This concept applies to many phenomena in our present world, but for the purpose of this article I am going to consider those whose lives are deteriorating as a result of the consumer credit crisis, housing bubble, and unemployment.

For the purpose of clarity, I am first going to describe who I am not talking about.

Billy Bob Spendthrift, who makes $35,000 a year racked up $15,000 in credit card debt and bought a home using an exploitive ARM loan, for the princely sum of $450,000.

His credit debt consists mainly of Best Buy purchases like large television sets and rare sports memorabilia he purchased on ebay. He has no savings or rainy day fund.

Billy Bob Spendthrift is, if you talk to “blame the consumer” faction on Internet message boards, a perfect example of how we got into this mess. To this faction, the credit crisis is mainly a result of Billy Bob Spenthrift and people like him.

Whatever percentage of embattled consumers Billy Bob represents (and that number is highly debatable), I am not talking about his kind.

The typical economically stressed American, in my own estimation, seems to have the following characteristics:

• Did not properly manage their credit debt, nor saved enough for the eventual bust cycle which follows boom cycles.
• Were forced by circumstance to live in places where the real estate bubble had swelled the most, because that tends to be where the jobs are. In order to afford artificially inflated homes, exploitive ARM loans were taken out, or excessive rent was paid which consumed funds which could have been used for saving.
• Was not an expert investor or financial planner. In cases where funds were invested prudently, outright fraud by corporations, banks, and investment houses may have created significant, but possibly unavoidable losses.
• Are diminishing funds which would otherwise go into savings to pay for exorbitant costs of higher education.
• May have unexpected medical bills, including large deductibles, or may not have medical insurance at all, because American health care is stupid.

Now many of these people find themselves unemployed, upside-down on their mortgages, and facing bankruptcy and, in more extreme cases, homelessness due to foreclosure.

The Hardscrabble Syndrome refers to the perverse pleasure certain individuals are taking in the suffering of those facing financial ruin. And if their stories are to be believed, the people who take the most pleasure are people who have been in precisely the same circumstance. It is similar to the phenomenon of hazing in fraternities – because the individual has gone through a painful and difficult time, they feel that they have earned the right to taunt and in fact contribute to the suffering of those now faced with the same ugliness.

This is something I don’t fully understand, except to the extent that I observe it in myself in relation to schoolwork. I hated schoolwork and homework and when my niece complains about it, I start getting fairly haughty about the fact that I had to do it and got through it, and that as a result I “have no sympathy.”

Until, that is, I catch myself doing it. I feel shame when I do. I cannot say most of it made me a better or more knowledgable person. Most of it is drudgery and most of it turned me off to learning.

In internet forums where credit problems are discussed, those who have had problems in the past become absolutely cruel to those who are experiencing the same thing now. Internet threads dissolve into sarcastic infantile sock puppeting: “Waaah waaaah poor me I racked up immense amounts of credit debt, and now I am in trouble!” It is fairly remarkable to watch the delight people take in being cruel to others when they most need support.

Hazing seems to light up the same circuit in the brain: I was humiliated, and suffered, and now I will do the same to you.

I don’t know enough about child abuse to say for certain, but I wonder if that, too, is more of the same: an individual is abused as a child, grows up, and then abuses his own child.

But more than merely observing the behavior itself, I continue to be amazed at the shameless delight people take in it. It is different than plain schadenfreude, because schadenfreude doesn’t require that one go through the same kind of tribulations. The Hardscrabble Syndrome seems to have the psychological payoff of self-aggrandizement – “I am more noble than you because I suffered through what you’re suffering through, and you are complete shit compared to me because you have not yet proven yourself capable of surviving it.” Chests are then beat and bones are thrown into the air.

This has been taken to absurd extremes. I’ve heard countless people refuse to express sympathy for anyone down on their luck not because they themselves went through the same thing, but because their *ancestors* – generally Great Depression survivors – went through the same thing.

I have to wonder how much this contributes to the lack of solidarity among American working people. People really do take pleasure in others becoming unemployed, take pleasure in others losing their homes, and take pleasure in others’ bankruptcy.

This has got to be linked to the demented class consciousness of the average American – that there is specific nobility in being poor, a kind of self-flaggelation that is somehow linked to the Protestant Work Ethic. It is part of the same thing that makes people feel the need to lecture their children about how they had to walk uphill in the snow to school with no shoes when they were growing up, or how politicians to try to claim they were raised in a log cabin with a dirt floor. How many people do you meet who are comfortable saying something like, “I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a middle class housing development. I was comfortable but not rich.”

You never hear that from a politician, even though, presumably, that makes up the bulk of Americans. But then again, there is an obvious explanation:

The last thing comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments want to hear about themselves is that they are comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments. Because comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments FUCKING HATE comfortable but not rich Americans on cul-de-sacs in middle class housing developments. And that’s the last thing they want to see in a leader, either. That would be simply nauseating!

Apparently, to the kind of American who posts on these message boards, there is only honor in suffering and deprivation. This attitude has been a boon to America’s upper classes. What’s good enough for Job, is good enough for the lot of us – just be happy you have roots and bark to eat and get back to work. This is one reason why Americans hate unions and endlessly stereotype union members as featherbedding layabouts. After all, they probably knew one, at some point, or heard a story about one, and so, that must be how it is. How dare people complain about being lower or working class. That’s just…unAmerican. Taking pride in ones poverty, even beating oneself up over it, well, that’s a different story.

American life has always been more about live-to-work, rather than work-to-live, and I believe that this exacerbates this ugly psychological excess.

I wonder how the United States would be different if we felt empathy and compassion for those who had lost everything. That could potentially include some toughlove for those who really did dig their own ditches, but it could provide a sense of togetherness, of being in this weird economic system together, and possibly lead to a voluntary, community-based safety net we all could benefit from.

People are awfully unchristian these days. And not in a good way.

On this note, Four Yorkshiremen is one of Python’s most sturdy sketches:

I’ve long had an interest in Canada, and have been trying my best to form some kind of assessment of the country to the degree that is possible. I’ve visited Canada only four times, and each for a short visit. My first road trip in college was a drive to Montreal up through New York state, and then I visited Winnipeg 3 times on business, which is not a good way to get acquainted with local culture but as I am one of the three Americans to have ever traveled outside of the United States, I take pride in it nonetheless.

Canadians, understandably, seek to define and bring into stark relief any differences with the United States that they can find. What I noticed as a traveler was the way their media was saturated with American news coverage. The immediate assumption many people make about Americans is that we are ethnocentric and that we believe the world really does revolve around us. From this, one might extrapolate a theory that an American would expect the foreign press to be focused on American news and culture, but this wasn’t my expectation in the slightest. Nor was it my hope. I am absolutely giddy to be out of the United States, and want to hear as little about it as possible when I am abroad. I always chuckle a bit at the complaints I hear from foreigners about American cultural saturation (or imperialism if they’re really pissed). If you live in, say, Europe, and you think it’s bad there…well, imagine *living here.* I am not one of these people who just routinely trashes my own country to ingratiate myself with foreigners who, many self-styled American intellectuals at least, perceive to be “more intelligent.”

That said, I really hate Hollywood, most American television, our government’s foreign policy, our consumerist culture…

Err…where was I? Oh yeah, I was in the process of not trying to ingratiate myself with foreigners by going on an anti-Yankee tirade. Don’t mistake it for that, really. I love my country but it is the most painful love imaginable. Prison love, really. Dyspeptic love. High stomach acid love.

