The libertarian leaning Tea Party is now fully in charge of the Republican Party – and that scares me. If you put Libertarians in charge of this country, they would turn it into an oligarchy. Without societal protections in place, the wealthy few would lord it over the rest of us. Our country would fall back into the 19th century when the Robber Barons ruled and the remainder of the country had very little.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that places emphasis on individual freedom over all other values. As such, it is often placed in contrast to traditional political notions that advocate some limits to freedom, such as liberalism (economic regulation, but personal freedom) and conservatism (personal regulation, but economic freedom).
Libertarianism can seem appealing. Why have a government interfere with my life, telling me what I should and should not want – or can and cannot do? As long as I do not interfere with the ability of others to pursue their personal goals, I should be free to pursue my own ends unhindered. But libertarianism makes for an unstable society. Common habits, customs, and traditions – as well as common moral values – bind a community together and encourage cooperation. A highly libertarian society, with a vast diversity of values and customs, is a fractured society without the bonds of common culture except those that emerge in small groups as people of similar preferences gather together (and, I would suggest, establish rules of behavior, which limit personal freedom).
It is not the most popular political orientation. A recent PEW study found only 9% of Americans polled fell in to the libertarian category. However, libertarianism appears to be particularly popular among those who are wealthy and well educated because it would allow them to hang onto their all of their money and not have to support the country that gave them the freedom to do well. It is also popular among many economists who believe in totally free market economics that is driven totally by self-interest. For these true believers, interference in their behavior restricts their ability to pursue their goals (greed). From this point of view, the only role of the government would be to enforce property rights, manage contracts and provide a few public goods such as defense and basic infrastructure. Everything is left to individuals to provide for themselves to the best of their ability.
All schools would be private (charging tuition), creating a well-educated upper class and little to no education for the lower classes. Unequal educational opportunities would create a cheap work force allowing business to once again get by with paying barely a living wage.
Welcome back to the future.
Reasonable limits on freedom advocated by both liberals and conservatives bind communities together and encourage cooperation. Liberals do this by limiting the ability of some to gain disproportionate power over the group and exploit that power for their own ends. Cooperation also lifts up the most disadvantaged, bringing more people in to the pool of cooperators rather than letting them drop off the edge of society.
Conservatives, on the other hand, seek to regulate personal freedoms – customs, habits, practices, etc. Taboos are common, with behaviors steered towards a common ground. This also binds communities together through like beliefs, traditions and prohibitions. Food taboos in religion are like this in that they might start as health initiatives, but they rapidly become instruments of conformity. A conforming community is more likely to trust each other and cooperate.
Libertarians – at least extreme libertarians – sacrifice the egalitarianism of liberalism and the social binding of conservatism for hyper-individuality at all cost – no matter who is hurt in the process. It is an attitude of “I have mine, you get your own. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if they break.” With Libertarianism, there is no philosophy of "a rising tide lifts all boats." The only rising tide will be for the wealthy, by the wealthy. The peasants can drown for all they care.
A regulated market enables high levels of cooperation that brings about high levels of production. But a strongly libertarian market is largely unregulated. This causes great inequities to emerge leading to the destabilization of society through the creation of an ‘oligarchy of corporations’ and a possible violent uprising of the used and abused masses.
Showing posts with label libertarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label libertarianism. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Where libertarian ideology fails
It has long been a central tenet of libertarian (hard-right conservative) ideology that government should not be expected to pick up the bill for providing that which people should be providing for themselves. While we may battle over what those things might be, that ideology has never, to the best of my knowledge, been extended to deny help to those who clearly cannot provide for themselves due to a dramatic and overwhelming catastrophe such as what has been experienced in Joplin and the many other American towns devastated by recent weather emergencies. And yet, this is the ideology that Congressional Leader Cantor expects his party to adopt in dealing with the tragedy that has been visited upon our fellow countrymen.
