Libertarians in 2013: The Even Whiter, Wealthier, WASPier Bastion of Republican Party

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld

Libertarians in 2013: The Even Whiter, Wealthier, WASPier Bastion of Republican Party

They are not the same as Tea Partiers or the religious right; this is a different crowd. 

 

 

 

 

October 29, 2013  |  

 

You could call it the wealthy white fratboy wing of the GOP. Or perhaps its masters-of-the-universe subset, as exemplified by Wall Streeters who regularly rank private profits above the common good and whose credo is “get government out of my way.”

Libertarians make up a small but enduring slice of the Right, a nationwide study by the Public Religion Research Institute confirms. Of course, they have their own party that nominates presidential candidates—like the Greens. But, practically speaking, libertarians line up with Republicans most of the time.
They are the economic conservatives and privacy rights adherents that existed before the Tea Party emerged in 2010, PRRI finds, and today—as in years past—they split with the religious right on regulating morality, and they are not always Tea Party fans.

PRRI’s “2013 American Values Survey” is the latest reminder from respected pollsters that “committed libertarians”—who comprise seven percent of all voters, with another 15 percent leaning their way—have an out-sized influence. Libertarians feel that there is almost nothing good that government can do for them personally or for society, PRRI reports. In contrast, the GOP’s evangelical wing wants government to ban abortion, reject same-sex marriage and bar assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

According to PRRI, a room full of libertarians would be overwhemingly young, male and white. “Nearly all libertarians are non-Hispanic whites (94 percent), more than two-thirds (68 percent) are men, and more than six in 10 (62 percent) are under the age of 50,” they report. Libertarians tend to be WASPs—white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (27 percent)—or religious agnostics (27 percent), but a few are Catholic (11 percent) and amazingly “no libertarians identify as black Protestant,” PRRI said, without offering an explanation.

It would one thing to dismiss libertarians as a fringe movement, as “only 12 percent of self-identified Republicans are libertarians, compared to 20 percent of Republicans who identify with the Tea Party, [or] 33 percent who identify with the religious right.” But with benefactors such as the Koch brothers channeling more than $250 million into the 2012 election for campaigns targeting Democrats and unions—and continuing today by leading attacks on Obamacare and trying to discredit climate change—it is important to know what they believe and how they differ from others on the Right.

On economic issues and social safety nets, PRRI reports they are old-school economic conservatives. Two-thirds oppose raising the federal minimum wage, which now is $7.25 an hour. Nearly all (96 percent) have “an unfavorable view of the 2010 health law [Obamacare], compared with 83 percent of white evangelicals.” Seventy-three percent oppose stronger environmental laws.   

Economic and religious conservatives have always occupied conflicting corners of the GOP—and that continues, as libertarians disagree with the religious right on culture war issues. “Nearly six-in-ten (57 percent) oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, a proportion identical to the general population,” PRRI said. Seventy percent favor lethal injections by physicians for the terminally ill—nearly twice the rate of other Republicans. Seventy-one percent favor legalizing pot, compared to 59 percent of Tea Partiers. In contrast, 69 pecent of “white evangelical Protestants oppose legalizing marijuana,” PRRI found. 

One area where libertarians are less liberal is LGBT issues—though they are more open-minded than much of the GOP. “While a majority (59 percent) of libertarians oppose same-sex marriage, they are significantly less opposed than Republicans overall (67 percent) and than other conservative-leaning groups such as Tea Party members (73 percent) and white evangelical Protestants (80 percent).”

When it comes to the intensity of their political beliefs, PPRI found that libertarians dislike Democrats more fervently than they like Republicans—who they have a hot-and-cold relationship with. Fifty-seven percent “have a favorable view” of the GOP, “but a substantial minority (40 percent) have an unfavorable view,” the survey said. That may be why they are less likely than Tea Partiers to vote in GOP primaries, PRRI found. When it comes to Democrats, 89 percent "have an unfavorable view" and 64 percent "have a very unfavorable opinion of the party." 

Libertarians name Sen. Rand Paul as their first choice for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee, with Tea Party darlings Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan following in descending order. But the PRRI survey offers no explanation about why one candidate would be more popular than another. Of course, there is a Libertarian Party, which has nominated its own national candidates in the past, such as Texas congressman Ron Paul—Rand Paul’s dad.

On other issues, their platform includes a strong aversion to the government’s domestic spying, an isolationist foreign policy, and reluctance to use military force. On economic growth, they favor lower taxes and do not support public programs to help people get ahead. That survival-of-the-fittest, hands-off mindset includes opposing gun control laws, as well as censoring online pornography.

Libertarians tend to register to vote at a slightly higher rate (80 percent) than the national average (76 percent), PRRI found. And the survey finds that they follow politics more than most Americans. “Libertarians are much more likely than Americans overall to pay attention to what is going on in government and politics,” it said. “Fewer than four-in-ten (38 percent) Americans report paying attention… Among libertarians, a majority (56 percent) report that they pay attention to politics always or most of the time.”

Americans who identify as firm libertarians might only be seven percent of the electorate, but with some of the deepest pockets in America backing their beliefs—particularly on economic issues and the role of government—they remain an outsized political force. They certainly are an enduring part of the Republican Party, even if they have been eclipsed by Tea Partiers—such as during the recent government shutdown.

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

Tea Party Crashers

  

Tea Party Crashers

Despite the real idealism of some of its activists, the latest conservative movement is nothing more than a Republican-managed tantrum

                 

by Michael Brendan Dougherty, from The American Conservative 

       
July-August 2010





The following is part of   a series of articles on activism in the United States . For more, read The New Face of Activism  and Lessons from the Godfather .


Judy Pepenella, codirector of New York’s Tea Party Patriots, insists that she has just blown my mind. “It’s ‘We the People,’ ” she repeats. “That’s the Tea Party—those three silly words: We. The. People.” She says it’s impossible to explain to an outsider, even a sympathetic one. “It doesn’t make any sense, but it makes all the sense in the world. In Massachusetts the people put out the call, and we helped Scott Brown. And no one can figure us out.”

Pepenella might not be able to define the Tea Party appeal, but she has the ingredients right. It is loud, self-regarding, incoherent, and endowed with a bottomless confidence that it speaks for real Americans. It sounds just like Republicans did circa 1994.

The year-old movement is credited with reviving right-wing populism, damaging health care reform, and electing Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. Opinion polls reveal that Americans have a more favorable view of it than they do of the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal compares it to the Whiskey Rebellion, heralding it as the fruition of Ross Perot–style populism, a great third force in American politics.

But in reality, the Tea Party is not Pepenella’s mysterious vehicle of democratic will, nor does it signal the emergence of an alternative to Republicans and Democrats. It’s a leaderless coalition of conservative activists who for all their revolu­tionary vim look less likely to take over the Grand Old Party than to be taken over by it.

