Play Safe, CFL! You’re libel to lose an eye if you keep this up.
/TSN personality nods agreeing then realizes it’s not part of the script and the nods become contorted grimaces of disagreement.
We must diverse like we never diversed before!
To cite Orwell’s 1984, the overall point was this: A world depicted in his novel is possible if man is unaware of his assaults on personal freedoms; that if he loses his right to his own thoughts we’re doomed as a free people.
This is the lesson from Charlottesville.
Well, that and the message that it’s okay to go provoke people who are allowed to congregate regardless of what you think of them.
Lemme ask, does it look like we’re winning?
Just when ‘business leaders’ weren’t already an insufferable breed of twats, they decide to resign from some useless council because of Trump’s reaction. I hope those bum taps and smug winks were worth making them look like clowns to the rest of us.
‘I swear I meant to diverse more.’
It’s interesting limousine liberal, bourgeois CEO’s blindly play into Antifa’s hands given how much the left hates corporations, no? Once ensnared, no amount of faux-right think posturing would save them from the left’s reign of terror. It’s like they don’t know the story of Murat. For those of you not in the loop, he was done in by a Girodin who were a branch of…the Jacobins.
I hope they have bigger bath tubs.
*********
Which brings me to my first digression. Years ago I went to a notary. In the back ground, as I prepared pay the $1500 fee, I noticed pictures of Cuba and Che. I wondered if he found it odd to have pictures of left-wing sociopaths who purged and killed peasants and intellectuals who would probably shoot him too for being a ‘capitalist pig’. I wondered further if it would bother him if, say, Che Tremblay (it’s Quebec) came to power and capped what he could charge customers?
This made me think of an (depressing but revealing) end note in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago:
31. One of our school friends was nearly arrested because of me at this time. It was an enormous relief to me to learn later that he was still free! But then, twenty-two years later, he wrote to me: “On the basis of your published works I conclude that you take a one-sided view of life…Objectively speaking, you have become the standard-bearer of Fascist reactionaries in the West, in West Germany and the United States, for example….Lenin, whom, I’m convinced, you love and honour just as much as you uses to, yes, and old Marx and Engels, too, would have condemned you in the severest fashion. Think about that!” Indeed, I do think about that: How sorry I am that you didn’t get arrested then! How much you lost!
Glibertarians hardest hit.
Moving along.
It’s….cute.
Of course, to those of us not robbed of our senses and rational bearings, Charlottesville is just another example of the collective intellectual and moral shallowness that grips hyper-partisans stalking Americans; and the West in general including my home country of Canada.
I think, as a starting point and ultimately a moot one, everyone can agree the KKK are douchebags. And that white supremacy, whatever the source of its recent little spike, is not exactly an endearing quality in a free and pluralist society.
But therein lies what’s so infuriating to the left: In a free and pluralist civilization there will be people and ideas you disagree with. I disagree with just about everything the progressive left argues. Heck, I think they’re essentially blue capped anti-humanists but this is the cross we must bear in a free world, eh?
Soon, they’ll be branding wrong think with tattoo serial numbers. What’s another tattoo for millennials? But for some of us old farts who can’t bear to ruin our skin, this is a frightening thought. I just made the jump from Irish Spring (soap for Leprechauns) to Old Spice, considering it ‘edgy’ because of the commercials.
Behind the smellful humour is a dreadful message. Modern progressive activists project their mean-spirited know-nothing drool-babblings revealing a a hideous intellectual and moral decadence very much in line with communism, socialism and fascism. There’s a rather large trail of unbecoming evidence pointing to their dark souls.
Until they admit they’re Marxist and therefore illiberal, we can never have an ‘honest conversation’ with progressives.
From holding college deans hostage to smashing people’s skulls with bike locks (so hipster-douchey, no?), to bullying random strangers in the streets, to a Berniebro shooting Republicans at a baseball game to a BLM sympathizer killing five cops (Time and again, when given the chance to truly tower above the racial divide, Obama chose to swim in with the swine), I think we can discern a pattern of behaviour here as a matter of established fact.
As if that’s not enough, they have the nerve to compare themselves to World War II veterans who fought the Axis powers and gave their lives to it in the most destructive war in world history. The horror of humanity they saw, Antifa can’t imagine from their safe spaces.
Antifa are nothing like war heroes. They’re thugs; not liberators. They just haven’t gotten around to choosing their color is all.
We’re told to fear white supremacists, but we should worry about the left more.
No one is talking about taking Mr. Jefferson’s deluxe apartment in the sky away, but progressive reprobates are trying to remove your right to free speech and expression.
Back to Charlottesville.
I think it’s pretty obvious what happened. A group got a permit to exercise their right to assemble. Another group not liking the message went to protest them. Both came prepared to fight. And found it with a tragic result. There are no winners and there is plenty of blame to go around. But we’re led to believe there’s only one party to blame?
I don’t think so.
Now the spill over of doxxing people begins and has already claimed an innocent victim.
The last part is probably the most disturbing trend. They search out people’s backgrounds and without a shred of evidence or context will publicly shame them with the aim of destroying their lives. It’s reminiscent of The Ox-Bow Incident about how a mob driven by revenge kill innocent people without evidence.
It’s Salem 2.0 is what it is.
And they’re supposed to be the good guys? What happens when they mistakenly dox another person and this time a life is lost? What then?
Progressive calculus.
Let’s take a look at this from another angle. Had white supremacists crashed the ‘March for Women’ and violence ensued, how would people react and the media respond?
I can’t believe we have to keep repeating this: People and groups are allowed freedom to associate and assembly regardless of message or of what others think of their beliefs.
I thought the ‘March for science’ was the usual vacuous showcase in numbskullery. The speeches I heard there and at the ‘March for Women’ were offensive and useful only to the loose lint on your couch where actual advancement of philosophical discourse is concerned.
But I would never ever demand their voices be silenced. They had every right to march and be heard, however idiotic. What possible purpose could be served in shutting down speech even if I think it’s dangerous to science? I can but offer a counter argument and keep them engaged.
When speech is seen as violence by the government, we may as well abandon The Constitution (and The Charter here in Canada – however, feeble in its commitment to liberty) and wipe the crumbs from our mouths with it.
Even if you feel morally upset by such persons or groups it doesn’t accord you the right to violently suppress their rights.
Repeat after me and Grover: You don’t have the right to violently suppress people’s right to free speech, expression and assembly on any grounds because you feel offended.
That goes for anyone and any group. There is no middle ground where our right to express ourselves is concerned.