Before Alabama was devastated by tornadoes on May 27, 2011, Joplin, Missouri was ravaged by a tornado on May 23 that took the lives of 134 people and displaced thousands as a result of their homes and businesses being destroyed. Yet House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a libertarian leaning Republican, has made it clear that he has no intention of coming to the aid of Joplin, Missouri unless and until budget offsets can be found to pay for any federal aid to help these Missourians in need.
Cantor has brought to the front the false and perverted choices embraced by those who would subscribe to his libertarian approach, including the followers of the Tea Party ideology.
Setting aside what most of us may feel about Congressman Cantor’s rather heartless comment about this situation, it turns out that Joplin is represented in Congress by a Tea Party backed Republican named Billy Long – one of the angry freshmen elected to Congress on a platform of being ‘fed up’ with career politicians and who ran on the motto that he was “Tea Party before Tea Party was cool’ which means he ascribes to libertarianism. So, what is a Tea Party Congressman – dedicated to smaller government and individual responsibility – to do when the very people who are hurt and in serious need of billions of dollars of assistance are the same people who sent him to Congress in support of his ultra-conservative beliefs?
His answer has been to do nothing as he weighs his ideological commitment against the dramatic needs of his constituents and the political damage that might follow whatever decision he makes. Upon learning of Cantor’s position on the subject, Long clammed-up, refusing to say where he stands.
Big mistake.
Even Tea Partiers want the federal government to open up the wallet and begin spending when their own lives are the ones engulfed in pain and disarray through no fault of their own.
Long’s fellow GOP Member of Congress from the Missouri Delegation, Jo Ann Emerson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, has had no problem whatsoever in working out where she stands. Her own district buried under 12 feet of water as a result of the storm, Emerson has not held back in her criticism of Cantor for holding these unfortunate people hostage to his ideology. She then added something that goes right to the heart of the matter when addressing the ideological conflict raised by asking the federal government to provide the needed assistance:
“People all of a sudden have a change of heart on spending when it becomes personal. My own constituents would be horrified if I didn’t do everything I could.”
Another are where people quickly drop ideology is in discussing the realities of healthcare when serious illness strikes one of their own loved ones. People no longer care about things like conservative versus liberal ideologies that has nothing to do with the one thing people do care about – making their loved one healthy again. Such is the case in Joplin, Missouri and the many lives from many towns that have been destroyed by extraordinary weather.
When your home or business – and possibly even the life of a loved one – has been snatched from you in an instant, political ideology is the last thing on your mind. When you need help as a result of an overwhelming circumstance where only the very wealthy among us could handle on their own, you will look to your fellow countrymen to stand by your side and do what it takes to provide that which is necessary to help you begin pulling your life back together.
Many of the folks in Joplin, Missouri – a district that sent a self-professed Tea Party devotee to represent them in Congress – have no doubt spent countless hours decrying the federal government’s involvement in anything not specifically allocated to it by the United States Constitution. These same people have spoken out loudly about how government’s role is not to spend for everyone who has a problem and reinforced the notion that Americans should be expected to take care of themselves and not look to government to solve their problems.
And then a devastating tornado took out half their town and killed 142 of their citizens.
These very same people are now finding that they currently see the issue very differently despite the fact that the Constitution does not specifically grant the federal government the power to bail out a city devastated by Mother Nature.
And who could possibly blame them?
As Americans, we understand that politics and ideology go out the window when such a crisis happens. Joplin citizens have now learned that it’s about humanity. When a fellow American is in this kind of trouble, we set aside our allegedly deeply held political beliefs and we do what we must to help people in such deep distress.
Eric Cantor does not get it. And in using this horrible circumstance to make his ideological point, Cantor reveals that there is something very wrong with his commitment to a twisted libertarian ideology rather than a commitment to people.
I suppose we should not be surprised. Remember that it was Eric Cantor who, when asked by a Virginia constituent what an uninsured relative (due to the relative’s having lost her job) who was dying of stomach cancer should do to get the operation she so badly needed to save her life, Cantor heartlessly advised that the dying relative should ‘find a charity’.
And what about Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri – a self-professed deeply conservative Republican with the voting record to back it up? Blunt has been quick to say that he wants the federal government to completely reimburse the devastated towns of Missouri and has asked the federal government to assume a larger share of the cleanup costs than what the government would normally take on in these circumstances.
