Some time back, someone commented on an earlier column by saying “small government” conservatives only hated the government when it offered people a crutch, not when it clubbed them. There’s a lot of truth in that.
Listening to most movement conservatives, you get the impression that the military and police don’t count as part of the government. They talk a good game about “big government” and its intrusiveness, how it meddles in everything, how dangerous it is, and so forth. For example, take Michelle Malkin—please. She wants a government that’s small—just big enough to perform essential functions, like rounding up a few hundred thousand of its own citizens because of their ethnic background, and holding them without trial in internment camps.
Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like big government—but he thinks terrorist thugs should be killed “on the spot.” So apparently a government can be acceptably “small”—even with the power to kill anyone it claims is guilty of a crime. Once O’Reilly defended the right of police to harass people they “knew” were guilty, when they couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a jury.
Sean Hannity’s second to none when it comes to denouncing “big government”—but he practically wet himself when Ted Kennedy accused Bush of lying about Iraq. Kennedy committed the heinous crime of—gasp—“calling the Commander-in-Chief a liar… in WARTIME!”
So apparently the single human being on Earth with the greatest concentration of coercive force at his disposal doesn’t count as part of the government. Government is to be distrusted. Government is to be feared. But it only counts as “government” when it’s acting within the borders of the United States. Even though the government is a stinking pit of corruption whose domestic policy serves “special interests” at the average citizen’s expense, when it acts overseas it suddenly becomes “us,” and it becomes un-American to question its motives.
The only part of government these “conservatives” seem to like is the part that wears uniforms and carries guns.
That whole approach is pretty weird, considering that coercive power is the defining feature of government. To quote George Washington (who damned well ought to have known), “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force.”
The police and military make government what it is. Poul Anderson defined government as the institution that claims the right to kill anyone who disobeys it. Without the ability to coercively enforce its will, government would just be a debating society, collecting contributions to fund worthy projects and suggesting new rules it might be a good idea for people to follow.
Both liberals and conservatives, in what passes for mainstream American political discourse, are guilty of ignoring the coercive nature of government, and thinking of it as “us.”
“Conservatives” are more prone to stop fearing government and think of it as “us” when it wears a uniform and beats people up; “liberals” are more prone to think of it as “us” when it coopts forms of social cooperation that would exist anyway.
It probably reflects a difference in personality types. Republicans tend to be type-A authoritarian personalities who are always demanding that we “show” somebody or other (i.e. outsiders and dissidents) who’s boss, or “get tough” on this or that, and constantly accusing liberals of being “soft” on this or that (it’s apparently a party for old men who need viagra).
Democrats, on the other hand, tend to see society as a giant nursery, with a social worker going around saying “Momma don’t allow this! Momma don’t allow that!”
Both sides are guilty. But at least the liberals have an internally consistent logic, because they don’t claim to fear government. It’s pretty damned weird, on the other hand, when a philosophy claims to distrust government but doesn’t think cops and soldiers—the people who make it a government—are part of the government.
"But at least the liberals have an internally consistent logic, because they don’t claim to fear government."
I actually see conservatives as having the internally consistent logic though not at all consistent rhetoric. Conservatives/Rightist base there ideas off of the authority of axioms such as "Jesus says," "my priest says," "the Constitution says" or "the president says." Rightism is an appeal to the authority of the status quo, but they actually aim at and do serve that authority (no matter how false or ridiculous that authority may be). Meanwhile the liberals spend all their time talking about the backwardness of authority and the status quo and then spend all of their effort reinforcing the status quo through their actions and policies. Your social worker example is spot on.
Of course, they're all full of shit. (I really wanted to make a fecal matter joke, but had to restrain myself.)
Kevin-
Please don't forget to savage the Objectivists for being as nasty on this as their senior partners at Faux News. Randian warmongering, police statism, and elite class apologetics are undefended broadside-of-a-barn targets. Whoever calls their cheap bluff and goads organised Objectivism into a predictably clumsy intellectually embarassing response will get immediate massive exposure. George Reisman is the best they have to throw at you; I know only one Randian public intellectual of quality who hasn't been thrown out of the movement. There are hundreds of young, lost Randian aspiring intellectuals out there ready to repair to a more honest rational individualist standard if it presents itself, and millions of people read the Fountainhead only to find that there's nowhere to go. Objectivism is an intellectual estate deliberately held back from any productive use by absentee landlords who don't wish to see individualist ideas promiscuously circulating through a popular economy. May I suggest that it's time for thieving mutualists to engage in intellectual land reform by direct action?
@Aster — You know, it would be interesting to see a "left-Randian" attack on hierarchy based on "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man…".
Brad- Verily. I so wish someone like Roderick Long would take up this torch.
Aster: The Randroids IMO are far, far worse than Fox and even most Republican talk radio.
I recall some pieces by Bidinotto saying the U.S. was justified, in "self-defense," in turning the Gulf region into molten glass if the Islamic countries didn't obey an American demand that they shut down the Madrasas (aggressive calls for violence, you know), and give the oil fields to private owners (cough Exxon-Mobil cough).
Now consider, first of all, that the ARI's propaganda might be interpreted by some in the Islamic world as "calls for violence." And consider also that Ayn Rand rejected Rothbard's views on state property: she viewed student occupations of state universities, like the Berkeley FSM, as a thuggish violation of property rights that should be suppressed by state violence.
