In case you didn’t know, I go to a hippy school in southern California. Naturally, this draws a large number of hippy sorts of kids. I write jokes in my free time and here’s one I told at open mic: “Hippies aren’t called that because they’re hip or hipsters. It’s because they’re hypocrites. They’re always saying give peace a chance but I find they aren’t receptive when I give them a piece of my mind (pause for laughter).” I know it’s a pun but it got an okay laugh.
Not the best joke, but the point is hippies aren’t good listeners.Remember that. There are also many who aren’t hippies, myself included among those few brave souls. What I’m trying to segue into here is politics (can’t you just feel the tension?).
The vast majority of the people I live with are liberal. Waaaay liberal. Many are socialists and green party folks. What few remain are apathetic or intensely cynical. There may be one or two closeted republicans. Essentially, I live in a world where Obama is practically Jesus. This environment can be… frustrating at times to say the least.
Why’s that? Well, I’m not a moderate. I’m not a republican either. In the distant, distant past I may have been but now I’m as opposed to them as any one else. Sadly, I’m a libertarian.
If you don’t know what that is you should Wikipedia it. Or read what comes after the next period. Libertarians favor a small government, one that manages the military, the police, and maybe the roads. If doing something infringes on someone else’s freedom, it’s illegal. Live and let live is what it’s all about. There are many kinds of libertarians with different ways of reaching similar conclusions. I’m a voluntaryist (also on Wikipedia). If something isn’t voluntary, I’m opposed to it. Taxes aren’t voluntary, so any tax that pays for anything that isn’t an essential state function (see above) is bad. Evil. Ideally non-existent. It’s not voluntary if you go to jail for not participating.
Maybe I’m childish in that regard. If someone doesn’t want to participate in national health care or social security or whatever, I don’t see why they should have to. A friend of mine always challenges me on this by talking about social contracts and democracy. A social contract isn’t something any of us have agreed to, it’s something you’re born in to and involuntary. Let’s look at democracy. Why should 51% of people get to decide what the other 49% do? If 51% or 80% or 99% of people think you should wear a seat-belt does that mean you should? Should you pay a fine because you chose not to wear one? It’s your body, your life that you’re risking. Why are other people involved in this decision? The fact of the matter is that if there weren’t seat-belt laws, that 51% or 80% or 99% could (and would) still wear them. Do what you want to do. Find others who want to do what you do. If someone wants to be left alone, then leave them alone.
It can get pretty close to anarchism (some anarchists vote libertarian) but it’s not. People have called me cold-hearted because I disagree with a national healthcare system. First of all, that’s ad hominem which is bad. Second, it paints me as something I’m not. I’m not opposed to people helping each other out with health care, I just believe it should be voluntary. If 51% of people want a big government insurance plan, they should realize they don’t need the government to do it for them. They can get together, the whole 51% of them and create their own insurance plan. No one’s stopping them. It’s not illegal. Think of how much faster people would be helped if they didn’t wait for government to do things for them? How long has healthcare needed reform? If the democrats did it themselves, without republicans to slow them down, they could have already hammered out a plan and and have it in effect.
Maybe it’s idealistic. I don’t know. I just want to do what I want. I want you to do what you want. I want everyone to do what they want.
The point of all that is that I’m a political outsider nearly everywhere, but I’m hit in the face with it every day because of the people I share a dorm building with. All I ever hear is one side of the political story (“woo Obama!”). I’ll try to watch the news and they talk about “both” sides of the story. Conservatives and liberals. My hippy friends would call me conservative. My conservative friends would call me liberal. I’m a classical liberal. I’m a Ron Paul conservative. I’m a libertarian and sometimes I get tired of people taking a condescending tone of voice when I mention what I think. I love all political beliefs. I spend hours on Wikipedia reading about them. Communism, socialism, fascism, anarchism, conservativism, objectivism, and their derivatives, opponents, whatever. I understand why people believe those things, I just want people to take a minute and try to understand why I like libertarianism. They don’t have to buy it or convert or anything, just try understand and treat me like a reasonable person.
Try this quiz and see where you stand: http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html
