Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
The flappettes between Vermont’s Republican and Libertarian parties and between the Libertarians and their own candidate for governor comes at an interesting time.
The libertarian Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul seems to be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, or at least the flavor of the month. In some political circles the recent buzz was over the New York Times Magazine cover story asking whether “the libertarian moment” might at last be at hand.
Almost surely not. The author seems confused about how to interpret public opinion polls.
But that shouldn’t dissuade Vermont Republicans from supporting Dan Feliciano as a write-in candidate for governor on primary day, even though Feliciano is already on the ballot as the Libertarian party candidate and both the Republican and Libertarian Party chairmen are unhappy that he also wants the GOP nomination.
At this point, there’s scant evidence that Feliciano would fare any worse in November than the three Republicans whose names are on the primary ballot. Meanwhile, Vermonters get the opportunity to take a look at libertarianism.
It’s not a pretty sight.
It isn’t that libertarian policy preferences are indefensible. Some are embraced by Democrats and Republicans, liberals, conservatives and moderates.
So why bother with libertarianism?
Because, say the libertarians, their basic premises are superior to those of mainstream politics, even when mainstreamers take similar positions.
Libertarianism is not monolithic, so they don’t all agree on those basic premises. But common to today’s libertarians is the conviction that personal liberty and individual autonomy trump all other concerns, and that liberty and autonomy require a government that does just a little more than nothing.
On its face, this sounds attractive. Alas, it defies reality. It is both un-historic and un-scientific.
And arguably un-American. America’s distinction is that some 230 years ago it created a superior system of government. The guys who did so made sure the government was not omnipotent. They made just as sure it was not impotent. For impotent government, the Articles of Confederation were just about perfect.
Specifically, the Founders made sure their new government had the power to tax. Taxation without representation is tyranny. Taxation approved by a democratically elected legislature is democracy. That’s why President Washington rode at the head of the troops that squelched the new government’s first tax resistance movement – the Whiskey Rebellion.
Yet it is a common theme of libertarians that all taxation diminishes an individual’s “liberty.”
It does not. It merely costs said individual a few bucks, earned thanks to the transportation, communications, and educational systems tax revenues make possible. Washington would have known that.
But then, Washington was no libertarian. Neither was Thomas Jefferson, that champion of personal liberty and economic equality (though maybe only for white folks). Neither was Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher who first noticed – and approved – the market economy.
It’s easy to dismiss libertarianism as a mere cover for policies designed to render society even more unequal. Sometimes it is, because that’s precisely what those policies would do. To privatize and deregulate – sometimes a good idea – is to redistribute wealth and/or income upwards. But libertarianism has a deeper, philosophical and psychological foundation, and therefore a deeper philosophical and psychological absurdity.
To understand that absurdity, just consider what a truly committed – and consistent – libertarian would refuse to do: drive (or even ride in) a car; turn on the kitchen tap or flush the toilet in most of the country; listen to/watch broadcast radio or television; attend or send children to a public school; root for the state university sports teams; be treated by a licensed physician or take the drugs the physician prescribes; apply for a patent or copyright; buy stock in a corporation, which is a creature of the state, and which exists only because of limited liability laws, which are government intrusions into the economy.
Oh, or eat food, almost all of it produced thanks to government research, safe to eat thanks to government inspection, transported by canals created and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers and over the Interstate Highway System (Dwight Eisenhower’s great socialist project), and inexpensive thanks to (arguably excessive) federal subsidies.
Obviously, nobody refuses to do any of that. Down deep, people understand that ours is an age dominated by collective entities. Not a Soviet-style system with one central collective ruled by the only legal political party, but an interdependent, intertwined galaxy of collectives – governments, corporations, universities, foundations, civic groups – which alternately cooperate and compete with one another. The result is a combination of systems that set the parameters of day-to-day life.
Which is no fun. Systems are so … systemic. All those collective entities are so impersonal.
Hence the psychological appeal or libertarianism. It allows its followers to defy all those collectives by shouting: I am an independent, autonomous, individual.
Sorry, you’re not. Neither is anybody else. Libertarians love to quote the famous 19th century poem, “Invictus,” which ends “I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.”
Not hardly. And even if you are the captain of your soul, you can never be sure the boatswain and the first mate are following orders.
You are a free citizen of a republic, guaranteed the rights to express yourself, worship (or not) as you please, be secure against unreasonable search and seizure or being forced to testify against yourself. These rights come from the Constitution, which is law, meaning government. They do not come from nature or from God, certainly not the one who commanded you not to have gods before Him. The Constitution says you may do just that.
But being a free citizen does not render you autonomous. These days everybody’s acts and thoughts are influenced (though by no means entirely determined) by those impersonal collectives. Companies spend more than a trillion dollars a year to persuade us to buy. Not just to buy their brand, but also to buy the product. And simply to buy. Consumerism is not natural. It’s not bad. Some of that glop we buy makes life more comfortable and more enjoyable. Some does not. Either way, it is not un-engineered.
Neither are our beliefs and attitudes, which helps explain why the U.S. government creates a propaganda apparatus every time it goes to war. People are not sheep. But they are, as Emerson said, “convertible,” and there are wealthy, powerful, and exceedingly skilled converters extant. They have some impact. As anyone who has taken an art history class knows, notions of beauty, harmony, truth and virtue change over the years as physical, technical, and economic reality changes, and most of those changes occurred before all those skilled converters arrived to speed the process.
Among their accomplishments is the delusion of the autonomous individual. Deep inside every person is a core of selfhood that is his or hers alone. But the belief that anything in his or her life – including his or her values, beliefs, and assumptions – is untouched by his and her surroundings does not withstand scrutiny.
Yet almost daily Americans are sold this bill of goods, which some buy. It is part of our mythology, regularly expressed in popular culture, especially all those Western and World War II movies whose message is: “A man’s got to be what a man’s got to be.”
So he does, as a woman’s got to be what she’s got to be. What he and she have to be – what they are – is that core of selfhood altered by Hollywood and television, schools and social norms, assumptions and beliefs which may or may not be true.
An individual – as everyone is – can deny these realities and become a libertarian. Or accept them and become a grown-up.
