Groovy Over Gravitas: The Unbearable Liteness of Being Reason

Classical Liberalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Reason

The reason I prefer to describe myself as a “classical liberal” is in order to avoid being equated with libertarians who equate liberty with grooviness. Exemplars are Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch of Reason magazine, who see the Ron Paul surge, in part, as a yearning for the “freewheeling fun of libertarianism.”

The breathy, unsubstantial nature of Reason libertarians was best encapsulated in the essay “Burke vs. Reason,” reproduced hereunder. Although I don’t agree with the writer about everything—his discounting of Ayn Rand, for example—Grace captures the essence of this libertarianism: Groovy over gravitas.

More material, “Reason’s list [of ’35 heroes of freedom’] is based on a false premise.” America is not freer than ever, as Reason’s groovy gush claims. If these libertines are not hip to that reality, then their feel for freedom—never mind their reasoning—is not very good.

What’s left but to groove on?

Burke vs. Reason
By Kevin Michael Grace | Jan 18, 2004

“Reason” believes that the world has become “groovier” since 1968, the year of that magazine’s founding. Not merely “groovier,” mind you, but “groovier and groovier.” In celebration, it has nominated “35 heroes of freedom,” freedom apparently being synonymous with grooviness. This list, and the reasons given for the selection of the “heroes” therein is sufficient to persuade me that modern libertarianism, at least as exemplified by Reason magazine, is not a philosophy suitable for adults.
What sort of person says “groovy,” anyway? The last time I heard it used non-ironically was by a crooked lawyer in the movie To Live and Die in L.A. He was shot to death directly afterward and quite deservedly so. With its connotations of kaftans, flower power and “The Pope Smokes Dope,” its use today suggests superannuated hippies nostalgic for the Golden Dawn of the 1960s. But Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor and presumed builder of the Pantheon of Groovy, is in his 40s and was thus barely toilet-trained during the Summer of Love. So the only nostalgia here is for a place that has never existed and never shall: Utopia.
To accuse someone or something of being “utopian” is normally considered an insult, for the reason that various attempts to mandate Heaven on Earth have resulted in the best approximations of Hell men can devise, but Reason thinks differently:
“For all of its many problems, the world we live in is dizzying in its variety, breathtaking in its riches, and wide-ranging in its options. Malcontents on the right and left who diagnose modernity as suffering from “affluenza” or “options anxiety” will admit this much: These days we’ve even got a greater choice of ways to be unhappy. Which may be as close to a definition of utopia as we’re likely to come.”
One would have thought it obvious that “a greater choice of ways to be unhappy” is a powerful argument against license. Certainly Edmund Burke thought so. Burke is considered the father of modern conservatism, but he was a Whig not a Tory, the champion of the American colonists and the people of India against the depredations of Warren Hastings. A classical liberal, in other words.
According to Burke,
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Certainly Thomas Szasz, one of Reason’s 35 heroes, would agree with Burke. But Margaret Thatcher, another hero, would not. “There is no such thing as society,” she famously declared. Reason evidently agrees, which explains the presence on its list of William Burroughs, Larry Flynt, Madonna, Martina Navratilova and Dennis Rodman, who are celebrated for their antinomianism and their intemperance.
William Burroughs is praised for “irrevocably loosen[ing] up Eisenhower’s America. Not only is his fiction (Junky, Naked Lunch, Nova Express) relentlessly anti-authoritarian, he proved that you can abuse your body in every way imaginable and still outlive the entire universe.” Like Rimbaud, Burroughs extolled the “derangement of all the senses”; unlike Rimbaud, his work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful. Burroughs also killed his wife and got away with it, but misogyny is not incompatible with grooviness, it seems.
Which brings us to Larry Flynt.
“Where Hugh Hefner mainstreamed bohemian sexual mores, hard-core porn merchant Flynt brought tastelessness to new depths, inspiring an unthinkable but revealing coalition between social conservatives and puritanical feminists–and helping to strengthen First Amendment protections for free expression along the way.”
Never mind that the First Amendment protects not “free expression” but “freedom of speech.” What is the nature of Flynt’s expression? “Chester the molester,” the depiction of a woman being put through a meat grinder, the reduction of the erotic to the clinical detachment of the livestock buyer and the mortician.
Madonna is praised for leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” In reality, Madonna’s career poses the question, How can you Ã?©pater le bourgeois after the burghers have embraced bohemianism? The answer is, You can’t. And so she has been reduced to publicly consuming her children, i.e., the likes of Britney Spears and Christian Aguilera.
Martina Navratilova is praised “as the first superstar athlete to admit she was gay and the first woman to play tennis like a man…she smashed stultifying stereotypes like so many poorly hit lobs.” But Navratilova has cheerfully admitted that even during her prime any one of the 100 top-ranked male players would have beaten her. As for stereotypes, she has firmly established in the public mind the conflation of female athletes with lesbianism. Which is not a good thing, is it?
Dennis Rodman is praised for “set[ting] an X-Men-level standard for cultural mutation. His flamboyant, frequently gay-ish antics place him in apostolic succession to a madcap handful of athletes such as Joe Namath, Rollie Fingers, and Muhammad Ali, all of whom challenged the lantern-jawed stiffness that had traditionally made sports stars such dull role models.” Rodman is a wreck of a man who wasted his talent, trashed his career and serves as a role model only for those that seek to emulate the insane, but what is that compared to the value of “gay-ish antics”?
It is worth noting that Reason’s list excludes cultural figures of eminence. (Unless you believe Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein and Willie Nelson count.) It is not as if America has not witnessed the flowering of great artists since 1968: Tom Wolfe in belles-lettres, Stanley Kubrick in film and Philip Glass in music are three that come to mind. But these men fail the grooviness test. Wolfe and Kubrick are rather gloomy about the human condition. And Glass is a Buddhist, a religion that teaches that desire is the root of human suffering, while Reason teaches the exact opposite.
To be fair, Reason’s list contains a number of worthies: Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Jane Jacobs, Ron Paul, Szasz, Clarence Thomas. But would they celebrate the destruction of all norms and the reduction of people to the level of atoms seeking ceaselessly and exclusively to maximize their utility? I think not.
In any event, Reason’s list is based on a false premise. The world may be freer since 1968, but Reason’s editors do not live in the world, they live in the United States. And only a fool or liar would deny that America is much less free than it was 35 years ago. There is no sphere of human activity that American governments do not seek to regulate–except the sexual sphere. Laws proliferate at such a rate that everyone is a law-breaker. There is nowhere Americans can go when they simply want to be left alone. Just ask Randy Weaver and David Koresh. Meanwhile, the range of acceptable opinion becomes ever more narrow. Just ask Al Campanis, Jimmy the Greek, Trent Lott, Rush Limbaugh, Gregg Easterbrook, et al. The world we live in may be dizzying in its variety, but America becomes less “diverse” with each passing day.
A glance at any newspaper serves to demonstrate that Americans no longer believe in personal responsibility. They have become as children; their woes are always someone else’s fault. “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.” If Burke was right, then American liberty is in mortal danger. If the juvenile delinquents at Reason are right, that is as nothing compared to the constitutionally guaranteed right of the cabaret artiste to masturbate in public. To what will Americans listen and to whom? The counsels of the wise and good or the flattery of knaves? Burke or Reason? The future of the Republic rests on the answers to these questions.

