Trouble in Paradise

I'll try to make this post concise and self-sufficient, but there's quite a lot of background material. Ideally, you'll be able to read just this and have a good idea of the thing. If it interests you and you have the time, I encourage you to delve through the background links.

Here's the background, roughly in chronological order:

• Billy Beck becomes the first to note that the new journal The New Libertarian and its NeoLibertarian Network ("NLN") are doomed to failure. In a nutshell, both the NLN and the new journal are about achieving libertarian-flavored, incremental political changes through pragmatism and compromise, as distinguished from uncompromising stands on individualist and libertarian principles (which also doesn't change anything).
• Meanwhile, at QandO Blog, where the NLN is housed, a list of words is published that libertarians shouldn't use for fear of scaring off the audience (read comments too).
• A few days pass, and Billy lights it up again; this time, mentioning his old Internet friend of 15 years, Bruce McQuain, part of both the NLN and the new journal.
• Bruce answers his old friend Billy, the gist of it being that if you want anything to change, you've got to get in the game, and according to Bruce, that means political action and pragmatic compromise. If you read this entry, then you must read the comments too. That's where the meat is.
• Since Billy was asked not to leave comments at Bruce's entry, he put up his own entry. If you read any of the background, this is an important post. If you're a voter who participates in the political process, see if you can answer Billy's questions. Dare ya.
• Dale Franks does what I think is a good job of clarifying what they mean by "pragmatism," which, to myself and most libertarians I know, means: the sacrifice of principles on the altar of expedient results. Again, you'll need to read the comments where a lot of the meat is.
• Since Billy wouldn't think of not respecting Bruce's request not to comment, He posts a series of entries on the topic in general and in response to some of the posted comments (here, here, here, here, and here). Also, Martin McPhillips weighs in.

So, that's the state of it as it is right now. If you've read the above background along with the comments to those entries with comments, then you've already picked up a lot of what I have to say on the matter.

To restate it, here, I think that this NLN, The New Libertarian, and all that's wrapped up in it will go over pretty much like a lead balloon. But I also wish them well. They stand to be able to do some good by introducing people to reason and individualism, and they stand to do no harm whatsoever. I don't and never have bought the puritanical notion that compromisers do any harm to non-compromisers. Libertarians hold zero political power. Compromise or non-compromise: it's all about the same to those who do hold the power.

I also think it's good to engage in such exercises, if for nothing else, to instruct yet another generation of libertarians that political participation for libertarians is a stark contradiction in terms. In the most basic terms I can put it, the whole fundamental and very first thing about libertarian political philosophy is the principle that nothing (except perhaps for God in the case of believers) comes before or supersedes the rights of the individual. Yet, each time you go to the polls to vote, you are affirming the counter-principle that the will of the majority precedes and supersedes the rights of any particular individual. The Constitution, you say? Then you're saying that The Constitution supersedes the rights of the individual, so you're still contradicting libertarian political philosophy.

This is an irreconcilable contradiction, folks. It's as fundamentally irreconcilable as anything can be irreconcilable. This balance sheet is never going to balance, no matter what. And this is why all truly libertarian political action must necessarily fail. It's built upon a contradiction. To the extent anyone can be successful is only the extent to which they compromise their principles. I've read a lot of dancing around this--that compromise is not about compromise of principles, but about desires, timetables, quantities and such.

But if I hold the principle that it's wrong to rob others, then what am I doing if I look the other way even though I desire the robber to quit? What does it say if I accept the robbery for a little while longer, provided he agrees to stop later? What does it mean if I agree that he simply takes less? I'll tell you what it means: it means that I prefer that myself and others not be robbed. But I certainly don't hold any principle about it. That's why there's a distinction to be made between preferences and principles. It's easy to prefer.

And on top of that, democracies don't ever, ever vote themselves smaller governments. It's not in their nature. You can try to make the voters libertarians, but then you'll soon have the dilemma that if they're really libertarians, they're very unlikely to compromise their stated principles by going to the polls to vote. You've got an honest-to-God Catch-22 on your hands, there--and that's even assuming you could indoctrinate a lot of libertarians, which you likely can't.

But as I said, I don't mind any of this. None of it matters--though it's important to try to keep the ideas and ideals alive--and that's why guys like Billy Beck deserve our encouragement. He knows he's not going to change anything, and I know it. He knows the NLN isn't going to change anything, and I know it.

However, if I am optimistic about the future, then it's only because I know and understand what a great potential is bound up in the human being. The truth is that I believe a bright future awaits humanity, but I have no earthly idea how they will achieve it. I'm only quite confident that conventional philosophy will have little to do with it, if anything, and that political action will have absolutely nothing to do with it.