If you do not accept this, then you’re exactly what you claim to be fighting and are driven by a tribal, emotional, misguided and distorted righteousness thus making you as dangerous to liberty as the persons or groups you abhor. You’ve conceded you won’t (or can’t) sell or promote your ideas in the realm of civil discourse.
In other words, you’re mob rule. What you advocate, lazily, is to legitimize government force against your opponents.
I’m horrified by how easily people are prepared to allow the jack boot of the government on the necks of people who happen to hold a different opinion.
To repeat. You can’t keep attacking innocent people physically and verbally, shutting down streets, shouting down people debating differing points of views, changing the language of discourse to suit your narratives, accosting people through guilt by association and so on and not expect retaliation.
Either you have freedom of speech and expression or you don’t. There’s no such thing as ‘balanced’ speech. If you believe there is, then you’re half-way to censorship.
At this point, I’d like to theorize that both these groups have little to do with anything our common liberal heritage bestowed upon our wretched, undeserving souls.
As collectivist identity groups, it’s less a left versus right battle and more of a left versus left engagement I theorize. Just like we saw in the early 20th century when communists fought socialists and both fought fascists.
Each of these ideologies were under the socialist umbrella with fascism lying to the right of communism and socialism.
Euphemisms for cucks’n cults.
In other words, it was a fight among illiberals and this event in Virginia was no different. If you’re identity hinges on collectivism or notions of the ‘greater good’ via government coercion, you’re illiberal.
Or, if you prefer pop culture analogies, it’s like a SJW version of The Riddler fighting The Penguin over who is more of a victim of the patriarchy.
Other than that, they’re also a bunch of illiterates deliberately mangling the facts of history through circular logic to fit their half-assed narratives and theories rooted in false premises and unhinged logical fallacies. No, that you defend the KKK’s right to free speech doesn’t mean you ‘tacitly’ condone them. If this passes as an argument, all I can say is go buy yourself a helmet because you’re in danger of getting a concussion.
Moreover, if they want to be taken seriously they should probably stop depicting Trump as both a Nazi and a fascist. Pick one and stick to it.
No, indeed, it’s not about the principle or the morality.
Standing for principles are the ones where you accept under all circumstances the right to free speech, expression and assembly when it’s in distress and under assault while not advocating for violence yourself.
Now, at this point, some may wonder why should a Canadian care? Oh, care we must. The United States is not alone in dealing with this and their bad ideas tend to find its way up here. They’re just the biggest black head on the face of Western civilization that everyone sees. America serves as the perfect distraction for the rest of the world.
Lucky them. Or us. Whatever.
There’s an uncomfortable adherence to a left-wing ideology which is a beautiful martini on the surface, but it’s a poisonous virus deep below and transcends national borders. So where principals over principles prevail, a loss of perspective easily pulls people in.
We all lose if liberty is lost. What’s the point of existing if you have no freedom to express your opinion? Note, I am not suggesting if you’re opinion is bad there can’t be consequences but that’s best for a free society to determine and not through the coercive action of the state. If the state regulates speech, you’re not free.
Simple.
One of the valuable lessons in Solzhenitsyn’s writings is to describe in detail how destructively slow this process really is. It’s almost impossible to criticize it without being told you have a ‘one-sided view of life’. The left always claim to have a nuanced view on life but when you examine and explore their views and arguments further, you realize it’s anything but. It’s just cold, naked, anti-humanism and always somehow ends up in death.
It’s communism by other means. Antifa and its ilk doesn’t care for principles of liberty. Their movement is not predicated on the philosophy of advancing liberty in the context of classical Western value. Far from it in fact. Indeed, they are hostile to it.
Antifa is where one finds notions of ‘white privilege’ and the West being a racist and murderous civilization.
Nothing more dangerous than a group of people thinking they can right the wrongs of the past and present in an effort to control the future.
Their entire outlook sits on a bedrock of illiberalism. If they were to ever achieve power they’d behave exactly like the Taliban, Jacobins or Bolsheviks slowly purging wrong think.
I’d be lined up against the wall. So would all of you here. And those useful idiots in the CEO ranks.
This is true.
Who will take to the streets in defence of freedom of speech, expression and assembly? Who will speak for it? This is the question.
I do see a boatload of petty opportunistic buffoons willing to squish and squash speech in a misguided attempt to stupidly ‘civilize’ discourse though. Nothing could be more barbaric I say!
Don’t let Trump or any other politician allow us to forget this cherished principle.
Boy, did it really take me this long to say the left are not nice people who project their rage and anger and live a miserable, empty existence void of any principles?
You wanna piece of me racist?
Moving forward, expect no ‘peak derp’ while the creepy and cowardly molluscum cult (led by intellectually deficient celebrities and fake journalists toeing a splendidly regressive narrative wallowing in their cheap, unreasonable, unhelpful, smug didactics) will continue to get their cues from a vapid Obamabot tweet.
The left are living in a post-retard bizarro world and we get to watch them burn down any shred of moral decency and intellectual currency they had left; a world where they get to be Super-Man while acting like Lex Luthor. Where they simultaneously get to co-opt bravery with veterans while denigrating Western civilization and its values.
If you ask this uncucked Canuck, it seems to me this petty band of illiberal, dilapidated delusional clowns are a direct danger to liberal values because they hold more influence over policy at the moment.
I don’t know what will come of this and if there will be a tipping point. I do know one thing though. Glibertarians will never be able to solve the deep-dish divide and we’re definitely on someone’s blackball list somewhere in Leftopia.
Update: Currently, as I began this post (forcing me to revise it a couple of times), there’s a right-wing rally along with a counter-protest in Boston. By all accounts it’s peaceful so far.
The only way to describe the media’s reaction to Trump’s press conference and statements about the events in Charlottesville yesterday is irrational. To understand how irrational the reaction was, just imagine if instead of involving white nationalists and antifa counter protestors the events of last weekend had been a conflict between two rival biker gangs.
Do not change a single event from this weekend but imagine the events being the result of violence at a biker rally. One biker club has its national rally and a rival biker club shows up to protest and disrupt it. During the course of the weekend, a lot of shouting and violence take place. Fights break out on Friday. For reasons yet to be known the local police do nothing to separate the rival gangs and violence and conflict spills over into Saturday. Finally, on Saturday afternoon a member of the first gang runs a car into a crowd of its rival gang injuring nineteen and killing one.
Now ask yourself, would anyone in their right mind claim that only the first biker gang was to blame and everyone is obligated to condemn it? Of course, no one would. There would be national outrage about the problem of biker gangs. The local police would be called to the carpet for not maintaining order. Law enforcement would crack down hard on both gangs and biker rallies in general.
