A new day

Life is so different today.

One week ago today, this minute, I was on the subway in New York City. We were on our way to Liberty Island. I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Now I'm half dressed and switching between the Detroit Tigers and the PGA Championship.

Huh.

It feels odd. Reality feels odd, doesn't it, especially when it comes around again as it will?

It is serious business. It feels unusual. What's up with that?

Why I cannot be libertarian

I have said to many folks, particularly my libertarian friends, that I want to be a libertarian so bad I can taste it. And I mean that. So what keeps me from signing on?

A handful of issues, for starters: as a group, they support abortion; they don't care for an aggressive foreign policy; and I simply can't quite come around on drug questions. Further, and this will sound very odd coming from me, they have too much of a distrust of government. Like it or not, there are things which only a government can do. Keeping order, for one, and keeping real and potential enemies at bay with the aggressive measures necessary. Then there's that pesky fact that freedom, which they champion to excess quite frankly, is a means rather than an end. Freedom is how we do things, not why, and while as a conservative I believe that the society which is best is one with the greatest rational amount of freedom, freedom as freedom cannot justify one solitary thing. This leads to I think the root problem with libertarianism as it stands today. It is the belief that the individual is the final arbiter of morality, the one who sets the standard for right and wrong.

No individual can hold this kind of power. On a practical level, it invites anarchy, or worse: a might makes right society. On a philosophic level, it begs one very important question: if I, as an individual, can make up my own mind about people and things, why should I ever listen to you? No progress can be made from such a starting point in ethics, which certainly means nothing can be done in any other area either.

If libertarians were to admit that it is not the individual (or that weak sister, consensus) which dictates what can and cannot be done, that justice and rightness exist outside of those realms having a genuine being of their own, I may reconsider my position. Until then, they are as bad as liberals: they want what they want because they want it. It is a poor substitute for critical thought on critical issues.

Freedom From the Afterlife no Bargain

We believe it was Jean-Paul Sartre who opined, roughly anyways, "If there is no afterlife, then the only honest response is despair". Maybe he said it, maybe it didn't. But the point behind the idea is quite true nonetheless. If there is no afterlife, then all that we do, every single thing that we do in this life, is for naught and devoid of meaning.

You don't think so? Then, dear friend, you delude yourself. If making this world a better world, whatever that means, entails doing what you can when you're here, well, all of that can be undone very easily. Much of what has happened in history was readily outwitted by events after the principals had died. But it won't matter to you any way you slice it. You will be out of existence, with no say in the matter. Your work, your life, will disperse into the mists of history, wafting away as the steam from your morning coffee. No one will notice, at least least once your generation passes. And you too will be forgotten. Every nonentity will be released from memory. Everyone's memory.

You fight for freedom, eh? Yours, or someone else's? As it is, that indeed may serve you well. While you're here. If we leave everyone else alone you can be left alone. It sounds profound. Annoying profound, perhaps, because it really stands for nothing more than what you want. If there is nothing beyond your human frame, then what you want seems rather petty, if you give it a moment's thought. It's nothing but a great sounding idea tied to a caramel latte. It seems great, yet is quickly gone. Freedom within decay, freedom with no bounds or construct, isn't freedom. It is at best reaction to nothing more than animal desire.

We aren't pessimists. We're optimists. But we can't help but see our atheistic, agnostic friends as naive at best. We feel that their philosophy, whether freedom loving or socialistic, must at its root be pessimistic because it isn't based on anything but what they happen to want, for their own selfish pleasures. If that isn't the basis for pessimism, what is?

In the meantime, we will keep trying to do what is right because its right. We will keep believing in people because they have a dignity which is beyond modern times. It is there because, one way or another, people last forever. If you can't believe that, well, don't believe it. It's your funeral.

Celebrate What?

A new commercial has been airing the last few days, the theme of which is 'celebrate differences'. Yes, we're about to go on that rant again, the one where we ask just what the hell do they mean. It's a personal favorite.

