"Holders of political power, both past and present, form a 'very exclusive club' in which membership is not easily relinquished"

Here's a short excerpt from a longer piece I wrote describing a constitutional convention way back in 2000 – a room full of political sweepings from all sides discussing political power. The piece can serve to mark Grant Robertson's retirement from one trough and transfer to another:

"David Caygill [1] admits that political power — once gained — is very hard to give up. Jim Bolger [2] said last night that holders of such power, both past and present, form a 'very exclusive club' in which membership is not easily relinquished. Both gentlemen are living examples that what they say is true!
    "A certain kind of person is attracted to this 'club,' and there is no need to wonder at its effect on them since it can be seen clearly enough in the room today. I am surprised no one here ... has quoted Lord Acton yet, who memorably reminds us that 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Since that was said, we have a further century of evidence, and many people in this room, to demonstrate his acuity."

NOTES

1. David Caygill was a former Labour Cabinet Minister, and since "retirement" never out of the government trough. He was chair of ACC, chair of the Electricity Commission, commissioner and deputy chair at Environment Canterbury, and is still a board member of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and chair of the Education New Zealand Trust.
2. Jim Bolger was a National Party Prime Minister, and since "retirement" never out of the government trough. Post-PM he enjoyed an Ambassadorship to Washington; chancellorship of Waikato University (with even fewer qualifications for the role than Grant Robertson); chairmanship of NZ Post, NZ Rail and Kiwibank; was head of Labour's "fair-pay agreement working group"; and still pops up regularly to bore at talks and interviews around the country to tell us all how capitalism has failed us.

"I think overtly political songs like that are a fast road to nowhere."

"I think overtly political songs like that* are a fast road to nowhere. I think it’s decidedly grim when kids listen to – and are swayed by – kids not much older than themselves. Rock stars being what they are, they stick loads of gear up their noses. So there they are preaching about their political persuasions and how an ideal world should be arranged, when all along they’re deeply fucked up themselves. It’s just intrinsically wrong."

~ Glen Matlock, from his book I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol

* "When Gene October and Chelsea came up with that song, 'Right To Work,' we couldn’t believe it. It was a complete joke. Gene October had never done a day’s work in his life and had no desire to – not even so much as a stroke."

'Politicians are not agents of positive change, but thermometers that measure the temperature of public opinion.'

"Libertarians should treat politicians, not as agents of positive change, but as thermometers that measure the temperature of public opinion.
    'Change the temperature,' wrote Leonard Read, 'and there will be a change in what’s out front—naturally and spontaneously. The only purpose in keeping an eye on the thermometer is to know what the temperature is. If the underlying influential opinion—the temperature—is interventionist, we’ll have interventionists in public office regardless of the party labels they may choose for their adornment and public appeal.”
    'If,' on the other hand, as Read continued, 'the underlying influential opinion—the temperature—is libertarian, we’ll have spokesmen for libertarianism in public office. Nor will all the king’s horses and all the king’s men be able to alter the reading of the political thermometer one whit'.”

~ Jess Gill quoting Leonard Read, from her article 'Why Liz Truss Failed While Margaret Thatcher (Partly) Succeeded'

"In the past, political discourse was mostly civil. Today, things are quite different."

"In the past, political discourse was mostly civil, characterised by polite but firm disagreement between men and women willing to acknowledge that their opponents were at least well-meaning. There was very little presumption of malice.
    "Today, things are quite different. In almost all countries now, political discourse has grown toxic. The Left in particular now believe that if anyone disagrees with their solutions, it indicates that they also disagree with their goals.
    "And as the problems they claim to be trying to solve include racism, poverty, climate change etc, they therefore conclude that by opposing these goals, their opponents are callously trying to destroy humanity and the world.
    "Presuming nothing but malice, they now believe they are facing demons, not morons....
    "The Right’s supporters, by contrast, are energised by their political opponents’ escalations, and typically respond with even more outrageous escalations of their own. The fear inspired by these tactics is even less conducive to normal political engagement.... 
    "And of course when you think your opponent is pure evil and hell-bent on destroying humanity and the planet, almost any activity, no matter how morally questionable, becomes justifiable....
"    [W]hat cannot be denied is that the toxicity of modern political discourse is now so serious that it is polluting us all – friends and families who once loved each other and paid little attention to the political wranglings of the day are now being fractious with one another, as they are convinced the causes they believe in are too serious to be ignored and any opponent too irresponsible to be tolerated....
    "[I]f we don’t calm down soon we will be too groggy to implement the solutions.
    "Possibly even to comprehend the problem."