Back to Canada…

Sure, I expected some mention of major American news stories or American stories which specifically affected Canada (logging, waterways, trade, etc.), but I was unprepared and a bit shocked at the amount of coverage of things happening in the United States. My initial impressions were a bit skewed, I was later to discover, as the hotel I was staying at in Winnipeg unceremoniously shoved the Daily News and Mail under my door each morning. Wikipedia says:

The Globe and Mail is a Canadian English language nationally distributed newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of 935 000,[3] it is Canada’s largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star. The Globe and Mail is widely considered to be Canada’s newspaper of record.

and

Even before the Globe merged with the Mail and Empire, the paper was widely considered the voice of the Upper Canada elite—that is, the Bay Street financial community of Toronto and the intellectuals of university and government institutions.

and

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the paper generally supported the policies of Liberal Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. In the 2006 federal election, the paper turned away from the Liberals to Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada. Once again, in the 2008 federal election, the paper’s editorial board endorsed Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Each time I was in Winnipeg, this newspaper and the CBC were my primary conduits (along with talking to Canadians) for understanding the way Canadians perceive themselves. Subsequent conversations with Canadians about the Daily News and Mail indicated a kind of disgust over this newspaper, mainly from those who sympathized with the Left. I was told, basically, to disregard any impressions I got from it. Whether or not this is fair advice remains to be seen, except to say that I typically like the folks I’ve met on the Canadian Left – that is, if they can refrain for ten seconds from telling me what’s wrong with my country to tell me something about themselves.

So what are the flaws with the United States? We’re all stupid, fat, and uneducated, to begin with. We’re ignorant racists. Moreoever, we’re xenophobic and particularly ignorant of anything that goes on outside our borders. We love war. And guns. And violence. We’re bullies. Moreover, we’re arrogant, and we really don’t listen to or care what anyone else in the world thinks. I have come to understand that everyone in the world understands America but Americans, who not only do not understand America, but don’t understand anything else, either.

I have been informed of this fact repeatedly by our friends abroad via numerous internet communications, and it has given me much to reflect on. In my trips across the deep South, the desert Southwest, and major US cities like New York and San Francisco, I was unable to put together such a concise analysis of 300 million people, but apparently this is something those abroad have been able to do for years. In terms of taking a kind of cultural assessment, it seems, other countries are light years ahead of us. We may not understand ourselves in terms of there being a united “us,” but the more educated and svelte abroad certainly do. If you’re an American and want to understand America (by which for the purposes of this article I mean the United States), all you need to do is find yourself a 23 year old with an Internet account in some other country. They will give you a rundown on America in the space of the few hundred characters alotted for a YouTube comment.

I’ve learned a few other things from our critics in Canada but even more so from Europeans and Australians. I am always interested to hear the opinions of people abroad, and these are some the facts I’ve learned:

• When Fox News says something, that means “Americans” – 300 million of us save the 4 or 5 good ones, are “saying it.” Which seems remarkable on the surface until I reflect upon the fact that I’ve never heard an American disagree with anything Fox News says, period.
• When our government does something, that means we “do it.” Although there is contempt for the American “obsession with guns,” the fact that we have not launched an armed revolution against our government makes us culpable for things like the two wars in the Middle East. We are each personally responsible for every bomb that falls on other countries or anyone who loses money or a home because of the US banking disaster. And we really need to stop being in denial about this and just kill ourselves.
• Although we are “uneducated idiots” it does not in fact make one an uneducated idiot to follow other uneducated idiots like ourselves into war, or buy our products (including high tech space age weaponry that, like a million monkeys at typewriters writing Hamlet, we have, in our slack-jawed ways, created “by mistake”) thereby enabling the aforementioned uneducated idiocy through tax revenues and tariffs, corporate campaign contributions, and so on. Nor can foreigners be held culpable for their assent to American leadership in ridiculous foreign wars. The responsibility for all of this lies squarely with us and the armed revolution we should be undertaking with guns idiots like us should not be allowed to have. In no way does the support of the leaders of allied countries condone, legitimize, or otherwise enable the foreign adventurism of the United States.
• Our primitive understanding of honor and personal responsibility is apparently too underdeveloped and backward to understand that indeed there is a kind of honor and dignity in refusing to take individual responsibility for the leadership of one’s country, unless you’re an American. So if you’re British and really pissed off about Tony Blair or Gordon Brown playing kissyface with George Bush, well, obviously you can’t blame British voters. Chrétien, Martin, and Harper? Not the fault of Canadians if these men committed Canadian soldiers to some other country’s stupid and pointless war. Bush, however, whether we as Americans voted for him or not – completely our fault, personally – each one of us. American presidents are like pipers and the leaders of other countries are like charmed snakes who cannot resist the pull of throwing in with the Yankee pigs. The sins of Blair, Brown, Chrétien, Martin, and Harper are marks on the soul of every American. And it’s our fault for not having prevented it. This would be the principal complaint about Americans. I make sure to write down the various grievances people have with the United States each time I encounter someone with an opinion so I can give them to the President next time we play golf or get together for a jamboree.
• Americans are horribly racist, and when not racist, they engage in insulting stereotypes about people from other countries. This off-putting characteristic of Americans cannot possibly be understood by Americans, because stupid fat uneducated arrogant Americans are never stereotyped themselves, nor can they understand what it is to live in a society completely free of racism like Britain or Canada. We should accept the counsel of America’s critics, who have demonstrated their credibility in this regard by schooling stupid fat dumb uneducated arrogant Americans in their tendency toward groupthink. That is, if we can hear them over the sound of gunfire Americans are always ducking.
• Canadians really kicked our ass in 1812, so we should fucking know who the real boss is if push comes to shove. Americans, still smarting from 1812, overcompensate for their weakness by pretending to have a really powerful military (LOL, as if a bunch of dumb idiots like the Americans could build a submarine or a missile!), but if the shit hits the fan, the Canadians, who kicked our ass in 1812, will have to put the smackdown on the United States. Did you hear that story about the American navy and the Canadian lighthouse? Besides, in a war between the United States and anyone else, the USA would probably show up late like they did in WW2 and by that time Canadians would have burned Washington DC to the ground and escaped with all of the wealth, technology, and gold that the Canadians and, okay, some Scots, actually invented or created themselves.
• The Canadians would really really really like to remind the United States that they really pasted us in 1812 because Americans seem to have forgotten because they are dumb and uneducated. Seriously, we got our asses beat and we know it. And they will remind us of it whenever they get really upset about the power dynamic between our two countries. Just to be clear – they beat the crap out of us in 1812. Just absolutely destroyed our dignity and we carry this as a kind of victimization syndrome and inadequacy complex into the present day. Those three or four Americans who do not obsess on this daily really ought to. 1812 FEVER: CATCH IT. Besides, Canada should pay more attention to what really matters: ‘We done bailed all yer asses outta WW2!’
• American television, music, and movies, are really, really stupid lowbrow shit, and we ought to really dip our cups deeper into the well of world culture. With the Red Green show (produced by the same people who produced the American Hee-Haw, incidentally), Celine Dion, Benny Hill, the Eurovision Song Context, Avril Lavigne, the Spice Girls, the Beckhams, and so forth, we have no excuse. Unlike the United States, both Britain and Canada have things like microbreweries and independent cinema for those who really look for quality – a concept completely foreign to those in the US. As fat dumb uneducated Yanks, we are stuck with Budweiser and The Dukes of Hazzard for the time being, and it suits us, because we’re fat dumb and uneducated. And oh, I bet you never heard this one: Do you know how American beer (the one we all drink, Budweiser) is like sex in a canoe? It’s fucking close to water! LOL!
• Some of the more enlightened abroad think we “deserve to be nuked” because all 300 million of us failed to prevent the rise of George Bush. That’s just deserts, because many of our soldiers have killed innocent people abroad. This is a minority view which you will often find upvoted or upmodded on message boards, but you really can’t hold others from the same country as the poster responsible, because that would be a kind of unfair collectivist stereotyping, which is completely different than when Fox News says something reprehensible and 300 million Americans are called to answer for it. But that makes sense, because there is and never has been any opposition in the United States anyway. Canadian opinion or British opinion or opinion in the Netherlands is often divided over serious issues but in the United States, we’re basically a one party system where everyone agrees with everyone else and gathers togethers to eat junk food together while lamenting the fact that we have no universities or other institutions of higher learning in the United States.
• America has never actually invented anything. Ever. The US Constitution? Written by a Swede. The US flag? Invented by a British Canadian. Baseball? French. Space Shuttle? New Zealand. We are far, far too stupid, dumb, uneducated, and slothful to invent anything. And it’s true to some extent: we ought to be glad that the rest of the world lets us use their Internet – a joint international project of various industrialized countries except the United States, unless you count the stealth Dutchman who posed as an American to make us feel better about ourselves, Vint Cerf (an alias). It is a wonder we figured out how to hook up our tubes to the world’s tubes at all.
• The United States never shows anything but American programming on television, nor can you find, for example, literature or books written by foreign author. While full of flags, the United States does not actually have any maps, and so its fat dumb uneducated citizens may have heard of Canada or a “country called Europe,” but are not aware of where they are. Rick Mercer has proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt in his comprehensive sociological studies called “Talking to Americans” which was a real eye-opener for Canadians, who don’t get all of their impressions about other countries from television like Americans do. Do you know how tiresome it is when Americans think all Canadians basically resemble Bob and Doug McKenzie? We really need to all stop being like Larry the Cable Guy and read some books, provided we can figure out a way to struggle toward literacy.
• One time, like, this guy, had a cousin, who once was in France and heard an American say something like, “Oh mah gawwwd why don’t you just speak ENGLISH already” from an American tourist. If this doesn’t prove that Americans are such arrogant, dumb, uneduated morons, I don’t know what will.
• Alberta is not “Canada” but Kansas is “America.”
• Americans really need to shut their damn mouth about other countries, because they never travel outside of the United States and know fuck all about another countries. We Americans should just shut up, sit down, and listen to foreigners tell us all about our own country from abroad instead.
• It is amazing we can reproduce at all given not only our girth but our fear of sexuality. There is no pornography or even dirty jokes in the United States because Americans fear sex. Hugh Hefner (born in Kitchener) moved to the US as a missionary attempting to educate Americans as to the beauty of the female form and sexuality in general. He failed, of course, and the US birthrate has been falling ever since, except of course for inbred births which have risen ever since Americans mistook an unpublished Far Side cartoon as a literal instruction manual for reproduction.

