Breaking Up With Libertarianism
Check it out - ah the memories!
AUD$445 well spent - I would use it probably more than anyone else I knew. To this day I cannot clean my house without wearing one. If its an obsession, and it may well be....that can be another story.
The thing is, I got something else into the bargain which I really was not expecting: an introduction and a subsequent infatuation with Libertarian Philosophy.
You see, pretty soon after I bought the iPod I discovered that there were these things called ‘Podcasts’ which weren’t yet built into iTunes - I have no idea how I discovered them. I think what happened was I discovered audiobooks first. Being an arts undergrad some years before and working in the arts (Film and Television) it will come as no surprise the my politics were liberal. What seems shocking to me all these years later was the lack of thought that I put into that label. Its just that I saw the world as a dichotomy of right and left and in that spectrum I was clearly not right, and probably left.
From Al Frankin To Free Talk Live
I started listening to Al Frankin’s AIR AMERICA RADIO after I listened to one of his audio books and missed the guy being in my ear. It was such a kick to be looking forward to listening to a program. I don’t have the patience to watch television most of the time. I can barely sit through a film, really. I need to to doing two things at once at any give time - and that’s whay I loved the podcasts - I could be say, painting a house (I have never done that) and listing to an audiobook. My attention is always held best when doing two things at once - mental and physical are the best combination. Anyway...the thing was I got into podcasts because they were something my temperament allowed me to really immerse myself in, in a way that other people get into THE WEST WING or LOST or whatever.
Needles to say i listened to a LOT of Al Frankin right off the bat. Probably, too much.
I started to think how it might be bad for me to be listening to all this political debate from a perspective that I already agreed with. So I though I’d get some opposing voices in my ear and downloaded some right wing political podcasts. That lasted about 10 seconds.
I couldn’t understand the right wing radio guys at all. They made no sense to me. I couldn’t find a way in.
So then I googled NOT LEFT NOT RIGHT POLITICAL PODCAST and that’s how I found Free Talk Live.
It was a revelation.
Imagine these political positions:
- Gay Rights? Yes.
- Immigration? Yes.
- Gun control? No.
- Drug War? No.
- Government Health Care? No.
Huh? What? How did this all gel together? What was the common thread?
It was a concept I had not heard mentioned as a political philosophy: Personal Freedom. Liberty. Libertarianism.
5 Years later and my life has been utterly transformed by it and I am still trying to figure out if it was for the better or for the worse. It is a lot easier to just get taxed, accept either the left or right points of view and see government as a necessary evil and your own particular form of government (Representative Democracy - I’m an Australian Citizen) as the best possible option with all its drawbacks. That leaves you with only policy issues to debate...some of which you lose, and some of which you win. And you can get on with your life.
But libertarian philosophy took those ideas I had previously accepted and lived with, inverted them, filleted them, hollowed them out, and displayed their remains to me with nothing but credible, logical, reason based arguments. I was in awe. I was enthralled.
It was a philosophy with no contradictions. It says in essence that violence is violence. That if it’s not OK for some people to initiate violence then it is not OK for anyone to. No matter what. No matter how many people endorse the violence. It punched a whole right through the idea of the ‘good’ of democracy that as a passive liberal I never once questioned. The philosophy is outlined here - but I recommend you turn the sound down...I think the music is annoying as all hell.
I did not come to accept all this easily. In all it was an approximately 4 year process. I went through all the basic questions that everyone asks when they encounter libertarian philosophy. Who builds the roads? Who administers justice? Are there no Police? Isn’t this anarchy? All these questions are answerable and each answer is backed by the same reason and logic and consistency of principle that is so lacking in any other political position. The best step-by-step argument against these basic concerns I encountered was an audiobook which you can download for free called The Market for Liberty.
I cannot hope to, nor am I trying to persuade anyone here toward libertarian philosophy. Like I said, it was a long process. I guess if I am talking to anyone here it is to those who find themselves in my position which is basically this: I understand the principles. I agree with them every step of the way. I win every argument with people who try to talk me out of my point of view. And yet my life is not improved. I am only alienating myself. And the further down the path I go the more I will be a victim of my political position rather than a champion for it.
Something has got to change in my mind if I am to remain a functioning, happy person. And at the end of the day personal freedom is about personal happiness. They are one joined at the hip. The contradiction was that for all the talk of freedom I felt a lot less free for seeing the world as I now do.
Not that I’d choose ignorance. But I think it is definitely time to take what I have learned and treasure it for what it is worth without letting it destroy me.