At a recent Tea Party confab in Nashville, Tennessee, Sarah Palin suggested that the GOP would be “smart to start trying to absorb” the Tea Party movement. But it doesn’t have to absorb anything. The two are already inseparable. Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, who recently used teacups as a prop during a speech, says, “If I wasn’t doing this job, I’d be out there with the Tea Partiers.” Eating rubber chicken and collecting a pretty good paycheck, no doubt.

The partiers provide a wellspring of fund-raising and volunteers, as they did for Scott Brown and currently are doing for Republican candidates across the country. During the health care debate, they supplied GOP shock troops for town hall meetings. At its sharpest edge, the Tea Party phenomenon represents the angry conservative base, punishing incumbent Republicans for any number of infractions: bailouts, support for amnesty, softness on terrorism, or, in the case of Charlie Crist, hugging President Barack Obama. But even the most militant rebels aren’t upending the establishment. They’re still playing safely within the confines of Republican orthodoxy.

The madness began on February 19, 2009, as a bizarre suggestion by CNBC’s Rick Santelli. In a disjointed and explosive rant, Santelli asked why we should “subsidize the losers’ mortgages.” The former Drexel Burnham Lambert exec thought Washington was going too far in trying to help home­owners. After shouting that Americans hadn’t made an attractive car since 1954, Santelli screamed, “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up at Lake Michigan, I’m going to start organizing.”
Santelli’s yawp came precisely, perhaps suspiciously, at the same time that Beltway institutions were encouraging their activists to start protesting. Brendan Steinhauser, who directs federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks, a libertarian-leaning D.C. operation, recalls that in the week leading up to Santelli’s rant, the nonprofit had been bombarded with calls from conservative activists awaiting orders. “They had already jammed the phone lines on Capitol Hill,” he says, “so we sent out a newsletter, signed by [former Texas congressman] Dick Armey, telling them to go out into the streets.”

FreedomWorks had the resources to break the Tea Parties big; the group commands a budget in the $8 million range and claims 902,000 members. As the outcry rose, Steinhauser made himself a kind of switchboard operator, connecting activists to one another and arranging lessons in how to get permits. “It’s very Saul Alinsky,” he says of FreedomWorks’ role.

Within 10 days of Santelli’s rant, Tea Party protests were put on in 40 cities and began to gain national notice. But as the movement transitioned from Facebook to Fox News, its character began to change. “One of the signs I saw at the first D.C. rally read simply, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” Steinhauser recalls. “But as the movement went out to the rural areas, it took on a more traditional Republican image, more hawkish on foreign policy, more conservative on social issues.” Less Ron Paul, more Sarah Palin. Talk of abolishing the Federal Reserve gave way to partisan shouts about Obama’s socialism. The young revolution began to sound a lot like the brash talk-radio right.

The Tea Partiers moved to institutionalize themselves, which also helped to lash the movement to the GOP. Tea Party Patriots, the largest group, boasts 1,000 local organizations with 15 million “associates.” Then came Tea Party Express, which played a major role in Glenn Beck’s 9/12 demonstration in Washington. Another group, Tea Party Nation, put on the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, grabbing headlines when it nabbed Sarah Palin as speaker in return for a fat $100,000 fee.

Everyday Tea Party activists, when they consider their relationship to the GOP, either say “it’s complicated” or admit outright that their interests are, for all intents, twinned. “Everyone I know is basically Republican,” says Todd Harvey, who organized a Tax Day rally in Dutchess County, New York, and belongs to a Tea Party group in Sebring, Florida. “I went to the premiere of the Tea Party documentary, and everyone who spoke was a Republican: Jim DeMint, Marsha Blackburn, Dick Armey, and Joe Wilson.”
Harvey’s local group gets together weekly. “We talk about the Tea Party movement,” he says. “It’s a feel-good session.” Anything else? “We support Rubio,” Harvey says of the conservative challenger to Florida’s incumbent governor, Charlie Crist. Of his efforts in suburban New York, Harvey says that Tea Party activists mostly busy themselves with getting Republicans elected: “We replaced some incumbents on the town boards and got some people on the county legislature.” His experience—from anger to activism to Republican politicking—is being replicated in hundreds of Tea Party cells nationwide.

Already, the GOP is implementing strategies to enfold the Tea Party within its tent forever. The South Carolina state GOP announced in early February that it would unite with Palmetto State Tea Party groups to share resources. “This is not something the state party by edict pushed down,” state chair Karen Floyd says. “This is something the grass roots pushed up with an understanding that we are stronger together than apart.”

Despite the real idealism of some of its activists both inside and outside the Beltway, the Tea Party is nothing more than a Republican-managed tantrum. Send the conservative activists into the streets to vent their anger. Let Obama feel the brunt of it. And if the GOP shows a modicum of contrition, the runaways will come home.

The plan is working perfectly. The power of Washington seems so remote to most people that even a scripted acknowledgment of their grievances tends to pacify them. Attendees at Tea Party Nation’s national conference were treated to every kind of insult that could be hurled at John McCain and, to a lesser extent, George W. Bush. But what does it matter if malcontents holed up in a southern hotel pour their anger on has-beens who will never run again? Especially when it seems to soften them to Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party movement creates the conditions in which the activist base of the GOP can feel like it is part of the game again. They can forget Bush-era betrayals, swallow their doubts, and vote Republican this November. All it takes is for someone to appreciate the anger—and it doesn’t matter that she supported the bailouts that enraged them or the candidate who forsook their support. Just as in 1994, Republicans have only to keep up the pretense that they, and they alone, are responding to an urgent uprising across the country.

Brilliantly, Sarah the Maverick mentioned her husband’s “independence” from the GOP during her Tea Party Convention appearance, referring to the fact that Todd Palin is not a registered Republican. Her suggestion of outsider status charged her bond with the conventioneers, but the veep nominee was not introducing Tea Partiers to possibilities outside their GOP abode. She was merely validating their feeling that Republicans have to win them over. Eventually, they will give in. They always do.

Judson Phillips, who runs Tea Party Nation, told the crowd that just two words scare our nation’s liberals: President Palin. He could easily have come up with two words to scare Republicans: third party. He could have found a pair that would rock the entire establishment: Revolution now! But that’s too risqué, even when everyone is hopped up on tea.

The Tea Party movement may be a bit frisky and unpredictable, but it will always have a warm cup to serve the GOP. In Nashville, the chanting went up tentatively at first, then gained force: “Run, Sarah, run!” She graciously accepted their adoration—then left in the company of the Republican professionals who make up her entourage.