The Internet has been an educational experience and I have learned much in recent years.

Of course my own travels in Canada reveal something fairly remarkable. And that is that while all Canadians hold all of the opinions I listed above, they tend not to quite put them that way to you even when you’re on their turf. They tend to do completely batshit crazy things like obey yield signs, even if you’re sporting an American license plate. They’ll tell you if you dropped something and didn’t notice. They’ll welcome you warmly into their establishments and the one time I drove across the border, the attendant at the border gate smiled, offered me maps and advice on good places to eat (I was an American and clearly her motivation was that she knew we really really really like to eat.) One time I was even hugged by a Canadian. If that’s not some sneaky bullshit, I don’t know what is. I had a friend check for knife marks in my back (or a sign that says, “Kick Me if you still remember 1812!”) but I couldn’t find it. Canadians display affection and friendliness just to fuck with us. They’re sociopaths, but they have us over a barrel, and they know it.

It’s disappointing the way Canadians hide their consuming hatred of Americans. Behind the smiles, superior diction, and hospitality, you might even be led to expect that somehow the impression you get of Canucks is inaccurate. But I know better. I look at that Canadian $5 bill and while others see a nice winter scene of people playing hockey on ice, I see, basically, Nazis plotting to come ransack my country (like they did in 1812.)

As an American I know the consequences will be bad for me personally if y’all come down in hordes, rosy-cheeked, betoqued and crazy-wired on double-doubles, hockey sticks a-blazin, sayin “eh” after every sentence and going ABOOT ABOOT ABOOT and hurling poutine at American rednecks who are spraying you in turn with automatic gun fire and mashed potatoes. I, for one, do not plan on being able to even understand the situation, and it is in my fear of you that I shall, in anticipation of your arrival, demonstrate my marginal sapience by doing the one thing I know how to do: clean my gun.

One final, barely relevant thing — there is, it is rumored, a segment of the United States who would like to see Fox News burned to the ground and its television personalities drawn and quartered. This same crowd of marginal anarchists is said to be completely appalled and ashamed by the comments regarding the Canadian military – they have made similar statements about the British in the past – but you can safely dismiss this as a mere rumor. Here in the States, we just like to make up a bunch of shit to try to confuse foreigners who all plot and scheme against us because it’s all we’ve got left, really. In all of our hearts, we’re hoping for the return of Dick Cheney and puttin’ our boot in yer ass cos it’s the American way and all that.

We have nothing in common and you have nothing to offer me. We are as different as night and day and no kind of bridges can be built here. You might as well be aliens – aliens with a superior intelligence.

I love Canada. Know that we’re not all Fox News. Know that most of us find this contemptible.

You can find some videos of groups like Anti-Racist Action angrily confronting fringe racialist groups of all sorts on YouTube.    Here’s one of the less entertaining bits of the confrontation in question:

One thing all of these have in common is a smug, self-congratulatory tone, as if these incidents are some kind of epic event, with the Leftists as heroes confronting the threat to civilization posed by pure evil: a bunch of corpulent white guys in, for example, a library in New Jersey somewhere.

What pisses me off about Antifa is that I have a similar assessment of the moral bankruptcy of the far Right that they do, but this theoretical agreement is where any sympathy I have ends.  Let me be clear: While the choice is a miserable one, if I had to inhabit a world full of foaming-at-the-mouth anarchists or foaming-at-the-mouth fascists, the choice would be fairly simple.  Each extreme is tedious, but on the most basic level, I can’t stand the Right’s music.  I mean, you’ll never hear some Nazi put on Curtis Mayfield. Or even Marvin Gaye – how could you stand to be around, have anything in common with, or otherwise want to inhabit a world full of people who can not dig on Inner City Blues?

And no, I’m not being facetious. The world of the white supremacist/separatist is a nightmarish stew of, well, basically, Wagner.

And it’s their own damn fault.  If I had to choose between Johnny Reb, Prussian Blue or the assembly-line-like product that the White Power skinheads put out, I’d have to listen to Wagner, too.   This, along with having to pretend the world isn’t full of really smoking hot Black, Latina, and Asian chicks, would make me a miserable Wagner-listening white guy, too. If I didn’t explode.

It is this sterile world which produces the kind of trembling, unhappy psychosis which leads to escapism like pretending to be some kind of German Viking and all of the other entertaining eccentricities and outright deficiencies of the Far Right.

But my own assessment of Antifa is the same as the recent anti-Scientology movement.  Sure, I can get my contempt on for a bunch of racists as I can the Clams, but where do these organizations rank in a threat to me, personally?  Avoiding Nazism and Scientology is about as difficult as not driving a motorcycle into the side of a Walgreens.  Most importantly, by twelve years of age, most sentient beings can explain fully the folly of each of these movements/belief systems/businesses.  Countering arguments for either is not exactly an exercise in rhetorical Krav Maga.  In fact, each is an easy target and attacking either is like playing a video game in cheat mode.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed, our entire economic system is collapsing around us.  Our free press is falling apart (and may well be decimated in the next decade), and we may wind up with a nation full of tent cities.   If you were an activist, why the hell would you waste any time in direct action against insignificant vermin like white supremacists?  A single one of the sober and dignified civil rights marches of the 1960s has done far more to discredit this kind of thinking than everything the modern anti-fascist movement has done in its entire childish existence.

I’m not saying that far right movements don’t pose some kind of statistical risk, especially to those who aren’t straight middle class white guys like me.  But I would ask how many assaults or murders were committed by these guys compared even to the number of assaults or shooting deaths by police in the past year?  How about deaths as a result of corporate pollution, or the employment of assassination squads, union-busting thugs, and so forth by modern corporations?  Or what about the two pointless wars we are presently involved in?

If you live in a town where a group of racist skinheads are going around threatening or beating up on people, that’s a different story. If the cops don’t handle it, you form something like an anti-fascist Guardian Angels and beat the snot out of them in the street. I have no problem with that.