The only reason the media and the nation at large are not having the same reaction it would if Charlottesville involved a fight between biker gangs is because it involved white nationalists. And the media and political class are incapable of having a rational conversation about anything involving white nationalism or white supremacy. The reason for this is that to do so would be to call into question the entire concept of white guilt.
White guilt, like all racial collectivist beliefs, is completely irrational. White guilt is doubly irrational because it embraces the very sort of racial collectivism it claims to reject. It is irrational to say that one person is responsible for the actions of another person just because they share the same color of skin. It is irrational to say that anyone living today is in any way accountable or responsible or has any reason to feel guilty about events that occurred before they were born. The entire concept of collective guilt, be it based on race, class, sex or anything else is utterly irrational. It represents the worst sort of tribalism that civilization and rationality seek to end.
White guilt, like all irrational belief systems, is completely antithetical to any form of rational discourse about any of the areas it concerns. Once a believer in an irrational ideology is forced to have a rational discussion about one area of the ideology the entire ideology comes into question. This is why the integration of professional sports did so much towards ending the idea of white racial supremacy. When blacks and whites were not allowed to compete on the same field, whites could hold the irrational belief that whites were inherently superior athletes to blacks. Once Jackie Robinson became a star in the major leagues and Jim Brown became the best football player in the world, whites could no longer hold that belief. They were forced to have a rational conversation based on facts about the relative athletic ability of the two races. And once they did that, they could no longer refuse to question or discuss rationally their views on racial superiority in every other area of life. The entire ideology fell like a house of cards. Within a few decades, white supremacy went from a societal given to a fringe belief.
One of the primary tenants of white guilt is that white nationalism is a unique evil. White guilt necessitates that white nationalism not just be wrong but a unique wrong in the world, worse than communism or any of the sins of other races. If white nationalism isn’t worse than other isms, then whites have no more or less to answer for than any other race or creed and the whole edifice of white guilt collapses. This is of course irrational. White nationalism and belief in white supremacy is evil but no more or less evil than any other form of nationalism or religious or racial supremacy. So no believer in white guilt can have a rational discussion about white nationalism without calling the entire concept of white guilt into question.
When Donald Trump spoke yesterday, he attempted to force the nation to have an honest and rational conversation about white nationalism and its involvement in the events last weekend. He said two undeniably truthful and rational things about the events this weekend. First, he said that not everyone at the march in Charlottesville was a white nationalist. This is true. The march was a protest against tearing down of the Robert E. Lee statue. It was organized by white nationalists but 200 or so people attended. It is perfectly rational and truthful to say that not all of them were white nationalists. Some of them, albeit a small minority, no doubt were there because they wanted to save the statue.
Second, he said that the counter protesters deserve a significant share of the blame for the resulting violence and death. This is also true. The counter protesters were active willing participants in the violence that occurred. The proof of that is in the photos and accounts of the weekend given in the Virginia ACLU Twitter feed. And as I explained above, had the events in Charlottesville involved any other group but white nationalists everyone involved would be assessed their share of the blame.
To say those things and to try and have a rational and truthful conversation about last weekend is to admit that it is possible for white nationalists, no matter how bad they are, to have been if the victims of a wrong or at least not be entirely responsible for the events of last weekend. And to do that is to necessarily admit the reality that white nationalists are not uniquely evil or worse than other violent or supremacist groups. Donald Trump’s statements were a direct challenge to the entire concept of collective white guilt.
One of the interesting things about Charlottesville that no one seems to have noticed is that an event that was supposed to be about white nationalism and white supremacy was not a race riot. I have not, in any of the pictures and video I have seen of the weekend, seen a single black person. Charlottesville was a conflict almost entirely or maybe entirely between white people. There is a good reason for this. The debate and conflict over white guilt is almost always a conflict between upper class and middle and lower class whites. Black people are nearly always bystanders or props in that conflict.
To understand why you have to understand how white guilt works. You would think the belief in collective white guilt would be an expression of self-loathing, but it is not. When a white person believes in white guilt they are engaging in one of the purest forms of virtue signaling. Since the belief is irrational and has nothing to do with their actions, they are not accepting any real moral responsibility. What they are doing is asserting their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept the belief. When a black person asserts collective white guilt, they are doing it to attack white people. When a white person does it, the white person is saying they understand their burden and the horrible sins of their race. In doing that, the white person is showing their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept their guilt and responsibility.
Embracing some level of white guilt is one of the primary ways upper class and gentry whites assert their moral superiority over middle and lower class whites. Middle and lower class whites don’t believe in white guilt. As a result, they often have more rational views about race. Middle and lower class whites can say and think rational things about race that upper-class whites cannot do without losing their class status. Lower and middle-class whites can believe that black people are sometimes just as racist as whites. They can believe that black supremacist groups can be just as bad as the KKK. They can believe that the Civil War was a complex event that wasn’t just about slavery and white supremacy, or that just because South Carolina or Mississippi were slave states and have a bad racial history doesn’t mean there are no good parts of those places or that people from there can’t be proud of being from them.
Upper-class whites cannot believe any of that. No upper-class white would ever wave a Confederate flag. No upper-class white would ever say that the Black Panthers are as bad as the KKK. If they are conservative, they might say the KKK is insignificant but they would never say that a black group is qualitatively just as bad. To do any of that would necessarily call into question the idea of white guilt and mean being kicked out of the class.
So when Trump yesterday tried to force a rational conversation about white nationalism, Washington, that most white and upper class of cities, lost its mind. It was all hands on deck, left and right, to save and assert the white guilt moral privilege. The responses to Trump were predictably irrational and counter factual. For the crime of saying not every incident is entirely one sided, Trump was accused of being a white supremacist; the President everyone feared he would be. Some of the reaction was so counterfactual it can fairly be called insane. Mitt Romney and John McCain described the counter protesters as fighters for justice and equality against the forces of prejudice and racism. People who showed up waving Communist flags and carrying pepper spray and bags of feces and urine are now fighters against evil and prejudice. Really? The entire response boiled down to a giant guttural groan of “How Dare You!!” by the white upper class. Trump had attacked their most sacred moral privilege and they were not going to take it lying down.
What will be the fall out of all this? Like most things involving Trump, a lot less than people think. First, I don’t think it is going to make a bit of difference politically. The people who voted for Trump are almost to the person people who reject the concept of white guilt. So, they won’t see it the way the media and Washington has. They will see it as Trump saying entirely fair and rational things. I don’t see Trump’s support dropping one bit. Trump’s enemies will just have a new reason to feel aggrieved.