Michael Brendan Dougherty, a former associate editor of The American Conservative, is a Phillips Journalism Fellow. Excerpted from The American Conservative (April 1, 2010), a journal of “old conservative” ideas. www.amconmag.com 

The tea party: A dangerous organization controlled by haters of America

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The tea party: A dangerous organization controlled by haters of America

 

By DOUG THOMPSON - A Capitol Hill Blue Commentary

 

October 17, 2013

   

The fire from within that threatens to consume America.

The dust still hasn’t settled from the debacle that kept the government closed for 16 days and drove the nation to the brink of financial default, but those responsible for the bulk of the national disgrace are promising harsh political retribution to anyone who actually came to their senses and voted to end the madness.

Various tea party-related organizations, all part of a dangerous cabal that threatens the security and future of the nation, say they will punish any and all such Republicans by putting up primary challenges in 2014.

Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, clings to his inane belief that his actions are a “service to the people,” and vows his campaign of reckless rhetoric and nonsensical flamboyance, will continue.

Good.  The more these groups carry on like shrill harpies the more it should piss off a too-long-dormant mass majority of voters who have had it with the wackiness of the rabid right and their headlong march into anti-American madness.

It’s time to publicly declare the tea party and the fanatical freaks who follow what they are: A dangerous, fringe group who answer not to the grassroots as they falsely claim, but to a couple of self-serving, power-mad billionaire brothers who have no interest in helping the majority of the nation or serving freedom or patriotism.

Charles and David Koch are loyal only to themselves and not the nation and should be treated as anti-American fanatics.  Those who follow such madmen are no better.  FreedomWorks and other aligned organizations should head the list of subversive organizations maintained by the government.

These groups came dangerously close to destroying America in the last two weeks.  They are, in our view, enemies of the state should be treated as such.

The deal that brought the shutdown to an end and averted a financial default at the last minute came because enough Republicans told the wackos that have controlled their party for too long to go to hell and crossed over to vote with Democrats.

That brought the current crisis to an end — for now.  But it all will be repeated right after the first of the year unless Republicans — and those who vote for them — tell the lunatic fringe to go screw themselves and return to doing what they were put into office to accomplish in the first place — serve America and not the America-hating rabid right cabal that threatens the future of this country.

America is burning and the fire that threatens to consume all that this nation stands for was set from within by phonies who claim to be patriots but who are — in reality — anti-American fanatics who pose a real and present danger to the nation whey falsely claim to serve.

If this over-the-top?  Damn right it is, but when dealing with hyperbolic fanatics one must resort to the tenor of those under scrutiny.  Gives them a taste of their own medicine.

However, this is America where even haters of this nation can exist and express their opinions.  We may not care much for the tea party but they have a right to exist in a free country.  In American, fools can both survive and thrive.
___


Copyright  © 2013 Capitol Hill Blue

The next Ted Cruz: Meet the Tea Party idol who could oust a top House Republican

 SALON

Tuesday, Oct 22, 2013 09:45 AM PDT
                      

The next Ted Cruz: Meet the Tea Party idol who could oust a top House Republican

 

Tea Party challenger Art Halvorson tells Salon that Boehner's not "man enough" to lead, and new House will oust him       

By Josh Eidelson

 

    

Topics: Art Halvorson, Bill Shuster, GOP, Tea Party, Republicans, Barack Obama, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Pennsylvania, primary, elections, Elections News, Business News, News, Politics News

Art Halvorson

 

 

After their government shutdown and debt ceiling stand-off ended in disappointment, some Tea Party groups are turning their sights on avenging their perceived betrayal in next year’s Republican primaries. Here’s one to watch: in Southwest Pennsylvania, right-wing Coast Guard retiree and real estate developer Art Halvorson is out to oust incumbent Bill Shuster, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and inherited the seat from his father in 2001. Shuster voted for the Boehner-backed deal that ended the shutdown; Halvorson is endorsed by RedState’s Erick Erickson and the Madison Project PAC, which last summer was already running ads slamming Shuster for voting “eight times” to raise the debt ceiling.

If Tea Party challengers like Halvorson pull off upsets next year, what kind of candidates – or congressmen – will they be? In a wide-ranging Monday interview, Halvorson told Salon that “nothing would have changed “ if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, advocated weaning Americans off of “dependence” on Medicare and Social Security, and bemoaned the end of the gold standard. He also had harsh words for Barack Obama (“easily intimidated” and prone to “anger”), John Boehner (not “man enough”), and even Paul Ryan. A condensed version of our conversation follows.

What did you make of the vote last week to pass a [continuing resolution] and raise the debt ceiling?

I thought it was a betrayal of the American people

How so?

We had started down a course to defund Obamacare, and Mr. Boehner went along with that, probably under pressure…Having chosen to take that path strategically, he needed to have decided ahead of time what the exit strategy was. And to cave was not the right exit strategy. He needed to follow through. And I believe they were winning that war…

It is [also] a war between conservatives and the establishments…Worldviews…are just night and day…one of them, with big government, is that the government can be a provider as well as a protector. And I think conservatives believe that the role of government, as outlined by the founding fathers, is to fundamentally be the role of protector, and the provider of justice, but not the provider of goods and services and economic control.

Is it your view that Boehner was planning all along for the showdown to end in that way, or do you think that his strategy-

I cannot judge the man’s heart…One could argue both cases, with respect to pure motives or impure…

[Either] he was throwing a bone to the conservatives, but he never intended to follow through – and the evidence for that case is that he began immediately to revise his position, to negotiate with himself and allow this circular firing squad, sort of, to begin to attack conservatives…To the extent that he didn’t manage that well,  that either is due to a lack of leadership on his part, or complicit behavior with the establishment in the Senate….

[Or] the alternative is that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And I tend to not think that he doesn’t know what he’s doing…

If you’re elected to Congress, are there any circumstances under which you would vote for John Boehner to be Speaker?

I don’t believe so. I can’t imagine that there would be…Fundamentally, that’s why I am running, is because we need a new leader as speaker.

And who do you think should be speaker of the house?

…At least a half dozen folks I believe are qualified who could step into those — step into that place.

The current House Republican Caucus — how many of those Republicans do you think deserve to win their primaries next year?

That’s a tough question …Roughly a third of them are so hard-core establishment-minded that they should be primaried and probably should be replaced, because they’re unreliable conservative votes, and we need reliable, authentic conservatives in order to take our country back…

[Last] Wednesday night…if the House or the Senate had defeated that compromise, what do you think would have happened afterwards?

Well, we would not have defaulted unless the president chose to tell the Treasury Secretary not to pay interest on the debt. We have plenty of money coming in to service the debt…We were not in any were not in any position to default unless it’s intentional. So I think nothing would have changed…We just would have extended our quote-unquote “government shutdown” – really it’s just a slowdown…

This was not unique to Mr. Obama, though I think he took it to the next level…You try to create the most pain for the public…so that people demand that the money be appropriated…They had to actually, intentionally create pain because there wasn’t enough pain created by the “shutdown” to accomplish the administration’s objectives.