But I am getting off-track here.  It’s none of my business, really, if people enjoy (and they do enjoy it – a lot) confronting a bunch of racist dolts at a library.  I think it’s a complete waste of resources, but sometimes I just sit around and watch lint float in front of the sun streaming through my window, and that doesn’t exactly do much to save the world either.

What I really object to is the idea that shouting down or disrupting communication is in and of itself a form of free speech.  You can perhaps make that case for the corporate-controlled, FCC-licensed-and-enforced media*, but when anyone can rent a room in a library, or hold an event at a university, publish a web page, stage a rally, or start their own zine, that holds no water with me at all.

(* I love a pirate disruption of a radio or TV broadcast about as much as I love anything on this earth.  You might remember a story about the 2009 Super Bowl, wherein a bunch of viewers in Tucson were exposed to the horror of cock during what many take to be a fairly homoerotic sport as it is.  I was at my parents watching the game when this happened.  Ordinarily this should make me really uncomfortable or grossed out but all I could do was laugh.  My father, who is apparently several decades removed from the pornographic…um…experience, was holding the remote control at the time, and apparently froze in confusion, hesitation or disbelief or something while my mother stormed out of the room.  It was the best Super Bowl I’ve ever seen and I had a damn good time as a result.  Whether gay, straight, man, woman, or child, one must admire at very least the power of cock to disrupt, derail, and upset. In the United States, at least.)

The mainstream Right has been complaining for some time about campus disruptions of conservative speaking events, the theft of non-progressive (or anti-progressive) student publications, and supposed witch hunts of conservative professors.  I have a somewhat unique perspective on this because I went into a fairly left-leaning university – into a political science department no less – as a young conservative myself.   My own experience was that, yes, there was a kind of irritation left-leaning professors would show to outspoken conservative students, but they seemed very aware of the power dynamic of the situation (something the Left thinks about far more often than the Right does), and made a specific effort to steer clear of creating a hostile or discriminatory environment.  Most of my professors (with one irritating exception) would take the opportunity to challenge my beliefs and, since many of them were intellectuals from third world countries, would try to give me a perspective on things I could never have myself, growing up as I did here in the land of plenty. I never encountered academic discrimination or anything I couldn’t handle. Having opinions – especially in real life as opposed to the Internet – has a cost, one which I was able to bear. There are always outlandish incidents, but I think conservatives do a horrible job of playing martyr, which they’ve been doing as they exploit this situation to make conservatism seem like some kind of embattled institution in academia. They come off as disingenuous babies. Conservatives are bad at this the same way they’re bad at being for limited government.

But as for campus events and publications (on the other hand), I did notice how disagreement with conservative beliefs could turn into sneering sarcastic contempt, veer off into completely ludicrous, bloated counter-arguments, and in fact into what the David Horowitzes of the world describe: something akin to mob censorship.  When you show up to heckle a speaker, or disrupt an event, or otherwise prevent an opinion or information from being communicated, you become my instant enemy – even if I otherwise agree with your point of view.  My reaction is not based in some kind of ideological calculus about free speech – it is visceral, angry, and potentially even violent.  I lose rationality, and I just want to basically pound whoever is stepping in between me and information into the ground.

I came to a realization lately that my radicalism regarding freedom of speech has little to do with being a speaker or communicator of controversial ideas, mainly because I don’t think I’m all that controversial. It has much more to do with being a listener or audience member.  The very act of disruption or heckling or stealing campus papers with views you don’t agree with insinuates that I, as the audience or reader, have the inability to think.  The implicit assumption in all forms of censorship, including the Left’s variant, is that everyone is a kind of imitative primate, unable to tell good ideas from bad ones, and that bad ideas corrupt the listener without his intellectual involvement.  It is the same tired (and horribly authoritarian) argument the Right has used for years about sex education or the depiction of, say, titties. Or when it gets its panties into a bunch about being honest about something like marijuana — that it “sends the wrong message” and that American citizens are dumb animals lacking the ability to understand subtleties and contradictions inherent in the discussion of complex subjects. Even if that is largely true, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy created by an anti-intellectual culture and civilization which values dumbed-down, oversimplified ideas.

And in the Left’s case, there’s even less excuse, because there is nothing ambiguous about white supremacy – it is a worldview of cowards and losers, a feedback loop and sausage-fest for those who cannot come to terms with their own inadequacies and failings in the often rough, challenging world in which we live.

Consider where this trend to attempt to control ideas leads – my irritation grows as I type this because I should not have to explain this to the Left – what possible consequences can there be to thinking of ideas and human psychology in these terms?  What possible kind of society can we have where certain kinds of inquiry or expression are prohibited on the basis of their perceived moral legitimacy?  Whether it is the State or a mob of people preventing someone from communicating ideas, the effect and consequences are, to me, the same.

If my political thinking has evolved anywhere, it is in the realization that there is way more to authoritarianism than just the State.  A government, a corporation, a homeowner’s association, the local, county, or state sheriff, or a mob of black-masked crusties – whoever is standing in front of me, limiting my movement or my mind – it’s all the same to me.   These all have one thing in common – I want to take a swing at all of them.  I can fucking think for myself.  Thanks.  Don’t need you – especially you clowns – as intercessors.  The very idea that you are trying to cleanse my intellectual environment is an insult to my mental autonomy and I read it as nothing but provocation and coercion. Once you have done this, your opinion or message means nothing to me.

I should not have to explain this.

ARA’s front page says:

“The Anti-Racist Action Network (ARA) is a decentralized network of militant anti-fascists and anti-racists in North America. ARA activists organize a variety of actions to expose, oppose, and confront hate in whatever form threatens the diversity and safety of our communities. We are dedicated to building a fun, diverse, liberated and explicitly anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic youth culture. We oppose and fight white supremacist groups like the KKK and neo-nazis, police brutality, and religious extremists (to name a few). We believe the only way to disrupt and ultimately destroy these groups is to do it ourselves!”

How about you give the audience some damn good reasons why these views are stupid and divisive at your own event?  And I won’t even go into the irony about the “whatever threatens the diversity…of our communities” part.

The obvious answer to this is a very old argument — a bumper sticker argument.  We’re all tired of people proposing it as if it’s a new or unique idea, but I guess there’s no choice but to repeat it here: Far better to keep racists out in the open, with their views open, accessible, and easily dissected and responded to, than driven underground. I’m annoyed at having to repeat something that should be instinctually obvious to every anti-authoritarian the world over. If you think that the basic expression of ideas grants them legitimacy, or that people cannot think for themselves, that in and of itself suggests that you believe in some kind of hierarchy, with you at the top, dictating what is and is not acceptable to the ignorant masses beneath you.

Now you’re the enemy.

And if you think that you really scare or intimidate racists, let me let you in on a secret: you just feed their siege mentality. You amuse them, and they use video shots of you acting like a bunch of screaming children to represent their entire opposition. Remember: They’re the ones stockpiling the guns. They’re the ones drilling with them in the woods. They’re not afraid of you. Annoyed, perhaps. Surprised, perhaps. But you become useful idiots to them in their campaign against the Left. All they have to do is point people to videos of these incidents.

This brings me to my last point: I wonder if anti-fascist activists know how they look on camera.  I’ve seen a few videos where the Nazis show up, all dressed up like little boys ‘playin sojer,’ swastika flags and podium.  The always miniscule crowd which initially gathers is comprised of people who stop to rubberneck at the freakshow (that’d be me), a bunch of Nazi plants whooping and “agreeing” with the speaker to make it okay for others in the crowd to agree as well. The police just stand around looking bored.

