The Adolescent Libertarian Mind

Spoke with a Libertarian on a plane.  A nice and solid guy. Everything he said would make sense if you replaced the complexity of history with sound bites.  And dismissed contrary evidence as opinion instead of asking for all the facts.  Ultimately it is an immature politics, one that allows its teenage-minded proponents to relieve their discomfort with complex modern life by pointing fingers at unreasonable rules without asking a thing of themselves when it comes to picking up their own room.  They honestly believe first of all that they live completely and totally honorably and secondly that everybody else would too if government got out of the "nanny" business and just left them alone.

Do you notice that none of them point to the far past, the past that put government in the so-called nanny business in the first place, as an example of how well non-interference works?  Shall we go back to the time of Dickens?  The city sky black with coal dust 365 days a year, children dying from hunger and want?  Shall we go back to the time of Upton Sinclair, with rats and rotting meat ground in your hot dogs, and workers who lose a limb on the job being SOL without income or recompense?  Shall our state leave business alone in making money and only use taxes for a strong police and military, like the mill and mining towns of the thirties where the might of the law was corrupted by the wealthy to bully the poor and prop up the rich?  I am sure that 90% of the despoilers and bullies saw themselves as good, solid citizens, as caring moral souls, but without external institutions to prevent abuses, their understanding skewed to allow a good opinion of themselves even as they treated others abominably.

Government regulation was born in response to abuses.  It strikes me as idiotic to believe that by removing the restrictions of regulation, that the abuses would not return.  If a regulation obstructs or damages honorable dealings, then by all means modify it to manage the situation.  Do not toss the baby with the bath water.

I live in a big city, Los Angeles.  I have neighbors who would toss their trash to the curb and be done if it were allowed.  Once a few did it, soon everyone would and our streets would run with sewage.  I have neighbors who would keep farm animals if allowed, and the stench would be something I could not get away from, living in close quarters and not on acreage with fields between us.  I have other neighbors who would start to party at dusk and carry on with music and drunken laughter till dawn if there were no curbs put on their volume. There are old cars on my street that only move once a week for street cleaning days but which would be allowed to die and rust in place if they didn't have to be kept at least in nominally running condition.

When I walk out my front door, I am thankful for the order. I am sure there is corruption and waste in government and I think we should fight it at every turn.  But to dismantle government because we do not like the limitations it places on us ignores the history of those limitations and our own immature resentment of the social equivalent of parental "house rules."

Vampire Republicans

Vampires - they suck your blood, infect you with their curse of bloodlust, and have no reflection, which is the mark of soullessness. They might be creatures of fantasy in the literal sense, but metaphorically speaking, they are all around us making pronouncements on the television, strolling the halls of power, and debasing their enemies real and perceived in interrogation rooms around the world.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Republican Party is worried about losing big in the coming Senate races. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lists a host of problems facing candidates from his party. These are all problems of what teachers would call 'plot' and not 'character.' Bad things have happened to the party. Nowhere is there an examination of whether the party's mindset and values has any responsibility for the disastrous situation.

It is not schadenfreude that makes me want to see them grovel, wear hair shirts, and climb the steps of the Capitol on their knees. Unless they see that they committed the sin of pride, dismissing with contempt their opponents on legislation and political action simply because they held all the reins, they are going to continue to support policies harmful to the body politic. Now that they see their control over the reins slipping, they moan about bipartisanship. Without acknowledgement of their fundamental failure to do the right thing - share the power when they had it all - their bipartisanship is a sham.

Amends need to be made. I know it is an election year, but the Republicans must do for their nation what Hillary has done for her party. She still believes she is the better candidate, that Barack cannot win, and if he does, his policies will sometimes take us in the wrong direction. But she has put on a smile and is supporting him absolutely.

After 9/11 the Democrats did that for the President and his party. Sometimes they held their noses and voted with the majority trusting that the other side also had the nation's best interests at heart. Republicans now trying to blame the President for all the failings of his administration look in the mirror of history and do not see themselves at all. Like vampires, they sucked out much of the wealth and national standing in the world gained during the Clinton years and now are wringing their hands wondering what went wrong. They look in the mirror and do not see their own faces. Like the vampires, they have lost their soul.

If the Republican in the Senate want to salvage some of this next election, they have to make amends to redeem their souls. Not just apologize, but support the Democrats on issues important to them as a way of admitting that the elephant in the room is not always right. The reality of this country right now shows that their policies were often wrong-headed. How can we trust giving them the means to govern again unless they can demonstrate that they have eyes to take a good look at themselves in the mirror in the light of day?