by Matt Barr

Peace, love, dope!

While watching several libertarians recoiling in horror at the prospect that someone might be trying to organize them effectively, I thought a little about what's wrong with libertarianism. At the link above is a great comment:

Libertarians are too busy being "right" to bother with nonsense like winning elections. I think many people are sympathetic to libertarian ideas... just not to libertarians. The H&R forum has plenty of intelligent, articulate libertarian thinkers who I hope never sit next to me on a plane.

No kidding. The May Reason arrived in the mail the other day, and Nick Gillespie's editor's note (I've had no time to read anything not related to fantasy baseball this week) touted a story about Joe Namath, Oscar Robertson and Dick Allen:

Welch argues persuasively that Namath, Allen and the Big O deserve "credit for encouraging individual freak flags to fly," for helping America to become a looser, more tolerant, more libertarian place. In very different ways, they represented something new and exciting in the stultifying world of professional sports: mavericks who played to the beat of a different drum.

That's a big deal, to a libertarian: being freaky. You're not the boss of me! That worldview is adorable in other people's teenagers, but eventually you grow up, start paying taxes and dealing with your own teenagers. Most of the time.

When James Earl Jones yells, "peace, love, dope!" and slams the door on Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, he's deriding someone he thinks is a retro 60s beatnik. Libertarians want to resurrect the greatness of that generation at that age, only with WiFi. Perhaps they're under the impression, certainly accommodated in the popular media, that those people made A Difference, and whether they did or not is immaterial. Today, Dad's driving. Libertarians can hide the teacher's chalk and giggle in the back of the class, but the rest of us still have to do our homework.

It's a shame, because "liberty" in the end means "self government," and if the most visible face we have on "liberty" is flying a "freak flag," what kind of advertisement is that for liberty?

Also from the comments to the above link:

You are never going to convince religious voters to be libertarians or to support libertarian causes. Religious voters are all about social control after all.

Well, I think "religious voters" are primarily concerned about being sure they don't sit next to a libertarian on a plane. This betrays as fundamental a misunderstanding of religious Americans as any blue-state fantasy. If the religious are free to worship, free to engage and persuade in the political process, they'll be just fine. They are just fine, it's not even speculation. I assume the modifier "social" before "control" means sex, drugs, and other "right of privacy" implicators. But which party is generally regarded as the busybodies and the "actual," as opposed to "social," control freaks? (Give the GOP time, I know.) How much support does it generally have among evangelical Christians?

Naturally, the fact the American Democratic party has devolved into the "sex with anyone, any time, on demand" party doesn't help, but if religious voters wanted to run everyone else's lives, they'd vote Democrat, like everyone else who wants to run everybody's lives does.

I suppose the peace, love, dope! answer to that is that religious voters support the GOP because they want to establish a theocracy, America and the constitution be damned. Which is paranoid (what's that a symptom of, I wonder?) and betrays a lack of faith in the ability of the American system of government to accommodate pluralism and promote liberty. Another thing voters like in their political parties is commitment to and faith in America.

Tell a "religious voter" you're for self-government where they'll be able to pass the laws they want and people across town and across the country will be able to pass the laws they want, they won't start babbling in tongues and trying to whack Satan out of your rotten body with sticks. They'll ask where to sign up. Which is its own problem if you think they're icky, and have an over the top problem with freaks.

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