Then the ARA types show up with masks and yell and scream and inevitably (lately especially) get dragged away by the cops for breaking the rules, whether that’s crossing the ropes or fence or whatever they have set up to separate the two factions.  Then the anti-fascists point to this treatment as some kind of bias toward or sympathy for the racists, to prove what a rotten fascist nation we live in.  Meanwhile, what the camera shows is a bunch of loons in Nazi uniforms presenting corrupt ideas in an orderly, peaceable fashion, and a rowdy disruptive mob bent on speech supression, vandalism, and possibly violence on the other side. The intent here is irrelevant; it’s the picture these episodes paint for the camera.

Does Antifa think the world outside of their little political cult doesn’t know there’s an opposition? Do they think that they, alone, are opposed to neo-Nazism? Do they think that if they don’t show up, we’re going to have a new Nazi reich in America? How completely addled to you have to be to believe that? Perhaps it is just a product of the very specific narcissism of self-styled revolutionaries who, I have always maintained, see themselves, “post-revolution,” sitting around a table in the Winter Palace writing grand speeches and manifestoes while we’re all out plowing the fields and working in the mines. I don’t paint all revolutionaries with this brush, but I’ve encountered more than a few. All the world is truly – literally – a stage for some people.

I don’t think there are many people undecided about Nazis, but let’s say there are a few, somewhere.  I cannot conceive of any of them possibly sympathizing with the anti-fascist mob (who themselves choose to dressup in costume and play ‘revvolooshunary’ – sinister black masks and all) over the fascists, who have secured a permit, take great pains not to offend or confront police, and certainly don’t do anything to cause a civil disturbance but say a bunch of ugly shit in front of a podium.

In summary, then, Antifa are just not my people:

• Their use of mob tactics to disrupt or otherwise prevent people from speaking freely is not a form of speech in and of itself, and is no different to me than a government – a much bigger mob but a mob just the same – doing it via legislation.
• They look like a bunch of hooligans on TV.  They discredit the anti-fascist cause by coming off as hoodlums, which, their Superfriends-to-the-Nazis’-Lex-Luthor posture aside, they closely resemble both in appearance and deed.
• Their complete detachment from reality over who the real enemy is makes me not want to trust their judgment in the trenches, should we ever have “trenches.”  As the tanks roll over libraries and homes, they’ll be busy throwing up barricades against the pothead-busting cops at a Phish concert. And no, it’s not all the same thing. If you want to be revolutionary and fight racism – and I’m all for that – there’s so much you can be doing in institutionally disadvantaged/impoverished communities that can help people empower themselves.
• The consequences for any kind of truly “anti-fascist” society, if this is any indication of how they deal with unpopular ideas or people holding them, seems to me to be a pretty shit alternative to the one we have at present.  Neo-nazis today – what’s it going to be, free market-supporting libertarians tomorrow?  As they would point out, racism and capitalism are, they say, all cut from the same exploitive, oppressive cloth.

No thanks.  I can think for myself.  I can think clearly enough to know that Left, Right, corporatist, or military – authoritarianism lives in the human heart from one end of the spectrum to another.

Edit: March 26 I’ve been ruminating on this for a few days and I wanted to add a note. I mixed two things together in this little rant, and it may have been unfair to Antifa. The suppression of conservative or reactionary speech on campus is not the same thing as disrupting a meeting of racists – to me, any suppression of communication is intolerable, and I say this more as an audience member than as a speaker.

But while I do support the rights of racists and everyone else to gather and say what they like, I should note that these people are contemptible and I am concerned that I may have given the impression of some kind of equivalence between anti-fascists and the fascists themselves. I am firmly on the side of anti-fascism, and if people feel that the fringe Right is indeed a danger (and I think it is minor compared to all of the other threats average people face from, for example, the “military-industrial complex,” to borrow a term), then confronting them is, for them, an imperative.

I realize this blog is young and many of you don’t know me, and so the context in which I write is not as clear as it would be to friends: I am fairly worn out on critiquing those who are absolute enemies of my values and I have turned, instead, toward people I sympathize with in one sense or another, to figure out how resistance to authority can be improved.

Unequivocally, in case it wasn’t clear, if it ever comes down to these rednecks vs. anti-fascists, I would throw in my lot, instantly, with the anti-fascists, whether in the streets (though I am rarely in “the streets”) or otherwise. There is no question.

It is not, in a broad sense, the motivation of anti-fascists I question, but merely the effctiveness of some of the tactics. I do not believe confronting enemies of equality and freedom in this manner contributes very much to defeating them. They know they have enemies, and it is this fact from which they draw strength and a strike a defensive pose.

I hope this blog will be different.  This blog is about ideology.  It is about the fact that I find myself alienated from almost every available political orientation.  I can no longer write my objections off as nit-picks.

Every ideology is broken.

This is difficult for me.

I have spent most of my life as an ideologue.  Certainly I have shot my mouth off and regretted it more times than I can count.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

The year is 1979 and the Iranian Revolution is happening on my television set.  They are burning US flags.

I am six years old.  If you’re not from the United States, you have probably heard of the American tendency to imbue our flag with a weird metaphysical significance.  By six, the US flag already meant a lot to me.  In my six year old mind, all of those things were good things.

You can imagine the confusion I felt watching this on television.  I asked my father to explain.  I don’t remember what he said.  How do you explain that to a six year old?

In the following year, Ronald Reagan was elected president.  My parents supported him and, so, I did as well.  I remember my third grade social studies teacher saying that she voted for Carter.  I remember thinking, “What is wrong with her?”

You can see the genesis of my problem already.

Version 3.0 or so of Cold War Paranoia was sweeping the country.  Soviet leaders – all old, probably alcoholic men, would vanish from public view, and then expire, only to replaced by more the same.   In three years, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko: Dead.   Nuclear weapons.  MX missiles.  Reagan.  Thatcher.

The way we were taught, of course, was that the Soviets were evil.  In hindsight, after a college education, books, and, having been exposed to a far wider variety of viewpoints, I have concluded that: Yes, they were.

But the problem was the noise and the flags.  One thing the United States did not lack in its tensions with the USSR was resolve.  And I remember very clearly cheering Reagan’s aggressiveness.  When I was 13 years old, I got a subscription to the National Review.  I watched the 1984 election coverage in its entirety.  I became a junkie.

I had joined the New Right.   Most of my real political awareness of the world came from the pages of the National Review.  For years I carried that around with me, earning the ire of several teachers, one of whom treated me with a kind of disgust.

He once said to me, “You know, I used to be just like you.  Carrying around the National Review.  Waving the flag.  The All-American kid.  But then something changed my mind.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Sex.”  And he smiled and turned away.

Burrrrrn.

Another teacher described me as, “to the Right of Atilla the Hun,” a description which, I was later to find, was not his original wording.  I found other people who had been described the same way, and we hung out on Bulletin Board Systems.  Once, I even called in to Bob Grant’s radio show (Bob Grant is one of the real old school right wing radio talk show personalities).

I was kind of a mess.

But my error at the time wasn’t exactly blind obedience to the groupthink of the American Right.  Sure, it was partially that.  But the real fraud was not so much the philosophy, but the phony worldview conservatives were offering up.  If indeed the Communists were “two days drive from the Texas Border,” and (it was insinuated) were twisting their evil little mustaches, planning the invasion, Red Dawn-style, of course it made sense to destabilize that effort in any possible way – up to and including funding right wing, America-friendly dictatorships and “freedom fighters.”

If indeed welfare mothers were driving around in Cadillacs, then it made sense that we needed some kind of harsh reform.

If indeed liberals were whiny statists, prone to weakness and surrender, of course they must be resisted and stopped.

If I look at conservatism issue by issue, many of its responses to perceived ills in America and abroad make sense, even now.

And so the 1980s continued to unfold.  It was us vs. them and I was definitely with “us,” the patriots.  I remember checking out Barry Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative,” feeling like it was important to learn about the Lives of the Saints.

Meanwhile, out there in the “liberal establishment,” which included the “liberal media,” and “liberal media bias,” there were appeasers, wimps, and bleeding hearts trying to neuter These Great United States.  And I knew which side I was on.

