This post was inspired by discussion with some of my young
friends overseas who dream of coming to America, “the land of opportunity,”
“flowing with milk and honey,” “with liberty and justice for all,” a nation
based on Equality from its very beginnings, a place where any hard-working
person can succeed. I once believed all
that, too, when I was young. The only
difference is, I have actually lived here for 51 years. I love my country. America is certainly one of the best places
on earth and I am sure it compares very favorably to any third-world nation
assuming, that is, that we don’t become a third-world nation ourselves, which
is liable to happen if current trends continue and if our GOP Congress
successfully implements their policies, which I once supported.
Our conversation began when I posted an article revealing
that we now have many more empty houses in America than we do homeless people,
of whom there are 3.5 million including, to our great shame, many military
veterans who defended our country at the cost of limbs and PTSD, who upon
returning from overseas, found themselves homeless and without medical
care. I was subsequently accused of
being un-American or unpatriotic for daring to suggest that our wonderful
country is less than perfect.
My accuser is a very bright and enthusiastic young man whose
goal is to become an American citizen and serve in the Marine Corps, and I very
much hope he will succeed in so doing!
In fact, I offered to write him a letter of recommendation. I am from a military family myself and a
member of the American Legion. My young
friend and I have some other things in common.
For one, we are both citizens of former colonies that had to fight for
our independence from Great Britain.
Additionally, and rather coincidental to this discussion, we both
attended college programs funded by the Koch Foundation, where we received a
rather one-sided perspective on American politics and economics. And like him, in my youth I believed in their
claims whole-heartedly.
By now it should not be a huge shock to most people who know
me, that my voter ID card says “Libertarian” on it. It was kind of my dirty little secret, until
I blogged about it quite a bit over the last few years. I
refer the interested reader to these links which explain more about what happened and
how I became disillusioned:
The Republicans Have Hijacked Libertarianism, wherein I
discuss the utopian vision of my youth and how it has very little in common
with what is called “Libertarian” today.
Why I Am Not Thrilled with Government, where I describe how,
as a tax-paying citizen and owner of several [failed] small businesses,
government regulation has had a negative impact on my ability to make a living
and for the most part, social programs have not provided any help when I needed
it.
A Liberal Libertarian, in which I discuss, “Clearly there is
no way to get to my Ideal World from the Real World.”
But why a “dirty little secret”? I was once proud to call myself “Libertarian”! In short, “Libertarianism” today has been
taken over by the Tea Party, whereas when I joined as a teenager, I shared the
views of Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, Emma Goldman and Noam Chomsky. Of course, I also read Ayn Rand (obligatory for Libertarians), but while I
enjoyed her books, even as a child I sensed that she was a rather disturbed
individual and not someone I would choose as a role model.
In any event, what attracted me about libertarian philosophy
was one thing: Freedom! The liberty of all men and women to live our
lives as we please, so long as we do not harm anyone else, including, but not
limited to, what business we may conduct in the free marketplace, what jobs we can
have, whom we may marry, and very importantly, bodily autonomy including whether,
when and with whom we will choose to have children, or even what types of
plants, medicine, food or drinks we may ingest.
It was my passionate commitment to freedom and the 13th
amendment that led to my giving a speech at a rally against the draft in Honolulu
in 1980 when I said on national television, “While it is important to defend
our nation against foreign enemies which would seek to conquer us, we must also
be vigilant to prevent the rise of tyranny from within. If we enslave our own citizens, what is left
for us to defend?” I also knew, being a military brat, that an all-volunteer army has better morale and is a more efficient fighting force, but that is beside the ideological principle.
My opposition to involuntary servitude likewise motivated me
more recently to become involved in reproductive rights. I had believed in my youth that this was
already accomplished, but it has since come under attack from the same
politicians who most loudly proclaim their defense of freedom and private
property, except when it involves a woman’s sovereignty over her own
body. One of the things that made me
really question the Libertarian Party was when I discovered a group called, “Pro-Choice
Libertarians,” which was founded in 1987, and I wondered why on earth such a
group would need to exist. Isn’t
“choice,” after all, essential to the definition of “Libertarian” or, for that
matter, “American”?!
Well, maybe not; at least, not in the beginning. And this is where we must take a closer look
at the doctrines we hold so dear and assume we know what they mean, or once
meant. Everyone loves to quote from the
Declaration of Independence:
“We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The problem is, when Jefferson wrote “all men” he clearly
did not mean “all,” because he, like several other Founders, owned slaves. What the phrase really meant at that time was
“all white male land owners.” It did not include Africans, Indians, or
even the Native Americans who helped the Pilgrims survive their first year here,
and women, of course, also were not included.