It’s easy to be an ideologue when you can’t see the faces or don’t know the names of the people you are hurting. Funny how Blunt's ideology took a 180 degree turn when it was about his own state.
Certainly, Blunt is reacting to the serious needs of his constituents and is to be praised for doing so. He understands the small value ideology holds when it is his neighbors who are in trouble. So far, Blunt has not even placed a condition on his request that offsets be found to pay for his wishes – and I don’t expect he will be doing so.
But Blunt also voted for the Ryan Budget that would devastate Medicare and Medicaid, forcing future senior citizens into a highly precarious position when it comes to their healthcare when they reach 65.
There is a terrible lesson in Joplin, Missouri for GOP lawmakers:
It’s all ‘personal’ to those who are affected.
It’s time for Republicans to turn away from Eric Cantor and libertarian Tea Party style ideology and remember that, at the end of the day, it’s all about people. And while we can differ on the solutions that will have the best result, there are certain needs that supersede ideology and politics – and Joplin, Missouri is clearly an example of such a need.
Libertarian ideology fails when it comes to community and people in need.
Before Alabama was devastated by tornadoes on May 27, 2011, Joplin, Missouri was ravaged by a tornado on May 23 that took the lives of 134 people and displaced thousands as a result of their homes and businesses being destroyed. Yet House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a libertarian leaning Republican, has made it clear that he has no intention of coming to the aid of Joplin, Missouri unless and until budget offsets can be found to pay for any federal aid to help these Missourians in need.
Cantor has brought to the front the false and perverted choices embraced by those who would subscribe to his libertarian approach, including the followers of the Tea Party ideology.
Setting aside what most of us may feel about Congressman Cantor’s rather heartless comment about this situation, it turns out that Joplin is represented in Congress by a Tea Party backed Republican named Billy Long – one of the angry freshmen elected to Congress on a platform of being ‘fed up’ with career politicians and who ran on the motto that he was “Tea Party before Tea Party was cool’ which means he ascribes to libertarianism. So, what is a Tea Party Congressman – dedicated to smaller government and individual responsibility – to do when the very people who are hurt and in serious need of billions of dollars of assistance are the same people who sent him to Congress in support of his ultra-conservative beliefs?
His answer has been to do nothing as he weighs his ideological commitment against the dramatic needs of his constituents and the political damage that might follow whatever decision he makes. Upon learning of Cantor’s position on the subject, Long clammed-up, refusing to say where he stands.
Big mistake.
Even Tea Partiers want the federal government to open up the wallet and begin spending when their own lives are the ones engulfed in pain and disarray through no fault of their own.
Long’s fellow GOP Member of Congress from the Missouri Delegation, Jo Ann Emerson, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, has had no problem whatsoever in working out where she stands. Her own district buried under 12 feet of water as a result of the storm, Emerson has not held back in her criticism of Cantor for holding these unfortunate people hostage to his ideology. She then added something that goes right to the heart of the matter when addressing the ideological conflict raised by asking the federal government to provide the needed assistance:
“People all of a sudden have a change of heart on spending when it becomes personal. My own constituents would be horrified if I didn’t do everything I could.”
Another are where people quickly drop ideology is in discussing the realities of healthcare when serious illness strikes one of their own loved ones. People no longer care about things like conservative versus liberal ideologies that has nothing to do with the one thing people do care about – making their loved one healthy again. Such is the case in Joplin, Missouri and the many lives from many towns that have been destroyed by extraordinary weather.
When your home or business – and possibly even the life of a loved one – has been snatched from you in an instant, political ideology is the last thing on your mind. When you need help as a result of an overwhelming circumstance where only the very wealthy among us could handle on their own, you will look to your fellow countrymen to stand by your side and do what it takes to provide that which is necessary to help you begin pulling your life back together.