How are you saying they did that?

They did it by creating stories, creating incidences where people were personally affected, where pain was felt. Shutting down the national parks and arresting people and kicking people out of their homes, because they happened to be located within the boundaries of the national parks…

Who was kicked out of their homes?

There were – well, you’re familiar with all the various stories of private property. I don’t want to get into those details. I’m just citing some open source examples. I hope that’s not where this interview is going…

If the debt ceiling had not been raised, do you think that would have been bad for the economy?

It would force changes. But that’s the whole point here: if we don’t force changes, the inertia of the increasing government spending is far more detrimental in the medium and the long-term then the short-term effect of not raising the debt ceiling…

I think we’ve already passed that point where we can’t borrow money, because now it’s just through the Fed they’re simply buying up that debt. That’s just- that’s just crazy.

So come January and February, when government funding runs out and then the debt ceiling increase runs out, what should House Republicans do in the lead-up to those deadlines?

They need to be doing what needs to be done right now. And just kicking the can until January or February is simply going to repeat the same thing we just went through. They need to be demanding, they need to be proposing solutions right now…doing that stuff right now, and define a strategy so the entire caucus can be behind it .

What should that strategy be?

I don’t know the full extent of the options they have, but they have options and they need to be exercising those options. One of the key things is the messaging…you have to start with a message, and a leader would do that, and articulate the problem and articulate some of the solutions, and get the people behind them and prepare the people for the fight. And it’s going to be a huge fight…

Do you think delaying or defunding Obamacare should be a mandatory condition for raising the debt ceiling again?
I certainly think it needs to be on the table, because Obamacare fundamentally exemplifies the problem.
You mentioned Republicans had been “winning.” What would the path to victory in the government shutdown and the showdown over the debt ceiling have looked like?

Part of it is that Mr. Obama’s approval rating would continue to plummet…It’s continuing to go down because he doesn’t offer any solution. He’s not willing to negotiate. I don’t think he’s able to negotiate – many people say that – and he doesn’t even appoint somebody who will negotiate on his behalf. He’s just intractable…

Republicans, if they would show some strength of character and stand up to him, I believe the American people would side with the true leadership. But I don’t see that in Mr. Boehner. I certainly don’t see that in Mr. Obama…

Mr. Shuster and Mr. Boehner are not standing up, and so they could be doing far better in this battle, if you will, for the hearts and minds of the American people, and for the future of our country, if they would be man enough to stand – leader enough to stand and defend their position and articulate it.

So is your view that if the government had stayed shut down and the debt ceiling hadn’t been raised, that Obama would then have made concessions on Obamacare?

Yes…Obamacare is not ready for primetime. It will collapse. He’s fundamentally playing with a losing hand…

As I’m reviewing the landscape of the nation, I believe that people are ready for leaders to emerge, and Mr. Boehner scored some points when he agreed to defund Obamacare as part of that initial CR. But then he immediately lost any status he gained, because he began negotiating with himself and began to slowly back down and start to look weak again.

When you say you don’t think Obama is “able” to negotiate, what do you mean?

Well, I’m not the only one saying that. That’s a sort of a conclusion based on the way he has operated. He does not engage. He does not seem to be interested. Therefore I have to make a judgment as to why is that. And I’m thinking maybe he’s not able to. And that’s over the course of time, putting together evidence from a number of occasions where he is easily intimidated and brought to a point, I believe, of anger. I’ll cite the case where he kicked Eric Cantor out of a meeting because Cantor was being tough…

I’m not just picking on the president. I’m saying Mr. Boehner I don’t think is a great negotiator either.

How many Republicans do you think will lose their seats in primaries because of the way this deal went down?

I have no way of knowing…I think the tide is shifting though… There’s a poll that came out last week I saw that 60 percent of people said that they wanted to clean house – including their own representative…

Where was that poll from?

I believe I saw it on Drudge Report. But I don’t know who did the poll.

Win or lose, these primary challenges – or the threat of primary challenges – how much of an impact do you think they’ve had in terms of getting incumbents to behave in a way that’s more in line with the vision that you’re putting forward?

It’s hard to measure…There is some evidence, for example, in my case: Mr. Shuster was rated at 50 percent in 2012 by the Heritage Action score – just to give you one objective assessment – and now he’s in the mid to low 70s. So clearly by the scoring of the key votes, by that particular scorecard, he has shifted to the right.

Some writers or political operatives have expressed the view that the shutdown and the influence of the Tea Party are going to hurt Republicans in the midterms, or could even lead to the Democrats taking back the House – what do you make of that argument?

Yeah, I think that’s wishful thinking. Look: the American people love underdogs. They love leaders. That’s what’s made America great, is great leaders. And what’s going on here with the Tea Party, or however you want to characterize those who are standing up to the establishment, I believe they’re going to be embraced by the American – did you know Ted Cruz got an eight minute standing ovation last night in Texas?

Where was that that Senator Cruz got an eight minute standing ovation?

When he returned to Texas last night. I don’t remember where I saw that – it was cited in one news report…Again, it’s just one anecdote, Josh, I’m not basing my whole argument on that. I’m just saying that I believe that leaders will be rewarded…

And what should happen to Medicare?

Medicare is not going to be – it should not be because – let’s put it this – for the near term it should be managed better…But Medicare is a fixture in our economy, and in our society right now, so I would not – we need to make improvements, and we need to be smart about that, but we need to keep it in place while we build an alternative, better approach. And the better approach is to begin shifting our culture. And this is a long-term strategy with near-term steps that are necessary to be shifting away from a dependency government-based provision of certain needs and services – services for needs, in this case medical services – to an individually- based approach, where we get back to independence on the part of a person and a family, away from dependence by persons and families…
We need to move away from this direction that we’re currently going where government will provide for everybody. That’s simply a socialist model…

So should most people who are over 65 get their insurance in the future from private insurers, or through the government?

Obviously, my preference is more people, as many people as possible – we’re talking in general terms here, so I don’t know where we’re going, I’m just trying to express my philosophical viewpoint – that more people on private insurance is better than more people on public assistance, and dependence on public provision of that. So are we understanding each other on this issue?

I think I understand – you said at the beginning that you want government to act as less of a provider. So I want to understand -

But to the extent that the government is necessary, they should be provided with that model. But we should be as a nation seeking, and our government should be seeking, to promote less dependence on government…I want the government to be in the position to make available access to as many different models as possible…I mean we have total government in the military side, with which I’m familiar. It’s total government medicine…

Should the government play less of a role in military and veterans’ health coverage?

No. No. Not necessarily. I just cite that as an example of: we already have all these models, the full spectrum, and I think it’s fine…

I’m admiting the government’s involved in it now. I just don’t want to see more government involvement…

So given that preference for more private health insurance, why not transition veterans’ care to private insurance?

