[PREV - PROBLEMATIC_TALES] [TOP]
BROKEN_WING
December 19, 2006
January 6, 2007
December 30, 2008
My personal political odyssey, in outline:
PROBLEMATIC_TALES
I was raised on science
fiction and comic books.
And skepticism, with an introduction
to philosophic debate early on. TOADKEEPER
My older brothers were heavy listeners And I suppose,
to WBAI, and I picked up the habit. WBAI I received a
touch of a sort
As a teenager on Long Island, of anarchism:
there were years when ANARCHY
WBAI was my sole connection A tendency to
to another world: rail against
intellectual, idealistic. any freedom
that's less than
All that Long Island was not. absolute.
The temptation was strong to adopt a
politically correct party line, to Note, though:
become a standard-issue leftist. Larry Josepheson,
who complained
If my need to belong were stronger that WBAI was
than my need to for truth, that's supposed to be
where I would've stopped. a *free speech*
radio station, not
I suspect that this is a left-wing one.
where many people stop.
It's current slogan
seems to have become
"peace and justice
What kicked me out of that orbit radio". What happened
was the nuclear power debate. to "free speech radio"?
NUCLEAR_SPLIT
(Yes, I know
Having been "raised on science that Pacifica
fiction", I didn't have the originally meant
automatic anti-technological bias "pacifist".)
of the early 70s left.
I teetered on the brink ANTI-PROMETHIAN
briefly, before concluding
that the anti-nuke people Paul McIsaac
were off base: on balance vs. Jerry
we were better off with Pournelle.
nuclear power plants than
without. NUKE
Some time after that
I got interested in
"libertarianism". Mid-70s libertarianism:
loosely, the notion that TARIAN_ISH
One of the attractions of all social problems can
libertarian doctrine was the be resolved through
notion that it was neither application of free
left-nor-right, but a market economics.
genuinely new approach.
Years later, it's probably
You wouldn't difficult to grasp what
know this to the intellectual landscape
look at modern was like back then:
libertarians,
who can't seem The left hadn't yet
to figure out completely given up on
why they're communism, and the
not just Though: right hadn't yet Consider
conservatives. there's adopted "free market" Nixon's
the war rhetoric. "wage and
on drugs. price
This is no doubt one freezes".
The 'tarians of the things that
have always left me disenchanted
known that with libertarian
was crazy. doctrine: it won.
There is almost *no
one* today who denies
the importance of
market mechanisms.
The real radicals are
talking about things
My break with like "green capitalism".
libertarianism was
a gradual thing --
Libertarians were
once inclined to
preach the virtues In comparison, modern
of decentralization libertarians (and
and diversity: "Let conservatives) never
a million flowers seem to have seen a
bloom". huge corporation they
didn't like.
Libertarian doctrine holds that
there's no such thing as a "natural
monopoly", but even if you're
inclined to grant that point, it's
clear that a lot of the corporate
growth is the result of of
*artificial* economies of scale:
And "globalization" tax codes that favor larger
was clearly behaving companies, and political clout
as one more force for purchased with large "donations".
uniformity --
An honest libertarian would
The "free market" be opposed to these -- they
defense of might even be public enemy
globalization number one.
persistently refused
to address moral In practice, the libertarian press
questions-- is nearly silent on the problem.
Why would advocates of freedom
insist that we must buy the
products of slave labor?
What if the "competitive I was registered as
advantage" of another a Republican for
nation is in lax pollution awhile, because
regulations? I wanted to vote
in Republican
primaries.
To me, party
membership has no
where near the
powerful symbolic
significance it
does to many
people.
It was always
funny to meet
people who make
pronouncements
like "I *hate*
Republicans."
Of course, that
was funnier before
the current crop
of Republicans,
whose brains have
been eaten by
crazed weasels
from hell.
Another difficulty for me was an
awareness of New Urbanism issues:
the current state of the United
States is a creation of government
interference in tranportation and
real estate -- highway funding and
zoning regulations.
And yet, libertarians have an
inexplicable fondness for
"private" cars and suburban TARAIAN_CONTRA_SUV
living.
And on top of this, the
libertarians still have no DOOM_CONTRA_TARIAN
answer to a problem like
"air pollution": what *can*
you do about it except The best you can do is
impose a government a modified market,
regulation, such as a e.g. tradeable emission
pollution tax? So the pure standards.
libertarian stance is
unworkable. A cute idea, but
it's still not
And speculation about clear to me if
private defense firms it's tenable. My
and police forces was expectation: the
always interesting, but process will be
no one seemed to seriously hijacked to set
believe this stuff would the total cap so
work. high it has no
effect.
During the Clinton era,
however, there was little
to be attracted to in the
Democratic party.
Many a Democrat remains in
denial about how bad Not to mention
Clinton's reign was. Bill Clinton's habit of
flipping cruise missles
1996 was a very bad around the Middle East.
year for legislation:
The Telecommunications Act
The Communications Decency Act
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act
The Anti-Terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act
And this then, brings us up to
the Bush Junior regime, at which
point even I can't ignore that
the US foreign policy is fucked
and has been for decades.
Treating the constitution
like waste paper and in
general behaving like the
bad guys in cold war pulp kidnapping,
fiction doesn't help much torture,
either. assasination.
Whose country
is this?
Where did it
come from?
--------
[NEXT - NUCLEAR_SPLIT]