“Libertarians are politically retarded, useful idiots”
May 13, 2021
By NZB3
James Davidson (8 May 2021) and Kaiden McCormick (12 May 2021) both write about the degeneracy of the current era and find nothing to disagree about concerning the symptoms they list. What NZB3 does take issue with (9 May 2021) is the cause.
Is freedom to blame? Specifically, is the Libertarian ethic of ‘live and let live’, pluralism, the Open Society (Karl Popper,) Capitalism (Ayn Rand,) to blame? This is a question about human nature. Are we good at heart with a Self-Actualising Tenancy (Carl Rogers) or are we born sinners (Christ/St Paul) after all? Given our liberty, our freedom to choose, will we degenerate or will we thrive? As we shall see, the much of what McCormick and Davidson’s reaction depends on their metaphysical estimate of what kind of being we are. In other words their sense of life, or, are we born to love or born to sin?
The Usual Preliminary Abuse
Rather than keep going back over the usual Libertarian abuse that is probably quite unconscious and habitual let’s just get this out of the way first. McCormick says…
“..another worthless platitude…It’s ridiculous to derive…feckless idealism…Libertarians are politically retarded, useful idiots, for many reasons…libertarians are politically retarded…” – McCormick
I’ll brush off this abuse as ad homonym just so long as it is acknowledged that it was said and recognised for what it is. That is, where people run out of ideas and arguments, especially where they feel threatened by a new idea, they down-regulate into fight/flight initiations.
The Role of Culture
Cultures are not museum pieces, they are the working machinery of everyday life (Thomas Sowell) as I’ve had reason to point out recently. In defending the English language and in explaining three of the most infamous murders in New Zealand that observation featured prominently. At the same time, as Libertarian Anarchist, what is to be prized most highly is the individual and not the tribe or the nation or any other collectivist abstraction.
Being made up of every layer, from atoms to memes, the human is the most ambivalent object in all creation. We are constantly being called to serve this or that side to our nature and shun another. So many forces are operating in nature and we humans are the least simple of all. Each of us is a climate in himself.
The molecular level demands this or that reaction from us, our family another. Our population seems to want some of us dead while everyone’s cells demand we live and reproduce. The reptile brain wants you to eat up all the food but your economy demands you pay for it. Your economics brain says to save but your gut flora says buy all the chocolate and eat it now! The Science World says stick to its Method but the Society World says fudge your climate data and become rich and famous and, “I second that,” says your reproductive drive thinking of all the beautiful women and babies that could lead to…so. much. ambivalence. in. being. human.
Which one owns me? Which do I pick? How do I negotiate the endless demands, these demons, these egregores, all giving conflicting messages? Shall I obey The State egregore or my family egregore first? Which culture should I pick, Christian or Woke or Muslim (Converted to Islam after the Mosque Attacks) or K-selected or r-selected? Physical or spiritual? Dynastic, like the New Zealand Settler, or solipsistic, like the Boomer? Shall I skip out on taking care of myself at the cellular or organism level when it’s crying out for a trip to the hospital because I’d rather die in office (eg Ballance, Seddon, Massey, Coates, Savage, Kirk..¹) serving my political in-group?
Culture is just one of these competing voices but you are no more a servant of it than you must be of your bladder or chromosomes or atoms or species. We have biological adaptations but, unlike animals, we have cultural adaptations too. Individualism involves selecting and perfecting these adaptations. Collectivism involves being fodder for one of these egregores which runs your life like a pawn on its giant chess board.
The individual chooses a trade he loves so he can be productive; The collectivist ego-identifies as a member of a Guild or Trade Unionist and will die for his in-group.
The individual chooses his family and friends because he values them; The collectivist is a wheel assigned to being a part-person in a greater family/tribal mechanism.
The individualist plays chess; The collectivist is something between a pawn and a king.
The individual selects a class and a country and will be upwardly mobile or migrate if necessary; The collectivist is their country and their class right or wrong.
The collectivist is a leaf in the wind; The individual is the wind.
“Giles’s folly” [Strawman]
McCormick does not believe in Self-Authoring (Jordan Peterson) or “craft your character to your moral ideal and be proud (Ayn Rand.) My stance is that culture is not the moulding tool of the individual but simply a moulding tool of the individual. After all, look again at the huge list of competing demands on every one of us leading up to and beyond culture from atoms to species, from conscientiousness to philosophy itself.