When it happens, it will be like Edison shining a light on the world. It'll be like Henry Ford putting a car in every garage. It will be like Bill Gates making individuals massively productive through computer software. It will be like Albert Einstein providing not only a way to solve problems that could never be solved previously, but a way to find and solve new problems no one previously knew existed.

Collectivism is here to stay until such point as it simply goes away--like slavery suddenly went away. Like one day man couldn't fly, and the next day he could.

In the meantime, there's only three things libertarians can do with any hope of having any effect:

1. Never vote.
2. Never sanction any political action, except emergencies that clearly prevent greater and graver harm (necessary war).
3. Support, praise, and applaud any and all acts of civil disobedience based on libertarian or individualist principles.

Civil disobedience is the only known peaceful way to potentially collapse collectivism. It would probably require less than a million people--provided all were steadfast.

If not that, then we're just going to have to wait for the right discovery to come along--and hope that it comes along in our lifetimes.

In the meantime, do everything you can to make your life worth the living, in spite of everything else.

Update: Greg Swann ads relevancies.

Comments

[A College Student]

My applause goes to both you and Billy Beck. I'm trying to give myself an education with my own reading (both real books and online material), and these debates are helping me along the process. You won't find discussion like this on the college campus today, or at least I haven't found it. I've been slowly trying to find my own value base, as difficult as it is with little support from people I know. I was into the whole objectivist/ayn rand following until I realized that the vast majority of people that called themselves objectivists incorrectly used objectivist principles to reinforce their voting habits and power grabs by the government.

I place a great value on these ideas, at a time when I am going to college and some mechanical engineers I know (honors students, some of them also top students) are lacking in the confidence (or unwilling to think) to lubricate their bicycle chains or construct simple furniture (sadly, I am not joking). Granted, not everyone is like this, but the fact that these things happen make me worried. It's funny, except in a few cases the better some people do in college the less they seem to think.

I'm giving a thumbs up for the moral leadership.

Best of wishes to both of you.

[Ernest Brown]

Richard,

Unfortunately, more than half a million Americans vanished along with slavery, which goes to the point at hand.

Once we've finished our Cassandra imitations, the blunt fact is that, historically speaking:

The Athenian democratic oligarchy did not vote itself out of self-destruction.

The Roman Republic did not vote itself out of self-destruction.

The Western European democracies are currently voting themselves INTO more self-destructive spending habits, not less.

History testifies that once the Caesars get the bright idea to offer "bread and circuses" to the masses, freedom flies out of the window.

The QandO boyos will ignore these unhappy facts in favor of self-deluded scraps of "hope" from firmly statist politicians.

To each their own, I suppose. It's a free country...

for a few more flickering moments.

[Kyle Bennett]

College:

"I've been slowly trying to find my own value base, as difficult as it is with little support from people I know"

The fact that you're trying puts you in the 98th percentile. I've got news for you, its going to take the rest of your life. But that's half the fun. There's support out there for whatever values you find, but you sometimes have to look hard for it. You sound like you already know your core values, but it takes a lifetime to tease out all the ramifications and reconcile them with everything else you learn along the way.

I won't try to tell you that objectivism is the one true way, but I'm probably roughly twice your age, and I find that its value to me still grows every day. Forget Rand and her slavering minions. She was right about a lot of things, but she was a crazy old bat, too. Don't give up on it because of a few assholes, but you're right not to make it something you *follow*. Use it. Use it to whatever extent you find value in it, then use other things to the extent you find value in them.

Happy Hunting

[Bithead]

In the meantime, there's only three things libertarians can do with any hope of having any effect:

Never vote.
Never sanction any political action, except emergencies that clearly prevent greater and graver harm (necessary war).
Support, praise, and applaud any and all acts of civil disobedience based on libertarian or individualist principles.

I daresay, there's been about half a century of such efforts thusfar, perhaps longer.

So in light of that long effort, tell us, please; Where the gains have been in this effort? What have these efforts won? Are we any closer to your stated goals?

[Richard Nikoley]

Bithead:

I don't think they are coordinated, and I don't think they are directed at the right targets. We do have a good example, though. Regardless of what you think about _all_ the goals of the black civil rights movement, it's tough to deny that it wasn't coordinated, that many people didn't display a lot of courage and steadfastnes, or that it wasn't effective.

[Billy Beck]

Anyone who thinks there has "been about half a century of such efforts thusfar, perhaps longer", is certainly daring, and completely deluded by ignorance.

Nobody who says that can be taken remotely seriously.

[Jeffrey]

NLN? Notice how similar that sounds to MLM? As if it was another Amway scam?

I'm going to argue that there is one kind of vote that is arguably moral: voting "no" on tax issues. In that case, opposing the looting makes up for participating in the voting process. If one votes against taxes consistently and on principle, one is saying that the gov't has no right to take from me OR ANYONE ELSE. This is not forcing anyone else to do anthing, as if they really want to give their money to the local school etc., I'm sure the school would accept it. Of course, being on the voting rolls opens one up to all kinds of other trouble (jury duty etc.).