Second, I don’t think we are going to see much white nationalist antifa violence going forward. Trump tried to force a conversation the left doesn’t want to have. For the left white guilt is not just about class it is also how it enforces identity politics. The left needs white guilt. Trump also tried to force the left to talk about its role in this violence. And that is also not a conversation anyone on the left wants to have. The left has condoned and enabled antifa violence for years and gotten away with it. They do not want to have to answer for that.
So I think the police departments in Democratic cities are going to start doing their jobs. Instead of standing down at these marches and counter protests, the police will start keeping the two sides apart, arresting people who show up with weapons and bags of urine and cracking down hard on any fights that break out and maintaining order. Deprived of the ability to riot with impunity, antifa will find better things to do. They don’t want to go to jail any more than anyone else and protests get pretty boring if you no longer have free reign to attack people. Deprived of any violence to use to slander the right, the media will lose interest as well. These marches are going over the next few months return to being the small events of paper hanging losers they have always been. So, I wouldn’t stock up on ammunition for the coming civil war just yet.
Lastly, I think that the drive to tear down Confederate monuments will likely fizzle as well. They will tear a few more down in Democratic cities but the issue will fade away as well. Trump did another thing yesterday and laid down the mark that if this stuff didn’t stop they would be calling for tearing down George Washington statues. Of course, all right thinking people are today dismissing this. They, however, know that it is true. There are already calls to tear down the statues of Theodore Roosevelt in museums in New York City. You can tear down Confederate statues and largely avoid a rational conversation. Most people really don’t know who the people were and you can always use the “but it’s racist” charge to keep the average observer from objecting. George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt are different. People do know who they are and can’t be scared off by the racist charge. And the left doesn’t want a rational conversation about that any more than they want a rational conversation about last weekend.
The statue controversy like all leftist causes is entirely manufactured. We had a hundred year struggle for black civil rights in this country. During that time not a single person to my knowledge, not Martin Luther King, not W.E.B Dubois, not Booker T. Washington, not Malcolm X, ever cared or said a single word about those monuments. Yet, suddenly in 2017, they are a threat to all that is right and good. Give me a break. Once the left decides tearing them down is no longer to their advantage, and they will if they haven’t already, no more will be heard about the subject.
Recently, within the Liberty-o-sphere, much hay was made over a speech by Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, titled “For a New Libertarian.” Steve Horowitz, Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University took issue with Deist’s employment of the phrase “blood and soil,” calling it a “clearly racist and anti-Semitic Nazi-era phrase.” Reaction to Horowitz ranged from pointing at him and hissing ‘Jew!’ to moremeasuredresponses. From my reading of the speech, I find claiming Deist’s employment of the phrase to be “clearly racist and anti-Semitic” to be uncharitable. However, I do find the defense of “Blut und Boden” being first coined by 19th century German romantic nationalists to be a bit odd in this context, as I wonder why the president of an ostensibly anarcho-capitalist think tank would choose as his cri du coeur a phrase that was the very center of the ideological foundations of the modern nation-state. Indeed, lost in all the back-and-forth over whether or not “For a New Libertarian” is Mein Kampf redux is the larger question: Is thin libertarianism dead?
Horowitz, as a self-styled “Bleeding Heart Libertarian,” is a proponent of what is known as thick libertarianism. That is, the belief that libertarianism entails certain social and political beliefs, namely a lukewarm 20th century humanist liberalism. Thickists argue that a society (or an individual) is not truly libertarian unless there is a general belief in egalitarianism, tolerance, democracy, etc.. On the other hand, Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists argue for thin libertarianism, which is defined as the belief that libertarianism equals the non-aggression principle – nothing more, nothing less. At least they did until Deist’s speech two and a half weeks ago. When Deist argued that “[i]n other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance,” it is an explicit rejection of thin libertarianism; he is saying that there is more to libertarianism than the NAP. However, contrary to the Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Deist and others now argue that it entails some flavor of traditionalist social conservatism.
As an anarcho-capitalist, I’m quite used to completely execrable human beings advocating for positions I share, which is why I believe Deist’s recent gambit to be wrong-headed. In the name of attempting to make liberty more appealing to people, Deist is, in fact, limiting and delimiting the movement extremely narrowly. Deist claimed “Mecca is not Paris, an Irishman is not an Aboriginal, a Buddhist is not a Rastafarian, a soccer mom is not a Russian,” yet here I am, the son of a Rastafarian and a Jew who converted to Buddhism at the age of 24. Thin libertarianism is what allows me to stand ranks with Deist against ever-encroaching statism. I need not agree with Deist’s new penchant for romantic nationalism, but as long as he respects the NAP, we can co-exist in the liberty sphere. It’s a shame the moonshine is so good that Deist keeps wanting to be invited to all those yokeltarian hootenannys down in Auburn, for with the death of thin libertarianism, the liberty movement may have suffer a self-inflicted dolorous blow from which it will not recover. Contra Deist, what will, in actuality, doom libertarianism to irrelevancy is fracturing the movement along 1,000 little stupid country mouse/city mouse pissing matches.
Item originally published here. Republished with author’s consent.
Not Robert E. Lee.
Let me say up front I am not a Nazi, a white nationalist, or a sympathizer of them. I am a military history buff who knows a lot about the Civil War and am firmly pro-union and very unsympathetic to the southern cause. I don’t buy a word of the lost cause or other mythologizing of the old south. So, anyone reading this can please not waste their time accusing me of being a white nationalist or confederate sympathizer. I am most certainly not.
Second, before we get onto the important work of using the events of yesterday to slander our political enemies, I think we might want to at least look at the facts as we know them. The facts are, as best I can tell, as follows. A white nationalist organization known as Unite the Right decided to have a national rally in Charlottesville, VA, to protest the removal of the city’s Robert E. Lee statue.
After months of work and hype on social media, Unite the Right managed to get 200 marchers to show up in Charlottesville Friday. On Friday night they marched around with tiki torches and waved flags without incident. On Saturday a group of Antifa counter protesters showed up. The counter protesters proceeded to attack the Unite the Right Marchers and a riot broke out.
According the the Virginia ACLU, the Charlottesville police stood down and did nothing to control the situation. During this riot, a supporter of the march, it is unclear if he is a member of any of the organizations there, slammed his car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing one person and injuring 19 others. It is unclear if the driver had planned to do this to any counter protesters before the march or if he just took the riot as an excuse to do it.
Those are the facts as we know them currently. What they mean can be debated. Any debate about this subject should be based upon facts, not assumptions or hasty generalizations. What can we reasonably conclude from the known facts? Three things, I think.
