When some of us say we have issues with modernity, it’s not just idle talk. Anyone of a religious bent will recognize much in American culture is antithetical to how we’re commanded to live. For example, life revolves around money and the pursuit thereof, all the while making sure to stick to the letter of the law—all is permitted as long as it’s not technically illegal.1
Everything is transactional. No need for deep roots; just move. Mobility of labor helps line go up, and if line go up, country good. Money = morality. Everyone has a price. Who cares about stuffy old tradition? Individualism over all. “What do I care about ‘society?’” some ask. “My rights end where my fist meets your nose. Just leave me alone and don’t take my stuff.”
The love of money, so some say, is the root of all evil. America seems to be built upon the love of money.
These are meme-level arguments, but they’re the easiest way of conveying the ideas I’m trying to discuss. You may accuse me of strawmanning my opposition here, but I’m really not. I’m using a lot of the exact words and ideas I heard expressed in a debate recently. Well, “debate.”
Yes, it’s libertarianism I’m talking about. I’ll just cut to the chase. I’m always inclined to give it a fair hearing, having been one myself a while ago—because many arguments sound really good in theory, so maybe I’m missing some key argument. Maybe I'm not understanding things. Sure, I’m biased against libertarianism, but I’ll listen.
Nope. I’m not missing anything. It really is a theory as shallow as the memes mocking it make it out to be. It’s an empty philosophy predicated on freedom and liberty to basically indulge in vice and have no duties or unchosen bonds. In other words, liberalism.2 Postmodernism, even, despite protests to the contrary.
This debate was between Jay Dyer, an online personality I’m rather fond of, and Austin Peterson, radio host and former libertarian candidate for president. There was also another libertarian guy named Chad and the whole thing was hosted and moderated by some guy named Jim Bob. You can watch it here. Me, I listened to it. No need to see people with faces made for radio.
What struck me was the shallowness of libertarianism as expressed by Peterson. No matter the quotes and the appeals to authority and the platitudes—there is nothing there. It doesn’t help that Peterson is one of the most smug and unlikeable individuals I’ve ever had the displeasure to subject myself to—and I’ve listened to both Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann! Peterson’s debate method when losing, or when having no answer to a question, is ad hominem. He’s the guy who has to have everyone else in the room think he’s the smartest one there. So yes, as was pointed out to me, he might not be emblematic of all libertarians, and that’s fair, but boy he’s an even worse ambassador than naked fat guy from their convention a few years back.
(Thanks
!)At the heart of it, though, it wasn’t even libertarianism I walked away disappointed in, but materialism generally. Try as he might, Peterson couldn’t reason away things like metaphysics or ethics or objective reality. He had no good answer as to why, for example, he drew the limit at children. Materialism and reason can find new and exciting ways to condone pushing the transitioning pre-pubescent children, or that favorite, perhaps unfair thing to beat libertarians with, “The age of consent should be abolished, bro.”
Drug legalization, free trade and open borders, no regulation, worship of corporations: these things have already been tried and haven’t worked out so great, and the unintended consequences have been quite devastating. They’ve made an ever-shrinking cadre at the top increasingly rich and immiserated the rest of us. Worse, they’ve destroyed the cultural fabric of America. These theories turn nations into economic zones. Who will fight and die for the GDP?
No, your choices aren’t “status quo or CHINESE COMMUNISM!” “America warts and all or RUSSIA.” The idea that this is the best system ever and can never be topped or even improved upon, or that we’re locked into this binary, is laughably stupid, and yet . . .
I don’t think a philosophy where the highest good is service to oneself, the hell with everyone else, is a great one to build a civilization upon. “Rational” or “enlightened” self-interest presupposes most people are rational or enlightened. Experience and history prove that otherwise, and if you don’t include yourself in this mix you’re a liar.
I think it must’ve been nice to live in communities where people knew and cared about each other. Sure, it was probably annoying to have people in your business, but at least you weren’t atomized. You knew your neighbors. High-trust societies sure sound great.
Without an ethical grounding, you have rule by whim. This is what really bothered me about Peterson’s insistence that ethics didn’t matter, that “no one” could claim to have an objective standard “granted from on high” or however he snidely put it. And yet, when pressed about where his theories came from, he glibly stated he’d “read a lot of literature” that convinced him.
Okay, but who wrote that literature, and where did they get their theories? And anyway, it’s kind of hard to claim you don’t know the Truth, like Peterson admits—with false modesty, it appeared to me—and then act like you know the Truth. Though Peterson repeatedly claimed to be open to changing his mind if presented with the right information, that’s nonsense. No one changes their mind about deeply held beliefs based on this mythical “new information.” People change their minds about deeply held beliefs for different reasons. Dare I say, metaphysical ones?
You can’t run a civilization on economic considerations.
Again, I shouldn’t just pick on libertarians. They’re not the only materialists running asylum America, although I’ve had libertarians tell me that open borders, planned obsolescence, and BlackRock buying up residential real estate are all actually good things. All of the regime-accepted choices we’re presented with boil down to economics and personal preference. How to make money, how to tax money, how to distribute money, the acquisition of stuff and the disposition thereof. “I’m a secular humanist,” Peterson crowed at one point. “I care about how to help humans.” But stuff isn’t the only way to help humans. How do we get people in our societies to flourish? Give them stuff? Make life comfortable? Give them freedom? Again, freedom to what? What is a good life? A nicer car? A bigger house? A boat? A houseboat?
