This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Libertarians believe themselves controversial and cool. Theyre desperate to package themselves as dangerous rebels, but in reality they are champions of conformity. Their irreverence and their opposition to political correctness is little more than a fashion accessory, disguising their subservience tofor all their protests against the political elitethe real elite.
Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers, exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards of a selfish society: I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because theyve politicized the protest of children who scream through tears, Youre not the boss of me. The rejection of all rules and regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent. It is infantile navet.
As much as libertarians boast of having a political movement gaining in popularity, youre not the boss of me does not even rise to the most elementary level of politics. Aristotle translated politics into meaning the things concerning the polis, referring to the city, or in other words, the community. Confucius connected politics with ethics, and his ethics are attached to communal service with a moral system based on empathy. A political program, like that from the right, that eliminates empathy, and denies the collective, is anti-political.
Opposition to any conception of the public interest and common good, and the consistent rejection of any opportunity to organize communities in the interest of solidarity, is not only a vicious form of anti-politics, it is affirmation of Americas most dominant and harmful dogmas.In America, selfishness, like blue jeans or a black dress, never goes out of style. It is the style. The founding fathers, for all the hagiographic praise and worship they receive as ritual in America, had no significant interest in freedom beyond their own social station, regardless of the poetry they put on paper. Native Americans, women, black Americans, and anyone who did not own property could not vote, but taxation without representation was the rallying cry of the revolution. The founders reacted with righteous rage to an injustice to their class, but demonstrated no passion or prioritization of expanding their victory for liberty to anyone who did not look, think, or spend money like them.
Many years after the nations establishment as an independent republic, President Calvin Coolidge quipped, The chief business of the American people is business. It is easy to extrapolate from that unintentional indictment how, in a rejection of alternative conceptions of philosophy and morality, America continually reinforced Alexis De Tocquevilles prescient 1831 observation, As one digs deeper into the national character of Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?
The disasters of reducing life, the governance of affairs, and the distribution of resources to such a shallow standard leaves wreckage where among the debris one can find human bodies. Studies indicate that nearly 18,000 Americans die every year because they lack comprehensive health insurance. Designing a healthcare system with the question, How much money will it bring in? at the center, kills instead of cures.
The denial of the collective interest and communal bond, as much as libertarians like to pose as trailblazers, is not the road less traveled, but the highway in gridlock. Competitive individualism, and the perversion of personal responsibility to mean social irresponsibility, is what allows for America to limp behind the rest of the developed world in providing for the poor and creating social services for the general population.
It also leads to the elevation of crude utility as a measurement of anythings purpose or value. Richard Hofstadter, observed in his classicAnti-Intellectualism in American Life, that many Americans are highly intelligent, but their intelligence is functional, not intellectual. They excel at their occupational tasks, but do not invest the intellect or imagination in abstract, critical, or philosophical inquiries and ideas. If society is reducible to the individual, and the individual is reducible to consumer capacity, the duties of democracy and the pleasures of creativity stand little chance of competing with the call of the cash register.
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Libertarianism is for petulant children: Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and the movements sad rebellion