First, the white nationalist movement is still the same small, insignificant movement it always has been. Despite months of hype and work, the Unite the Right rally drew 200 people. The white nationalist KKK movement has been able to draw a couple hundred people at a national rally for my entire lifetime. So let’s stop with the nonsense about this being some significant rally or that the white nationalists are any more popular or emboldened today than they ever have been. They are not. It’s the same small group of morons that have always been there. The proof of that is in the numbers. If there had been 10,000 people at that rally, I might reconsider that. But there wasn’t.
Second, what played out yesterday in Charlottesville is just a repeat of what happened in Berkeley, Middleburg, NYU, and other places over the last year and a half. Some group Antifa finds objectionable has a speech or a rally. Then Antifa shows up and starts assaulting people and the police stand down, let them do it, and let the riot happen. That is exactly what happened yesterday. It should surprise no one that one of these riots has now resulted in someone’s death. The fact that the death was the result of the actions of the enemies of Antifa, rather than Antifa itself, changes nothing. This was going to happen eventually.
Third, this is exactly what Antifa wanted. Their plan is always to attack their enemies hoping they fight back and then get blamed for the resulting violence. And time and again the police let them do it. Every time some self-righteous writer like David French gets up and talks about this being the result of the “alt right,” whatever that is, they are doing nothing but emboldening Antifa and encouraging this to happen more in the future.
You want this stuff to stop, and you should, don’t waste your time virtue signaling about the dreaded Virginia Nazis. They are an insignificant group that are defended by no one and whose only use seems to be to allow Democrats and writers like David French to slander their political opponents. Prosecuting and condemning the person who did this is an essential start. But you can’t undo the harm he did and you can’t deter or prevent the actions of truly violent people.
What can be done is to hold local police accountable for doing their jobs and preventing situations like the one in Charlottesville from happening in the first place. As the President said, the solution to this is for police to restore law and order. There are no other answers or deeper lessons here. It is just that simple.
Editor’s note (8:32 pm central): there are several people involved at Glibs. I took it upon myself personally and without discussion to post this article. I thought it was well-written and would provoke a respectful and engaging discussion from the readers. It is in no way the consensus opinion of everyone involved and shouldn’t be considered such. -sloopyinca
10″The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” – H. L. Mencken
Let’s start with a couple of quick, short, non-scholarly definitions. What is free speech? I would say the right to express whatever you goddamn feel like. Wait a damn minute! “Obscene speech is not free speech!” (it like totally is), “hate speech is not free speech!” (I beg to differ) or “you can’t yell “fire!” in a crowded theater!” (I tried it once, it seems I could).
Great Balls of You Cant Say That
Is hate speech really free speech? Mea culpa, as the ancient Dacians used to say. There is, in fact, no such thing as hate speech, as there is no possible objective definition of it. There is no such thing as obscene speech, intolerant speech, and offensive speech. All these things are in the ear of the behearer (yes, I know it’s not a word, it be jokes). There is, in fact, such a thing as fire.
To support speech which is free is specifically about the one you personally find offensive and disagreeable. It’s no great feat, no feat at all, to graciously allow speech you agree with. The whole goddamn point is to defend the “bad speech”. And I do not mean “a bit rude, but makes a good point”. I mean gratuitously stupid and offensive speech, the one that is nowhere near a good point, which is offensive just to be offensive, just to push boundaries, contradictory and half-baked, vile and inflammatory. This is the litmus test of free speech. Respecting speech when you just can’t even.
Here is a good place to state that I am one of the good guys, an ally (Or is it axis? I get confused) and I do not agree with any speech anyone might find offensive, although I think they have the right to say it, and please buy me cocktails – nothing too sweet and girly, mind, an old fashioned works, or maybe a Sazerac. I had a decent cocktail once with rye whiskey, bitters and something called Sirop de Picon, but this is all besides the point.
The main issue of free speech is not of theaters, but of government. Whether private individuals can set rules in their private sphere – I can kick you out of my home if I don’t like what you say – government should not attempt to ban speech in the public sphere. This is understood by some, not by others.
But! There is often a but, and this one is sort of thicc. The fact you can avoid speech you don’t like, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do so. It is good to strive towards a society where the government respects freedom and expression by law and private parties respect it by custom. Yes, twitter/youtube/facebook can and often do police speech on their platforms, as is their right. But maybe, just maybe, it is a bad idea to do so. And while it is not directly a right infringement, they can be criticized for this.
I Had the Right to Remain Silent…But I Didn’t Have the Ability” – Ron White
Private actors, people and companies, can deny a “platform” to speech they don’t like, but I believe people should have the default view of: let’s hear the asshole out. If you are confident in your opinion, you can listen to another one, no matter how shitty. One grows by being exposed to as many ideas as possible, as opposed to avoiding anything different, while screaming to lung capacity about how stupid or ignorant or hateful others are. I always found it quite amazing how certain some are of the superiority of their views, when they refuse to even attempt to understand others. It is like the view you developed in high school, probably the very first one you came across, was perfect and there is no need for further inquiry.
Just shake it off, or something
All that being said, it is every snowflake’s right to insulate xerself in whatever echo chamber xir chooses. I think it is stupid, but you do you and like whatever. Fine, but–ehm–how about speech that is violence and promotes actual harm? I feel threatened! That tweet is literally violence! Check mate, free speechers!
I do not have much shit to give in general, but sometimes I worry about our society and the people in it. How, well… soft everyone is becoming, how delicate, how fragile, how lacking in introspection and self-awareness some people are. Like or loath Nassim Taleb, there is something to be said of antifragility. Or resilience.
In the new intersectional reality, it has become a mark of social status to claim victimhood. Everyone wants as many oppression brownie points as possible. I do not understand this and do not think it is healthy. Time was, it was a matter of pride to overcome adversity. You had it real tough and you made, conquered every obstacle. Now it seems to be the opposite. This is not the way forward. Victim status was something to be avoided and conquered, not celebrated, because the individual gains most from overcoming adversity, not whining about it.
The most annoying thing is that for a good number of these people there is no adversity. They try so hard to claim oppression – the very thing one should overcome – when none exists. But what are the optics of that? How does it help women, for example, when some feminist screams hysterically about everything? Makes ’em look real rational, doesn’t it? Claiming you can’t handle even mildly offensive speech. I get they are professional activists and this is their bread and butter – screaming hysterically and grievance mongering – and most likely they don’t give a shit beyond themselves, but do they think it is a good look?
How weak are you, how pathetic, if I may be a little harsh, to claim online speech is literally violence and caused you real harm? And this is not about credible threats. It rarely is. How incapable of self-control are we if hearing an opinion – no matter how bad it may be – makes us feel threatened, fearing for our safety? Or causes a breakdown? Or mental illness, PTSD, whatever. Rotting in a trench and hearing bad things are basically the same.