We’ve seen what happens when life gets too comfortable and people have too much free time absent any ethics or metaphysical considerations: they go crazy. Too many have survivorship bias: “I can handle myself, so if you can’t, it’s because you’re weak.” Selfishness is good, etc. and so on.
Yes, most people are weak. We all are, actually. Nobody, not even the most rugged of individuals or ancappiest of libertarians, just lives by whim. Everyone has a code. Everyone—well, anyone functional—has a structure. Limits. Everyone cares. If you didn’t, then you’d be a pure hedonist, and you wouldn’t be functional.
Peterson also denies the supernatural while admitting that humans have overcome the natural, base, animal inclinations to dominate by force. But why? Why? The why does matter because without the why the goalposts are always moving and expediency is all that matters. Truth and right and wrong is what fifty-percent-plus-one think it is at any time. Eventually it’ll just boil down to a battle of all against all. This should sound familiar, actually.
If a right is an entitlement without a duty, why should anybody have a duty to protect it? Where do rights come from? Why are new ones discovered, old ones abrogated? Where’s the master list? If rights are self-evident, why do we have to keep discovering them via emanations and penumbras? How is this better than revealed wisdom?
People do care about this, and always have, because for life to have a deeper meaning there needs to be more of a consideration than personal wealth and personal pleasure. This is the disconnect I find deeply unsatisfying. Alas, I am stuck in a profoundly and proudly materialist culture built on the love of money.
Maybe this doesn’t bother you. Maybe you’ve read between the lines here and realized I’m probably suggesting religion as a potential answer to these questions. That’s because I absolutely am. And I’m particularly fond of Christianity, the religion which built and sustained what we call the West. It’s running on the fumes of Christianity now, but despite what some edgelord neo-pagan Nietzcheans say about it being a “slave religion” of the “weak,” I think most of us enjoy living in a world where, say, sickly babies aren’t tossed out to die and where charity is a thing. Wait until your baby is born with some defect, or your child isn’t some sort of Aryan ubermensch and then tell me they should die. If you end up in the poorhouse, please do partake in Canadian healthcare and relieve us of the burden because God forbid there’s any of this charity nonsense to help you get back on your feet. Don’t be a hypocrite!
Without any spiritual inclination we’re forever chasing our tails. It doesn’t help that there is no real social fabric or shared culture in America to speak of, unless you count the NFL and Marvel movies. Materialists will tell you this is all the result of rational self-interest and personal preference, but did anybody really choose this for themselves? It’s all stuff nobody seems to want.
Do you like that corporations have so much power they can pull the government’s strings? Or that they collude to do the government’s dirty work? Is that all fine and dandy because “Hey, at least it’s not the government!” When I hear Peterson say “How could corporations do any worse?” I want to scream. Or when he discusses how people have the right to contract with anyone. It’s all contracts. As if excessive legalism is a good thing. The coffee maker discussion in that debate was quite telling, and underscores how much of a disaster the internet of things will be, as will corporation-controlled smart cities. Just because the people running our government are awful doesn’t mean the people running our corporations (who we can’t even vote for) are all saints and should be given carte blanche to run things. Just wait until we get these private police forces . . .
Much of this was foisted upon us, and a lot is enforced by the so-called private sector. Many libertarian type economic politics (offshoring, open borders, free trade) have helped cause this crisis of meaning. I have no doubt that the small sliver of people who got rich and continue to get rich wouldn’t change a thing. But then again, they’re insulated from the consequences.
- Alexander
But is it good? Is it right?
I don’t mean “liberalism” as a euphemism for the Democrat political party here in America. I mean “liberalism” as the Enlightenment philosophy undergirding America since its founding, and which the Democrats are the standard-bearers of and the Republicans are “What the Democrats want, just slower.”
The ironic thing about libertarians is how they believe their ideology is being overlooked and yet libertarianism is the hidden grammar of American politics. We have 'em on both sides of the political aisle, the Republicans (fiscal libertarianism) and the Democrats (social libertarianism). For all the talk the GOP has about preserving our Christian culture and for all the talk the Dems have about the helping the worker, the downtrodden, when it comes down to it the Republicans will always prioritize lower taxes and helping big corporations while the Democrats will always prioritize promoting sexual degeneracy and drugs.
I stopped calling myself a libertarian in 2020. I saw, finally, that it didn't mean anything. There were libertarians telling me I should be forced to get the vax and others saying it was not merely ok, but desirable, for grocery stores to starve my family until we gave in and wore masks because, you know, they're "private companies". Then they told me it was all right for "private companies" like YouTube, Facebook, etc... to censor me and news they didn't like, which conveniently was the exact same stuff the state didn't like. Libertarianism ex nihilo is bound for the same end as Bolshevism or the French Revolution. The NAP is not the be all, end all of ethics and Rothbard was not the stay of philosophy. Without higher values to base these suppositions in, it is just a raft of dodgy assertions that you are free to abandon or reinterpret when you felt like it, and most will. At the very least, libertarians were totally out maneuvered by the state outsourcing it's oppression to "private" actors over the last few years, and they still have no answer to this reality within the framework they've contrived, so it doesn't even matter that their critique of the state is valuable.