[Bithead]

Anyone who thinks there has "been about half a century of such efforts thusfar, perhaps longer", is certainly daring, and completely deluded by ignorance.

Nobody who says that can be taken remotely seriously.

I was willing to stipulate that the followers of Rand were making such efforts that long ago. No matter.
You've been doing it for what, now, Billy, twenty, near on?

You're wone of the better writers of the (or any) mold out there. Tell me..How many minds have you changed in that time?

[Bithead]

Richard;

I don't think they are coordinated, and I don't think they are directed at the right targets.

Perhaps, and I suppose at least part of that to be part of the "Principle" thing.

Regardless of what you think about _all_ the goals of the black civil rights movement, it's tough to deny that it wasn't coordinated, that many people didn't display a lot of courage and steadfastnes, or that it wasn't effective.

That's just it, Richard.. it wasn't. What pushed it over the edge was the violence, that as we've discussed, I'd sooner avoid.

And Jeffrey;
Would you extend that to voing for someone you feel likely to work for such issues?

regards all

[Richard Nikoley]

Eric:

Well, I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems to me that the violence associated with the civil rights movement was on a pretty small scale, and what's remembered today does not see to be the violence. I don't think you can have civil disobedience on a large scale without small outbreaks of limited violence.

But it's a far cry from massive rioting or civil war.

Anyway, like I said, I'm no expert in this period of history.

[Billy Beck]

Eric: fewer than would have been changed if you had been in the game.

Jeffrey: if the question whether to burn Jews were put to ballot, would you vote?

Not me. The question is not open to majority opinion.

The same principle applies to private property, and that's why it's foolish to cast a ballot in such matters. Nobody is ever going to get me to stipulate to the question. It's simply not open to discussion.

[Billy Beck]

Eric: you are manifestly incompetent to discuss civil disobedience in the civil rights campaign, because you're ignorant. You simply don't know the facts. Watching you talk about this stuff is utterly maudlin. It doesn't have to be that way. You could do your homework before you started posting about it, and you really should.

You're as wrong as you can be.

[Real Libertarian Vanguard]

If it makes you feel better, we Rothbardians, the true enlightened disciples of Misesian/Rothbardian/Hoppean axioms and libertarianism, find all of you guilty of sectarianism, opportunism, suppressive persons, neoconism and heresy.

May you rot in hell, you imperialist, state-capitalist, neocon squirrels.

[John Lopez]

Spooner showed that voting can in principle be moral. In practice, though, it's a bloody waste of time for anything except propping up the government.

Or, "If voting could change anything, it'd be illegal".

[bithead]

Well, I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems to me that the violence associated with the civil rights movement was on a pretty small scale.

Perhaps that's because you didn't live in the Deriot area. (Which is Detroit, spelled sides, kinda) Or, Rochester, for that matter. Or any of a dozen other places where serious rioting showed up. We here in Rochester laughingly suggested that the large fires and swaths of burned out buildings happened simply to make it easier and cheaper for Johnson's Urban renewal programs... Cheaper than tearing stuff down using union help, ya see.

And as for the morality of it all;

Georgie Anne Geyer today, writing about Pope John Paul:
"His support of the Solidarity Free Trade Unions would seem to be, first and foremost, political. It was his trip to his native and beloved Poland in 1979, just a year after his investiture as pope, that set the country spiritually afire against the communists. For the first time, Poles said, they realized that it was the communists who were the dissidents in Poland, and not they. "

Billy says, rightly, in his notes on the death of the Pope...... "Most people with a brain in their heads and a sense of history recall 1989, but I do wonder how many people recall 1979."

But personally, I wonder how many people on this side of the world recall the decades BEFORE 1979, he spent as a Priest and a Bishop, fighting the Communists.

For much of his life, he didn't hold himself above the frey, and keep himself out of the fight....Rather he stood in it, and became the more persistent fighter. He wasn't one to demand it all at once, rather playing political game..... And within that context he didn't try to "go long", he played a patient game of inches. He went in with the idea of changing one mind at a time, knowing that the cascade effect would eventually take over.

There's a lesson there, and I wonder if Geyer knows just how hard she's hit this one. I doubt many would dare to suggest the Pope operated outside of his principles to gain his victories in the political arena, eh?

[Billy Beck]

None of the violence you're talking about had anything to do with King.

Fucking ignoramus.

[bithead]

True, Billy; to a point, but that ignores the idea that King wouldn't have been successful, had that racial violence not occurred.

