The Sovereignty of the Individual

From The Free Market, a monthly publication of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL:

You must become aware that no one may rule your life without your consent, no matter what the excuse or argument, smoke and mirrors notwithstanding.  You must recognize that no one knows better than you what is best for yourself; that there is no political authority above you; that you don’t have any owners, and therefore, that you don’t need to pay tribute to obtain your liberty or tranquility.  And when that realization comes, you will say to yourself, I am a sovereign individual! [emphasis original]

So said Helio Beltrao in his April 12 speech as he accepted the Libertas Award from Instituto Mises Brasil.  Given the apparent approval of Austrian thinkers in the U.S., it’s evident that the libertarians are as radical as the tyrants they think are running around.  I wonder how routinely tax evaders are prosecuted in Rio.

Oh, you value the common good? NAZI!

After seeing a billboard a couple weeks back advertising Glenn Beck’s radio show (move over Rush, this guy gets FM), I decided to tune into 98.9, “The Big Talker,” yesterday.  You should tune in just once, so you can hear Beck’s promo clip, in which some sultry woman describes Beck as the “fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.”  Uh oh.  I listened on, and discovered that Beck was in unfortunately common form as he associated the concept of the “common good” with the ramp up to Nazism.  I didn’t catch what had set him off so much; it could have been Kagan, or Obama’s criticism of BP, or the latest perceived threats to his enormous ego.  But yesterday the common good was taking a beating.

According to now Dr. Beck (big surprise, Liberty), the rhetoric of the common good was an essential factor in moving Germany towards its extermination of undesirables like the mentally ill, the elderly, homosexuals, and, of course, European Jews.  Or rather, growth-towards-Nazism is an essential element of the “common good.”  Beck’s understanding of the efficient causes of the European genocide change pretty much everyday, but tend to drag a decent concept through mud every time.  The obvious irony is that yesterday Beck was appealing to the common good in all but name for virtually all of his pleas to save America.

It wasn’t very long after his tirade against the common good that he again attacked churches that preach “social justice,” and this time he lashed out at Jim Wallis.

Needless to say, it was one of those hysterical moments that ends up being cripplingly depressing.  I had to watch this video (again) to take the edge off.

A Statuary Shakedown

About a month ago, after a discussion of the controversy surrounding Davy Crockett’s death, I asked my students a question related the past in the public present.  At the University of Texas at Austin, there are a few statues of Confederate leaders.  Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are the most notable figures, but most folks would need to read the weathered inscriptions on the statues of Albert Johnson and John Reagan to discover any connection to the controversy of having Confederates (and some alleged sympathizers) on campus.  Since every few years at UT there are movements to have the statues removed, I asked my freshmen (a group, admittedly, composed mostly of whites and Hispanics) whether they thought the statues should be removed.  The response was mostly in the negative.  Students seemed to know that these figures’ legacies were complicated, but thought that the statues should remain.

An Open Letter to Anyone at The Economist (Y’all REALLY Need to Read This)

I grabbed my pimento cheese sandwich and some fresh brussels sprouts (for my third night in a row of making this fantastic recipe) at Central Market and made my way to the express checkout, where I was greeted by this atrocious magazine cover:

“The horror, the horror!” is right, but in this case it has nothing to do with the European economic meltdown.  If there’s a case for mixed visual metaphors as a term, this terribly photoshopped image (wait, why is the Acropolis lit up in front when then sun is behind it?) is exhibit A.  Who is Merkel supposed to be?  Brando or Sheen?  Maybe Hoffman?  At this point I have no clue and could use some illuminating comments from any readers.  And why are the helicopters flying over the Acropolis?  Greek don’t surf or something?

Whatever the cover’s intended meaning is, and it seems to suggest that something very, very bad is happening, it’s assembled so poorly that it detracts from all the significations deployed in trying to make the point.  The Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are both resources for powerful symbols that might, somehow, have something to say to the current Greek crisis, but any symbolic value here is obscured by the fact that this image looks like it was made in fifteen minutes by some World of Warcraft player who loves posting his Frankenstein photoshopped images on Internet forums.

Usually I’m a fan of The Economist, and whenever I get their invitations to subscribe in the mail I tend to actually open the envelope and consider signing up.  After seeing this thing I’m glad I haven’t yet.  This is an image I will need to get over.

P. S.  I think I just moved a little bit closer to writing like David Bentley Hart.  That’s alright, I guess.  I’m not going to edit it out.

The Word on the Street

There’s a strange kind of catholicity I feel for the preachers who get out on the Drag with their damnation signs and exhort people to repent.  The Gospel is so much more than what they preach, of course, but I don’t think it’s anything less than that.  This sentiment is probably O’Connor inspired, I must admit.

The common line of critique from people who feel some sympathy for these preachers is that their style of preaching is not very effective, and that it turns more people off to Christianity than onto it.  Fair enough, but the real reason it’s wrong-headed is that although these ministers claim some relation to the prophets of the Old Testament as justification, they miss the simple fact that the kids today are ignorant of some of Christianity’s most basic tenets and tropes and can’t receive that sort of prophetic admonition.  The prophecies of God for the people of God, no matter how disobedient they were.  You could call it pearls before swine, if you made it a special point to mention that the pigs were blind.

Of course, the kids who try to take on the preachers make jokes of themselves, but only because Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris have encouraged them in that direction.  These atheists today are so anti-religious they can’t understand that they’re being completely religious, even zealous; if you’re trying to be an atheist, the validity of theism is still the name of the game, and you haven’t gotten over it.

This whole problem, not surprisingly, is why Nietzsche can be very, very awesome.

In Defense of . . . the Tea Party?

Although I don’t think I would say I’m the last person who would defend the Tea Party, I would certainly be reluctant to do so under normal conditions.  For starters, it seems that too many of them take the Fox News narrative of American politics without even the smallest grain of salt.  Add to that a libertarian stance, a stance which I see as being as reductionist of the human spirit (because let’s remember, economics isn’t just about finance) as is communism.  Top it off with their apparent celebration of a crime that even the Founders thought distasteful and you’ll have a good idea of why I tend to think poorly of their positions, without even getting to their warping of political theology (if what they do deserves the name).

But what is even more distasteful is the attempt from some members on the left to paint their political and economic critique, however otherwise ill-informed, as a racist platform.  One of the more notable accusations came in the form of the website Crash the Tea Party, which seems to have thankfully gone down, although I hope not from web traffic.  A few days ago I visited their forum and found examples of political rhetoric that would make Sarah Palin look like a modern day Cicero.  Convinced that there is a deep and abiding racism in the Tea Party core, some Democrats are out to paint the grassroots movement as crypto-segregationists or worse.  It’s there, the Left just has to find it.

Isn’t this the same kind of preemptive strike/WMD rhetoric we put up with for years?  “We know they’re there, let’s do all we can to expose it!”  Hopefully members of the left are as dissatisfied with the Party Crashers as I am, and care about the morality of a method as well as the ends to which it is directed.

But I guess it’s politics as usual.  And it’s not like Tea Party crazies don’t have their own dangerous heroes, from people who called in death threats to senators to that one guy who tried to bug a Louisiana senator’s office.  I’d throw them all in jail for bad taste, but nobody takes me seriously on politics.  Let’s not take any of these goofballs seriously either.