There’s a unique — the military is unique, and that is that we deploy — that we have to have full service capability, we have to have doctors on the staff, the doctors deploy to the area of operations…

And for veterans back in the United States, why not transition that to a private system?

I would be amenable to studying that, and being part of looking at that. I’m not – I mean, that’s a good point, yes, why – that’s a question we should be asking: Is there a better delivery mechanism – healthcare delivery mechanism – than the current VA structure. And I’m willing to look at that…I believe that’s a great question.

How much support do you think there is in your district for the kind of change you would like to see in Medicare?

… I’m not sure I could give you a clean assessment of where people are on that

…I’m not trying to blow smoke at you about, “Oh, people are ready for change.” I don’t think that would be right. They are willing to consider changes though. Because they know that the path we’re on is unsustainable. They want “the government” quote-unquote to stop spending more than they take in, and part of that is going to reflect – is going to require some pain and some change. And how much they’re willing to accept in the area that they are particularly benefiting [from] – anecdotally, I think people are ready to consider some changes.

The president’s proposal for chained CPI, which would reduce future Social Security benefits – what’s your view of that?

It’s classic government – it’s classic big government, so I think that it’s stealing from the American people…the government borrows money with no intentions of paying it back, and so how they – the way they deal with it is they allow the money to inflate…Without a gold standard or any real standard upon which – with just fiat money, the government is free to do that almost without any limitation. I say all that to say the CPI is just one more gimmick that the government has, a tool that they have at their disposal to sort of deal with…unintended consequences of big spending, deficit spending. That’s how they deal with it…It’s reprehensible…They’re perpetuating this establishment inertia, and it’s disgusting…

When you say “stealing from the American people,” are you referring to the Social Security program itself, or to proposal to change the CPI?

No. The effect that the changes to the CPI would have on the cost of living increases …It’s a one-off way to address the cost of living allowance increases in Social Security. So it’s an indirect way of addressing that problem which hurts so many people who are dependent on Social Security…
That’s what big government does. That’s why we’ve got to attack big government, that’s the enemy here. They’re trying to give all these things away, and they can’t afford it, and so they come back to try to address the unaffordability with things like that…

What should be done with Social Security then?

…The folks who are near to entering it or already receiving Social Security benefits need to be protected and preserved, and assured that there’s no threat from any quarter for those things that they have paid into…We need to be talking to younger generations now about getting onto an individual long-term retirement system that is not dependent on Social Security. We need to be moving away from it. It’s always going to be there, but there needs to be options…

Leaders need to start talking about these things, be unafraid to bear the consequences of being misquoted and being abused…as [Paul] Ryan was abused by his willingness to discuss the future of Social Security.

You mentioned the gold standard: do you think the U.S. should return to the gold standard?
…We should have never gone off of it in my opinion…So we need to be there, but can we get back to it? I think it’s still an open question for me.

You mentioned Paul Ryan. Have you been disappointed to see Congressman Ryan working as closely as he has with Speaker Boehner?

The short answer is yes… I think that as he was introduced on the scene, he was perceived to be – by me and many others – to be more conservative than he really is. So he has tendencies towards the establishment, I guess is the way I’d put it. So yeah, I’ve been disappointed. I wish he was more of an independent conservative than I believe he really is.

 

More Josh Eidelson.

 

SALON


Tuesday, Oct 22, 2013 04:45 AM PDT

Tea Party is an anti-populist elite tool. And it has progressives fooled

This is not some spontaneous uprising. It's the newest incarnation of a rich, elite, right-wing tradition

By Michael Lind

 

    

Topics: Tea Party, The Right, GOP, Republican Party, Conservatives, The Left, Democrats, Ronald Reagan, one percent, Elites, Editor's Picks, Business News, Politics News

Ted Cruz (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

In recent essays for Salon I have argued that progressives and mainstream pundits are making a profound mistake by treating Tea Party radicalism as an outburst of irrationality by moronic “low information” yokels, rather than understanding it as a calculated (if not necessarily successful) strategy by the regional elite of the South and its allies in other regions. In an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “The Tea Party and the GOP Crackup,” William Galston presents data that reinforces this conclusion:

Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The New York Times survey found the opposite. Only 26% of tea-party supporters regard themselves as working class, versus 34% of the general population; 50% identify as middle class (versus 40% nationally); and 15% consider themselves upper-middle class (versus 10% nationally). Twenty-three percent are college graduates, and an additional 14% have postgraduate training, versus 15% and 10%, respectively, for the overall population. Conversely, only 29% of tea-party supporters have just a high-school education or less, versus 47% for all adults.

I have also argued that the Tea Party is not a new movement that sprang up as a result of spontaneous populist anger against Wall Street bailouts in the Great Recession, but rather the “newest right,” the most recent incarnation of an evolving right-wing tradition that goes back beyond Reagan and Goldwater to mostly Southern roots. Galston notes the high degree of overlap between the Tea Party and mainstream Republican conservatives:

Nor, finally, is the tea party an independent outside force putting pressure on Republicans, according to the survey. Fully 76% of its supporters either identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Rather, they are a dissident reform movement within the party, determined to move it back toward true conservatism after what they see as the apostasies of the Bush years and the outrages of the Obama administration.

Against progressives and pundits who insist on blaming the white working class for Tea Party radicalism, I have argued that the radical right agenda serves the interest of the economic elites of the South and some areas in the Midwest and other regions — particularly those whose business models are threatened by unions, high minimum wages and environmental regulations. Here, too, Galston understands what most commentators miss:

Many tea-party supporters are small businessmen who see taxes and regulations as direct threats to their livelihood. Unlike establishment Republicans who see potential gains from government programs such as infrastructure funding, these tea partiers regard most government spending as a deadweight loss. Because many of them run low-wage businesses on narrow margins, they believe that they have no choice but to fight measures, such as ObamaCare, that reduce their flexibility and raise their costs—measures to which large corporations with deeper pockets can adjust.

I have high regard for Galston’s abilities as a political analyst, and no small regard for my own. But this is not rocket science. All of this has been obvious to anyone who bothered to examine the polling and voting data, since the term “Tea Party” first entered the national dialogue following the crash of 2008.

Why, in the face of all of this evidence, are so many progressives and pundits convinced that the white working class, rather than affluent and educated conservative elites, are the driving force behind the right? Why do so many American progressives blame the masses for a movement of the classes? The answer is that the American center-left has been misled for half a century by the bad scholarship of the historian Richard Hoftstadter (1916-1970) and by German Marxist emigres of the Frankfurt School.

In the U.S., as in Western Europe, coalitions of populist farmers who united with organized urban workers were the social base of progressive movements like the New Deal. This was recognized by the liberal historians of the 1930s and 1940s, who tended to celebrate the contribution of populism to the evolving New Deal tradition.