~ composite quote from Alex Noble, from his post 'The Scrubbers Are Failing' and Chris Trotter from his post 'Much Worse Than it Looks'

Politics... "making your friends happy by making their enemies suffer."

Image by Scott McCloud

"Cruelty is the main emotion that politicians pander to. And cruelty is what every politician strives to deliver. They don’t want to make everyone happy. They want to make their friends happy by making their enemies suffer."
          ~ Bryan Caplan, from his post 'Politics is Cruelty'

"What is Liberty?"

 

Philosopher Stephen Hicks answers, in one minute, the question: "What is Liberty?" -- part of his series of videos of Philosophy in Real Life.

"...the first step -- having a solid idea and commitment to begin with."

Replace the word "music" with art, with business, with politics -- with "any endeavour, like starting a business, taking a trip, etc. If we approach these things with the attitude [Brian] Eno described [several decades ago], the fruits will be sweeter."

MUSICIAN: What step in the music-making process most often proves to be the undoing of a musician?
ENO: That's an interesting question. I would say the first step--having a solid idea and commitment to begin with. So much of the music I hear has all the right ingredients but none of the soul. The solid idea, the beginning, is soul of some kind. It's believing that working in this medium will benefit you spiritually and will somehow free a part of your spirit that is otherwise locked up because it can't find a convenient place to exit in the normal, day-to-day world. 

    I guess it's what people call conviction. If you have that, you can work with any set of ingredients no matter how rubbishy they are. I've been listening to a lot of gospel music recently and some of the recordings I have are atrocious. The acoustics are dreadful, the pressings are filthy--everything is wrong. They've got none of the ingredients normally considered to be part of a successful work, but they have so much of that other ingredient that you don't even notice the lack of those other things. What I hear with so many of the new [1980s] English synthesiser bands is all the ingredients for contemporary pop respectability. You can check them off: use of the studio in a "creative" way, electronics, modern rhythms, clean productions, slightly meaningful lyrics, correct haircuts, the right ideological stance--the whole bag of bananas. They have all that stuff but they miss because they don't convey any sense that doing music is really critical to their lives.

[Quote in introduction: Bruce Carleton; hat tip Brian Eno Before + After Ambient]

"Collectivist movements don’t care about individuals. Changing one mind? It means nothing to them. It’s just one more pawn available to manufacture other pawns..."

"Collectivist movements don’t care about individuals. Changing one mind? It means nothing to them. It’s just one more pawn available to manufacture other pawns, all marching lockstep in a single direction, just waiting to be sacrificed for the cause. We are building a movement of individualists. And in a movement of individualists, every success matters, because each person matters—and because none of us is a pawn.
    "Whenever I become overwhelmed by the difficulty of our mission and the seemingly insurmountable odds of success, I remind myself of the importance of the individual—and of the impact a single individual can have on the world....
    "I don’t mean to diminish the importance of politics. Politics is important. Freedom is important. And in many ways, there has never been a bigger opportunity to impact politics than there is today. "Twenty years ago, people were generally satisfied with a status quo that was drifting slowly in the direction of statism. Today, we are no longer drifting. We are running toward statism at full speed.
    "That will cause many who value freedom to turn to purely political causes and activist organizations promising fast results. They have been promising fast results for as long as I’ve been alive. But if the last few decades have made anything clear, it’s that we will not move in a pro-freedom direction until people value freedom—and they will not value freedom until they learn to value living by their own mind and for their own sake. The battle for freedom is a battle for philosophy."
          ~ John Allison, from his letter on behalf of the Ayn Rand Institute
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"At its root, politics is the struggle between those who want authentic rights to be the order of the day, and those who demand privileges or 'printing-press rights'"

"At its root, politics is the struggle between those who want authentic rights to be the order of the day, and those who want privileges or 'printing-press rights' to be the order – between those who seek to survive and prosper under liberty, and those who seek to survive and prosper under a system of coercions. When privileges usurp rights, with the shield of rights being replaced by the weapon of privilege, the struggle for moral space devolves into a fight among privilege-seekers over whose immoral space is going to win the day, and damn the consequences."
        ~ Terry Verhoeven, from his book Rights: Rediscovering Our Means to Liberty

NB: The best place to purchase Rights in paperback is from Book Depository, where shipping is free. You can also purchase it as an e-book from Amazon. Alternatively,  you can read for free in html at the Rights Institute website.