Look a bit at human history. I’ll wait. People have gone through some bad shit. War, famine, disease, genocides, gulags, torture and suffering we cannot fathom. And we get all up in arms about tweets? Seriously? Of course, each society has its problems and things to improve. I am not saying that because we have it better than 100 years ago, we should never complain or not try to improve things. Constant improvement is a goal. But just a wee bit of perspective here and there does not hurt. And you hurt no one as much as yourself by being a snowflake.
Safety used to mean you are not in imminent danger of bodily harm. Now it somehow means not hearing what you don’t want to hear. How did society get to that point? How the hell can opinions trigger PTSD in people with no imaginable reason to have PTSD? And if they do have it, we need to see how in the modern world people are so mollycoddled as to get PTSD for no apparent reason.
Now, I perfectly realize all this shit is massively over-represented over the interwebs and it is not a representation of general society. Yet. But it is growing and should be nipped in the bud. And sadly, it is growing more than usual in schools.
Offense is purely subjective, and it is taken meaninglessly in most contexts. Being offended – and this goes for most people – is bullshit 99% of the damn time, and it leads to a lot of unnecessary drama. Just shake it off, as the philosophers say. And this comes from someone who is very far from the stereotypical tough guy. Seriously. Some asshole said this and that? Fuck him, who cares?
You may have read about the City of Chicago’s financial difficulties. More often than not, the news coverage on this issue often looks for a single cause of the problem, such as pension underfunding or the fact that Democrats are uniquely bad at math. This commentary is too simplistic and overlooks the fact that major cities are complex. Yes, Chicago’s pension system is woefully underfunded, but this doesn’t explain the City’s consistent budget deficits (pensions are long-term liabilities and current costs are relatively small in comparison to other expenditures). Yes, Democrats are astonishingly bad at understanding arithmetic, but this wasn’t always true about ‘Chicago Democrats’ (RIP) who, unlike their Midwestern peers (St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, etc.), cobbled together strong financial performance during the 1970’s and 1980’s while manufacturing jobs and population declined precipitously in the City.
I have provided a very brief summary of the issues contributing to the City’s poor financial position, along with providing an overview of the financial difficulty faced by Chicago Public Schools (which is a separate government from the City of Chicago).
Deficits and Debt
For over ten years, the City has maintained a budgetary imbalance. Though these deficits have declined over the past four years, they are still expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The result of these deficits has been a significant decline in reserves, with the City currently holding just 4% of its revenue in reserve. In general, a local government is considered to be fiscally healthy if it holds no less than 10% of its revenue in reserve. For the current fiscal year, the City of Chicago is projecting to completely exhaust all of its reserves.
The City has also issued debt to close its budget gaps over a period of several years. This has resulted in an $8.3 billion debt load for the City ($3,080 per resident), which represents a 75% increase in debt between 2005 and 2014. The use of debt to correct these budget imbalances has also increased the City’s fixed costs. For fiscal year 2016 nearly a quarter of all revenue will be used for the payment of debt service. Most local governments with healthy finances dedicate no more than 10% of revenue toward the payment of debt. Historically to manage this large debt load, the City has often employed financial gimmicks such as ‘scoop and toss’, whereby new debt is issued with a longer maturity to repay existing debt outstanding. For the 2016 fiscal year the City has avoided employing this tactic.
Significant Long-Term Pension Liability
The City manages four pension systems: the Municipal Employees Fund (MEF), the Laborers Fund (LF), the Policemen Fund (PF), and the Firemen Fund (FF). These pension systems’ current funding levels are 41%, 64%, 26%, and 23%, respectively (actuaries consider a pension system ‘healthy’ if funding levels are at or above 80%). The poor funding ratio and large combined liability of $20 billion is due to the City having failed to adequately contribute the full annual cost to its pension systems since the mid-1990s, due in large part to the unrealistic 7.75% rate of return assumptions in these pension systems (returns have averaged just under 6%).
To rectify this situation, the City enacted modest pension reform to reduce the annual contribution and slightly reduce the long-term liability for only the MEF and LF pension systems. This reform legislation was eventually ruled to be unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court.
In order to make its annual contribution to its pension systems, the City raised its property taxes and instituted a 29.5% utility tax. The tax on water and sewer services will be incremental with a 7.7% increase occurring in 2017; an 8.4% increase in 2018; an 8.2% increase in 2019, and a 5.2% increase in 2020.
Chicago Public Schools
The City’s school system, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), is also financially weak. At the end of fiscal year 2015, CPS had operating reserves representing roughly 7% of total revenue and liquidity representing roughly ten days cash-on-hand. In general a school district is considered to be financially healthy if it holds no less than 10% of its revenues in reserve and liquidity is at least fifty days cash-on-hand.
Additionally, CPS faces challenging demographic issues similar to those that face the city (below). Enrollment at CPS schools has dropped roughly 5% between 2000 and 2010. Further, the percentage of school-aged children in the City (ages 0-19) has declined 17% between 2000 and 2010 suggesting that enrollment is unlikely to grow in the future. In 2016, CPS reported a decline of 3.5% from the previous year. In spite of these enrollment declines, CPS’ total expenditures increased 10% between 2010 and 2015.
Many of the rising costs that CPS faces are connected to labor contracts that limit classroom sizes and mandate costly employee healthcare and retirement benefits. These labor contracts exert the most pressure on CPS underfunded pension system. In fiscal year 2016, CPS will have to make a $676 million pension contribution which will consume 10% of its total budget. This cost will continue to rise as CPS is under a state mandate to achieve 90% funding in its pension system (which is currently only 58% funded) by 2058.
To a large extent, the underfunding of the pension system has been due to CPS failing to make its annual contribution payments in recent years. As recently as 2001, CPS’ pension system was more than 100% funded.
CPS faces labor unrest due to the school district seeking concessions from its teachers’ labor union. Points of contention primarily center on pay increases, health insurance benefits, and teacher pension contributions. Currently, teachers only contribute 2% of their salary in pension contributions while CPS would like to increase that amount to 9% of a teacher’s salary. The teachers’ union went on strike in 2012 over these concession demands.
Declining Demographic Trends
Currently the City’s unemployment rate is higher than both the State average and the national average. Additionally the City has experienced declining population for five of the past six decades. Between 2000 and 2010, the City’s population declined by 6.9%. Estimates since the 2010 Census indicate that the City is experiencing one of the largest population declines of the twenty-five largest cities in the country. A high unemployment rate and declining population will further constrain the City’s financial health as it loses taxpayers.
