To the Libertarian/Randites - an open letter

I haven’t written in a long time, I’ve spent the last year or so in reflective mode, trying to see a path that doesn’t just go over old ground: yes, we know Obama is an idiot, we knew it first… so what? The coming campaign for 2012 is, sadly, predictable – unless HRC reconsiders… but even then, we get the benefit of competence, intelligence, leadership… in the context of political corruption even the Gilded Age couldn’t comprehend. The solutions I can see would require an emergence of will and determination in this country that I don’t know if we even possess anymore… I will continue to put out ideas and plans for those who are interested but it’s more in the vein of “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I don’t often get riled anymore, chalk it up to cynicism or burnt out faith in my fellow man. I more or less expect the daily freak show of stupidity and venality that parades across our ‘informational’ display devices these days. Like Captain Renault in ‘Casablanca’ I am faux “Shocked!, Shocked! To find out that there is gambling going on here!”.

But every once in a while, there occurs an act so vile, so venomous, so…evil, that I have to take notice or forfeit my ‘moral superiority’ card.

Such an event took place the other day during the so-called Tea Party debate:

From the Sam Stein article on the debate: here

A bit of a startling moment happened near the end of Monday night’s CNN debate when a hypothetical question was posed to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Wolf Blitzer asked.

“Yeah!” several members of the crowd yelled out.

Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.

This is depraved, there is no other word for it.

I feel like the prophet Isaiah - damning the Jews for their acts of injustice and cruelty.

The problem is that the logic of Libertarianism leads, ineluctably, to this position: I am answerable only to myself, I can do anything I choose, regardless of the consequences to others, there is no injustice or cruelty except insofar as it might impact me or anything I choose to do. I have no responsibility whatsoever to any other person on earth and I don't give a damn whether they live or die.
This is why Libertarianism is evil and why anyone who practices it needs to take a long look in the mirror to determine whether they're human any longer.

...but I'm not sure I can say that these days, it’s way too popular to be a monster...

I like Ron Paul, in a ‘motley fool’ kind of way, I like his quips, his iconoclastic stance, his impertinent windmill jousting at the establishment, he’s a lot of fun to watch…

But Ron Paul is a fraud, always has been, because he is forsworn, because he took an oath before he became a Libertarian – the Hippocratic oath, the one that says “First, do no harm.” The one that mandates service to others - that countermands his Libertarian “Me First and Fuck You” creed on the most basic level. He tries to get by that oath, even in his response above, he tries to avoid responsibility by saying “that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing” – so Ron Paul’s logic is: I don’t have to care about anyone because someone else will always clean up the mess. This, then, is the essential tenet of Libertarianism (and its even more evil stepchild: Ayn Randism): I don’t give a shit about you or anyone else and I don’t have to because there’s always some other ‘dumb fuck’ (Mark – Facebook - Zuckerberg’s definition of his customers) who will clean up the mess I create/ignore/leave behind.

Libertarianism and Randisim (they’re just different facets of the same depraved psuedo-philosophy, very similar to the Nazi perversion of Nietzsche) are not about the glorious brightness of the rugged individual making his Galt-like way against the tides of mindless bureaucracy and the envy of the masses of mediocrity.

No.

The truth is that Libertarianism and Randism both are about denial and exclusion, about selfishness and venality, about abandoning responsibility not claiming it, about the vast disconnect with the human race, reducing all others to ciphers (read Camus to see what I mean). In fact, they are the modern banners of the elemental fear of ‘the other’ that limits us, constrains us, separates and devalues us. And a further truth is that they make us weak, not strong, each of us an island, a castle, inviolate and sufficient unto itself – and, oh, such easy prey for the Hitlers, the Maos… ‘monsters from the Id’, indeed.

For the real world impact of Ron Paul’s (and Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Grover Norquist – the list goes on, but notice they’re all very, very rich) plans for you and me, read this, yes, I know it’s from the Daily Kos, I’m assuming you’re not so stupid as to think they never have a valid point: here

Remembering her brother, Susan from 29 writes:

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object. It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

And

His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery. But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured. Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.

Those all I’ll quote because you should read her entire essay. So here’s your out: I’m not going to just drop in quotes from this piece, give you the gist and let you slide without getting hurt, I don’t think it would be right, she’s writing from a place of pain I hope never to know – but this is the real world, not the make believe, fantasy, flag-waving bullshit paraded about by your ‘representative’ on the 6 O’clock news. If you have the fortitude to read about something real, perhaps even connect in a tenuous way to the experience of someone other than yourself, read on.

If you’re a Libertarian or a Randite, of course you won’t, because you don’t really give a damn about someone else’s life or experience: after all, there’s nothing in it for you.

Just between us: go to hell.