"We’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults." #QotD

"Social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself. I think of non-PC gaffes as the equivalent of old swear words. Like the puritans who were agape when someone said “goddamn,” the new faithful are scandalised when someone says something “problematic.” Another commonality of the zealot then and now: humourlessness.
    "And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. “Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke....
    "[W]e’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults."
        ~ Andrew Sullivan, from his otherwise risible op-ed 'America's New Religions'
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QotD: On the Benevolent Universe Premise

"There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days—the conviction that ideas matter. . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one’s mind matters . . . .
    "Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one’s immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: 'This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule.' One feels certain that somewhere on earth—even if not anywhere in one’s surroundings or within one’s reach—a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters."
~ Ayn Rand on the Benevolent Universe Premise, from her article 'The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy'
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Ayn Rand advises the National Party

Ayn Rand offers advice on choosing a political candidate:

In view of the general confusion on this subject, it is advisable to remind prospective voters of a few basic considerations, as guidelines in deciding what one can properly expect of a political candidate, particularly of a presidential candidate.
....One cannot expect, nor is it necessary, to agree with a candidate’s total philosophy — only with his political philosophy (and only in terms of essentials). It is not a Philosopher-King that we are electing, but an executive for a specific, delimited job. It is only political consistency that we can demand of him; if he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours.
....A contradiction of that kind, will, of course, hamper the effectiveness of his campaign, weaken his arguments and dilute his appeal — as any contradictions undercut any man’s efficacy. But we have to judge him as we judge any work, theory, or product of mixed premises: by his dominant trend.
....A vote for any candidate does not constitute an endorsement of his entire position, not even of his entire political position, only of his basic political principles…
....It is the basic — and, today, the only — issue by which a candidate must be judged: freedom vs. statism.
....If a candidate evades, equivocates and hides his stand under a junk-heap of random concretes, we must add up those concretes and judge him accordingly. If his stand is mixed, we must evaluate it by asking: Will he protect freedom or destroy the last of it? Will he accelerate, delay, or stop the march towards statism?

So, a serious question: is there any candidate for National Party leader who you could support? Or are they all little more than a junk-heap of random concretes.

Bonus Quote of the Day: On ‘failed policies’

 

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“But politicians who talk about failed policies are just blowing smoke. Government policies succeed in doing exactly what they are supposed to do: channelling resources bilked from the general public to politically organized and influential interests groups.” ~ Robert Higgs

Ayn Rand predicted an American slide toward fascism

 

Are fascism and socialism opposites? No, observed Ayn Rand, in practice they “are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme,” with as little difference to those under their boot as there was between Castro and Batista. The two systems differ only in one technical respect, making socialism “in this respect [only] the more honest of the two.”
    Contrary to many conservative commentators during the 1960s, Rand maintained that America was drifting toward fascism, not socialism, and that this slippery slope was virtually inevitable in a mixed economy.
    In this guest post, George Smith ponders how she might view her prediction today …

---

In a letter written on March 19, 1944, Ayn Rand remarked: “Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism.” Rand would later expand on this insight in various articles, most notably in two of her lectures at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston: “The Fascist New Frontier”¹; and “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”².

Rand knew better than to accept the traditional left-right dichotomy between socialism (or communism) and fascism, according to which socialism is the extreme version of left-ideology and fascism is the extreme version of right-ideology (i.e., capitalism). Indeed, in a 1971 Ayn Rand Letter she characterised fascism as “socialism for big business.” Both are variants of statism, in contrast to a free country based on individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism. As Rand put it in “Conservativism: An Obituary”:

The world conflict of today is the conflict of the individual against the state, the same conflict that has been fought throughout mankind’s history. The names change, but the essence—and the results—remain the same, whether it is the individual against feudalism, or against absolute monarchy, or against communism or fascism or Nazism or socialism or the welfare state.