Throughout the progressive and New Deal eras, to be sure, urban American intellectuals like H.L. Mencken tended to despise rural people, in every country; Mencken despised European “peasants” as much as he despised the provincial American “booboisie.” Hoftstadter infused Menckenseque contempt for rural and working-class Americans into postwar intellectual liberalism, by means of influential books like “Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915″ (1944); “The American Political Tradition“ (1948); “The Age of Reform” (1955); “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” (1963). By emphasizing genuine examples of racism and anti-Semitism among agrarian Populists, without pointing out that these biases were widely shared among American Anglo-Protestant elites who often despised the Populists, Hoftstadter convinced several generations of American college students and professors that the Populists were a kind of incipient fascist force. By the 1960s, all too many American liberal intellectuals looked at their working-class fellow citizens and saw, not the heroic workers of the new Deal era murals, but peasants with pitchforks and proto-Nazis.

Many mid-century liberal intellectuals blamed first McCarthyism and then the rise of the Goldwater-Reagan movement on a deranged white working class. They found confirmation for this theory not only in Hofstadter but also in “The Authoritarian Personality,” a 1950 collection of essays by sociologists led by Theodor W. Adorno, a refugee from Hitler who had been part of the “Frankfurt School” of Marxist sociology. As Jon Wiener has explained:

The Age of Reform was framed around the theory of “status politics,” which came from an essay by German sociologist Max Weber, published in the United States by Hofstadter’s Columbia colleague and friend the radical sociologist C. Wright Mills. Hofstadter’s “status politics” thesis held that the Populists were driven to irrationality and paranoia by anxiety over their declining status in an America where rural life and its values were being supplanted by an urban industrial society. Populism, in this view, was a form of reactionary resistance to modernity. Here Hofstadter was the Jewish New York intellectual anxiously looking for traces of proto-fascism somewhere in middle America. He saw Joe McCarthy as a potential American Hitler and believed he had found the roots of American fascism among rural Protestants in the Midwest. It was history by analogy—but the analogy didn’t work.

The scholarship of Adorno and Hofstadter has long been discredited. In the case of Germany, the historian Michael Mann has demonstrated that National Socialism was widely supported by Germans of all classes, including elites. During the 1930s, the would-be leaders of American fascism tended to come from the American elite, including Lawrence Dennis, a Harvard-educated foreign service officer, and Philip Johnson, an upper-class trust-funder who later became the most celebrated American architect of the second half of the 20th century. Johnson’s fling with fascism in the 1930s became a scandal in his later years. An “embedded reporter” with the Wehrmacht during its invasion of Poland, considered a reliable American friend of the Nazi regime, the young Johnson wrote: “The German green uniforms made the place look gay and happy. There were not many Jews to be seen. We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle.”

Recent scholarship on Goldwater-Reagan conservatism has demolished the idea that it represented a rebellion by disoriented yahoos. Indeed, in 1984 Reagan took 62.7 percent of the college-educated vote, compared to Walter Mondale’s 36.9 percent. Working-class “Reagan Democrats” notwithstanding, Reaganism was a revolt of the privileged against the New Deal order that had been built by the farmer-labor alliance in coalition with middle-class progressives.

Today as in the Reagan era, the Democrats are the more downscale, less-educated party, while the Republicans tend to win the votes of educated and affluent white Americans. In 2012 Romney received the votes of 52 percent of college-educated white women and 55 percent of college-educated white men, losing only the tiny sliver of whites with post-graduate degrees like university professors.
While white voters of all age groups preferred Romney to Obama, the propensity of whites to vote for Republicans rises with income. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “Among whites without a college degree, income has become a stronger predictor of the vote over time. But actually it’s those with less income, not more income, who are more likely to support Democratic presidential candidates. And again, there certainly no trend by which whites with below-average incomes and no college degree become more Republican.”

PRRI notes:

• White working-class voters in households that make less than $30,000 per year were nearly evenly divided in their voting preferences (39% favored Obama, 42% favored Romney). However, a majority (51%) of white working-class voters with annual incomes of $30,000 or more a year supported Romney, while 35% preferred Obama.
• Half (50%) of white working-class voters who have not reported using food stamps in the past two years supported Romney, while less than one-third (32%) supported Obama. By contrast, white working-class voters who reported receiving food stamps in the last two years preferred Obama to Romney by a significant margin (48% vs. 36%).

The white working class is pretty evenly divided among Democrats and Republicans in the Northeast, Midwest and West — only in the South are working-class whites overwhelmingly Republican.  It is the Southern white working class that skews the voting statistics and culture-war issues like “God, guns and gays,” on which white Southerners of all classes tend to be more conservatives than whites in other regions.

In general, the American white working class is as liberal on economic issues as it was during the New Deal era — and far more progressive than many of the socially liberal billionaires who finance the Democratic Party of Clinton and Obama:

• Seven-in-ten (70%) white working-class Americans believe the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy, and a majority (53%) say that one of the biggest problems in this country is that we don’t give everyone an equal chance in life.
• A plurality (46%) of white working-class Americans believe that capitalism and the free market system are at odds with Christian values, while 38% disagree.
• Nearly 8-in-10 white working-class Americans say that corporations moving American jobs overseas are somewhat (25%) or very (53%) responsible for Americans’ current economic distress.
• Over 6-in-10 (62%) white working-class Americans favor raising the tax rate on Americans with household incomes of over $1 million per year.

In light of all of this, it comes as no surprise that identifying the Tea Party with the white working class is a mistake:

White working-class Americans (13 percent) are no more likely than white college-educated Americans (10 percent) to say they consider themselves part of the Tea Party. White working-class Americans (34 percent) are also about equally as likely as white college-educated Americans (31 percent) to say the Tea Party movement shares their values.

If it wants to live up to its claim of being “the reality-based community,” the American center-left needs to dispense with the half-century-old anti-working-class mythology of Hofstadter and Adorno and look at real-world electoral and opinion data, for a change. By refusing to recognize that today’s right-wing radicalism serves the interests of elites — in particular, Southern elites — and blaming it erroneously on the non-Southern white working class, progressives only harm themselves, not least by confusing their enemies with their potential allies.
 

Michael Lind is the author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States and co-founder of the New America Foundation. More Michael Lind.

Christian delusions are driving the GOP insane

SALON

Thursday, Oct 10, 2013 9:40 PM UTC

Christian delusions are driving the GOP insane

Why aren't Republicans more frightened of a shutdown and a default? Part of the reason is magical thinking

By Amanda Marcotte

Topics: AlterNet, Christianity, Religion, Tea Party, Conservatism, Shutdown, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Life News, Politics News

This article originally appeared on Alternet. 

Why aren’t Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn’t really fooling the voters: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, Republican threats rely on believing they don’t care about the consequences, while Democrats do.