Celebrate differences. Before going any further, we do in fact know what they mean. They mean for us to accept the 'differences among people', and to an extent that's okay. The commercial speaks of loving those of different colors and backgrounds and lifestyles; to wit, whomever they see as worthy of acceptance. Some of those, the ad makes quite clear, are outside right wing celebration.

And there's the rub. Will they accept conservatives who will not accept everyone or every idea they support? Somehow we doubt it. And we haven't even gotten into the notion that merely being asked to celebrate differences is little but a vacuous and hollow platitude. In the first place, we know it because we know they will not support us and our differences along with theirs. In the second place, by themselves the words don't actually mean anything in particular.

Murderers are different than most of us because few people murder. But you know we don't mean that, the celebrators will assert. Well, then, say it, even though it will mean little. The point is simply that any phrase left to itself is innocuous. It's the affects and effects that such trite catchphrases have and cause which matter. Have no doubt in your mind then that such blithe remarks will cause some people to want support for the unsupportable. After all, such would be as different as anything else might be when making mere comparisons between people and concepts.

So, onto the dust heap, celebrate difference. You belong right there with education, peace, liberty, freedom, and all other large sounding words employed by many yet without real meaning. Come celebrate that with us. The bonfire, being fueled with the best fuel (you know what we mean), will burn quite nicely.

Modern Hedonism

A popular viewpoint in modern culture is that our lives are not leading somewhere but are instead simply a journey. We might be searching for ourselves, whatever that means, or seeking meaning, whatever that means, or seeking enlightenment. Yes, whatever that means. But there's one glaring problem with each of these approaches.

What do they mean?

The answer is, on their own accounts, not much, really.

If the point of our lives is only that life is nothing more than a journey, well, then, won't any old journey foot the bill? And as we're all surely going somewhere whether by accident or design it appears we've all accomplished that. There you go, the mystery of life solved. Sixpence, please, and tell your psychologist to shove off.

The trouble is that a journey really doesn't mean anything at all without a destination. And a destination really doesn't mean anything at all unless the destination is worth the trouble of traveling towards. Yet having a destination means judgment; it requires us to ask, should we be heading that way?

And what is judgment? It means considering the well from the ill and consciously accepting that we should travel towards the well. But ouch; that means introspection, and introspection might lead us to condemn what other folks do or, horror of horrors, condemn what we do or want to do.

That really is the major problem in today's world. We want to do whatever we want (on whatever grounds, but the grounds don't mean anything either without introspection, do they?) yet we don't want to make judgments. So we develop an opinion which tells us we can't judge the actions of others, simply and conveniently so that we may assert that they can't judge what we do. We call it freedom.

Yet at one time that attitude was called hedonism. Civilization may not be developing; it may be regressing.

Libertarianism at war with itself

Libertarianism is, in an odd sort of way, like communism. Both look good on paper, yet neither is practical.

You don't think so? Well, what about these concerns:

For libertarianism to sustain itself, it would require a guaranteed, eternal majority. This will not happen or, at best, it will only happen during short runs. People, being people, will use their free will and shoot libertarianism out of the sky.

It might work with an iron first under a benevolent dictator. But there are two problems with that. One, we see how that has worked for communism, and two, that also would rely on an eternal march of benevolent dictators. That won't happen either, and, further, would actually mock libertarianism.

Then there's the business of freedom. Libertarians preach it with an almost religious fervor. It's their end-all be-all. But 'I'm for freedom' isn't really a tenable position. It begs an entire litany of questions, not the least of which are questions like, freedom to do what, freedom to be what, and whether what we want are things we ought to want. Libertarians forget, or refuse to accept, that freedom is only a means. It is not an end. That is, unless you want total, complete freedom to do absolutely anything you want. To be sure, they don't believe that. They believe there are some limitations on human behavior. But note that that means they aren't actually in favor of freedom anyway because they do, when it suits them, restrict it.

Next there's the matter of how they might get their agenda in place. In the United States today that cannot happen except through revolution or politics. Yet they abhor politics and politicians, and even should they approve of a revolution (which would be dangerous as such things tend towards going out of control) and perhaps a contradiction within their philosophy. How can you force people to become libertarians against their will? You can't, outside of confessing that freedom is not without bounds. Unless, again, and we love hammering this point home, you don't believe in unfettered liberty.