The placement of socialism and fascism at opposite ends of a political spectrum serves a nefarious purpose, according to Rand. It serves to buttress the case that we must avoid “extremism” and choose the sensible middle course of a “mixed economy.” Quoting from “‘Extremism,’ Or The Art of Smearing”:

If it were true that dictatorship is inevitable and that fascism and communism are the two “extremes” at the opposite ends of our course, then what is the safest place to choose? Why, the middle of the road. The safely undefined, indeterminate, mixed-economy, “moderate” middle—with a “moderate” amount of government favors and special privileges to the rich and a “moderate” amount of government handouts to the poor—with a “moderate” respect for rights and a “moderate” degree of brute force—with a “moderate” amount of freedom and a “moderate” amount of slavery—with a “moderate” degree of justice and a “moderate” degree of injustice—with a “moderate” amount of security and a “moderate” amount of terror—and with a moderate degree of tolerance for all, except those “extremists” who uphold principles, consistency, objectivity, morality and who refuse to compromise.

In both of her major articles on fascism (cited above) Rand distinguished between fascism and socialism by noting a rather technical (and ultimately inconsequential) difference in their approaches to private property. Here is the relevant passage from “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”:

Observe that both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.
    Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means “property,” without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.
    In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say “more honest,” not “better”—because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government —and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

Contrary to many conservative commentators during the 1960s, Rand maintained that America was drifting toward fascism, not socialism, and that this descent was virtually inevitable in a mixed economy. “A mixed economy is an explosive, untenable mixture of two opposite elements,” freedom and statism, “which cannot remain stable, but must ultimately go one way or the other” (“‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing”). Economic controls generate their own problems, and with these problems come demands for additional controls—so either those controls must be abolished or a mixed economy will eventually degenerate into a form of economic dictatorship. Rand conceded that most American advocates of the welfare state “are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialisation of private property.” These welfare-statists “want to ‘preserve’ private property” while calling for greater government control over such property. “But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.”

Rand gave us some of the finest analyses of a mixed economy—its premises, implications, and long-range consequences—ever penned by a free-market advocate. In “The New Fascism,” for example, she compared a mixed economy to a system that operates by the law of the jungle, a system in which “no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it.” A mixed economy divides a country “into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defence and offense.” Although Rand did not invoke Thomas Hobbes in this context, it is safe to say that the economic “chaos” of a mixed economy resembles the Hobbesian war of all against all in a state of nature, a system in which interest groups feel the need to screw others before they get screwed themselves.

A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalised civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force.

Of course, Rand never claimed that America had degenerated into full-blown fascism (she held that freedom of speech was a bright line in this respect), but she did believe that the fundamental premise of the “altruist-collectivist” morality—the foundation of all collectivist regimes, including fascism—was accepted and preached by modern liberals and conservatives alike. (Those who mistakenly dub Rand a “conservative” should read “Conservatism: An Obituary,” a scathing critique in which she accused conservative leaders of “moral treason.” In some respects Rand detested modern conservatives more than she did modern liberals. She was especially contemptuous of those conservatives who attempted to justify capitalism by appealing to religion or to tradition.) Rand illustrated her point in “The Fascist New Frontier,” a polemical tour de force aimed at President Kennedy and his administration.

Rand began this 1962 lecture by quoting passages from the 1920 political platform of the German Nazi Party, including demands for “an end to the power of the financial interests,” “profit sharing in big business,” “a broad extension of care for the aged,” the “improvement of public health” by government, “an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education,” and so forth. All such welfare-state measures, this platform concluded, “can only proceed from within on the foundation of “The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”

Rand had no problem quoting similar proposals and sentiments from President Kennedy and members of his administration, such as Kennedy’s celebrated remark, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what America will do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The particulars of Rand’s speech will come as no surprise to those familiar with her ideas, but I wish to call attention to her final remarks about the meaning of “the public interest.” As used by Kennedy and other politicians, both Democratic and Republican, this fuzzy phrase has little if any meaning, except to indicate that individuals have a duty to sacrifice their interests for the sake of a greater, undefined good, as determined by those who wield the brute force of political power. Rand then stated what she regarded as the only coherent meaning of “the public interest.”

[T]here is no such thing as ‘the public interest’ except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of “the public interest”—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without them.
    The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of “the public interest.”