What is libertarianism’s best strategy to gain a legitimate amount of power nationally (and then happily cede it to the people)? Libertarians of the small-l and big-L varieties have sought to gain power by either co-opting one of the major political parties (See; Ron Paul Revolution that the GOP squashed) or by finding candidates to run as a Libertarian that appeal to establishment voters (see: Aleppo). But I believe there is a third, and overlooked, option: get a candidate who does some libertarian things that irritate the major parties and the deep state apparatus, and allow those actions to result in political hysterics from ultra-partisans while average Americans see no net loss from the actions and in many cases a serious net gain. I believe this will continue to set in motion a series of events where the government can be shrunk to a level that’s at least tolerable to minarchists and other run-of-the-mill libertarians.
How libertarian is President Donald Trump?
The answer is: not very. I think that’s been established. The man swam in a pool of cronyism sharks his entire professional life. He, through desire or necessity, has been a rent-seeker. He has used eminent domain to further his projects. He has sought special treatment from political entities both domestic and foreign to further his interests. The man is no altruist. But does that make him distasteful, or does it make the system in which he operated distasteful? Personally, I will rarely fault someone for utilizing the same processes his competition would use, so long as it does not originate from a position of government authority. And Trump never held office before his inauguration. In other words, he never utilized political office for financial gain by, say, orchestrating government access to foreign actors that overwhelmingly donated to your personal foundation or for trade groups and banks that hired your unqualified husband to give speeches at ridiculously over-inflated fees. In other words, I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.
And yes, Trump is allowing Jeff Sessions to wage the drug war, which is a sticking point to a lot of libertarian minds. But I ask you, is it better to wage a drug war and uphold the concepts of equal protection and the rule of law (while allowing Congress to do their job and vote to legalize drugs the right way)? Or is it better to arbitrarily enforce duly enacted laws based on the geography of a person and/or their willingness to bend a knee to the state and support legalization with a ton of unlibertarian strings attached?
The sadder these people are, the happier I get.
Some policy positives already achieved and in the works:
So now we come to Donald Trump’s libertarianism or lack thereof. The man, no doubt, will continue some of our military adventurism overseas. But he has already stopped our policy of running guns to terrorists and terrorist-sympathizers in Libya and Syria after the previous admin established those programs and destabilized an entire region, while thoroughly destroying the likelihood that a rogue regime would abandon its weapons programs and try to re-enter the international community (read: we came, we saw, he died). There has been no resurrection of the programs nthe last two administrations ran to ship guns into Mexico through the drug cartels, for different motives yet still in gross violation of Mexican sovereignty. And perhaps he will continue to not carry out targeted assassinations of American citizens that have never been charged with a crime, which the prior admin was all too happy to do in gross violation of the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, he has already started to roll back our country’s association with liberty-robbing agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Both of those agreements undercut the ability for American companies and consumers to freely negotiate what they were willing to exchange goods and services for. Removing our name from them is a step in the right direction, especially if it’s followed up with free trade agreements that haven’t existed in a century or more. That action is yet to be seen, but at least someone had the audacity to upset the globalist apple cart and stop a little bit of the insanity those agreements put us further along the path to.
Get us out of this circus, please!
As for civil liberties, Trump is still an unknown quantity. His statement about “roughing up” suspects is problematic to say the least. And I can only hope it was hollow bluster. But even so, it sets a very poor example and he should correct it immediately. Now, having said that, he has not furthered Obama’s policy of killing Americans without due process, but that’s not going to be enough. His willingness to stop going after businesses that exercise what should be a fundamental right to free association looks good so far. As do his overtures to Second Amendment causes. As does his willingness to tackle Affirmative Action and Title IX insanity. Holy crap, I just realized he’s been the best president on civil liberties we’ve had in recent memory. People that overlook the substance of these actions due to his boorishness need to reassess what their priorities are, in my opinion.
Furthermore, our business climate has benefited greatly from having an outsider installed as the head of the regulatory apparatus. Trump has already vowed, and started to carry out, a dismantling of the bureaucracies that stifle economic growth and freedom for Americans. From the onerous EPA regulations to CAFE standards being rolled back or passed to the states, there has been a serious uptick in confidence from the business and manufacturing sectors that Trump will get the government out of the way of prosperity. The hilarious irony there is that Trump was a crony his entire life, as I mentioned earlier. But perhaps he had no choice but to play the game the only way that could lead to success: do what the government tells you and push others out. Now, when given the reins, he seems to be more than willing to eliminate programs that he personally benefited from but that create barriers to entry for others. Yes, he could have opposed the system while benefiting from it. But let’s not pretend he’s some awful hypocrite because he played the hand he was dealt. Business “leaders” like Elon Musk, Mark Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc, etc, etc have done the same thing and so did their forefathers like Ford, Carnegie, Mellon, and others on back through the ages as long as there was a government agent with a hand in their pocket. So I’m willing to forgive that.
Be happy for this.
And lastly, he put what appears to be a strict constructionist on the Supreme Court in Neil Gorsuch. That is a marked improvement on any names mentioned by establishment candidates on either side of the aisle during the last campaign.
The other intangible positive results of a Trump presidency:
Another thing libertarians have always sought is a diminished reverence for elected officials and other “public servants” whose goals are often at odds with those of the people. Trump’s mere presence has caused probably 2/3 of the political spectrum to demand the reverence for the office be scaled back. They are now calling for more power in the hands of the states or localities and even ::gasp:: the people, on occasion. These are people that have been statists to the core. They are the Big Government democrats and NeoCon statist Republicans. And they are finally unified in an effort to diminish the role of the Executive Branch. This serves to re-establish the separation of powers that has become all-too-muddy with much of the congressional responsibilities being passed to Executive Branch agencies in an attempt to deflect responsibility and ensure easy reelection for entrenched politicians. The more responsibility that is pushed back into the laps of our directly elected officials and down to the state or local level, the better for us. It helps us create a more diverse political environment where “laboratories of democracy” are able to compete for ideas and human investment, rather than an all-powerful centralized state controlling everything. And one need look no further than minimum wage laws (since we have them, I’ll address it) to realize a top-down approach where the minimum wage “needed” in New York is imposed on small towns in New Mexico or Wyoming, where the cost of living doesn’t even come close, is a horrific idea. The Trump era is returning us to an ideal the founders embraced in that respect.
And he is returning us to another ideal the founders cherished: temporary service from business-people and non-careerist politicians. The flood of people on Trump’s coattails from all sides of the political spectrum is refreshing. Sure, many are moneyed and or celebrity candidacies. But so what? Its a step in the right direction any time we start to end political dynasties and careerists that sit in the Senate for 30 years as they grow further and further out of touch from average Americans. More turnover from political novices has a much better potential upside of shrinking our government than does further entrenching those who have pushed us to near financial ruin and reduced individual liberty.