Starting from the perverse definitions of "self-defense" and "aggression" that these Randroid monsters use, it's possible to threaten "Do what we say or we'll murder the entire human race," and define failure to obey as "aggression" and global genocide as "self-defense." Maybe, using the ARI's logic, the rest of the world should define the U.S. government's very act of permitting such calls for violence from ARI and TOC as itself constituting state sponsor of terror–and then launch a war of extermination against the U.S. to make the rest of the world safe from American corporatist terror. It would be at least as rational and internally consistent as the Randroid doctrine. In fact, I believe Bin Laden justified the civilian deaths from 9-11, arguing for the moral culpability of the entire population in supporting or acquiescing to government policy, in the very same terms the ARI beasts of prey regularly use.
Most Randroid foreign policy propaganda, behind all the elaborate philosophical justifications, amounts to "Let's kill all the people we don't like and take their stuff." It's just an animal's howl of rage, wrapped up in faux Aristotelian rhetoric.
Rand was a genius but arrogant philosopher with many flaws in her philosophy that led her to make ridiculous arguments. The Randroids take her flawed philosophy and elevate it to the level of divine thought so it's no wonder they are totally insane. They are the same as any other fundamentalists. I always found it ironic that they would argue that since the "Muslims would kill all of us, we should kill them first" without realizing that what they say gives the the Muslim world equal justification to destroy the Western world out of self-defense from the Randroids.
Kevin-
Everything you say here is true, and should be said loudly. It should be said mercilessly until such a time, if ever, that prominent Randian voices emerge who acknowledge and repudiate the organised Objectivism which has become Conrad’s Kurtz. To some degree- the precise degree is in my mind a very complex and debatable matter- organised Objectivism’s promotion of genocial imperialism flows from Rand’s worst statements and tendencies.
I do decidely part with those who conclude from this that we should not learn from Rand and be affected by her vision of what human beings might be and ought to be. It’s barbaric to reject the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution because the class who held titled authority and/or practical power during these periods made certain that our liberated human potential was used for the purpose of brutal world conquest. We shouldn’t refuse to learn from Marx because of the Soviet Union, or from Hegel and Nietzsche because of Nazism. Ideas which derive from Rand certainly found their way into neoconservative policy documents which killed people, but in a very selective and essentially misunderstood form. For that matter it’s very dubious whether either Leo Strauss or Daniel Bell would have endorsed Bush/Cheney.
There was a better strain of Randianism, represented by Chris Sciabarra, undoubtedly the most brilliant Randian intellect since Rand herself. Such people have been driven out of organised Objectivism by a clique of Pharisees locked in place by a vicious class game protected by intellectual property laws. Sciabarra himself was poisonous betrayed, socially blacklisted, and cruelly abandoned. I have seldom seen such human nastiness, and I have seem a few things.
There’s much more to be said on this issue, and I’m quite grateful to you for such readiness to speak out on this. I merely do not wish, to reference Brad’s excellent idea, for the Fountainhead and “I swear by my life and my love of it” to go down with the Ayn Rand Institute. Rand’s praxis needs essential revision, most especially as regards class and environmentalism. For that matter we need an individualism whose revolt against collective and traditional authority has been updated since the days of Mae West and Greta Garbo.
All of this could be done if Chris Sciabarra were still with us. Is a man who made left-libertarianism possible not owed a movement which learns from and transcends the philosopher whose legacy he tried to repair?
My fear is that left-libertarianism, like the first libertarian movement, will with time and operational cultural relevativism forget the importance of reason and individualism and learn to apologise for any collectivist injustice which is not the state. Or, as a case in point corollary, that anti-imperialists will turn a blind eye to the horrifying fate which awaits freely thinking and feeling people (women, for instance) trapped within theocratic closed societies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. The better Randians keep quiet about the ‘bomb them to glass and extract our oil from the rubble’ ARI Daleks because they fear the alternative is a relativist acceptance of social systems which permit no freedom to the individual. They don’t see the exceptionalism, imperialism, classism, and racism involved in this because Objectivist society’s philosophical arbiters don’t know anyone whose family doesn’t have an investment portfolio, while the flock has never been outside of the United States and sees the world through the lens of a science fiction novel published in 1957.
There is little to love or even respect in Randian society. But it’s precisely for that reason that it would be so easy to knock over- really, what does it have to offer anyone who insists on honest perception of today’s reality? The only reason the Objectivist orthodoxy gets away with it is because Randian individualists don’t feel they have anywhere else safe to go. And, again, there truly are many politically homeless Randians with buried doubts and empathies who need nothing so much as an alternative individualist social milieu with a heart and soul, and who are themselves hurting and stifled within the confines of Objectivism’s cold lattice. What they need is reassurance that the alternative will defend reason and the Enlightenment and, as you’ve always done, respect entrepeneurship and enlightened self-interest. In my case, all I’ve ever wanted has been assurance that whoever carries on from the bourgeoisie will preserve their last accomplishments in civil rights and social citizenship which allow me to survive. I quite seriously currently calculate my practical life as if there is no future.
I want there to be a next generation of Randians after it becomes obvious to everyone that ‘capitalism’ is creating a worldwide class police state detached from reality and powerless to prevent itself from eating our planet alive. I look at mutualism as an honest free market without a game rigged for the benefit of rich white men. A similar humanisation is necessary to make egoism and individualism genuinely fair, and I suspect the same is necessary all the way down to first principles. It could be done. Imagine if Chris Sciabarra could write for the Center for a Stateless Society.