Why I'm not a libertarian

Rand Paul has gotten into a lot of trouble recently for his comments on the Civil Rights Act.  He made them, then had to go back and retract a little, then had to reverse his comments completely.  The problem is that most people were accusing him of being racist, when what he was being was a true libertarian.  In all the discussions about whether he believes blacks should be allowed to sit at lunch counters, what was missed was that libertarianism is a flawed way of running a country.

This would probably be reason #153 as to why I love Rachel Maddow.  On the show where she interviewed Rand Paul she did hammer him over and over again about whether a private business has the right to deny service to anyone it sees fit, and Rand Paul countered that if you can tell a business who they can and can’t serve, then you can limit speech, etc.  For Paul and libertarians, if they’re real libertarians, any government interference is unwelcome.  For people like Maddow and myself, government sometimes needs to step in and accomplish what we cannot on our own.  There are times when society moves to slow, and we ask our elected representatives to pass laws to move us a little bit further along.  This is what it means to be a Progressive.  See the video below

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Libertarians have an odd sort of attraction to both the left and the right.  The right because they favor limited government interference, however for Republicans that usually only means limited interference in business.  A libertarian, however, would never approve of a marriage amendment or spending on abstinence only education.  This is why some liberals fall for libertarian ideas, because libertarians favor the repeal of drug laws and wouldn’t ban gay marriage, because both those are limits on individual freedom.

The flip side is they believe people should be free without limits.  That sounds like a good thing, because it’s only words.  It’s philosophy without any grounding in fact. What Rachel Maddow attempted to show was the dark side to this unlimited freedom.  No government interference means that businesses can discriminate against anyone they see fit.  They can choose to pay women less for the same jobs, they can fire gays for no reason, they can dump toxic waste where they see fit, they can lie in advertising, they don’t have to run safety tests on their products, they don’t have to prepare food in sanitary ways, etc. 


Here's Rachel Maddow the next day:

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Rand Paul and others try to argue that we don’t need the federal government to tell us that racism is wrong, but Woolworth’s wasn’t going to desegregate on its own and if it did, it would have been decades later.  Belief that business will act in its self interest and create safe products is not true.  We had an oil spill in the gulf and it was most likely due to a business seeking to skirt the safety standards of the United States.  (and of course Rand Paul defended them as well.) What more proof do you need to know that businesses will not do what is in the best interests of anyone but themselves.  Price gouging is against the law because if it wasn’t PEOPLE WOULD DO IT!

If we lived in small communities libertarianism might work.  In a small community any business that acted inappropriately could be ostracized and shamed by that community, but we live in a vast nation.  We have corporations that took money from people, then took money from the federal government when it mismanaged that first set of money and had the audacity to give its members bonuses.  They feel no shame.  What can the people do when they have no individual power?  They can use their power, through their elected representatives to pass laws to ensure that it can’t happen again.  Essentially saying, we allowed you freedom, and you’ve proven you cannot be trusted.  Much the way your parents imposed stricter rules on you as a teen when you stayed out past curfew or were caught drinking.  Most people think of the government as an outside force, when in fact it is comprised of people just like us (though some more arrogant and greedy, sure), who were hired to do what we ask them to.  It isn’t always perfect, and they don’t always come through, but I’d rather have them trying than the libertarian ideal of no one trying at all.

 

I resemble that remark.

On the heels of Arizona passing it’s immigration law, countless cities cancelling events, and the fear that Major League baseball will decide to pull next year’s all-star game (apparently it won't but maybe the players will boycott), any rational individual would try to lie low and see if the controversy blows over. Well, Arizona appears to be taking a page from Sue Lowden and has decided to draw even more attention to its racial attitudes. However, those attitudes just seem to confirm what the country already thinks of it.

The other day, Arizona governor Brewer signed a law to get rid of ethnic studies classes in schools. The reasoning given by Tom Horne, the author of the bill, is that these ethnic studies classes "promote resentment toward a race or class of people" (read: white people) and "promote the overthrow of the United States government".  Seriously, that what he thinks will happen if you have kids read Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

This echoes a fear that a lot of white people have that children are going to be taught history that diminishes what white people have done and, at worst, paint white people as the bad guys. The problem is, if you’ll pardon the pun, most of the history we’re taught in school white-washes our past.  Heck Pat Buchannan on Rachel Maddow claimed that "this has been a country basically built by white folks".  Forgetting to mention that it was done with a lot of free black labor.

