O O Ø O O O O
Live Free or Whatever
Liberty is like hockey: no one enjoys interference.
- Point the first
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A few weeks ago we had a rare occurrence here at the pd.o. Besides the obvious girl thing, there was the singular incident of referring to the big-L Liberals in a positive light, and referring to small-l liberal ideas as generally desirable.
- Point the second
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A few months ago a friend of mine started describing the idea of Libertarianism as “It’s strange. It takes all the good liberal ideas...”
- Point the third
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I’ve always thought of myself as politically conservative. (I’m from Cow Town, after all.) I saw it as being on the side of increased freedom, while having to put up with the religious politicos, who just happen to want the same.
I recently had the revelation that people on both sides of the supposed political spectrum (right versus left) want the same thing: the freedom to live their lives in the fashion they see fit.
Think. What do you want? To be free of government interference in how you run your business? (Right wing.) To be free to shop on Sundays? (Left wing.) To be free to earn a dollar without a government claim to half of it? (Right wing.) To be free of government monitoring of email in the name of national security? (Left wing.) To be free of a fiscally mortgaged future from tax and spend governments? (Right.) To have the freedom to choose what to do with your body? (Left.) To be free not to work on a Sunday? (R.) To be free of corporate destruction of the environment? (L.)
These left-right dichotomies however, come at a price. If you get in bed with the right-wingers—as I have in the past—you have to deal with the Lord’s Prayer in the schools, and a don’t-see-don’t-tell policy toward homosexuals. If you side with the left wingers, you get a steaming pile of debt, and a billion dollar gun registry that prevents absolutely nothing.
So what would happen if you combined only the best aspects of all of these ideas? What would you get if you took only the intelligent, free position on each of these issues? For starters, you’d get the pd.o. But politically, you’d wind up with the libertarians.
True Revolutionaries
Troubadour Dan Bern sings “The only reason for revolution is to be able to love who you want, how you want, when you want, where you want.” I think this is pretty much identical to what I’ve already outlined. Live your life.
Why is libertarianism not a more powerful movement? It has everything everyone wants, except the ability to force people to do something they don't want to. It follows that the people against the cause of liberty are those who want control. Politicians strive to be elected so they can force people to obey their ideas. Libertarians, by contrast, are too busy living their lives to bother with the mechanisms of control. They make lousy politicians, because they don't rally for any particular programme, they just put forward the idea of freedom.
But freedom is too radical. We have been indoctrinated to believe that if you want government to control the social agenda, you’re a conservative. If you want government to control the economic agenda, you’re a liberal. If you don’t want government to control anything, you’re an extremist.
Well I don’t want to tell anyone how to go about their life, so I guess I’m an extremist.
Why aren’t you?
Evan Spence
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
PD DCIX