Many of the folks in Joplin, Missouri – a district that sent a self-professed Tea Party devotee to represent them in Congress – have no doubt spent countless hours decrying the federal government’s involvement in anything not specifically allocated to it by the United States Constitution. These same people have spoken out loudly about how government’s role is not to spend for everyone who has a problem and reinforced the notion that Americans should be expected to take care of themselves and not look to government to solve their problems.
And then a devastating tornado took out half their town and killed 142 of their citizens.
These very same people are now finding that they currently see the issue very differently despite the fact that the Constitution does not specifically grant the federal government the power to bail out a city devastated by Mother Nature.
And who could possibly blame them?
As Americans, we understand that politics and ideology go out the window when such a crisis happens. Joplin citizens have now learned that it’s about humanity. When a fellow American is in this kind of trouble, we set aside our allegedly deeply held political beliefs and we do what we must to help people in such deep distress.
Eric Cantor does not get it. And in using this horrible circumstance to make his ideological point, Cantor reveals that there is something very wrong with his commitment to a twisted libertarian ideology rather than a commitment to people.
I suppose we should not be surprised. Remember that it was Eric Cantor who, when asked by a Virginia constituent what an uninsured relative (due to the relative’s having lost her job) who was dying of stomach cancer should do to get the operation she so badly needed to save her life, Cantor heartlessly advised that the dying relative should ‘find a charity’.
And what about Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri – a self-professed deeply conservative Republican with the voting record to back it up? Blunt has been quick to say that he wants the federal government to completely reimburse the devastated towns of Missouri and has asked the federal government to assume a larger share of the cleanup costs than what the government would normally take on in these circumstances.
It’s easy to be an ideologue when you can’t see the faces or don’t know the names of the people you are hurting. Funny how Blunt's ideology took a 180 degree turn when it was about his own state.
Certainly, Blunt is reacting to the serious needs of his constituents and is to be praised for doing so. He understands the small value ideology holds when it is his neighbors who are in trouble. So far, Blunt has not even placed a condition on his request that offsets be found to pay for his wishes – and I don’t expect he will be doing so.
But Blunt also voted for the Ryan Budget that would devastate Medicare and Medicaid, forcing future senior citizens into a highly precarious position when it comes to their healthcare when they reach 65.
There is a terrible lesson in Joplin, Missouri for GOP lawmakers:
It’s all ‘personal’ to those who are affected.
It’s time for Republicans to turn away from Eric Cantor and libertarian Tea Party style ideology and remember that, at the end of the day, it’s all about people. And while we can differ on the solutions that will have the best result, there are certain needs that supersede ideology and politics – and Joplin, Missouri is clearly an example of such a need.
Libertarian ideology fails when it comes to community and people in need.
This is an edited version of: Deadly Tornados Reveal The Failure Of Today’s Perverse GOP Ideology by Rick Ungar
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Rand Paul’s immature libertarianism
Rand Paul is already crashing and burning. Did you notice? Here's how it went down: first, he unmistakably suggested that he opposed Title II of the Civil Rights Act. Then he tried unsuccessfully to weasel his way out, under near-implacable questioning. This was when people got really worked up. So Paul put out a press release, the strategy of which was more or less to deny that the previous 24 hours had happened.
But there are people, including FOX news commentators, who are lined up to defend him. The basic claim is that, while Paul was of course wrong to oppose civil rights legislation, it was an honest and “respectable” mistake. As Dave Weigel said, "Rand doesn't mean harm; he is suffering as the libertarian debate moves into prime time." Various Republicans have made arguments similar to Weigel's. It was a mere “theoretical” idea, they say, and nothing should be made of it. A staffer for Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC, calls the whole thing "a non-issue." Only old white guys would declare the whole civil rights thing as not important – Republican old white guys!
Now, fresh off his 24-hour news cycle disaster in which he questioned the basis for the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paul is taking his fringe libertarianism even further. Paul rejects the notion that the President of the United States should hold private corporations accountable for the havoc they wreck on our country, such as BP Oil and Massey Energy!
In Paul’s libertarian world, private companies and private property owners should be able to do as they please without federal interference. Apparently the concept of civil and criminal negligence is beyond Paul, because his response to the Gulf oil spill and the Massey Energy mining disaster was “sometimes accidents happen.”