I shall conclude this essay on a personal note. Before I began preparing for this essay, I had not read some of the articles quoted above for many, many years. In fact, I had not read some of the material since my college days 45 years ago. I therefore approached my new readings with a certain amount of trepidation. I liked the articles when I first read them, but would they stand the test of time? Would Rand’s insights and arguments appear commonplace, even hackneyed, with the passage of so much time? Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Rand was exactly on point on many issues. Indeed, if we substitute “President Obama” for “President Kennedy” or “President Johnson” many of her points would be even more pertinent today than they were during the 1960s.

Unfortunately, the ideological sewer of American politics has become even more foul today than it was in Rand’s day, but Rand did what she could to reverse the trend, and one person can only do so much. And no one can say that she didn’t warn us.

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George H. Smith is an independent scholar and a weekly columnist at the Cato Institute’s Libertarianism.org. He is the author of Atheism: The Case Against God (1974), Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (1991), and Why Atheism (2000). He is also the author of the audio series on “Great Political Thinkers,” “The Meaning of the Constitution,” and “The Ideas of Liberty.”
This post previously appeared at FEE and Libertarianism.Org.

NOTES:

1. Dec. 16, 1962, published as a booklet by the Nathaniel Branden Institute in 1963
2. April 18, 1965, published as Chapter 20 in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by New American Library in 1967

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Quote of the Day

 

"...books are a way to make your life larger."
~ Lynn Neary, from her article
   ‘One Way To Bridge The Political Divide: Read The Book That's Not For You’

..

[Hat tip Econlib]

Don’t Lose Friendships Over Politics

 

If we long for a better world of mutual understanding and peace, says Jeffrey Tucker in this guest post, one way to help achieve it is to live as if it already exists. Never let politics take that away from you.

* * * *

Has the American election season always been this rough on friendships?

So many people I know are getting into Facebook fights, Twitter wars, Instagram arguments, and Snapchat squabbles. What begins as an ideological dispute ends in bitterness. People are provoking others, demanding those who do or don’t support their candidate leave their networks, cutting ties with friends and family – and all because of political differences.

[And most folk doing this in New Zealand don’t even vote! - Ed.]

People perceive the stakes this year to be that high. To be sure, political philosophy does matter and does carry high stakes. However, the partisan struggle for the control of the state apparatus by this or that temporary manager doesn’t matter as much as every election season seems to suggest. You might be being manipulated, and friendships and families are actually too precious to throw away for transient reasons.

It’s a pity to cause permanent rifts, and so unnecessary. The people who rearrange their personal relationships for the election imagine that they are taking control of their lives. They don’t seem to realise that they are actually letting strangers control their lives – strangers who care nothing for them in a system that actually seeks to divide people so it can conquer them. To permit politics to fundamentally alter something so important as friendship is to give politicians more importance than they deserve.

Trolling and Banning

Now, of course there is a proviso here. If there is someone in your network who is deliberately trolling you, harassing you, and goading you to respond, the best possible response is to block them. Not talk back. Not engage in a tit for tat. Just quietly block, without drama or announcement, much less denunciation.

Most public people I know have blocked as many as one hundred plus people over the past year, simply because this election season has been so contentious, with the alt-right and alt-left (who oddly agree on so much) battling it out on social media. Blocking is the far better path than engaging them. Vicious back and forths on the Internet can be life-consuming and draining. People who are trying to do that to you deserve exclusion from your conversation circle.

Apart from these cases, it strikes me as pointless to hurl someone out of your life because of political differences.

First, by denying yourself access to different points of view, you risk isolating yourself from a critic who might teach you something you need to know, maybe about anything in life, but maybe even about politics.

Second, talking to people with different opinions keeps you making sense and speaking in a civil way, addressing others in a way that could persuade them.

Third, and most critically, to isolate yourself, hate others for their views, and regard people with different points of view as less deserving of dignified treatment, plays into exactly what the political system wants for you to do.

But Aren’t They Aggressors?

A counter to my point was offered by a friend of mine last year. Speaking as a libertarian, he said, he regards anyone who supports some government action – even just casually and without much thought – as wittingly or unwittingly contributing to an opinion culture that supports rising political violence. The only friends he believes deserve the time of day from him must hold steadfastly to his voluntarist perspective, else he regards them as a direct threat to his life and liberty.

