We are all libertarians—for us
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I never thought I’d live to see the day, but Dick Cheney offered his nation a powerful lesson in citizenship this week. When, at one of his daily Obama bashings, he was asked where he stood on the gay marriage debate, the following came out of his mouth:
“I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone.”
In the immortal words of Emperor Hirohito, I am going to “endure the unendurable” and applaud Mr. Cheney for his enlightened statement. “Freedom means freedom for everyone.”
Way to go, Dick. I know you don’t really mean it, you just happen to have a gay daughter. You’re just looking after your own, but, then again, so are we all.
In that fundamental way, Dick Cheney is no worse than any of us, and no better. We’re all libertarians, for ourselves.
We’re all libertarians where we are concerned. I trust me with anything, I trust you about as far as I can throw you, and I will, given half a chance. You’re a reckless speeder; I’m in a hurry. I can handle it; you can’t. I treat me like Jefferson; I treat you like Stalin.
And if what we demand of others becomes inconvenient for us, we simply change our demands. People shed their beliefs as easily as they shed their sweaters and for the same reason—things got too hot.
If a liberal is a conservative who has not yet been mugged, a social conservative is a social liberal whose daughter hasn’t yet “gotten into trouble.”
Some anti-abortion politician’s seventeen-year-old daughter gets herself pregnant. A discreet trip is arranged, unless the politician is running for president at the time, in which case the trouble becomes a blessed event. The abortion laws we’ve passed don’t mean a thing when it comes to family, not our family, we’re a special case.
But we’re all special cases. The existential question for a democratic society is how do you reconcile 300 million people who don’t want anyone telling them what to do with 300 million people who want to tell everyone else what to do, when it’s the same 300 million people?
The answer is simple: Rights and Laws.
We have Rights to protect us from others and we have Laws to protect others from us.
But simple doesn’t mean easy. Getting the balance right has been the work of generations.
The Founding Fathers and their enlightenment tutors knew their history. They’d seen the arbitrary rule of King, Pope and Despot, they knew the corruption it led to, they saw how those rules applied to “everybody else” while the Sun King MILFed his way through Versailles.
But they didn’t trust democracy, either, because tyranny is tyranny and it doesn’t matter who the tyrants are, or how many of them are oppressing how few of the rest.
It took a stoke of genius to untie that knot, and fortunately for us and the rest of mankind, geniuses were a farthing a dozen a few hundred years ago, when we needed them most.
The rule of law was the starting point. But the real breakthrough was when they came up with the concept of rights. Rights were anti-law, rights are places the law can’t go. Rights are so important to retaining freedom that when they weren’t put in the Constitution, the first Congress and three-quarters of the States jammed ten of them into that document by amendment in four short years.
We call those ten amendments the Bill of Rights, but they’re really the Bill of Leave Us the Hell Alone.
Rights and laws: If you can locate the balance point between those two poles you’ll have a pretty good idea how free a given society is. And if you want a society that is self-governing and sustainable you should also know this:
The best laws aren’t the ones that are enforced. They are the ones that are obeyed.
There is a cost when laws are foolish, outdated, unjust, or generally disregarded and held in contempt. Such laws devalue the currency of the other laws. It’s the legal equivalent of inflation—have too many worthless laws and soon the whole legal edifice is bankrupt.
Rights are even more frail. The USSR had a bill of rights, but it rarely advanced beyond the theoretical. Rights are the restraint of power by paper. It’s a miracle they are ever respected at all.
The alternative to Rights and Laws is Rules and Obedience. Mankind lived under that yoke for as long as mankind lived, until the last couple of centuries, because it worked. The alternative was the law of the jungle and we’d left the jungle behind when we dug the first ditch. But, as the old saying goes, you can take the homo sapiens out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the homo sapiens. Bullies and brutes, the nefarious and the negligent, are always with us, probably in proportions unchanged since the stone age. Mankind needs to be ruled or it dies. The only question is how.
The great good act behind Mr. Cheney’s tacit support for gay marriage is that he said it out loud. He could have hidden behind his politics and condemned it, while quietly telling Mary, “Go to Sweden, honey, and I’ll walk you down the aisle.”
But he didn’t, he supported tolerance instead. That’s an example for all of us libertarian fascists. If we are going to live together in peace and freedom, if we are to properly balance rights and laws, we need restraint in our behavior and tolerance in our opinions, both as much as humanly practical.
But who gets to say how much is practical? Why me, of course.
Comment by Nicole Jordan on 5 June 2009:
Wow: Rights protect us from others and Laws protect others from us. That should be carved into a stone monument somewhere! Good job, Snark.
Comment by joker on 9 June 2009:
A very interesting and mostly enjoyable posting Snark, save for one paragraph that actually made me cringe.