“If premise A consists of: “culture exists” and premise B consists of “it is the moulding tool of an individual” then logically you can’t deduce Davidson’s statement as “rank collectivism”. This is faulty logic and a feature throughout the Giles’s response piece.”
“Furthermore, it’s false to use his [Giles’] critique to place him [Davidson] among the left..”
“Contrary to Giles’s claim, we as individuals are moulded by our culture. ”
“To think culture has no part in man’s tendency towards achieving…”
McCormick, like Davidson, sees the culture egregore as primary in exactly the same way the Left do, only differing about which sub-species should be favored. The question “Whose culture?” skips over the choice to be a play thing of this particular collectivism in the first place. From that point of view, where culture is all, is “THE moulding tool of an individual” it must seem that one who disagrees (myself) doesn’t even rate culture as having any role at all. In his words, “..a radical rationalist conception of individualism which is the primacy of individual wants and reason.” This is a zero sum conception of individualism which leaves no room for a negotiated individualism that takes proper notice and negotiates with all of our constituent parts. Of course we are moulded by our culture, I know that, I only claim it’s not the primary and it’s not the only mould in which our identity finds expression.
Collectivist Speak
McCormick says “Liberty is the practical freedom one has to engage in his responsibilities.” As you can see, the only “Liberty” here is for the egregore/demon/collective to dispose of individuals. It’s the worship of a false god by sacrifice of the individual who has no rights only “responsibilities” to the collective group.
“..people don’t know best for themselves (I tend to cautiously agree)”
“…man has an inherent membership to his community, an obligation to the past, present and future to maintain and defend…. Liberty is therefore that granted to carry out responsibilities…”
This is to say that man is born into duty and obligation, liability, not of his own making and choosing. He belongs not to himself but to his tribe and can like it or be exiled. And, as Margaret Thatcher and Ayn Rand both point out, society does not exist. It’s an abstraction. Therefore, who you really end up being subservient to is not some Hegelian Spirit but some politician or some priest with a funny hat wrapped up in the necessary cloth and pageantry to be mistaken for the egregore itself. Philosopher Kings with ‘Noble Lies.’
Why would anyone self-erase to this extent and step backwards to a pre-Enlightenment herd-conception of themselves like this? Well…Original Sin is a powerful organ of many egregores…
“Mould Man Against His Sinful Will”
The proper level for this debate is at the metaphysical level. Is this a benevolent universe, man’s purpose and opportunity to pursue his own happiness? Or, is man born into chains for the sins claimed of Biblical ancestors he had no responsibility for committing? If one is persuaded by the later then collectivism certainly follows. If there is degeneracy then it’s because Liberty has been wrongly placed in the hands of the individual, not the culture that owns him. If there is institutionalised Woke Cancel Culture that’s because Free Speech, Academic Freedom, is the decision to shoot oneself in the foot at the cost of shooting Communists in the head.
“In it, live and let be leads to specific structures that incentivize addiction, group conflict and..”
“…conservative voices at Universities are being stifled by a “woke cancel culture”…the long march through the institutions has led to the hellscape at modern universities we see today…freedom is just a loser demanding the opposition shoot themselves in the foot.”
They can be a great people, Kaiden, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. Mankind is not evil, just uninformed¹. In a Free Market, including one of ideas, the best will win. Why would anyone need a healthy, viable, functional, culture subsidised by The State? Don’t you know that shows it is weak and makes it weaker still?
As with the various digressions into abuse, the desire to remove Accademic Freedom and Live and Let Live from the cultural landscape is a confession of defeat. Those whose culture depends on hatred of man, who see him as a tool, a means not an end in himself, cannot have their way except by the initiation of force. It’s refreshing, just as a change, to have this hostility toward individuated healthy humanity directed from the Right rather than the Left. It’s quite nostalgic and antiquarian.
It’s an important reminder for Anarchists and Anarchists-in-waiting that the Left is not the enemy per se, Collectivism is. The Right have many good conclusions that free folk share which they didn’t come to honestly. Given the chance to pervert the logos and install a false god, some egregore or other, in its place the Right are just as ready and drooling as the Left.
–
1 Specific posts about all these New Zealand Prime Ministers are published on AHNZ. It’s amazing, the trend of men who put their all into the political level to the detriment of their organism level.
2 Just quoted Superman’s father and Professor X back-to-back. And, loving it.
Image ref. Forces Operation in Evolution, Richard Allan, Form 7 Biology- Course Manual (1993)
Like Comment Share