Pucker up!
The net result so far (in my opinion):
So let us all embrace the non-libertarian president. For one of these reasons or for another I might have missed. But embrace it nonetheless, because it has already borne libertarian fruit, and I suspect it will continue to do so for many of the right and some of the wrong reasons. Its the best we could have hoped for and probably the most libertarian moment in America for a hundred years.
I was thinking of starting a quick discussion about libertarianism and feminism and how the two go together, because well it could be rather entertaining.
Disclaimer: I am white, male, Romanian, and an engineer, with a huge penis. I mean massive. You should see this thing. So I maybe do not have the full nuances of Americanese society or the blessing of an education in intersectionality at a social sciences college. Which I think is a good thing, as I talk general principle not the particularities of this or that society. Onwards, then.
Also disclaimer: while I use terms like men and women in the article, it goes without saying I do so for the sake of brevity, do add how many ever other identifications in there.
Feminists for liberty
So let’s get ready to rumble. In the blue corner we have a lot of libertarians who are against the concept of feminism, for a wide variety of reasons (from philosophy to actual misogyny). In the red (well pinko mostly) corner, feminists like good ol’ Lizzie NB from you know which site, who says feminism is part of libertarianism, I think. She has that whole feminist for liberty thing going.
Personal view: I am not a feminist. I do support full liberty and rights for women. I do not believe men/women are superior/inferior in any way, though I believe there are some biological differences. Those differences are irrelevant from a philosophical point of view. Beyond the State and the Law, the main concerns of libertarianism, I think people should respect each other and treat each other as equals.
So what is my disagreement with feminism? And to be clear, I do not qualify this by stating third wave/radical/intersectional/postmodern/critical theory/whatever feminism. Feminism period. Well, it is the same with my disagreement with any form of identity politics. Any form of group politics, group rights. The way I see it, it is quite inherent in identity politics to devolve into tribalism and collectivism. It is just human nature. In the end, these movements will fill with self-interested people who profit from them and with people with various ideological ideas beyond the scope of the movement. These people will be interested in grievance mongering, keeping conflicts, and hijacking the movements for other reasons. Inevitably, the demand for positive rights or privileges appears.
Women were not equal to men throughout history. The fact that I believe feminism is not a solution does not mean I discount the problem. Saying communism was a disaster for Russia is not saying Tsarist Russia was just great. I think actually advocating liberty for all is the solution, without going down the path of identity politics. I am sympathetic to arguments that liberty for all is fine, but a certain group’s liberty is more restricted/infringed than other groups, and it should be highlighted, but, in the long term, doing this via identity politics can be counterproductive. You can highlight it strongly without different terms for this. The liberty movement has a long history of supporting equal rights, and can attack a particular injustice without attaching it to identity terminology.
Unlike feminists for sharia
Also, it goes without saying that most of these movements – sex, sexual orientation, race – will be inevitably taken over by ideological leftist – which is the standard left MO – and high jacked for entirely different purposes. The reaction of the left-wing press to organizations like Pink Pistols is quite relevant. Or the environmental movement dominated by watermelons (you know, green on the outside, red on the inside). In the end capitalism is the true problem, because of course. It always is.
Now Lizzie, or people like Christina Hoff Sommers, may say at this point that there is plenty she disagrees with from left feminists and they claim they want a different type of feminism, which is in fact about equal rights and liberty. But that, to me, is like saying oh we don’t want the current big bureaucratic state, we want a competent efficient big bureaucracy. Not gonna happen, as the problems are inherent in bureaucracy and will inevitably reach this point. The same goes for feminism. What the world needs is not more labels and groups and tribalism.
I do not want to suggest that people who identify as libertarian feminists are not real libertarians or something like that. Just that the second label is unneeded and can be quite counterproductive.
About sexism, it is quite important to define it because “anything some feminist does not like is sexism” is bullshit. To give an example, I have heard many a feminist call sexism that a man tells another man a joke that a woman overhears and finds offensive, even if not directed at that woman. Well, tough shit. I my-very-self sometimes like to tell improper jokes, transgressive, or jokes which are offensive just for the sake of being offensive. Jimmy Carr built a very lucrative career on this. If you are bothered, that is your problem and none of mine. I will have to go with the thicker skin thing here. I mean honestly, the world is a nasty place, and it ain’t gonna change soon. So I think a thicker skin is universally useful advice.
Patrice was offensive to women, but it was funny
That is offensive to women, is an oft heard claim. Which women? Are all women offended by the same thing? Who made someone official spokespersons for all women (good gig if you can get it)? Another thing is men will not behave towards women exactly like they behave towards other men and the same goes for women. This is not sexism, it is just nature. It is, as they say, OK.
Is there sexism in the libertarian movement? Well yes, like everywhere. Except the US Democratic party, where there are zero sexists. Furthermore libertarianism attracts a lot of… let’s say non mainstream people, due to not wanting laws against non-violent behavior, irrespective of how in poor taste that behavior may be. Can libertarian men change towards being less sexist / offensive to some women? Sure, probably some of them could.
But here is the problem: I hear many claim casual sexism is what turns women from libertarianism. I am sorry, but this is nonsense. If casual sexism puts you off your principles, your principles were not strong in the first place, and inevitably you would repent and write for Salon about being an ex-libertarian. A community is nice and all, but principles should somewhat transcend that.
Now, of course, ideas reaching people is important. If someone is exposed to libertarian ideas they may become interested in researching further and thinking about it, and in the end developing the principles, so it is important not to turn people off directly. This can use some work for libertarians, including better outreach towards womenfolk. Also, it should be a basic goal in life not to be a complete asshole, sexism or otherwise.
Sadly, the notion that libertarianism is not popular mostly because of marketing issues rings hollow to me. Most people, men and women, do not really have strong principles, do not really research and think about why they believe what they believe. They are just not interested in what libertarians are selling. The movement is small and even doubling the numbers will keep it small. And better marketing will sadly not change much. Looking at the major challenges of spreading libertarianism, casual sexism is not one. Which is sad because it would probably be easier to fix. Of course, that does not change the premise of trying not to be offensive for no apparent reason. This is basic politeness.
Second, what played out yesterday in Charlottesville is just a repeat of what happened in Berkeley, Middleburg, NYU, and other places over the last year and a half. Some group Antifa finds objectionable has a speech or a rally. Then Antifa shows up and starts assaulting people and the police stand down, let them do it, and let the riot happen. That is exactly what happened yesterday. It should surprise no one that one of these riots has now resulted in someone’s death. The fact that the death was the result of the actions of the enemies of Antifa, rather than Antifa itself, changes nothing. This was going to happen eventually.