So why aren’t they more afraid? Businessweek, hardly a liberal news organization, said the price of default would be “a financial apocalypse” that would cause a worldwide economic depression.  This is the sort of thing that affects everyone. Having a right wing ideology doesn’t magically protect your investments from crashing alongside the rest of the stock market.

The willingness of Republicans to take the debt ceiling and the federal budget hostage in order to try to extract concessions from Democrats is probably the most lasting gift that the Tea Party has granted the country. More reasonable Republican politicians fear being primaried by Tea Party candidates. A handful of wide-eyed fanatics in Congress have hijacked the party. The Tea Party base and the hard right politicians driving this entire thing seem oblivious to the consequences. It’s no wonder, since so many of them—particularly those in leadership—are fundamentalist Christians whose religions have distorted their worldview until they cannot actually see what they’re doing and what kind of damage it would cause.

The press often talks about the Tea Party like they’re secularist movement that is interested mainly in promoting “fiscal conservatism”, a vague notion that never actually seems to make good on the promise to save taxpayer money. The reality is much different: The Tea Party is actually driven primarily by fundamentalist Christians whose penchant for magical thinking and belief that they’re being guided by divine forces makes it tough for them to see the real world as it is.

It’s not just that the rogue’s gallery of congress people who are pushing the hardest for hostage-taking as a negotiation tactic also happens to be a bench full of Bible thumpers. Pew Research shows that people who align with the Tea Party are more likely to not only agree with the views of religious conservatives, but are likely to cite religious belief as their prime motivation for their political views.  White evangelicals are the religious group most likely to approve of the Tea Party. Looking over the data, it becomes evident that the “Tea Party” is just a new name for the same old white fundamentalists who would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with everyone else, and this latest power play from the Republicans is, in essence, a move from that demographic to assert their “right” to control the country, even if their politicians aren’t in power.

It’s no surprise, under the circumstances, that a movement controlled by fundamentalist Christians would be oblivious to the very real dangers that their actions present. Fundamentalist religion is extremely good at convincing its followers to be more afraid of imaginary threats than real ones, and to engage in downright magical thinking about the possibility that their own choices could work out very badly. When you believe that forcing the government into default in an attempt to derail Obamacare is the Lord’s work, it’s very difficult for you to see that it could have very real, negative effects.

It’s hard for the Christian fundamentalists who run the Republican Party now to worry about the serious economic danger they’re putting the world in, because they are swept up in worrying that President Obama is an agent of the devil and that the world is on the verge of mayhem and apocalypse if they don’t “stop” him somehow, presumably be derailing the Affordable Care Act. Christian conservatives such as Ellis Washington are running around telling each other that the ACA  will lead to “the systematic genocide of the weak, minorities, enfeebled, the elderly and political enemies of the God-state.” Twenty percent of Republicans believe Obama is the Antichrist.Washington Times columnist Jeffrey Kuhner argued that Obama is using his signature health care legislation to promote “the destruction of the family, Christian culture”, and demanded that Christians “need to engage in peaceful civil disobedience against President Obama’s signature health care law”.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops joined in, demanding that the Republicans shut down the government rather than let Obamacare go into effect. The excuse was their objection to the requirement that insurance make contraception available without a copayment, saying ending this requirement matters more than “serving their own employees or the neediest Americans.”

The Christian right media has been hammering home the message that Christians should oppose the Affordable Care Act. Pat Necerato of the Christian News Network accused the supporters of the law of committing idolatry and accused people who want health care of being covetous. The Christian Post approvingly reported various Christian leaders, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, saying things like the health care law is “a profound attack on our liberties” and lamented “Today is the day I will tell my grandchildren about when they ask me what happened to freedom in America.”

Some in the Christian right straight up believe Obamacare portends the end times. Rick Phillips, writing for Christianity.com, hinted that Obamacare might be predicted in Revelations, though he held back from saying that was certain. Others are less cautious. On the right wing fundamentalist email underground, a conspiracy theory has arisen claiming that Obamacare will require all citizens to have a microchip implanted. While it’s completely untrue, many Christians believe that this means the “mark of the beast” predicted in Revelations that portends the return of Christ and the end of the world.

In other words, the Christian right has worked itself into a frenzy of believing that if this health care law is implemented fully, then we are, in fact, facing down either the end of American Christianity itself or quite possibly the end times themselves. In comparison, it’s hard to be too scared by the worldwide financial collapse that they’re promising to unleash if the Democrats don’t just give up their power and let Republicans do what they want. Sure, crashing stock markets, soaring unemployment, and worldwide economic depression sounds bad, but for the Christian right, the alternative is fire and brimstone and God unleashing all sorts of hell on the world.

This is a problem that extends beyond just the immediate manufactured crisis. The Christian right has become the primary vehicle in American politics for minimizing the problems of the real world while inventing imaginary problems as distractions. Witness, for instance, the way that fundamentalist Christianity has been harnessed to promote the notion that climate change isn’t a real problem. Average global temperatures are creeping up, but the majority of Christian conservatives are too worried about the supposed existential threats of abortion and gay rights to care.

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that it’s easy for Christian conservatives to worry more about imaginary threats from Obamacare than it is for them to worry about the very real threat to worldwide economic stability if the go along with their harebrained scheme of forcing the government into default. To make it worse, many have convinced themselves that it’s their opponents who are deluded. Take right wing Christian Senator Tom Coburn, who celebrated the possibility of default back in January by saying it would be a “wonderful experiment”. Being able to blow past all the advice of experts just to make stuff up you want to believe isn’t a quality that is unique to fundamentalists, but as these budget negotiations are making clear, they do have a uniquely strong ability to lie to themselves about what is and isn’t a real danger to themselves and to the world.

Amanda Marcotte is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist. She's published two books and blogs regularly at Pandagon, RH Reality Check and Slate's Double X. More Amanda Marcotte.

Letter to an Angry Libertarian

  Tea Party and the Right  

AlterNet / By RJ Eskow

 

Letter to an Angry Libertarian

 

Libertarians want to return to the good old days of 19th-century America: a time of robber barons, poverty wages and unsafe working conditions. 

 

October 11, 2013  |   

 

 

Dear Libertarian:

We don’t know each other, but I’m writing because you’re one of the many people who wrote to me in responce to a piece I wrote recently ("11 Questions You Should Ask Libertarians to See If They're Hypocrites").

A lot of people responded. Some of you made reasonable points, while some of you simply ranted. A frightening number of you expressed hostility to democracy itself.

I don’t know your name, your age or your life story. But I’m addressing this to you in the hopes that we can get to know one another a little better.

Who are you?