Now, this strikes me as vastly too severe. The truth is that most people who support some government action do not regard themselves as violent people. They believe that they are favouring something that is good for others, perhaps fostering the better life for the community.

For example, if a person favours higher spending on public education, they believe that they are pushing for policies that are good for others, not calling for violence against taxpayers to support unworkable programs. How can you possibly persuade them otherwise if you cut off all ties?

And it’s not just libertarians who can be this way. A good friend of mine was a casual lefty and, like most from his tribe, he was dead serious about the issue of climate change. I had no idea until the subject came up over coffee. I expressed some doubt that the science was truly settled concerning all causes and effects, solutions, costs and benefits, and so on. I was actually very measured in my comments, but somehow they caused him to blow up, call me a science-denying, tin-foil-hat-wearing capitalist apologist, and then actually leave the conversation. And that was it.

I was stunned. I was merely disagreeing with him, however cautiously. But somehow, he had come to believe that anyone who disagreed with him bears some responsibility for the rising sea levels, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the gradual disintegration of the planet, even though I’ve written very little on the topic at all.

He was letting politics control his life and even determine his friendships. Both of us are spiritually poorer as a result of this friendship loss.

And consider the toxic effect the rising politics of personal identity – on the left and the right – are having on the ability of people to find value in each other. Imagine how you would make me feel if you believed my whiteness represents a continuing stain on the world order. There is no chance for any kind of engagement; after all, I cannot change my race. Or what if I believe your blackness or gayness or atheism or whatever is leading to demographic or cultural destruction – how can we possibly be civil to each other? The politics of identity is causing precisely these sorts of irrational and pointless splits among us.

What Is the Point of Friendship?

What the libertarian and the lefty I mentioned above do not realise is that they are guilty of the same error of allowing politics to invade the conduct of their lives and determine the conditions of their personal happiness. Once this kind of thing starts, there is truly no end to it.

Must everyone agree with you on every jot and tittle of your ideology to be your friend? Must there be zero tolerance for even the slightest difference in outlook, priority, application, and goal of your particular political outlook? In other words, must all your friends believe exactly as you believe?

If this is your perspective, you might consider: there is not much point to being friends and engaging in conversation with someone who has the exact same view on all things that you have. It seems rather boring. Might as well stay home and reflect on your own infallibility.

I like to think of friendship much the way we think of economic exchange. In economics, goods and services do not exchange in the presence of perfect sameness. They exchange because each party to the exchange believes himself or herself will be better off than he or she was before the exchange. It is only in the presence of unequal expectations that exchange becomes mutually rewarding.

It is the same with friendship. We need to hear different points of view. We need the insights of others. Even if we don’t accept them in total, we can still hope to understand people and the world better by considering what others have to say – with sincerity, warmth, and honesty. In other words, friendships like this help us have an open mind and keep us all humble and teachable.

Candidates Will Betray You

Neither is it a good idea to give up a friendship based on loyalty to a particular candidate. The top two contenders for the presidency have held many different and conflicting views on a huge range of political issues, from taxation to immigration to war. And so it is with every election. These people are wired to be adaptable based on the polls. To follow one or the other all the way to the point that it affects your associations is to risk compromising your own intellectual integrity.

Neither is worth that.

One of the great tragedies of politics is that it can take people who in real life would be peaceful and loyal and loving friends and turn them into bitter enemies. I’m always struck by this when I see a political rally, with face offs between backers and protesters. What exactly is gained by this? If you put these same people in a shopping mall or movie theater or restaurant, they would have every reason to get along and no reason to be screaming obscenities at each other.

We should hold on to that realisation. Each of us is a human being with feelings, hopes, dreams, and a vision of a life well-lived – every single person, regardless of race, religion, gender identity, or ideology. Politics should change nothing about that.

If we long for a better world of mutual understanding and peace, one way to help achieve it is to live as if it already exists. Above all, that means never letting politics get in the way of rewarding human relationships.

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Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.
This post first appeared at FEE.