I learned about the civil rights movement only because I read about it on my own. I even had a teacher who tried to say that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery but about economics. Yeah, I’ve heard those arguments before (here's a list of 5 from about.com.
-- The Civil War was about economics. Yes, the south didn’t want to pay workers a salary, when it could just buy them at a one time fee.
-- The War was about state’s rights. Yes the right of some states to keep and own slaves
-- The War was brought on by the differences between industrial and agricultural ways of life. Yes, and agriculture at that time involved…what was that again… oh, yeah…SLAVES!

Look, the truth is that there are hippie teachers who take glee in pointing out that Jefferson owned slaves at the same time as writing that “all men are created equal.” The problem isn’t with those teachers, as people on the right would have it, it's with trying to write only "shiny-happy" history.

What Jefferson and the founding fathers did is amazing. They were a group of intellectuals who “thought” about what the best type of government would be and then debated, made compromises and implemented it. That government stands as the sole remaining super-power in the world today. The fact that they denied women a vote and denied blacks even the most basic rights of humanity, is a big bad spot on our record. But just because they made mistakes (and a big ones at that) doesn’t mean we should just ignore those mistakes.

The United States of America has done a lot of bad things: Slavery, the treatment of the Chinese railroad workers, Jim Crow laws, Japanese Internment Camps, Vietnam massacres, the list goes on. The difference between the Right and Left on talking about these things is that the Right feels that even mentioning these things is to disparage or “hate” America. The Left knows that by acknowledging these events, apologizing and trying to make things right after the fact, is what makes us a great country. Saying we made a mistake, trying to make it right and ensuring that it never happens again is what movie heroes are all about.

Al Franken explained it like this: "But you have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its Mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its Mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you're not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be."  Your parents could do no wrong and if someone criticized or spoke bad about your parents, you’d fight with them.

The Left is like a married couple. We know that our spouse isn’t perfect, and we’re going to have disagreements and sometimes they’re going to annoy the hell out of us. But, you work at it. You love them so you try to make things better. You try to find a solution that doesn’t end in dissolution. At least that what you should do if you’re an adult.

So when Horne heard about these African-American and Mexican-American studies programs, he reacted like a child upon hearing his parent being denigrated. “You take that back! You shut up!” In all honesty these courses just teach that someone other than old white men had a hand in crafting our nation. It teaches these students that people like them made a difference; it makes them feel a part of history. If you have kids that are interested enough to take these classes and learn about American History or read world literature, why would anyone try to stop them? Teachers have a hard enough time getting students interested in lessons, why take away something that might actually hold their interest?

On a political level, why would you sign a bill that targets “ethnic” groups on the heels of signing a bill that many believe targets “ethnic” groups? I predict a ban on Mexican radio stations next with some flimsy argument as to why it needs to be eliminated. “It’s not that we don’t like Mexican music, it’s that the beats of that music cycle at a frequency that is harmful to salamanders.”

Good luck Arizona, I hope you find your way.

When will they admit they're wrong?

There comes a time when you have to admit you're wrong.  Whether it's because you said, "I turned the dishwasher on," only to find that all your dishes are still dirty and the soap is sitting in its holder unused.  Or, because you believe that business should operate without any oversight or regulations, only to find that they end up buying credit default swaps on bad CDOs or not keeping their mines up to safe standards.  Sometimes you have to admit you're wrong.

The news these days is filled with items that should have people (and by people I mean politicians as well) reevaluating their stances on certain issues.  It should, but it doesn't.  An American citizen is captured for attempting to set off a bomb in Times Square and he was caught with good police work, not torture or by dropping bombs.  However, the issue on the right is whether he should have been Mirandized.  These are lawmakers, they do understand that if you don't make someone aware of their Miranda rights, any information they give us might not be admissible in court.  Meaning when you tried to convict him of a crime, he might go free. (I won't even mention the Lieberman bill.)

Then there's the Drill Baby, Drill crowd.  We have a major ecological disaster in the gulf, and they don't admit that maybe 1. we need to make sure we regulate the oil industry, 2. maybe oil isn't the easiest thing to drill from the ground, and 3. it can cause a big mess when something goes wrong.  At least Arnold Schwarzenegger said it made no sense to drill off of California after the spill, but Palin couldn't let it go.

And, shouldn't this spill lead us to some environmental legislation.  Well, we have this bill that Sen. Kerry and others are going to pass.  Of course, it probably won't do anything really substantial, but it is a start.  And maybe thanks to the oil spill there won't be an amendment for more oil wells off of the coast.

And what about Protecting the Constitution, Arizona passes a law that allows police to violate your 4th amendment rights, and it was passed by a Republican majority and the tea parties aren't marching on Phoenix!

I would just like every once in a while for people to say, "you know maybe I should re-think some of my proposals and stances."  Instead it seems that everyone is sticking to their ideological guns.  Intellectual honesty is all I want, but maybe that's too much to ask.