Kevin Michael Grace is an unemployed journalist who maintains the website TheAmbler.com.

Update # II:Erasing The Afrikaner Nation

Classical Liberalism, Communism, Crime, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, South-Africa

“CNN’s Kyra Phillips has led her viewers to believe that dangling a noose—an impolite and impolitic form of expression—is a hate crime; a black man beating a white man to a pulp—not so much. Being maimed or murdered, evidently, doesn’t compare to being maligned. Phillips and the feminized establishment media have difficulties differentiating a felony from an affront to feelings. No wonder these wonder men and women are mum about who’s killing whom in the democratic South Africa, the pride of the liberal press…”

I’m aware that in “Erasing the Afrikaner Nation” I’m reminding readers, on the happy occasion of the Thanksgiving, of brutal injustices. But, as I give thanks for the safety and security I enjoy in my American home, and for the love of my beloved husband and daughter, I think too of the innocents—members of my extended family included—imperiled in my former homeland.

Happy Thanksgiving,

ILANA

Update # I: Some of the letters received and promptly discarded were the ones with The Expected Epithet. As one wise scholar once said to me, “If you are not called a racist, then, it seems to me, you are in intellectual trouble and it is high time to reconsider your own thinking.”

The other less expected avenue of attack was a defense of Marxism, coupled to a claim, thrown into the ignorant mix, that the South African Communist Party is a spent force in that political landscape. On display here is an ignorance of the ANC, its history and philosophy.