At the end of the day, libertarian philosophy contradicts itself. We believe that is evident in the above comments. You simply cannot preach freedom as an end and then argue that it can be restricted in any way, shape, or form.

They sound good and they look good. Yet all they do is bang an empty drum.

Whither Liberty?

The gay marriage issue appears settled, in both the United States and much of the western world. That's not surprising, considering the widespread application of 'liberty' we have seen over the last few decades. We have no problem with liberty per se, of course; a well regulated liberty is to be sought and prized. But we wonder how many folks actually consider what a well regulated liberty means.

It surely does not mean that we can do absolutely anything we want. Were that to be the case, then we would be supreme hypocrites to call any action by anyone else wrong. It would impossible to call the terrorists, not to mention the murderers and rapists, wrong. So there are barriers to liberty. Or, at least, as any rational observer would say, that we are not at liberty to do ill to others.

The next question becomes, then, are we at liberty to do anything we want with ourselves? This question involves the aspect of liberty which calls on us to be self regulating, and, interestingly, it is also the aspect of liberty most libertarians, we think, anyway, wish to avoid. We cannot help but feel they would like if it did not exist at all, for it demands of the individual that he, perhaps, should not do things he may very well wish to do. Regulating the self means telling the self that some things may be wrong even if they don't, on the surface, violate that old libertarian bugbear of not doing violence. It may mean being forced to admit that violence against another is more than an overt act. It may mean having to conclude that violence against another may constitute actions which seem wholly personal but in fact still harm the body politic as well as the person.

It goes almost without saying, though it must be said so that everyone hears, when you do wrong, it may encourage others to do wrong. That's simply the other side of the equation which involves doing right; if we lead best by example, as is so often said, then examples of doing wrong surely encourage wrongdoing. Even when the wrongdoing 'doesn't hurt anyone'.

This puts the civil libertarians in a pickle. They must either argue that we don't need to be self regulatory, or they must argue that certain (presumably nonviolent) acts almost universally accepted as wrong (before now, anyway) are in fact right either on their own standing or, as the supporters of gay marriage and the like argue, if the person or persons involved think so.

The obvious problem is that, should such be true, then all any person would need to do to justify doing wrong is to assert that it's right for them. What we have here in the long run is a recipe for the end of all liberties, real or imagined. If we are not obliged to be self regulatory, if we are not obliged to ask ourselves whether we should commit an act or not even if it seems to affect no one else, then we have no obligation at all. And if we have no such obligation at all, any talk about freedom and liberty is spurious.

We have said before that we believe libertarians to be moral relativists. We stand by that assertion. This is why.

Texas and Abortion

Texas has passed an 'extreme' abortion bill, one which would close most abortion facilities in that state. Several other states have passed similar measures, almost all of them in the South or more conservative areas of the nation. What does this mean?

For starters, it means that the abortion debate is alive and well. That is a good thing. Once measures such as what have been passed in Texas and other states are no longer controversial, we will have seen the end of the abortion debate. Until then, the cause must endure.

Why should anyone be for abortion? Outside of rare cases, most abortions involve women who freely consented to sex. Isn't part of being free the accepting of responsibility? Don't those women know that they could get pregnant? In knowing what might happen yet committing the act anyway, haven't they in fact accepted the potential consequences and all which goes along with that?

And there's the rub. The presumed right to abortion allows women (and we wonder how often their boyfriends, husbands, or ships that pass in the night) to avoid responsibility. Abortion allows everyone involved to have their fun without living up to the potential results of that fun. Abortion is ultimately and in the overwhelming majority of cases for the undisciplined to act without regard for what may happen as a result of that act. It is indeed about freedom, but exactly the wrong kind of freedom: the freedom to act without consequence.

That will not help the cause of freedom. But it will indeed make us a selfish nation.