 

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Quote of the Day: Utilitarianism v Rights

 

“Right is a principle; utility is only a result. Right is a cause; utility is only an effect. Say to a man: you have the right not to be put to death or arbitrarily plundered. You will give him quite another feeling of security and protection than you will by telling him: it is not useful for you to be put to death or arbitrarily plundered.”
~ Henri-Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), Principles of Politics

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[Hat tip Conza]

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Bonus quote of the day: On politicians

“Politicians aren’t men, they’re
networks of obligations and enmities.”
~ Peter Corris, from his novel Man in the Shadows

Quote of the Day: On political battles

“A political battle is merely a skirmish fought with
muskets; a philosophical battle is a nuclear war.”
- Ayn Rand, from her essay “What Can One Do?”
in her book Philosophy: Who Needs It

Discuss.

Quotes of the Day: On Politics…

After I posted a bunch of quotes on bureaucracy last week, I was sent a few more on politics…

It is the responsibility of every citizen to ignore dumb laws.
       — Ian Clarke – aka Sanity [http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=73217&cid=6588343]

Politics on the internet, it’s like Jupiter's great red spot, except made of faeces.
        — cutsDwnSudoIntelects [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/8llur]

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
        — Milton Friedman

Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
        — Jerzy Peterkiewicz

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
        — Thomas Sowell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
        — George Orwell

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have…  The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
        — Thomas Jefferson

As Isaac Asimov put it (wording approximate): “If I must be ruled by larcenous bullies, I much prefer that they be located far away. Local bullies know far more about me and my doings than faraway bullies sitting in offices in Washington, and can oppress me far more effectively.”
        — Henry Spencer [http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Htt7u5.E6n%40spsystems.net]

Socialism doesn’t start with concentration camps …. Full employment is a threat, not a promise.
        — Maht

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere.
        — Milton Friedman

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.
        — Milton Friedman

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
        — Milton Friedman

I’m a bureaucrat, everything has to be negated at first.
        — Christoph Lohmann

Bureaucracy is stronger than physics.
        — Christoph Lohmann

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
        — F.A. Hayek

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rates higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.
        — F.A. Hayek

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
        — John Adams, Journal 1772

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
        — James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787.

All governments lie.
        — journalist I.F. Stone, addressing journalism students on the one truth they’d be well-advised always to recall.

Freedom includes the right to say what others may object to and resent… The essence of citizenship is to be tolerant of strong and provocative words.
        — John Diefenbaker

Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice… moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
        — Karl Hess, as Barry Goldwater’s head speechwriter

Liberty is the breath of progress.
        — Robert Ingersoll

The United States is a nation of laws, poorly written and randomly enforced.
        — Frank Zappa

Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.
        — Publius Cornelius Tacitus

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
        — Cornelius Tacitus, 55-117 AD, Roman historian

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.
        — Alexander Hamilton

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
        — Lao Tsu

There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven’t even included the harm to young people. It’s absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes.
        — Milton Friedman

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
        — Alexis De Tocqueville

The behaviour of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
        — Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
        — HL Mencken

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
        — Mignon McLaughlin

The art of taking money from the few and votes from the many under the pretext of protecting the one from the other.
        — Sen. Matthew Quay (R-PA), quoted in Realigning America: Mckinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 by R. Hal Williams.

[The] free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
        — Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri [1998], Commissioner Pravin Lal

A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul.
        — George Bernard Shaw

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
        — P.J. O'Rourke

I would rather live in a society which treated children as adults than one which treated adults as children.
        — Lizard

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
        — H.L. Mencken

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
        — Plato

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which [the American] founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
        — Charles Austin Beard, historian

They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.
        — Rev. Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant minister in Nazi Germany, in 1945

When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I’m innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don’t own a gun.
Now they’ve come for the first amendment, and I can’t say anything at all.
        — Tim Freeman tsf@cs.cmu.edu

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
        — Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that’s a pretty likely sign that it shouldn’t be a law.
        — unkown

The U.S. Constitution may be flawed, but it’s a whole lot better than what we have now.
        — unkown

It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
        — unkown

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
        — Fredric Bastiat, early French economist

I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding the Income Tax Law, I will meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry time, for all our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual centre, for no one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it.
        — Senator Elihu Root of NY, 1913

[The makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
        — Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
        — Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.
        — Nikita Khrushchev

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”
        — Albert Einstein, “My First Impression of the U.S.A.”, 1921

I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS.
        — Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism

Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don’t do the same for Time magazine?
        — Mark Fowler, FCC Chairman