King was able to capatalize on the violent background to make the point stick. Rather like a good-cop/bad cop relationship, or like negotiating peace with a large military massed on the border waiting for such negiotations to fail. Focuses the mind, I expect.

[Bithead]

Addendum;
Put more correctly, without the racial violence as a backdrop, the situation would not have been created in Congress and the Judicial system, that eventually would allow King and his supporters to step in and claim victory.

[Charles Hueter]

And within that context he didn't try to "go long", he played a patient game of inches. He went in with the idea of changing one mind at a time, knowing that the cascade effect would eventually take over.

If it is your chosen path to change minds in order to affect larger social change, then why not go at it with full honesty and acknowledgement of your goals? Why not tell the prospective voter, as an example, "Look - I think it is wrong to tax someone in order to pay the state to waste X% of that wealth, the remainder of which the state will then use to incompetently provide for the services of others, directing the entire process with national/regional/state/local politics in mind that often enough don't even bother to pay lip service to the 'greater good' that is so often used to justify the taxation in the first place."

It's a rhetorical brick in the face to that prospective voter and I think it is one that is badly needed if your goal is to have an informed and rational electorate. Watering down your message to make it appeal to a wider audience will come back to bite you in the ass. Imagine the cries of "liar!" or "deceiver!" once word gets out that, for example, no, you really don't want Social Security to exist, but before we can reach abolishment, we should pare down it's reach and hunger in the name of keeping it solvent. Today's partisans will sniff that fakery out and broadcast it before the media cycle can even begin on your candidate's electoral life.

If you are attempting to change minds, I'd think you ought to present them with the truth first, foremost, and always.

[John Lopez]

Charles,

The electorate in general doesn't want truth, they want comforting lies. They want free lunches with ponies and ice cream, and they'll vote for whoever promises them the most goodies on everyone else's dime.

What do these NeoLibs propose to do when they're on camera and they get asked what their ultimate plan for Social Security is? Their opponent will be hand-waving about "fixing" and "ensuring" and "lockboxes", and the great mass of voters is (just like they always have) going to eat that shit up. The NeoLib saying "I'll abolish it" (the truth, let's assume) is suicide.

And they aren't about political suicide, their swipes at the LP are proof of that. So that means that they're going to lie. They're going to hand-wave about something too, something that the focus groups (they *will* have focus groups, right?) have said will appeal to the voters. Something like "lockbox" and "fix" and "ensure", because above all they want to get elected.

Now there may be some individuals in the NeoLib movement that would tell the truth, but no one in their right mind is going to let those types within a hundred yards of a teevee camera. "Just send in your check and we'll do the talking, m'kay?"

[Bithead]

If it is your chosen path to change minds in order to affect larger social change, then why not go at it with full honesty and acknowledgement of your goals?

Simply put; It's been shown not to work.

Free societies... even marginally free ones.... tend to reist a large degree of change... in ANY direction.. all at a throw. A quick overview of history shows that someone... anyone... trying to shove massive amounts of change all at once down the throat of the people... ANY people... tends not to get elected. A history of the LP and it's roaring succeses is a microcosm of that effect.

We got to the bad spot we're in by a 100 years effort by the left to push us here. Think you they'd have been able to accomplish this all at once? Hume may have something to say to that. I merely submit the reverse is also true, if this is to work through the political process.

[Billy Beck]

"Hume may have something to say to that."

As if you would know.

[Bithead]

(Chuckle)
If I recall rightly, the quote I'm thinking of ran close on this: "It is seldom that any freedom is lost all at once."

Hmm. I guess I DO know, huh?

[MWW]

Wait a minute... I think I've finally seen the light. Maybe these Neo-Libertarians are right and being a principled libertarian is just plain idiotic.

After all -- what's wrong with promoting taxation in "moderation". It's only a few bucks. People won't miss it - at all.. really just trust the Neo-Libertarians. If you vote for them, they'll only take enough money to satisfy the pirate booty that the public simply won't live without...

And what about zoning by-laws regulating my neighbors lawn with respect to the length of their grass -- so long as I keep my property-values up it can't hurt anybody -- if it's only done in moderation and afterall - we do have to compromise or people just wont vote for our candidates....

And of course the neo-libertarians won't breath a word about wanting to stop the drug war or asset forfeiture. After all, most people don't even like pot-heads so who really cares about them anyways. Besides which most of them will be in prison -- which pretty much will disqualify them from having a vote anyways. They don't count!

And hey -- come to think of it what's wrong with axe-murdering in moderation, or baby raping, or just a small amount of genocide.

Who could possibly be opposed to those things? After all, the idea of rights is really just a silly invention by those stupid "idealists" and "purist" "extremist" libertarians who are too dumb to "get in the game".

After all -- if winning is what's important and principles don't matter then whose really to say what's right or wrong anymore.

After all - Who *is* John Galt?