Freedom is a Means, Not an End

There is a certain allure to libertarianism within the conservative community. The stress on individual freedom definitely has its merits. Human freedom, personal liberty; these are terms which are deeply embedded in the American psyche, perhaps more so than anywhere else on Earth these days. So why aren't American conservatives more overtly libertarian seeing as so much of their rhetoric employs libertarian phraseology? The irony involved in answering that question lies in the very same ideal of freedom which is at the heart of the libertarian movement.

Libertarians preach freedom. But the trouble is that freedom is a means, and not an end, as libertarians assert.

When someone says that they are for freedom, can we ever really drop the subject at that? Might anyone actually say: Oh, he's for freedom, so we know where he stands? If we do, we are pretty close to talking nonsense, don't you think? In order to really understand what our libertarian friend supports, isn't it necessary to ask: Freedom from whom? Freedom from what? Freedom to do what, and why? How might this freedom be attained and secured? Indeed, why should we think we are entitled to any sort of freedom and liberty at all? When we ask these questions, there appears one important point which sort of encompasses them all (and a great many others), a critical point which few people rarely consider.

Once we begin asking these questions, we aren't really talking about freedom, are we? Aren't we actually saying that we can only support freedom in the context of the question involved?

We're in fact talking about what might be called doing justice; it might be called The Golden Rule; it might be called ethics and morals or plain old right and wrong. But whatever we call it, we cannot call it freedom. Freedom of action, so far as it goes, must be seen as valuable only insofar as the action in question is right and just, or encourages rightness and justice. For it goes without saying (even though we are about to say it; don't you hate that?) that freedom as freedom simply means doing what you want because you want to do it. Freedom as freedom does not necessitate reflection upon whether we ought or ought not do something. It means nothing at all, on its own terms, except that Joe Smith wants such and such done and has the ability to do it, so he does it.

But when asking whether are free to do something, or whether society should sanction or prohibit a given action, well, isn't it implied that we are only truly free to do it if it's just? Isn't it in fact putting restrictions and qualifiers on our freedom? In this light, when our libertarian friends say they're for freedom, well, it's hard to take them at their word, for in the very act of making that assertion they themselves must mean they support something beyond mere freedom. When they protest torture, are they really protesting the lack of freedom of the persons tortured or the fact that torture is wrong, even if part part of the affront is denying him his freedom? When they clamor for homosexual rights, they must mean that such rights are worth support in themselves, or what's their point? Indeed, when they protest oppressive taxes and regulations, something which we right wingers can agree with them about, they must be claiming that the government is wrong to aggressively tax and regulate citizens and businesses and not, ahem, that the government is free to do so. For if freedom is our measuring stick, who's to say that the government isn't free to overtax and overspend?

We don't see how anyone can be for 'freedom' any more than they can be for 'education' or 'civil liberties' or 'peace'. But we can see how people can want to support what is right and disdain the wrong; we can understand why they would want to encourage good and discourage evil. We understand that doing good and avoiding bad is precisely what the individual and the broader society needs. That, perhaps, is the key difference between libertarians and conservatives. And it's all the difference in the world.

Santorum Takes off the Gloves

Does he smell blood? Is he beginning to sense the potential swell of conservative sentiment more than willing to support someone like him? Is someone finally getting the message that Mitt Romney is shallow and weak, and starting to go on the offensive? It is beginning to look as though, if that guy exists, it's Rick Santorum.

Hydrofracking is the process of breaking rocks and what not as a means of forcing oil and gas from them. Santorum called the environmental hue and cry against it a 'boogeyman' and asserted that no ill will come from the process. He even went so far as to openly mock the environmentalists as fear mongers who politicize science. This after he told a crowd in Colorado that he never bought into the global warming hoax.

Wow. What is not to like when a conservative shoots from the lip like this? Especially as he's right on the money: global warming is bad science, indeed little more than a variation on the perpetual doomsday scenarios the fringes have spouted since the dawn of man. It's time to call it what it is.

Santorum certainly did that with his recent assertion that the left, the liberals, want to control you. They want to shame you into a false concern and childlike fear which will only keep them in power. It's all politics, aimed at keeping liberals in power and you and your liberty in check. It isn't about the environment. It's about them keeping you in place by keeping theirs.

We're really, really, starting to like Rick Santorum.