On Libertarianism: Who are those guys?

I had promised to regale the vast audience here with more stories of my imaginary life but this one could not wait. I promise the Mr. Pepermint story before Christmas!

 On Libertarianism:

In 1974, I became a libertarian. For about 15 minutes.  I had heard a presentation, done some reading, and searching for an answer beyond an unpopular war, Lyndon Johnson - Richard Nixon, and three assassinations in five years, libertarianism made a lot of sense. Reliance on self and the enslavement of a government to the benefit of a people, whose needs were negligible, had an awesome feeling of independence and revolution to it.  I could feel my beard growing long and my calloused hands around the handle of an axe, while Neil Young tended his garden next door. This is what Canned Heat meant when they sang “I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go?”

   

Shortly after finding this bliss, I had two conversations with people I respected, my community college, government instructor and my high school girlfriend’s father, a banker. My government instructor was a progressive, liberal, democrat and he grew very grave when I naively said to him one day after class, “I think I figured it out! I’m a libertarian!” Socratically, he thoughtfully guided me through a number of values that he knew that I held and pointed out places where there might be some inconsistency with libertarianism. He suggested a couple of more readings and continuing the discussion.

Later that night, I spoke to Al, a principled, humble, Christian conservative, who also was later revealed as a philandering alcoholic, and asked if he had ever heard of libertarianism? He grew very grave and his brow furrowed as he spoke of Nazi’s and Japs and the necessity of the military industrial complex to protect the economic complex, which had to be big so we could all get rich enough, we wouldn’t need libertarianism. As Al had season tickets behind home plate and a ski boat, which I was welcome to use at any time, his objections struck a nerve. Without government, there would have been no ball park or lake. Right then I knew, I was not a libertarian.

If, as our fore-creatures crawled up out of the muck, or dropped down from the vegetation, or were spontaneously generated in a couple of days by a benevolent, if passive, creator, IF, the first twitch of a desire for social order, the first word spoken, had been LIBERTARIANISM, then, perhaps, we would be wired in such a way as to be able to achieve Utopious "You can leave this long haired country boy alone" Nirvana. However, one cannot undo the history of civilization, nor have we achieved much in understanding basic human meanness. Both of these would be required to approach Libertarianism.

There are a couple of things you never hear Libertarians talk about but the main one is, How does Libertarianism cope with human meanness? I'll grant that the status quo doesn't do much to prevent ass-holiness but it does give  some of the victims of it a work around. Another thing you never hear Libertarians talk about is why they are so doggedly determined to change the system from within. Why do they want to get elected to the giant government? Why are they not just writing a new constitution and using the ballot initiative to change it from the outside? Do any elected Libertarians turn down the benefits offered by the big government?

 In the Libertarian world “the market forces” prevent discrimination, collusion of power, monopolies, and other economic unfairness. Yet, their philosophy fails to grasp the historic truths that where there is diversity there has often been conflict of values and cultures. People mostly seek out their own kind for cultural, social, and economic relationships to the exclusion of “the others” and if the “other” happens to be historically disadvantaged due to, oh, say, slavery?, there really is not a way to imbue every being with the same opportunity.  This is why Rand Paul is a fool – rather, Sen.-Elect Fool. Paul recently made noise about civil rights legislation being unnecessary and used the market forces argument to assert that because black people have money, a restaurateur would an idiot for not serving them because all of the other restaurants, who did serve black people, would make more money. Apparently, Sen. Paul was too pre-occupied with fraternity pranks to have learned about the ancient times when governments in foreign and far away places like Mississippi, failed to “interfere with market forces” in civil rights, which resulted in lynching, civil rights workers murdered, and precious few, and almost always segregated, services and accommodations. If Sen.-Elect Rand could explain to me how libertarianism could have stopped Jim Crow and the KKK, I might have to reconsider my out of hand rejection of Libertarianism. Oh yeah, and he would have to explain how market forces would have desegregated schools.

Libertarians are the only perfect people. Their only flaw is expecting perfection from the rest of us. Despite my unwillingness to convert to a well-intentioned philosophy that has the unintended effect of harboring and fostering the terminally mean-spirited, I know that if Aliens came down and invaded earth they would kill everyone except the Libertarians. Then after they got to know them, they would kill them twice.

True Libertarians would like to roll back civilization and start over. The Neo-Libertarians, who are so dangerous today, hide their meanness, fear, or greed behind the veil of the misplaced idealism of this unattainable social and economic order and a very poor understanding of the Constitution. There, they wait like Sith lords though there will never be enough of them to do more than flesh wound the progress of a somewhat feeble, forward teetering government fueled by the well-intentioned electorate.