I and my friends who were discussing these unalienable rights would not
qualify for them! While the principle of
Equality was there from the start, its actualization only happened recently in
history. Slavery officially ended in
1865, Black men got the right to vote in 1870 and their full civil rights in
1964, while women were not able to vote until 1920, and in 2014 our Equal
Rights Amendment has not yet been approved by Congress. America is still growing into her full
potential. Our Founders’ vision of
Equality, Liberty and Justice for all is a work in progress.
So, how did we get here today where, in one of the
wealthiest nations on earth, 3.5 million people are homeless while 18,600,000
houses are empty, and many people working full-time need government assistance
to feed their families?
Many people mistakenly blame our economic situation on Mr.
Obama. Although the President has many
talents, time travel is not one of them, and the collapse of our economy occurred
in 2007, the year before he was elected.
Other people are quick to blame President George Bush Jr., because the
expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan created a huge deficit, the economy was
sluggish during his administration, and many of our jobs were sent overseas. But Mr. Bush did not start this problem,
either. Rather, it all began 20 years
earlier during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, whose economic
advisors, including Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, convinced him to cut
taxes on the rich and deregulate the banks and corporations. The theory behind this policy was that the
Market could be trusted to ensure that businesses would prosper, jobs would be
created, and the wealth would “trickle down” to benefit everyone, not just the
rich. Unfortunately, it didn’t
work. Or rather, it worked extremely
well, but only for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. Over the next 30 years the wealth “trickled
up,” making the rich richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class increasingly
poor. But, to be fair, it seemed like a
good idea at the time, and Reagan had no way of knowing what would happen.
Now, I realize I will be attacked as stupid and naïve for
saying that. Most liberals like to paint
Reagan as an evil, heartless man who purposely instigated the destruction of the
middle class. I, however, liked
President Reagan. My impression of him
at the time was that he was a warm, caring person who genuinely meant
well. I prefer to believe that he was
sincerely convinced those economic policies would work. He, being a generous person, naively assumed
that the wealthy CEOs of the major corporations would do the right thing,
investing their wealth wisely for the benefit of the whole country. Instead it mostly went into their
pockets. How was he to know? Unlike our current President, Mr. Reagan was
not a constitutional scholar. He was a
Hollywood actor who became Governor of California not because of his economic
or political knowledge, but rather, his charm.
As President, he believed what his trusted advisors told him.
I am not sure that President Bush Jr. can be given the same
benefit of the doubt, since by the time he was elected in 2000, the effect of
20 years of Reaganomics should have started to be noticeable. Or, some would argue, it was noticeably
beneficial to all of his very wealthy friends in banking and industry and
therefore he chose to continue those same policies, which likewise were being
promoted ever more vigorously by the Republicans in Congress. Meanwhile, wages for 99% of Americans had
been steadily falling since the 1980s relative to the cost of living, despite
worker productivity and corporate profits being at an all-time high.
In any event, deregulation of the banks led to unwise (some would say, "predatory") lending practices in which people were given loans that they were unable to pay
back, and the banks would then foreclose and take their homes. At the same time, the unregulated stock
market was having huge success selling “derivatives,” a complicated sort of
gambling whereby investors could make money on the sub-prime mortgage loans in a
manner which I do not fully understand, and as with all gambling, a “winning
streak” cannot last forever. At some point
in 2007 it all came crashing down, the banks and corporations began to fall
like dominoes, and the stock market plummeted.
That was not supposed to happen, according to what I learned
at my Libertarian college summer school at the Cato Institute, which the Koch
Foundation had given me a generous scholarship to attend. The students were told that free market
capitalism was essential to our constitutional freedoms, and that the
government should never interfere. The
Market was something almost sacred which, if left alone, was self-regulating and could be completely trusted
to provide the best possible outcome for everyone. Therefore, regulation of banks and industry,
and labor laws like the minimum wage and overtime pay were “un-American” and dangerous
to Liberty. This is the belief still
promoted by the Koch Foundation and the GOP – not because it is true, but
because it advances their agenda of corporate control over America. Contrary to what we were told, deregulating
Big Business over the last 30 years did not result in prosperity for most Americans;
it was a catastrophe for 99% of us.
While my favorite Libertarian, Dr. Mary Ruwart, describes in glowing terms how a truly free market would create jobs and opportunity and
wealth for everyone, unfortunately we can’t get there from here. There is no “free market” in America because
the playing field is not even close to being level, and the game is already
rigged to prevent competition. I am
quite sure this is not what our Founders intended, and it is the key point
where I differ from "libertarian" philosophy as it is commonly presented today.