The South African Communist Party, the African National Congress, and the ANC’s terrorist arm, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), were overlapping, intricately intertwined entities, historically and ideologically.

The Communist Party is a rib from the ANC’s rib cage. There is an overlap in membership, confirms the government’s own website, with “a number of SACP members occupying seats in the General Assembly by virtue of their dual ANC membership—The party’s membership overlaps with those of the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), its partners in what is known as the tripartite alliance. It has significant representation in the ANC and government, from the executive down to local government structures.”
“The party believes in the establishment of a socialist society, which it says should be characterized by democracy, equality, freedom, and the socialization of the predominant part of the economy.”

“Socialization,” to those who still don’t know, is antithetical to freedom. This is the embodiment of Orwellian speech.

The ANC-orchestrated “racial socialism” that is contributing to the destruction of South Africa would do any modern, media-savvy Marxist proud. This is not merely affirmative action—which is bad enough—but rather, legislation that does away with property rights, with the aim of transferring wealth, by stealth, from white owners to black non-owners. ANC position papers hint at its ideological direction/intentions. The leopard has not changed its spots; it’s just a very cunning leopard.

Update # II (Nov. 27): A number of “Christian” souls have written in to gloat: Afrikaners are getting their comeuppance because of the sins of apartheid. The more hateful of these letters were not published.

These collectivists conflate the actions and legislation enacted by the state with the wishes and will of all European people—Boer and British alike. Such is the collectivist mindset.

However, even if we concede the collectivist’s argument, the destruction wrought by the criminal class (that includes the ANC government) to South Africa’s economy and productive workers dwarfs compared to the sins of apartheid. What you have in the offing is the looming demise of a civilization. As for the numbers, I quote from an essay familiar by now to readers of BAB and IlanaMercer.com:

“Few know that during the decades of the repressive apartheid regime, only a few hundred Africans perished as a direct result of police brutality. A horrible injustice, indubitably, but nothing approximating the carnage under ‘free’ South Africa, where thousands of Africans perish every few months. (Let us not beat about the bush; crime in South Africa is black on black and black on white.)”

But then, collectivists love what they’d call “creative destruction.”

Al Jazeera: Fair, Balanced & Banned In The US

Journalism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda

I first saw Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychiatrist who regularly exposes Islam’s true hue, on Al Jazeera. Well, not quite; Al Jazeera is banned in the land of the free. This particular broadcast was made available on the Internet by the Middle East Media Research Institute. What I saw of the Al Jazeera program was fair and balanced. Unlike “Fix News,” it was also intelligent—the moderator made reference to, gasp, Samuel P. Huntington. Most of “Fix News’” bimbos and beaus have no idea who that American intellectual is. At the time, I wrote:

“For my money, if Al-Jazeera continues to provoke viewers with the likes of Sultan, I’ll be signing on when they start to transmit here. It’s a whole lot better than enduring Chris Matthews’ incestuous love-ins with ‘The ‘Hardball’ hotshots.’ That’s when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Rita Cosby aka ‘Throaty McHuskington,’ who each torture us independently during their respective programs, combine to amplify the unedifying effects.
As for the girls at CNN—Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, and Anderson Cooper appear indifferent to professional competition. Edgy reporting elsewhere never rubs off on this crew. They prefer to kvetch interminably about colorectal, breast, and lung cancer; anorexia nervosa, and Katrina. In this stream of soporific, soft-news stories, Wafa Sultan is indeed a rarity.”

Speaking recently to my fervently pro-Israel father in South Africa, he said: “The only fair shake Israel ever gets in this country’s media is from Al-Jazeera. The women anchors are also beautiful and refined,” he added. That’s more than you can say of say, Laurie Dhue—an anchor with a foghorn for a voice and a neck as thick as an ox’s. Dhue modulates her voice and pulls faces to ensure the viewer knows exactly where she stands on the issues. Kimberly Guilfoyle’s shrieking voice and large overbite are also something to behold. And have you seen Fix’s Red-Eye female representatives? Loud, crass, and crude doesn’t begin to capture their charms.

In “Bring the Real World Home,” Roger Cohen of the New York Times confirms what I surmised about Al Jazeera:

“A year after its launch, it reaches 100 million households worldwide. Its focus is on ‘reporting from the political south to the political north,’ as Nigel Parsons, its managing director, put it. The world it presents, more from the impact than the launch point of U.S. missiles, is one that must be understood.