I’m writing because you wrote a blog post, or addressed me on Twitter, or made a YouTube video about what I’d written. Or maybe you sent me an email. I’ve learned that you guys use Internet technology quite a bit. That’s no surprise, since the Silicon Valley is swarming with libertarians. But it is somewhat ironic, don’t you think, that so many of you disseminate your opinions on government-created technology? (Defense Department research created the Internet.)

What’s even more ironic is that so many Internet billionaires (I’m looking at you, Peter Thiel) are extremist libertarians in their views. They support their views with wealth they’ve accumulated using government-created technology, government-protected patents, a government-educated workforce, and consumers who are protected and educated at government expense.

I called that hypocritical in my last piece, which made some of you angry. Hey, it’s my opinion! Sue me, as the expression goes. (Wait: as libertarians, I suppose you can’t literally sue me. Courts are a government entity.) But I’m not writing this letter to pick a fight. I want to address those libertarians who were essentially courteous and respectful. You wrote thoughtful responses to my piece, and I’ll respond to some of your specific points shortly.

But first, let me say that I appreciate the dedication so many libertarians have shown in defending civil liberties and opposing the militarized state. I wish that liberals had been more steadfast on these principles since Obama took office. Ron Paul was the only 2012 presidential candidate to speak the truth about US military intervention, and Rand Paul’s anti-drone filibuster was admirable.

I also appreciate and admire your willingness to reject conventional thinking. We should never stop discussing new concepts, however radical. Ideas are beautiful things when they’re well constructed, and some libertarian ideas are admirable in their construction—even if I find them sorely lacking in real-world situations.

Finally, libertarians have also been great allies on the subject of Wall Street and large corporations, especially when it comes to ending their government funding, their implicit subsidies and exemptions from prosecution.

Anecdote Break

Before we continue, an anecdote: I went on a talk show to discuss banking reform with one of the guys from Reason magazine, and in the kitchen afterward we were both surprised at how much we agreed. He was funny and imperturbable. We decided to air our differences over coffee.

I said “You people are 60 percent great, and 40 percent irrational.”

“I’ll take 60 percent,” he cheerfully. “What else?”

“Talking with you guys is like being on a first date that’s going really well, until all of a sudden she starts talking about her alien abduction and how space people are speaking to her through her fillings.”

He said, "The existence of alien life is a very real possibility."
Like I said: Very funny.

Finally I said “Okay, I’ve told you what I think. What do you think about people like me?”

His answer: “Nice, but way too serious.”

The Libertarian Experiment, 1776-1929

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be serious about. It’s true that libertarian ideas can be intriguing. But political debates have real-world, human consequences. If an exciting idea doesn’t work in practice, we have a moral obligation to change our thinking.

My deepest criticism of libertarians is that they aren’t willing to change in the face of experience. This nation conducted a long experiment in libertarian economics, after all, from its inception until the mid-19th-century or thereabouts. Our economy retained many libertarian features—minimal regulations and labor laws, for example—until the early 20th century.

They weren’t the “good old days,” at least not for most Americans. It was a time of robber barons, poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, and financial instability. To return to that level of deregulation in today’s advanced industrial economy would be even worse. We’d see frequent BP-type environmental disasters, accelerated climate change, and financial crises that span the entire globe.

Triumph of the Will?

Several of you told me that economic transactions, including the employer/employee relationship, should be based on “free will.” But garment workers in early-20th-century New York or 21st-century Bangladesh aren’t allowed to exercise their free will. They either accept poverty wages and lethal working conditions or they starve. Why does an employer’s freedom to negotiate trump the employees’ right to organize collectively? “Free will” is pretty narrowly defined.

One of you wrote that, “You have a right to the product of your labors, but you can’t force someone to pay you more than what you are due.” But you can force someone to accept less than what they’re due, if the alternative is starvation. That’s not a free and fair transaction.

You wrote that no transaction is immoral “as long as force is not involved.” But what human forces are more brutal than hunger, privation and death?

Market Wisdom

Several of you said that, in the words of one email, “The only reason big corporations are bad right now is because of big government.” That’s simply not true. Big corporations were big and bad in the 1900s, too, when the federal government was much smaller than it is today.

A lot of you took umbrage at my observation that the public lost interest in libertarianism until it received artificial subsidies from corporations and wealthy individuals. I asked, shouldn’t the “market” in ideas decide? Many of you reacted by implying that I think unpopular ideas should be suppressed. That’s not what I said. I was observing some hypocrisy in your position, not stating my own.

Remember: I’m not the one who believes in the all-knowing “wisdom of markets.” I support public education and nonprofit journalism, so that unpopular ideas can flourish without being manipulated or suppressed by big-money interests.

Democracy, No!

My question about democracy was, “Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of marketplace?” This is where it was disturbing to hear some of your opinions—especially knowing they’re shared by many wealthy and powerful people.

One of you wrote that, “Democracy is no more of a form of marketplace than a rampaging mob is a form of marketplace.” You added: “Democracy is no more than theft by popular vote.”

This is a very Randian—and very wrong-headed—view of democracy. It’s absurd to suggest that a line of people waiting to vote is “rampaging,” while a line of people at the Walmart checkout counter is “preparing to make a rational market decision.”

What you call a “mob,” we call “the majority.” Your choice of language betrays a fierce contempt for “ordinary" people—that is, the non-wealthy—which is deeply disturbing. This elitism is libertarianism’s dark heart, and I ask you to reexamine your assumptions about it.

The “theft” in question is, at least for most of you, taxation. But taxes are collected in return for services provided, often more effectively and at lower cost than the “privatized” alternative.

One of you quoted Ambrose Bierce as saying, “Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” Unfortunately, that useful government-sponsored resource called the Internet offers no proof (other than user-written websites) that Bierce ever said that. Whoever said it was wrong, especially in Bierce’s time. (Or Ben Franklin’s. The saying is misattributed to him, too.)

Our democratic processes have been subverted by big money and big media, two forces whose corrupting influence is often defended by libertarians. Our system is run by a few lambs. First those lambs enriched themselves, often by cheating and manipulating the flock. Then they gave the throng a choice of pro-lamb candidates and called it democracy.

Goodbye For Now

Well, my libertarian friend, there you have it. You’re engaged with the world of ideas, and that’s good. I hope you stay open-minded, as I try to do, and let experience—including the BP oil spill and the financial crisis of 2008—influence your thinking. I hope we can continue to work together to resist militarism and defend our individual liberties.

I’m sorry if my last piece was too brusque or sarcastic. I’ll work on my tone. But if you think my ideas are no good, I hope you’ll take comfort in the thought that market forces should therefore crush them and replace them with better ones—maybe even yours!

Your democracy-loving friend,

Richard

PS: How about that whole Bitcoin thing, huh? Looks kinda bad for your side right now, don’t you think? Talk to you soon.

RJ Eskow is a writer, business person, and songwriter/musician. He has worked as a consultant in public policy, technology, and finance, specializing in healthcare issues.