Well isn't *THAT* special.
Posted on 01/16/2003 5:18:10 PM PST by Max McGarrity
Liberty-minded individuals are so used to criticizing the totalitarianism that emanates from governments that they forget one other source of constant oppression that needs to be dealt with: the tyranny of the masses.
The mass of totalitarians, these days, is composed of hordes of petty, self-elected Führers running around trying to dictate everyone else’s choices and lifestyles to suit their own preferences and comfort levels. The totalitarian impulses that resonate from these individuals are alarming. Americans, on the whole, are ripe for lording it over everyone else, and they have no problem making arbitrary judgments about the needs of others while proclaiming that which is necessary or not, based on their own foregone conclusions.
How about the current "war" against SUVs? This is one of the most hysteria-induced campaigns to ever permeate the human senses. Nitwits like Arianna Huffington, a nationally syndicated columnist, don’t just declare a dislike for SUVs or a personal preference for something more inspiring, but instead, Huffington promotes an entire Detroit-bashing campaign that is running TV commercials indicting SUV owning soccer moms for hijacking airplanes, blowing up nightclubs, sending American soldiers off to war, and teaching kids around the world to hate America. So sickening and insane are the implications that one has to immediately see Huffington as an illegitimate source on any topic going forward.
In fact, nothing is more reckless than people appointing themselves to apply dictatorial rule over their fellow men. Not a day goes by where I don’t receive yet another e-mail from the latest Hitler-of-the-day, telling me why others don’t “need” to own and drive an SUV. They actually take to defining "accepted purposes" for the ownership of vehicles. I had one reader tell me that her parents "lived on a farm in snowy Iowa, and if they could get by without one, so can soccer moms and everyone else." Well, there you go. Let’s not improve living standards for folks, but rather, let’s let the frenzied, envious masses dictate life’s little rules according to their bête-noirs.
Somehow, an SUV becomes an unnecessary fashion statement while sports cars, convertibles, big luxury cars, and classic cars all get passing grades. The whiners never present a substantial case for their wild assumptions. Instead, they can only point out that their lives are made miserable when others don’t come up to their standards and absolutes.
These kinds of people are downright wicked. They are quintessential fools who don’t believe that their freedom ends at others’ noses. They make simplistic, emotional claims that everything everyone else does can somehow "affect them," so therefore, the potential for being impinged upon is enough of a reason to trot out their list of decrees that others need to abide by – decrees that can only be enforced by the ruling regime in Washington.
The most amazing thing about these fascists is that they can’t even think for themselves; they are out there parroting everyone else on the hysteria-mobile, and they go digging for ways to rationalize the tyranny over others. Any rationale will work. Perhaps these tyrants need to wake up to the fact that the choices of others are none of their business.
In any case, it is ruinous for anyone to think they can determine what has or hasn't a "purpose" in anyone else's life. Just because they don't have an immediate purpose for a given option does not mean that others don't. The point is, "need" or "purpose" is defined by whom? Them? The government? GW Bush? Michael Jackson? Santa’s elves? Dorothy and Toto? Do we all have to justify our choices with the Hitlerian bunch first?
The SUV despotism, overall, is a sign of much more ominous things. It defines a personality type that often resorts to sniveling and whining about the human race as a whole, with a hatred for the hoi polloi and their commercial tendencies. These folks hold themselves out as the paragons of righteousness in a world that is awash in bad behavior, bad choices, and misguided appetites. Sound familiar? Study the routines of the world’s worst tyrants and it will.
ABC’s John Stossel is perhaps a good example of a guy who recognizes the totalitarian impulse of the masses. His Give Me a Break segments not only make a mockery of government repression, but also, much of his fault-finding is with the people themselves – regular citizens that commence tirades over the details of others’ lives.
Witness the collective howls over cell phone use in cars. Stossel’s segment on banning cell phones was particularly compelling, especially since the latest popular crusade for all the little tyrants is the micromanagement of what we do in our car.
According to Stossel, "polls show about 70 percent of Americans support a ban on handheld cell phones." He adds, "People do all kinds things while driving. They eat, fix their hair, put on lipstick, light cigarettes, and we even saw someone curling their eyelashes. If we must always drive with two hands on the wheel, should we outlaw picking your nose? Just putting on my sunglasses or drinking a sip of coffee takes a hand of the wheel. The radio is a big distraction problem; I'm constantly distracted trying to push the tiny buttons to avoid commercials."