This particular tendency of mine, which is particularly embarrassing now, began to undergo a slow decay.  I was suffering cognitive dissonance in relation to several issues.  I felt at the time that it was important to suck it up and keep the faith.

This is a bad reason to belong to any political movement.

One theme I want to explore on this blog is how ideology and religion are similar enough to be practically the same.  Our tendency to be loyal to groups is a counterproductive, if not malevolent influence in American civic life (and this is probably true for all other countries as well).

The first problem was consumerism.  While I supported capitalism (my support for this economic system would only grow after I left the Right behind), I hated conspicuous consumption, strip malls, and the hideous swarm of McMansions that were springing up in overgrown meadows in my native New Jersey.

I was particularly appalled by slavish devotion to status that I witnessed in my hometown.  I felt like a foreigner.  My values could not have been more different.

Throughout the 1980s, I insisted (to the chagrin of my mother) on wearing flannel and jeans to school (I was grunge before grunge was cool.  Well, not grunge.  More like Mike Watt.)  I hated the expensive Benetton and Z Cavaricci clothes my peers were wearing.  Instinctively, I sought to distance myself from everyone.  I wanted to be as unlike my peers as possible.  I was into computers.  I dressed like a redneck.  I hung out with classic rock and progressive rock fans.  The more out of fashion I became, the better I felt, and the more comfortable I felt in my own skin.

(One thing I truly regret from those days is not talking to the punks and skinheads in my school.  I think I would have had more in common with them, but because they looked funny, I just assumed they were some kind of different species.  I probably would have left conservatism a lot earlier had I diversified my circle of friends.)

So that was the first crack in my worldview.  I didn’t trust the wealthy, nor did I feel I had anything in common with that class (I still don’t).   By the end of high school, I was listening to Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan, while still being militant and loud about my views on The Way America Is And Should Be.  Awkward.

The second crack was apartheid.  At first I was confused, but then aghast, at the way conservatives were apologizing for the South African regime, a political system which I was certain no honest American could possibly support.  Writers like Patrick Buchanan (a pundit I admired for some time) were writing articles about how Mandela’s ANC was allied with the South African Communist Party, so therefore the ANC must clearly be an evil and untrustworthy organization, based on the company they were keeping.  They would claim (possibly true for all I know) that South African blacks were financially and educationally better off than almost all other black populations in sub-Saharan Africa, and that for these reasons, we should not support (or be lukewarm in our support) for regime change.

When it became clear that change was going to occur in South Africa whether US conservatives liked it or not, they cynically turned their support to Mandela’s rival, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and his Inkatha Freedom Party.  I remember watching all of this, and reading about the divestiture movement in which US students were pushing Universities to divest financial interests in companies which did significant business in South Africa.  I tried to make sense of this.  As much as I hated breaking ranks, I found apartheid so appalling on the surface, that I could not understand how conservatives could possibly lend any kind of support to the white regime there.

The third crack was Iran-Contra.  While I didn’t particularly (at the time) have any great objections to illicitly funding the Contras, I was particularly troubled by the source of the funds: Iran.   Iran was an enemy who posed not only a threat to Enlightenment values, but who had humiliated and embarrassed the United States less than a decade earlier.  Why the hell were we selling arms to these clowns?

All of these things created uncomfortable doubts.  In 1990 I went to college, and if anything will break you of doctrinaire conservatism, it’s college, and in particular Rutgers University, an institution of higher education described by Bob Grant as, “The Little Red School House in New Jersey.”  I enrolled in many political science courses.

Now if you’re a conservative, I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking the professors got to me – the filthy tenured Marxist intellectuals who used to be the cowardly draft-dodging hippies indoctrinated me.

But that’s not what happened.

Someone else got to me before the Marxists did, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

What happened was Desert Storm, the most ludicrous use of the US military in my lifetime.  I could not figure out any reason whatsoever why US soldiers should die in defense of a Middle Eastern country (that wasn’t Israel).   I could not figure out what business this was of ours, and while the footage of CNN anchor Bernard Shaw under the table was both hilarious and entertaining, I found myself really annoyed by the cheesy PR campaign that was cooked up to sell the “war.”  I remember rolling my eyes when they introduced the term “Desert Storm” to America, like it was an episode in  a GI Joe cartoon.

All of the PR surrounding the war was clearly directed at people far more malleable than I was, and I found this to be cynical and in direct contradiction of the paleoconservative isolationist values I was becoming sympathetic with.  I maintained then as I do now, that for all of the “limited government” rhetoric of conservatives – for all of the complaints about liberals spending “other people’s money” on their pet projects – conservatives are never loathe to soak the US taxpayer for any kind of foreign policy fetish they can dream up.

And this was one of the biggest problems I was beginning to have with conservatism: it is hypocritical.  In particular, those Bob Dylan records got me reading a lot about the 1960s, and this led to reading about drugs.  The Drug War was, and continues to be, the single most hypocritical (and pathological, if not sociopathic) compulsion of the Right.  Limited government — just don’t smoke a joint.  Limited government — but make sure you give lots of Other People’s Money to the DEA, BATF, and foreign governments who play ball.

Or take Ed Meese’s goofy anti-pornography crusade:  Limited government –just don’t look at tits, and my god, whatever you do, don’t show the human reproductive act.  Limited government — but don’t (in certain states) commit sodomy or sell sex toys.  Limited government — but don’t say the F word on television.

Yeah, right.

In 1991 I was involved in an all-day festival urging the legalization of marijuana (hey, college).  All the freaks were out.  Bands were playing.  High Times magazine was there.  And off to the side, looking far more straight, far more serious, and older, were a group of people who had all of the answers to the questions I was asking at the time:

Libertarians.

I had read about Libertarians some years earlier in a book called “The Political Spectrum.”  At the time, 1987 or so, I thought these people were insane (mostly for their support of drug legalization, a point of view I’d, well, come around to).

One Libertarian was happy to find someone at Rutgers interested in the Party, and the philosophy, which I still had a lot to learn about.  We left the event and walked around campus while he gave me what amounted to a 3 hour case for libertarianism.  This individual was a good speaker.  He was a landlord, clean-cut, educated, and had what can only be called unbridled contempt for the State.   Not only was he persuasive, but he seemed to have an instinct for what was troubling me about conservatism.   He hammered away very specifically at conservatives, hitting every base, like a salesman reading his customer and focusing his sales pitch.

Most libertarians (small or big L) were not born as libertarians.  Most came from somewhere else.  Some came from the 60s counterculture – Aquarians who just couldn’t get down with socialism (This is probably the main source of Rand’s quip about libertarians being “hippies of the Right” – a description I have always found far off-base, at least based on the majority of libertarians I’ve met).  Other libertarians came from the Right – Republicans like myself, who could not live with the contradictions and hypocrisy that conservatism is full of.  My attraction to conservatism was never tradition – it was always anti-Statist; always about keeping the government about of people’s lives.  It was about freedom.

I always felt that if conservatives believed that US traditions were generally anti-statist, that was fine with me.  I figured tradition and the “good old days” never meant much to me just because I was young.  I considered conservatism’s focus on the past a kind of eccentricity of people who were primarily motivated by liberty.

I was wrong.  Conservatives create their sense of what the United States of America should be from a mythologized past – a past which perhaps has some free traditions, but which is also dirtied by slavery, Japanese internment camps, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, land grabs, COINTELPRO. and so on.  The values of rugged individualism, responsibility, and liberty, were always important to me as a conservative, but they were important to me without the traditionalist context conservatives often seem concerned with.  I am interested in the values of our forebears only to the extent that they can enhance my own liberty; I see nothing intrinsically value about tradition in and of itself.  What I mean to say here, is that if individual liberty was an idea someone thought of last week, I’d be a convert to it despite its lack of historical antecedents.  Accordingly, the Constitution is only important to me because of very specifically what it says – its status as some kind of national religious document could not interest me less.