Rand Paul is not ready for prime time. The far right-wing libertarian, tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky has immature, not-very-well-thought-out views. It's not just that he is saying stupid things because he is so committed to a purist stance. No, it's worse. Libertarianism itself is what is naïve here, not just Rand Paul. We should stop tip-toeing around this belief system as if its adherents are ancient revered nobles clinging to their proud ways. These are immature people hankering for the old Wild West where there were no rules.
It's time to stop taking libertarianism seriously. Ironically, the best way into this point comes from another brilliant libertarian, legal scholar Richard Epstein: "To be against Title II in 1964 would be to be brain-dead to the underlying realities of how this world works."
That’s the key: "the underlying realities of how the world works." Rand Paul’s views are not based in reality.
Most capitalist enterprise in this country has been ultimately underwritten by the government. This is true at an obvious level that even most libertarians would concede: for the system to work, you need some kind of bare bones apparatus for enforcing contracts and protecting property. Businesses are also often given tax breaks, city-built infrastructure, and other sweetheart deals just to locate in certain places. We could fill a library with the details of the underwriting from the states and the federal government enjoyed by American business.
Libertarians like Paul are walking around with the fanciful idea in their heads that the world could just snap back to a “natural” benign order if the government stopped interfering. For example, Paul thinks that we do not need Title II of the Civil Rights Acts because “good” people wouldn't shop at the racist stores, therefore there wouldn't be any racist stores. Yeah, right. He is living in never-never land with Peter Pan.
This is the belief system of people who have been the recipients of massive government backing for their entire lives. Although libertarians will never admit it, without the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, there might not be private property or private businesses left for them to complain about the government infringing on. Not many capitalist democracies could survive 20 to 25 percent unemployment like the United States did during the Great Depression without government help. It doesn't just happen by good luck. We have seen whole countries crumble when their government cannot or will not help.
Take a couple more recent examples:
Savvy health insurance executives were quite aware that if reform had failed, skyrocketing prices were likely to doom the whole system of private insurance and bring on single-payer.
Imagine the moment in, say, twenty years, when the evidence of climate change has become undeniable, and there’s an urgent crackdown on carbon-intensive industries. Then coal companies and agribusiness will be wishing they’d gotten on board with the mild, slow-moving reform that is cap-and-trade.
Do you get it? The government helped to make the "free market." It's also constantly trimming around the edges to keep it healthy. The state can think ahead and balance competing interests in a way that no single company can or cares to.
The libertarian who insists that the state has no place beyond basic night-watchman duties is like a teenager who, having been given a car, promptly thinks no rules should apply to him and starts demanding the right to stay out all night. Sometimes, someone else really is looking out for your best interests by saying no. (This isn't to say the state is looking out for the best interests of everybody, or even most people.)
The point is just that however much Glenn Beck might hyperventilate, the government does NOT want to destroy the free market. It wants to preserve it – and government does this job better than the market can on its own. That is why the best complaint about libertarians isn't that they are racist or selfish, although a good many of them are those things and their beliefs encourage both of these bad behaviors. It is that they are completely out of touch with reality.
Libertarianism is a worldview that prospers only as long as nobody actually tries it in government. But the adherents to libertarianism are too unreflective, self-absorbed, and immature to realize this. Maybe that is why so many of Ron and Rand Paul’s followers are the very right-leaning college students who don’t like it when their parents give advice or set rules.
Taken from: The lesson of Rand Paul: libertarianism is juvenile
By Gabriel Winant
But there are people, including FOX news commentators, who are lined up to defend him. The basic claim is that, while Paul was of course wrong to oppose civil rights legislation, it was an honest and “respectable” mistake. As Dave Weigel said, "Rand doesn't mean harm; he is suffering as the libertarian debate moves into prime time." Various Republicans have made arguments similar to Weigel's. It was a mere “theoretical” idea, they say, and nothing should be made of it. A staffer for Senator Jim DeMint, R-SC, calls the whole thing "a non-issue." Only old white guys would declare the whole civil rights thing as not important – Republican old white guys!