In any case, why are cell phones such a focus? If it’s not out-and-out envy, what is it? Hardly a day goes by where some jerk talking on a cell phone doesn’t do something foolish in front of me, enough to put me on the alert. However, the same goes for folks driving while they are eating, yelling at their kids in the back seat, and distracting themselves looking at the latest strip mall, neon sign, or sales banner. Do we just ban all distractions, ban any and all items in cars, and ban children from cars? How about banning passengers in the front seat? They can be more distracting than the ubiquitous cell phone.
Stossel’s findings that Americans have a totalitarian bent toward cell phone use are hardly surprising. This impulse is apparent in the anti-junk food crusaders as they rage on against corporations like McDonald’s under the auspices of "health concerns." These crusaders blame the manufacturers of quick foods for everything from obesity to lifelong bad habits to baiting "addiction" to fat and cholesterol. If they can’t dictate your car choice, they’ll try to tell you what you can or can’t eat.
The totalitarian hordes hate Starbucks, and they would probably like to put caffeine on the same regulatory level as heroin. The smoking Nazis need no introduction, as various state attorneys general and corrupt trial lawyers persuaded the masses that smoking is a collective decision, not an individual one. You want to allow your customers to enjoy smoking in your place of business? Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, wants to stop you. And he’s got the support of many citizens who would love to see that happen because they don’t smoke.
Raising children is no longer a parental choice as others want to lord it over that sphere too. Don’t discipline your children in public, because somewhere someone will decide that they are the arbiter of justice for your child if they don’t like what they see. Car seats? A friend of mine showed up at his son’s school with his son not in the car seat (he was beyond the required minimum age), and he was read the riot act by a teacher who thought that her capricious assessment supercede a father’s direct supervision.
The individual tyrant mindsets that make up that of the collective mass are necessarily the result of democracy. Weaned on the teats of the State, these individuals are imbued with the "democratic" philosophy that government is there to provide for their endeavors, even if it means having the State aggress against others to relieve them of life’s little uncertainties and risks. Democracy gives them a say-so in the political process, a process where coercive powers are exercised at will via majority rule. Once the nipples of democracy have been exposed to the piglets gathering round the hub of majority rule, we engender a perpetual breeding process of decadent usurpation by the masses over the few.
Do people ever stop to think that the world exists beyond their own little, personal quirks? The powers that create the laws these folks clamor for will only be used against them to clamp down on their own choices and lifestyles at some point in the future. What goes around comes around, but hey, I suppose it’s only the here and now that matters to the high time preference peoples.
Before I get the wave of hate mail from the assorted Führers that have read this, here’s the startling revelation I must make in order to avoid the usual charges of "me first": I don't own an SUV. I don’t smoke, and I don’t ever eat at McDonald’s. I defend individual rights, private property, and free enterprise where it does not aggress against the person or property of another. It's called F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Let the Lifestyle Police get a life and stop whining about the consumer choices of those around them for the sake of elevating their personal choices as truths. Consumers should be able to make their own choices without others dictating their own moral sentiments, complaints, and general harassments upon them. Perish the thought!
In other words, get out of our lives, get out of our decisions, and tend to your own attainments. This is not Stalin's Russia.
January 14, 2003
Karen De Coster, CPA, [send her mail] is a paleolibertarian freelance writer, graduate student in Austrian Economics, and a business professional from Michigan. Her first book is currently in the works. See her Mises Institute archive for more online articles, and check out her website, along with her blog.
Well isn't *THAT* special.
Of course they have the "right" to whine. Now, if I were to call in the government guns to take that right away, I'd be just like they are--wrong.
I can see from your posts however that you do try to impose, to force your values and opinions on others.
5
Do we? Does a defender impose his "values" on an attacker by defending against the attack? Isn't that an argument from moral equivalence?
If you can see a moral difference between aggression and defense, then your forumula is too simple because it leaves out the most important bit.
An aggressor is trying to impose his values on his victim, theft, murder, whatever. The victim fights back and imposes his own value, self-survival, against the attacker's wishes.
According to you, these are moral equivalents -- both imposition of values.