The word “Libertarian” as adopted by the GOP has come to
mean the liberty of corporations to exploit peoples’ labor and rip us off to
the fullest extent possible. These faux “libertarians” who want to deregulate
the banks and industry are perfectly happy to regulate the hell out of ordinary
citizens in our own bedrooms and small business owners in our attempts to compete with Big Business. That
is why they support the Citizens United ruling which awarded “personhood” to
corporations and equated money with “free speech,” thereby essentially handing
over our elections to them. This
collusion of government and industry, i.e. fascism, is the opposite of liberty!
In 2008, with an epidemic of people losing their homes in the
wake of the stock market crash, the government stepped in to save the tanking
economy, offering bailouts. The GOP
supported the bailouts as a necessary response to the emergency situation. But, the bailouts were not given to the
citizens who had lost their homes and their retirement, or people drowning in
debt from high-interest student loans or credit cards, or those bankrupted by
medical bills. Family farms and small
businesses were not eligible for help. No,
not a penny of the bailouts went to the American people. Rather, the money was given to the same banks
which had issued the bad loans, foreclosed and taken the peoples’ homes, and
gambled with their derivatives, and to the insurance companies who had either
refused to insure them, or else collected their premiums and then failed to pay
the claims.
Because of my belief in the Constitution and the principle
of Liberty, I supported Gary Johnson in the last election. This was despite my affection for Barry
Obama, with whom I attended high school in Hawaii and who I think has done an
amazing job in the face of continual opposition from Congress. Unbelievably, the GOP treason went so far as
to shut down the government, including suspending pay for our active duty
military, in protest of the Affordable Care Act because they did not want the
American people to have the same health insurance that they enjoy, which our
tax dollars paid for! The President finally wrangled an agreement with Congress so that our military personnel could pay their rent and feed their families. Since then Congress has agreed to hardly anything.
Anyway, while I respect Mr. Obama, Gary Johnson was the only candidate in the race with the balls to openly state in his platform that he
would oppose “crony capitalism,” another name for fascism. He also was the only candidate to fully
support bodily autonomy, equal rights for all Americans including LGBT, and the
legalization of cannabis, which our Founders grew and is now illegal in most
states, primarily due to the pharmaceutical industry lobby. Interestingly, while David Koch once ran as
Libertarian VP and has funded many campaigns, he did not donate to Gary
Johnson, on the basis that Gary was “too extreme” in his support of personal
liberty!
Our Constitution states:
“We the People of the United States in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.”
While I still believe in the Libertarian principle that the
primary function of government is “to prevent force and fraud,” over time I
have come to a broader understanding of those terms which recommends government
intervention to a greater extent than I once thought necessary. The “free market” sounds good in theory, but
what happens when unrestrained capitalism is unjust, upsets domestic Tranquility, fails to
provide for the common defense, damages the general Welfare, and conflicts with
the Liberty of individual citizens and their right to private property? If it comes down to a choice between
capitalism and the broader principle of the Constitution itself, which is to
protect our country and its people, then I must choose the Constitution.
The sort of “liberty” advocated by the Kochs and the GOP is the freedom of
citizens to be mercilessly exploited by the banks, insurance companies and corporations, to work
long hours at low wages insufficient for survival, to be sent to war and then
cast off like damaged goods, to become homeless, to starve, or to die from lack
of medical care. Conservatives obsess
over the “free market,” which is not actually mentioned (only implied) in the
Constitution, while completely ignoring the “promote the general Welfare” part. That is because they are doing the bidding of
their corporate masters. Congress does
not represent us, the ordinary working people whose taxes pay their salaries
and provide them with generous benefits including the best health care
available. They represent the
billionaire donors who have paid for their election, made easier by the
Citizens United ruling.
Our Founders came to the new world for Liberty. They fought a war for independence from Britain
motivated in part by “taxation without representation,” as well as their
opposition to the monopoly of the East India Company, the “crony capitalism” of
its day. The current policies supported
by the GOP and promoted by the Koch Foundation would turn Big Business loose to
devour America and take away all the protections that our citizens have
enjoyed. This has been made possible by unlimited
campaign financing and laws enacted to take away our representation and hand it
over to the corporations, all in the name of so-called “constitutional
liberty.” The Constitution was written
to define and limit government in order to guarantee the rights and liberties
of the American people, not the multinational corporations.
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