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.
        — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark – Mapp vs. Ohio

The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
        — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.
        — George D. Herron

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.
        — Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliance with none.
        — Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
        — Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
        — Thomas Jefferson

The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well, what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
        — Thomas Jefferson

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.
        — Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
        — Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
        — Thomas Jefferson

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
        — Abraham Lincoln

Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes… A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
        — Abraham Lincoln

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation.
        — James Madison

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of any of their number is self-protection.
        — John Stuart Mill, 1859

Taxation of earnings from labour is on a par with forced labour. Seizing the results of someone’s labour is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
        — Robert Nozick, Harvard philosopher

Alcohol didn’t cause the high crime rates of the ‘20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today’s alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does.
        — unkown

Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was.
        — US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
        — William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
        -— Isaac Asimov

Plea bargaining – where the innocent are more guilty, and the guilty more innocent! The upswing is it does an awesome job padding those all important conviction stats for DAs and politicians!

        — CommentMan [http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cck7a/c0ro0me]

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
        — Hannah Arendt

Liberal institutions straightway cease being liberal the moment they are soundly established: Once this is attained, no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
        — Nietzsche

I am interested in politics so that one day I will not have to be interested in politics.
        — Ayn Rand

I oppose registration for the draft… because I believe the security of freedom can best be achieved by security through freedom.
        — Ronald Reagan

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others: The Constitution of this Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.
        — Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

You can always rely on government to make the right decision, but only after it has exhausted every other conceivable alternative.
        — E. S. Savas, a management professor at Baruch College in New York

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
        — Joseph Stalin

It’s illegal to say to a voter “Here’s $100, vote for me.” So what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs programs.
        — Don Farrar

We propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders. People are the great resource, and so long as we keep our economy free, more people means more growth, the more the merrier. Study after study shows that even the most recent immigrants give more than they take.
        — Wall Street Journal

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
        — George Washington

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.
        — George Washington

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?
        — Daniel Webster

National Health Insurance means combining the efficiency of the Postal Service with the compassion of the I.R.S. …. and the cost accounting of the Pentagon.
        — Louis Sullivan/Connie Horner quoted by Novak in Forbes

Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve ‘tax breaks,’ which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money.
        — Dave Barry

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
        — John Perry Barlow

Cryptography shifts the balance of power from those with a monopoly on violence to those who comprehend mathematics and security design.
        — Jacob Appelbaum

To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a design committee of bureaucrats.
        — Henry Spencer

They who can give up essential liberty for temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
        — Benjamin Franklin

If you can’t do, teach,
If you can’t teach, administrate,
If you can’t administrate, go into politics,
If you can’t get elected, go to work for the government.
        — unkown

It is sort of interesting that in our society these days we are very quick to apply the term ‘war’ to places where there are no actual wars, and loath to apply the term ‘war’ when we are actually fighting wars.
        — Bruce Schneier

Socialism can be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.
        — F.A. Hayek

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
        — C.S. Lewis, “God in the Dock”

Of course drugs need to be controlled, just as alcohol, tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, food additives and indeed UN bureaucrats with massive budgets need to be controlled.
        — Matthew Engel [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/486fb0d8-7ca3-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=a712eb94-dc2b-11da-890d-0000779e2340,print=yes.html]

I was struck by the similarities between the anti-drug movement and crack addicts. Both live in fear of ill-defined phantoms. They also tend to have short attention spans, be committed to repeating past mistakes and have a seeming inability to admit responsibility for the problems they create.
        — Tom Feiling

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.
        — Frank Zappa

Societies without a reservoir of people who don’t follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.
        — Bruce Schneier

The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty.
        — Lord Chief Justice Halisham

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannise will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
        — Voltaire

As a rule of thumb, anything particularly ridiculous in an otherwise reasonable context is probably due to a law.
        — TheWama – http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8kz6z/#c09mc23

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world.
        — Socrates (5th Century B.C.)

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
        — John Adams

People are pissed off about the seemingly impossible goal of social mobility. Their proposed solution is to take the wheels off the cart.
        — Stanley Lieber

Sisyphus only get the rock-rolling job after the gods showed mercy, he was originally sentenced to an eternity of political debates.
        — unkown

Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.
        — Sir Humphrey Appleby

[Hat tip Quotes.Cat]