Yet, the network has been sidelined in the United States. Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told me: ‘There’s definitely an attitude here that these guys are the enemy. But in the Mideast, Asia and Europe they have a credibility the U.S. desperately needs.’
Moran met recently with Al Jazeera English executives seeking to extend the service’s Lilliputian reach here. Right now, you can watch it in Toledo, Ohio, through Buckeye Cablesystem, which reaches 147,000 homes.

Or, if you’re in Burlington, Vt., a municipal cable service offers the network to about 1,000 homes. Washington Cable, in the capital, reaches half that. Better options are YouTube or GlobeCast satellite distribution.

These are slim pickings. Al Jazeera English is far more accessible in Israel. Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, told me: ‘It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.’

Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that ‘cable providers shouldn’t give them access.’

Most cable companies have bowed to the pressure while denying politics influenced their decisions. ‘It just comes down to channel capacity and other programming options,’ Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, told me.
Nonsense, says Representative Moran, blaming ‘political winds plus a risk-averse corporate structure.’

These political winds hurt America. Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.

Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.”

Al Jazeera: Fair, Balanced & Banned In The US

Journalism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda

I first saw Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychiatrist who regularly exposes Islam’s true hue, on Al Jazeera. Well, not quite; Al Jazeera is banned in the land of the free. This particular broadcast was made available on the Internet by the Middle East Media Research Institute. What I saw of the Al Jazeera program was fair and balanced. Unlike “Fix News,” it was also intelligent—the moderator made reference to, gasp, Samuel P. Huntington. Most of “Fix News’” bimbos and beaus have no idea who that American intellectual is. At the time, I wrote:

“For my money, if Al-Jazeera continues to provoke viewers with the likes of Sultan, I’ll be signing on when they start to transmit here. It’s a whole lot better than enduring Chris Matthews’ incestuous love-ins with ‘The ‘Hardball’ hotshots.’ That’s when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Rita Cosby aka ‘Throaty McHuskington,’ who each torture us independently during their respective programs, combine to amplify the unedifying effects.
As for the girls at CNN—Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, and Anderson Cooper appear indifferent to professional competition. Edgy reporting elsewhere never rubs off on this crew. They prefer to kvetch interminably about colorectal, breast, and lung cancer; anorexia nervosa, and Katrina. In this stream of soporific, soft-news stories, Wafa Sultan is indeed a rarity.”

Speaking recently to my fervently pro-Israel father in South Africa, he said: “The only fair shake Israel ever gets in this country’s media is from Al-Jazeera. The women anchors are also beautiful and refined,” he added. That’s more than you can say of say, Laurie Dhue—an anchor with a foghorn for a voice and a neck as thick as an ox’s. Dhue modulates her voice and pulls faces to ensure the viewer knows exactly where she stands on the issues. Kimberly Guilfoyle’s shrieking voice and large overbite are also something to behold. And have you seen Fix’s Red-Eye female representatives? Loud, crass, and crude doesn’t begin to capture their charms.

In “Bring the Real World Home,” Roger Cohen of the New York Times confirms what I surmised about Al Jazeera:

“A year after its launch, it reaches 100 million households worldwide. Its focus is on ‘reporting from the political south to the political north,’ as Nigel Parsons, its managing director, put it. The world it presents, more from the impact than the launch point of U.S. missiles, is one that must be understood.

Yet, the network has been sidelined in the United States. Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told me: ‘There’s definitely an attitude here that these guys are the enemy. But in the Mideast, Asia and Europe they have a credibility the U.S. desperately needs.’
Moran met recently with Al Jazeera English executives seeking to extend the service’s Lilliputian reach here. Right now, you can watch it in Toledo, Ohio, through Buckeye Cablesystem, which reaches 147,000 homes.

Or, if you’re in Burlington, Vt., a municipal cable service offers the network to about 1,000 homes. Washington Cable, in the capital, reaches half that. Better options are YouTube or GlobeCast satellite distribution.

These are slim pickings. Al Jazeera English is far more accessible in Israel. Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, told me: ‘It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.’

Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that ‘cable providers shouldn’t give them access.’

Most cable companies have bowed to the pressure while denying politics influenced their decisions. ‘It just comes down to channel capacity and other programming options,’ Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, told me.
Nonsense, says Representative Moran, blaming ‘political winds plus a risk-averse corporate structure.’

These political winds hurt America. Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.

Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.”