gswann@presenceofmind.net
Posted on 12/18/2002 9:28:45 AM PST by Greg Swann
Lott and liberty...by Greg Swann |
Admonishing me, seemingly, for my admiration of Trent Lott's obstinacy, John Sabotta asks: Why should anyone refrain from calling for him to step down just because he is bravely defending a despicable principle?It remains to be seen whether Lott is defending any sort of principle. I'm inclined to think he is not. Never has. Never will. But that doesn't seem very important to me. What is important as a matter of politics is this: Is what Lott is doing of value to those who seek liberty, irrespective of his conscious intent? And: Are the objectives of those who seek liberty advanced or retarded by their joining in the demand for his resignation? I should say that I am much more interested in the personal and dramatic details of this story than in its political portents. As I argued in Hang tough, I thinking yielding to the demands of the mob is a poor idea, assuring only that the mob will make more, and more-irrational, demands. But I am an egoist first, and I think that human beings should never volunteer for their own immolation. Sabotta argues that, since Lott sullied himself by becoming a politician, he is now obliged to fall on his sword in order to "follow the rules of that game". I don't see how that follows, but, again, I don't see the importance of the argument. Are libertarians condemned to follow the rules of a game they resist, reject, condemn, denounce, and oppose? Are we just more suck-flies of the blowflysphere, with no hope that anyone will take us seriously unless we fly in formation with the rest of the carrion-eaters? If Trent Lott resigns as majority leader of the Senate will taxes be reduced by even a penny? Will the state get out of our businesses? Out of our bedrooms? Will FBI thugs stop murdering innocents? Will America's children be released from the indoctrination centers in which they are imprisoned? Will the drug laws be repealed? Will a racially-enlightened federal government suddenly discover that the worst enemy black Americans have ever known is that self-same federal government? Is there any goal of those who seek liberty that will be advanced in any way at all by Lott's abdication? The Republicans are whining that a weakened Lott will inhibit the implementation of their agenda. Are there any libertarians who will argue that this is a bad thing. Under the cover of the trivial chatter that affects to be news, President George Bush has announced that a goal of his second term will be to impose Rotarian Socialism on the Federal Government. State functions will be 'privatized,' which means that police powers will be sold to politically-favored campaign donors, leading eventually to endless Enron-like scandals. Where the failures of ordinary Socialism serve to denounce Socialism, the failures of Rotarian Socialism denounce Capitalism, which it superficially resembles. Are there libertarians who are in a hurry to see the state become an agent of anti-Capitalist propaganda as an unintended consequence? Is it actually plausible to argue that Trent Lott's reluctance to resign, whether principled or truculent, is bad for the cause of human liberty? From the other direction, making ourselves party to mob rule, even if for principled, well-intentioned reasons, is surely a mistake. We are the witches who are to be burned at the pyre, not the inconsequential Trent Lotts of the world. In the relatively free countries of the West, libertarians are often hounded and forbidden to work. In the polities where mob rule is all the rule there is, libertarians are jailed for years on end. And there is an easily-understood reason why no word of freedom ever emerges from the darkest corners of the Earth. For lovers of liberty, feeding the beast is to become in due course the food of the beast. Conceivably, some feel the need to excoriate Lott for expressing the baldest (and therefore least insidious) kind of racism. That strikes me as counting coup, which in its aboriginal form was the baldest (and therefore most obvious) kind of mob rule. In any case, where the federal government effects a vicious racism not by segregation but by the incubus of the Welfare State--by the war on black youth that is the War on Drugs--by the inescapable plantations of ignorance created by the public school monopoly--by the unending war on marriage and family brought about by the War on Poverty--where the federal government does all that to seize and destroy the values of black Americans, making a point of spitting at a racist jackass seems like a vanity to me. I think hanging tough is the right thing for Trent Lott to do--to preserve his dignity as man, to exercise his rights as a free moral agent and to oppose the rule of the shrieking mob. But I also think it is vain to argue that Lott's hanging tough is in some way bad for liberty or libertarians. Clearly, just the opposite is true. Repeating Sabotta's question: Why should anyone refrain from calling for him to step down just because he is bravely defending a despicable principle?I don't know why a hypothetical anyone should refrain from demanding Lott's resignation, but I know why libertarians should: Because leaving Lott where he is advances our principles, or at least impedes the advancement of those who are against our principles. And because joining the mob, for any reason, advances a principle that is against us. |
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