Now, fresh off his 24-hour news cycle disaster in which he questioned the basis for the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paul is taking his fringe libertarianism even further. Paul rejects the notion that the President of the United States should hold private corporations accountable for the havoc they wreck on our country, such as BP Oil and Massey Energy!
In Paul’s libertarian world, private companies and private property owners should be able to do as they please without federal interference. Apparently the concept of civil and criminal negligence is beyond Paul, because his response to the Gulf oil spill and the Massey Energy mining disaster was “sometimes accidents happen.”
Rand Paul is not ready for prime time. The far right-wing libertarian, tea party candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky has immature, not-very-well-thought-out views. It's not just that he is saying stupid things because he is so committed to a purist stance. No, it's worse. Libertarianism itself is what is naïve here, not just Rand Paul. We should stop tip-toeing around this belief system as if its adherents are ancient revered nobles clinging to their proud ways. These are immature people hankering for the old Wild West where there were no rules.
It's time to stop taking libertarianism seriously. Ironically, the best way into this point comes from another brilliant libertarian, legal scholar Richard Epstein: "To be against Title II in 1964 would be to be brain-dead to the underlying realities of how this world works."
That’s the key: "the underlying realities of how the world works." Rand Paul’s views are not based in reality.
Most capitalist enterprise in this country has been ultimately underwritten by the government. This is true at an obvious level that even most libertarians would concede: for the system to work, you need some kind of bare bones apparatus for enforcing contracts and protecting property. Businesses are also often given tax breaks, city-built infrastructure, and other sweetheart deals just to locate in certain places. We could fill a library with the details of the underwriting from the states and the federal government enjoyed by American business.
Libertarians like Paul are walking around with the fanciful idea in their heads that the world could just snap back to a “natural” benign order if the government stopped interfering. For example, Paul thinks that we do not need Title II of the Civil Rights Acts because “good” people wouldn't shop at the racist stores, therefore there wouldn't be any racist stores. Yeah, right. He is living in never-never land with Peter Pan.
This is the belief system of people who have been the recipients of massive government backing for their entire lives. Although libertarians will never admit it, without the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, there might not be private property or private businesses left for them to complain about the government infringing on. Not many capitalist democracies could survive 20 to 25 percent unemployment like the United States did during the Great Depression without government help. It doesn't just happen by good luck. We have seen whole countries crumble when their government cannot or will not help.
Take a couple more recent examples:
Savvy health insurance executives were quite aware that if reform had failed, skyrocketing prices were likely to doom the whole system of private insurance and bring on single-payer.
Imagine the moment in, say, twenty years, when the evidence of climate change has become undeniable, and there’s an urgent crackdown on carbon-intensive industries. Then coal companies and agribusiness will be wishing they’d gotten on board with the mild, slow-moving reform that is cap-and-trade.
Do you get it? The government helped to make the "free market." It's also constantly trimming around the edges to keep it healthy. The state can think ahead and balance competing interests in a way that no single company can or cares to.
The libertarian who insists that the state has no place beyond basic night-watchman duties is like a teenager who, having been given a car, promptly thinks no rules should apply to him and starts demanding the right to stay out all night. Sometimes, someone else really is looking out for your best interests by saying no. (This isn't to say the state is looking out for the best interests of everybody, or even most people.)
The point is just that however much Glenn Beck might hyperventilate, the government does NOT want to destroy the free market. It wants to preserve it – and government does this job better than the market can on its own. That is why the best complaint about libertarians isn't that they are racist or selfish, although a good many of them are those things and their beliefs encourage both of these bad behaviors. It is that they are completely out of touch with reality.
Libertarianism is a worldview that prospers only as long as nobody actually tries it in government. But the adherents to libertarianism are too unreflective, self-absorbed, and immature to realize this. Maybe that is why so many of Ron and Rand Paul’s followers are the very right-leaning college students who don’t like it when their parents give advice or set rules.
Taken from: The lesson of Rand Paul: libertarianism is juvenile
By Gabriel Winant
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)