Libertarians get this, by which I mean they *dig* this.  Libertarianism, whether people agree with it or not, is one of the least hypocritical ideologies I have yet to encounter.  It is an intoxicating brew of individual rights and individual sovereignty which countenances anything from a distaste for, to outright hatred for, the state.

I was beginning to hate the state.

I joined the Libertarian Party.

I will never completely exorcise it from my system.  I did leave, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The problems with the Libertarian Party are well documented.  They are largely the same as any political party, except these problems are exacerbated by basically having no constituency in what is an ossified two party system.   In a sense, it is a large clown car full of very frowny clowns who don’t realize they’re clowns at all.  They’re not crying-on-the-inside clowns (Libertarians do not cry), but they tend to believe that most people deep down either are or want to be Libertarians (see the Nolan Quiz booths at your local county fair), and they have trouble squaring this with the complete and embarrassing failure of the Libertarian Party at the polls.

But I like them anyway.  Mostly because in any debate between a conservative, liberal, and libertarian, the libertarian is probably going to be right – or, at worst, the least wrong.

Ayn Rand is the peanut butter to the libertarians’ jelly.  Rand didn’t have much use for libertarians – she thought they were doomed to failure largely because either they were anarchists (anarcho-capitalists) in disguise, a system she found irrational and unworkable, or because they divorced their political program from the rationalist philosophy she thought provided an indispensible and inalienable foundation to any just political system.  More specifically, Rand didn’t like libertarians because while they agreed with her politically, they weren’t (all) Objectivists.

(Objectivism is Rand’s philosophy, or what Rand called philosophy.  There are people out there who spend a great deal of their time making a case for whether Rand’s thinking constitutes or does not constitute a philosophy.  It is the most boring discussion in the history of politics and philosophy.)

I liked Ayn Rand.  Specifically, I liked Atlas Shrugged a lot.  Most Rand fans tend to list The Fountainhead as their favorite Ayn Rand work, but not me.  I liked Atlas Shrugged for all the reasons others criticize it.  I like it because it has stones — it is a thinly disguised polemic which says in essence that there are a minority of great men who make the majority of contributions that make society worth living in, and you should not get in their way (perhaps more precisely, you have no right to get in their way) — that they owe you nothing, and that you should just be glad the benefits of their creations trickle down to you.  In the novel, these great men go on strike, and society collapses.

I *liked* Galt’s infamous speech.  I liked the polemical nature of the work.  I liked that it was didactic, long, and hammered home a single point repeatedly.  This tends to disgust students of “literature” and it is understandable why.  But there are a million beautifully written stories.  There are few polemics, however, like Atlas Shrugged.  There are manifestos and philosophical treatises, but nothing kicks you repeatedly in the brain the way Atlas Shrugged does.

Amusingly (especially now, some years later), people read Atlas Shrugged as either a work of radical individualism, or as an incitement to crypto- (or not so crypto-) fascism.  It is never enough for a detractor of Rand’s to say that they didn’t like Atlas Shrugged.  Rather, like Galt’s nearly interminable rant at the end of the book, critics of Rand will write voluminous texts stating not only why they don’t like Rand, but hammering home the degree to which they don’t like Rand, and how little they think of anyone else who does.  The complete and total destruction of decorum, civility, and order that a simple statement like “Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book” (especially on the Internet) can cause is a sight to behold.

At Rutgers, I took a class called “Ideologies of the Right.”  We were assigned one of Rand’s essay collections, “The Virtue of Selfishness” as a comment on libertarianism.  Libertarians claim to be neither right nor left, but let me tell you, people on the Left (especially anarchists) are fucking *positive* that libertarianism is an ideology of the right.  My professor had absolutely nothing good to say about The Virtue of Selfishness, but I found it interesting, and I read some more of Rand’s books as a result.

There were a few people into Objectivism in my local Libertarian Party organization, but they tended to be far more into philosophy than I was.  Though not “Randroids” by any definition of the word, they were more hardcore.  Rand’s movement is frequently referred to as a cult.  If you read about Rand’s inner circle, that epithet (and it is an epithet) may be accurate or at least justifiable.  But the stereotypical “Randroid” was not something I encountered often.  For a short time, we had a small group (Central Jersey Objectivists) that met at a house I was renting at the time, and I can’t recall anyone showing up to those meetings who could be described as the Randroid stereotype.  Some were small business owners, one was an ex-punk.  There were homosexuals, pot smokers, and British comedy fans in the group.  While I would meet a few Randroids over the course of my flirtation with Objectivism in the 1990s, the vast majority of Rand fans did not in fact idolize Rand to any degree.  In fact, many of them refused any kind of direct affiliation with Rand’s organizational inheritors, the Ayn Rand Institute.  It was about ideas.

But I had problems with Objectivism from the start.  For one, I was bored by the more abstract “low level” aspects of the philosophy, as outlined in “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” a book by Leonard Peikoff.  Peikoff enumerates Rand’s philosophy beginning from a few simple axioms, and works his way outward to greater and greater levels of abstraction, connecting, among other things, rational self interest, capitalism, atheism, and science to these three axiomatic principles.

I just couldn’t get into it.  It all painted a very pretty, elegant clockwork “grand unification theory” of rational individualism, but it seemed simplistic to me.  But as I am not and have never been a student of philosophy, I just couldn’t find the energy to poke holes in it.  Besides, I liked where the philosophy led.

I still reject any and all claims that Objectivism is a fascist, cryptofascist, or social Darwinist philosophy.  In fact, Objectivism still strikes me as the precise opposite of these things.   These accusations tend to demonstrate to me that the accuser is either is completely ignorant of, or is trying to smear the philosophy.  There are, of course, many cogent, possibly valid criticisms of Objectivism, many made by ex-Objectivists (and still self-described rationalists themselves), but the social Darwinist claim is unconvincing.

But the principal issue I had with Objectivism is focused on something Rand was concerned with in art – the is/ought dichotomy.  In Atlas Shrugged, the great men of the world are inventors, single-proprietorship industrialists, composers, and engineers.  That’s the ought – how things ought to be – and this shines through in Rand.  In fact, many criticisms of Atlas Shrugged focus on how unrealistic some of the characters are.  Rand would respond that it was not meant to be a documentary – that though her villains may well map to the real-world (though I take issue with this personally), her heroes are men and women as they Ought to be: idealized archetypes.

What I sensed about the world, however, and this has only become more stark in recent years, is that the industrialists tend to be at least a little corrupt (if not complete criminals), that wealth tends to be redistributed to many not-so-great men at the top (often bottom up, as is happening now with this banking and industry bailout), that there are vanishingly few great artists, and our upper class all too often seems to subsist on inherited money and the business acumen of generations long dead.

Modern Capitalism seems mostly concerned with producing a lot of widgets, cheap plastic crap, insultingly stupid television, and pharmaceuticals of questionable effectiveness.  The artists of substance that do exist tend to create art Rand would have hated, and many (or possibly most) successful products tend to be pointless luxuries and distractions.

Even taking into account the is/ought issues in Rand’s art, I just cannot connect the world of Atlas Shrugged to the world I presently live in.  My own sense of the world has never indicated that the principal struggle in our society is between the producers and “men of the mind” and second-handers/leeches.  As much as I like Atlas Shrugged (and you can bet I’ve looked for this), I just don’t see it.  In the last few months I’ve watched all the captains of industry and banking (formerly long-winded advocates of free market Capitalism), who, having been either laughably incompetent or corrupt, ask their shills, cronies, and toadies in Washington to take money from US taxpayers, and compensate them for their total failure.

Somewhere, there is an illicitly yoked Hank Rearden or a John Galt – I know they’re out there.  But I really just don’t sense that this is the great struggle of our times.  I look up at the mansions on the hills, and I see mostly swine.  And that’s not jealousy.  That’s contempt for men who have never done an actual day of honest (or even productive) work in their lives.  This is obviously not all of them.  But it is true of far more of them than I would have thought, if I had ever really bought into Rand’s take on the world.

I had other problems with Rand, but I don’t want to go into this too much.