I’m not being dramatic there. You can really isolate yourself by being too right. That’s the trap of it.
You see, I work in the Australian Film and Television industry. Or at least I work in television and I am an Australian citizen.
For anyone who doesn’t know, the Australian Government is the center of that industry. They fund development, production, distribution and obviously this takes the wind out of the sails of any private non-government investment. And the entire industry fawns over what is now known as Screen Australia. Yes, I believe it shouldn’t exist. Yes, I believe it lowers the quality of our output by encouraging ‘art’ or ‘culture’ rather than the business of entertainment. Yes I believe it encourages a ‘clique’ mentality among a small group of those in charge of the funding which effectively rewards those who are ‘mates’ with the incrowed. And I believe that without it we would actually have Directors, DOP’s, Writers, Actors and Technicians available for profit-oriented projects rather than those of ‘cultural significance’. We would have an actual Industry. Or if not, then we don’t deserve one.
I’m right. I know it. But being right, in theory, is not going to get me anywhere.
Is it at all effective for me to isolate myself from the process that I disagree with on principle, and then try to protest with my meek, unproduced, uncredited voice of all ideals and no experience? Colloquially, In Australia you’d call someone like that a ‘wanker’.
Perhaps it is better to work through the system, and then denounce it later - on an actual stage. Perhaps it is better to work with people and not isolate yourself on principle.
When I get back to Australia there will be very real possibility that I will be asked to work with a director who has just been to the United States for a series of meetings. As a result of this she’s likely to be offered government funding to develop one of the screenplays we have been collaborating on.
So do I politely explain that I will not be proceeding based on political principles? My politics says yes. But I’m not an idiot. I know what the cost of behaving like a fundamentalist is. Nothing will ever happen.
Moving On
It is time for me to get back on the highway.
But it will not be the same one I was on before I started hearing those once strange sounding terms... Liberty, Self Government, Anarcho-capitalsim, individual sovereignty. I do not regret my journey into libertarian political philosophy - but there is a flaw to it. I’m not sure what it is but I have heard it said that libertarians “win on the theory exam and then fail the practical”.
A quote I heard in an interview with P.J. O’Rouke on a podcast the other day summed up exactly how I feel about my current political position and how I can neither proceed with it nor let it go. P.J. was actually quoting someone else at the time and the paraphrasing goes like this:
“Everything the Libertarians say is right
except the conclusions they come to.”
That hit me as all at once completely contradictory, and yet utterly perspicacious. It was something that I needed to hear said, and there it was. My brain went racing, knowing there was truth in the statement and wondering what it meant. I wanted to - still want to - find and understand the truth in that statement because I know that I feel the truth in that statement.
It’s not like I’ve read “Libertarianism Makes You Stupid” and am suddenly ‘seeing the light’. I happen to see holes all through that essay and much of the criticisms leveled I consider are easily addressed. (Someone else can do that, and plenty probably have). That’s not what I’m interested in today.
No, I am not abandoning libertarian ideals. Its just that, for now, they are just that. They are ideals.
And I am going to need more than ideals to live my life from now on.
Breaking Up.
To me, the feeling is kind of like breaking up with someone when its really not working out. You love them. You’ll keep loving them. They will always have a place. But there’s no future in it. And now, eveything need not be painted with the black brush of intolerable ignorance and the white brush of libertarian ideals. I can start to see the world as more nuanced and more interesting and more complex than that. Which of course it is. That’s a place where I can actually start to live my life again. There’s less paralysis there.
And just like breaking up with someone you have loved, there is the excitement of moving forward even if you don’t know exactly how or where to.
I will always think libertarian, and I will encourage others to see why when I get the chance. My politics will always be rooted in individual freedom and libertarian philosophy.
I will always at the very least maintain that legislation should never be a knee-jerk reaction. (At the moment I am convinced that the vast majority of Australians will legislate on a whim. There is no thought behind it whatsoever. But I’ll save that for another time).
But as for living my life as a fundamentalist libertarian, willing to sacrifice everything for those ideals...that’s not going to be me. Consider me converted, consider me enlightened and consider me a passionate proponent, but I got shit to do 
Its not you, libertarianism...its me. And well it should be.
Doug Suiter,
Valencia, Spain.
Sunday, 5 July 2009.
Hey - as a footnote here’s what Safari’s Google Search suggests to me when I search the term LIBERTARIANS ARE... Read into it as you will!