But anyone else can see that it matters which one is acting in self-defense and which one is acting as aggressor.
Libertarianism is about acts in self-defense. Big government is about acts of aggression in pursuit of social engineering.
Concerning the question of imposing values: Should the majority impose its values on the minority?
Yes. When the values of the minority conflict real strongly with the values of the majority, the majority will always prevail.
A small community may enjoy eating dogs. It's acceptable in Southeast Asia. But here, it is seen as cruel and repellant. Not just lost pets, but even stray dogs, unwanted dogs. They'd be fined or arrested for cruelty.
Should we be tolerant and allow Satanism, where children are sexually abused, ritually-scarred, animals offered in sacrifice?
What if someone wants to be an ancient Aztec? He embraces the religion of Montezuma, and offers human sacrifice. "Who are we to violate their right to freedom of religion?"
No society has total freedom, no restrictions whatsoever. Total freedom on the personal level is self-destructive. The same for society.
So people get riled at the mention of social controls. Yet, people do it all the time. Values are imposed by ourselves on others, always. It's not a question of whether we should, but: Which values? We're going to force values on each other. The question is: What values will prevail?
Traditional values should be accepted. They work really well. They were established by religion. If this is forcing religion on people, then so be it. If not, the results are disastrous.
For the past 20 to 25 years, they were saying: "Do what you want to. If it feels good, do it. Anything goes." Before, it was widely agreed what morality was. The world was fairly free of self-inflicted diseases. It seemed risk-free, retribution-free, death-free. This was because their parents lived moral lives, their grandparents lived faithful lives. Now, they DUMP the social controls which helped them, which protected them, which preserved them, which nourished them. Catastrophe results!
If we claim to be kind, or compassionate, yet sit back and watch people do things which will bring about suffering and death: it's a travesty, an hypocrisy. To uphold morality: it's a kindness, it's a compassion, motivated not from power, to dictate beliefs and morality. It's similar to the abortion debate, where the people horrified at babies getting killed are labeled: "Right wing nuts," "Extremists," "Religious fascists," "Hateful."
It's not from mean-spiritedness, but from compassion: You don't want to see all these babies murdered. You don't want to see all these kids getting diseases. You don't want to see all the foolish messages: "Go out and be promiscuous." "Do your own thing." "Anything goes." A girl takes it to heart, and, BOOM! a teenaged mother, emotionally-unequipped for motherhood, or, BOOM! suddenly and permanently sterile, where she can never have children, just as she was half-developed as an adult.
We see the messages: "Follow behavior patterns that bring suffering, and death."
There was Jesus, entering the Holy Temple, Him, filled with love, compassion, long-suffering, forgiveness. He saw the money-changers and drove them out, with whip in hand. Why did He do that? Jesus acted out of love for God. If a nasty remark is made, directed to a family member, against someone you love, it is natural to feel anger, to be hurt by it. It is a combination of hurt and anger, and the desire to lash out, because someone you love has been hurt. It is a natural reaction to cruelty. What Jesus did, going into the Temple, to adore the Father, seeing the people keeping others from worshipping, by burdening them, by profiting from it, He threw them out, bodily threw them out.
The Prophets said words of anger, resounding words, still strong today: "You brood of vipers! You evildoers!" Not that they were angry people, but that they were hurt, hurt at the cruelty of their day, hurt because GOD is hurt. They had seen His love, felt His love living inside them. Their words are coming from this hurt, that a loving, benevolent God is being treated wrongly by His creatures.
If a child is kidnapped and killed, if a dealer sells drugs near a school, people are rightly angered by it, that someone they love is being hurt. "This is wrong. It makes us mad to see you acting that way."
Personally, I think SUVs are stupid, ugly looking vehicles. I wouldn't have one on a bet. But it is not my business to pass judgment on what my neighbors drive. But the point is that while I do not think the issue in this post is itself important; I think it very important that Americans resist bandwagons to mind their neighbors business. SUVs will never be the defining issue between the American tradition and the forces of the egalitarian Left (i.e. the various variations of Socialism), but they have evoked some symptomatic reactions. This writer has reacted appropriately to denounce the sort of mindset that is essential for Socialism to triumph.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
As I said before, I have no love for SUVs, but the writer is responding to a mindset; and your lengthy post offers no justification for the mindset the writer is attacking.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
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