Suffice to say, I took what I could from Rand and left the rest.  Rand remains one of many important influences on my thinking, and while I am not an Objectivist, the Objectivist sense of the world as a place existing on its own, independent of our senses, yet as a place we can experience and analyze through our senses, and the old principal of non-contradiction which was so important to her, provides an almost instinctual foundation for how I think about the world. (Not that I don’t contradict myself, but that I find contradiction unsatisfactory and distressing).   I just don’t buy all the directions (derivations) that the philosophy proceeds from there.

So I have problems with Rand.  But I’m not going to join the chorus of ex-Rand fans who, like alcoholics or dopers having becoming teetotalers, launch a crusade against their former vices.  As is probably the case with drugs, Catholicism, or promiscuity, so, too, Rand is a mixture of good and bad.  I have taken what I can, have given credit where credit is due, and have moved on.

By the end of the 1990s, I was beginning to hate my job.  In fact, I was beginning to hate working.  Working is a drag for everyone sometimes, but I began to loathe every day, and loathe the idea of working through retirement.  I find my job uninspiring, and nothing that seems to interest me pays.  On top of this, I have witnessed the corruption of American Enterprise, from the defense industry to communications companies cooperating with illegal domestic wiretaps, to demanding taxpayer dollars for bailouts.  I have become suspicious of the long-term sustainability of free market capitalism.

Free market advocates will analyze any economic problem and find some way to blame government intervention.  Alternately, they will look at something like currency destabilization or an outright post-bubble depression and say something like, “See?  Capitalism works.  We are now going through a correction, a rational consequence of bad investing.”  To advocates of Capitalism, a depression is just a strong “market correction.”

Bursting bubbles, as we have seen, invite only further governmental intervention.  And so I believe now that Capitalism cannot exist as a sustainable economic system any more than Communism can.  I believe, in fact, that owing to the complexity of both a global economy and human nature, all pure economic “schools” (advocacy groups) are much like religions.   I do believe that power corrupts, and as money is power, I believe money does, too.   Like elements high on the periodic chart which can only last for milliseconds in a laboratory or particle accelerator, pure economic systems decay under the instability of their own questionable foundations.

I have never had an employer who was not at least a little bit corrupt.  I am not confident that even the most hardcore libertarians – even Anarcho-Capitalists – would be as steadfast in their values if their bellies were empty.

Lastly, I believe that extreme inequality in the distribution of wealth will necessarily lead to the destruction of Capitalism through mass action, whether this comes in the form of mass unionization, agrarian insurrections, or voting a bunch of liberal Democrats into office.  Further, I see no evidence whatsoever that pure unfettered Capitalism in the Anarcho-Capitalist sense, is workable.  It may be, but Anarcho-Capitalists, like most Anarchists, have a lot of theory but few real world examples to convince me that the world they advocate is sustainable.  This was one of Rand’s objections to anarchy, and it remains one of mine.

But here is the difficult part.  You might expect me to say something like I’ve become a Democratic Socialist, or an advocate of a mixed economy.  But you’d be wrong, and that really brings us to the crux of what this blog is about.

This blog is about the dead end I have reached in political thinking.  I am not convinced that any economic system is good for all people, in all situations, all of the time.

However, I do not have an economic system to advocate.  I advocate nothing.  I don’t like anything on the menu.

At the same time, on matters of civil liberties, I remain, as always, a libertarian.

That is to say, I continue to be a radical advocate of:

• Freedom of speech (including so-called “hate speech”, text files on bomb construction, gross pornography, and cuss words) and freedom of conscience (including, in contrast to most of the secular-oriented, mangers and menorahs in public parks, a case in which I believe freedom of speech trumps the Establishment clause.  I don’t think a manger in a park comes anywhere close to Establishment, and I am an atheist.)
• The right of individuals to own weapons for the purpose of self-defense and hunting
• The right of individuals to take drugs (including crack, heroin, and methamphetamine, though I wish they wouldn’t.)
• Sexual freedom, including but not limited to the right of homosexuals to marry, so long as we insist on preserving marriage as a legal institution
• The sovereignty of the individual – a radical and difficult doctrine, but one which I absolutely believe in.  All roads here lead to Anarchism of some sort.

At the same time:

• I wish people would lead more examined lives.
• I wish people would read more, talk more, revive discourse (rather than merely having rehashed arguments), in the interests of discovering universal truths, to the extent that they exist.  I wish that, for most people, classical learning continued well into adulthood and old age.
• I wish people were less obsessed in or interested in money.  I believe we work too much, and think and love and sing too little.  I think we buy too much cheap plastic shit, try to fill psychological, spiritual, and philosophical holes with consumer goods, and that strip malls, and suburban development continue to be a blight on our country, no matter how many jobs they create.
• I believe there should be more adventure in life.
• I have unapologetic esteem for Western Civilization as a whole, including but not limited to Enligtenment values, the scientific method, architecture, art, music, poetry, and literature.  I am a fan of all of these things — except of course for all of the hypocrisy, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and slavery.  I do not believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  My own personal concerns about ethnocentrism aside, I believe that the concept of individual rights is – broadly and roughly speaking – the best possible system for all people on planet earth.  I believe cultures which engage in honor killings, acid attacks, theocracy, and whom refuse to recognize the rights of individuals are indisputably inferior to our own.  I refuse to apologize for this point of view.
• I believe science and reason are superior to religion.  I also believe a person rejects or accepts religion or faith of their own accord and that it is a waste (and often an injustice) to attempt to persuade those of faith to abandon their beliefs.  They will come around, or they will not.  Religion, like any belief system (including ones I subscribed to), is a mixed bag.  Some good, some bad.  I’d rather have lunch with Thomas Aquinas, Moses Maimonides, or even C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton than hang out with a bunch of smug atheists sitting around agreeing with each other.  Atheism is not a philosophy.  It is a detail in a larger philosophy.  In my case, it is a lack of belief, or the inability to believe, and nothing more.  That said, I am irked when religion intrudes on public life, or in any way affects my rights as an atheist.
• I despise the state.  This has not changed.  But I believe in civilization.  I do not believe one is necessary for the other.  I like barn-raisings, credit unions, cooperatives, Food Not Bombs, volunteerism, mutualism, Freecycle, collectives, intentional communities, and jump starts.  I like the concept of the potluck dinner.  I do not believe that There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch – just that, in our present condition, that tends to be true most of the time.  It shouldn’t be that way.
• I would prefer a more cooperative, and less competitive society.  I do not believe competition – another article of faith for capitalists – is always a positive thing.
• I believe in romance, ecstatic experiences, adventure, and transcendence.  I believe we have sold ourselves out as a species.  I do not believe we were intended to sit around in cubicles or gridlock for a third (or more) of our waking hours.
• I have no political program to advocate which would sustainably bring my idea of a better world into existence.

And so I leave off here.  This blog will discuss political ideas from across the spectrum, the doubts I have about them, and the flaws I perceive.

An important disclaimer:

Never assume that I advocate any idea or political philosophy because I discuss it here.  I intend to play Devil’s Advocate where necessary.  My point is to look at political ideas afresh, and determine how they can be applied to our present condition, what the flaws in these ideas are, and what their consequences are for their advocates.  To that end, I will be dealing with political ideas from across the spectrum – Fascism to Anarchy.

I encourage any comments, but note that anything counterproductive will be deleted.  I’ve been on the Internet too long to regard abusiveness on my blog as an issue of free speech.   By all means, start your own blog!  But I reserve the right to delete any comment without explanation.  My sincere hope is that this will simply not be necessary.  Please be respectful,  literate, and constructive in your replies.  Feel free to disagree in a civil manner, of course.

Oh, and incidentally, the greatest flaw of any ideologue is the belief that those who do not share his politics are evil, idiotic, or otherwise deficient or beneath him in some way.  Along my own personal intellectual odyssey, I have found this to be a horrible misperception.   Any decent person is always welcome at my table.  I mean that.

-Jake Century