Before I get to my rebuttal on what I didn’t like, I offer you another angle on “Rules and Obedience.” I’d say they didn’t go away a couple of centuries ago my friend; they’re very much still with us. Religion began as a way for frightened primitive humans to explain the sun, moon and Mother Nature. It soon evolved into a way to control people and make money through rules and obedience. It is a crutch for the emotionally weak to lean on in times of strife, because many folks need to believe there is some “higher power.” In a sick twisting of “faith,” religion also continues to serve as the rallying cry for seemingly endless war and murder.
Dick Cheney may have shown you an act of tolerance you were not expecting, since most of you folks on the Left consider him to be sitting just to the right of Satan himself. I suggest that when “the Church” (I’m referring to all religions here) does so, it will be worthy of more than applause.
I must mention my distaste for your reference to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Your insinuation that Sarah Palin would have condoned her daughter having an abortion had she not been a presidential candidate at the time is both insensitive and crass. It is completely undeserved in view of Palin’s decision to not have her son Trig’s brain sucked out of her through a tube and discarded as medical waste just because he would be born with Down’s Syndrome. May I remind you she made that decision long before Johnny Mack tapped her to run as his veep. I really don’t care what anyone’s politics are; Sarah Palin is worthy of respect for the love and devotion she’s given to her Special Needs child.
Is Mr. Cheney’s “tolerance” self-serving and hypocritical because he is a conservative dealing with an openly-gay daughter? Perhaps. Do we all have a tendency to favor ourselves and maybe not always practice what we preach? Sure. Was it really necessary to direct such a baseless, insensitive accusation at a terrific lady who dares to believe life is precious and leads by example?
I’d have to say “No.”
Comment by proletarian on 13 June 2009:
Mr. Snark, I see you’re at it again my friend. I’ll give you an A for eloquence, B for humor, but D for substance. I can’t believe you would even insinuate you are anything close to Libertarian ideology. From all the posts I’ve read, you’re but one notch from Deb’s views. However, you are far more graceful and kind.
Lest I be remiss, I shall remind you. Your sardonic sniping does not go unnoticed. Albeit witty, sonorous, and at times informative, it’s still covert in intension and inflammatory in tone. The sleeping lion has fangs and often sleeps lightly.
You are as far left as one can get. Not a criticism, but observation. What you incline and attempt to inculcate in others is “liberal” tolerance. Those that screech and scream for others to “tolerate”, yet have none themselves. For those who screech and scream for justice and then find justice unkind, change the rules they will. Liberals, exactly the crux of your post indeed.
How can one have tolerance when one can’t even give a man the benefit of doubt. What makes you think Cheney is not sincere or wanting to make recompense for previous misgivings? Peace and harmony on earth shall never be attained until we can fully trust one another.
Having tolerance is different than condonation and sooth with regards to immorality, ethics or justice. I didn’t see any contempt or censure for Mr. Letterman’s odious words. Yet the demons howled and the succubae wailed when Imus took the stage.
Where is justice Mr. Twain? Where is the compassion or tolerance for him? For those who espouse such rhetoric, espouse hypocrisy they do.
Comment by joker on 15 June 2009:
proletarian: “Those that screech and scream for others to “tolerate”, yet have none themselves. For those who screech and scream for justice and then find justice unkind, change the rules they will.” That is just outstanding. Not that the rest of your comments were not also right on the money, but these words resonate so clearly in articulating the true hypocrisy of liberalism. Bravo!
Comment by Snark Twain on 16 June 2009:
Gentlemen, you soothe an old writer’s soul. As I labor away in the wee, small hours, wreathed by cigar smoke and loneliness, I wonder. What is the point? Why do I sweat and strain so? Is anyone out there? Is anybody listening? And even if there is and they are, what good does it do? What possible difference can my feeble labors make to heal a cold and uncaring world?
And then I see it. Because of my work, MY work, two beautiful souls who may have never met are now joined in joyous intellectual congress on this very spot. Two who cried against the darkness alone, now cry together, and it’s not so dark anymore.
It is a lovely thing to witness. I, Snark Twain, midwife and matchmaker, am humbled by its beauty. My faith in humanity is refreshed, my efforts validated, my meaning restored.
Thank you both, Proletarian and Joker. I wish you all the happiness in the world. And I beg your forbearance on the issues you’ve raised. I’m working on something big. Check back in a day or so, and then fire away, you crazy kids!
PS: Prole, I wrote this piece days before David Letterman stepped in it. So I couldn’t react to his “odious” words then. And the idea of being the millionth commentator to comment on them now holds limited appeal–but I will say this. Sarah Palin wasn’t really offended and David Letterman wasn’t really apologizing last night. The whole thing is Kabuki, IMHO.
Comment by proletarian on 17 June 2009:
Damn Snark, I liked your response immeasurably more than your post. Now that’s what writing is all about! I knew there was more to you than the dark and dreary ideology of yesteryear. I’m waiting for your next sonorous treatise with bated breath my friend. I would say prose but I know you are far from being a churl or philistine.