
Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal (1968) - vezzy-fnord
https://mises.org/library/confessions-right-wing-liberal
======
WBrentWilliams
Interesting reading. I think the intellectual mistake the author made is in
thinking that one's political dogma (and therefore party affiliation) should
not change over time because the party does not change over time. That is, the
idea that a political party is the manifestation of an unchanging view.

The fun revelation is that business dresses itself up as conservative, then
pursues its own ends of profit. That's the entire definition of bourgeois. It
is worth highlighting as in many ways, the free software movement is a very
conservative one, from the point of view of the way code was shared in the
beginning of its history: That is, you asked the programmer who wrote the code
you were interested in for a copy and usually got it gratis as the money was
made in selling the equipment. The change of label to liberal-radical came
later when business started to realize that software, itself, was a sell-able
product.

The point I'm making is that choosing a side in any two party system is always
artificial. Any party affiliation should be viewed as one of convenience. This
explains why Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democratic Party and why both
Paul politicians aligned with the GOP.

From my standpoint, the only winning play for the individual is to decide what
is important to yourself, acknowledge that it will change over time, and
remember not to get caught up in the game being played. Your "side", or party
affiliation, in fact, should change as your interests change.

In other words, don't be proud of your party, and don't overly-identify with
said party.

~~~
bmelton
> In other words, don't be proud of your party, and don't overly-identify with
> said party.

Amen.

While I'm inclined to believe that an adversarial Congress is beneficial to
the nation on the whole, the zeal with which most Americans seek to categorize
themselves into "in-group" and "out-group" members is discomforting.

Scarier though, in my opinion, is how quickly the politicians are to
capitalize on that polarization, which offers instant and immediate
demonification of whomever takes the opposite view; and so long as the parties
work like this, nobody notices that so much of the parties' political
platforms are not internally consistent, or are even highly hypocritical.

Having been swayed by good arguments enough that I felt the need to make sense
of it, I was able to divine a set of 'first principles' that I endorse, and
policy choices that align with those principles tend to be ones that I approve
of, no matter who, or from which party it originates.

Of course, being a political chimera makes for often difficult discussions.

~~~
WBrentWilliams
I go a step farther. In my state, there is no requirement to join a party to
vote in the primaries. Instead, you simply pick a party for which to vote. I
believe the only rational choice is to say "Give me one ballot for each
party," which gives close-to-stacked-rank voting for the primary.

I still show up for the primaries, as I want the chance to choose who I vote
for when I get to the general election. However, such a system makes it
impossible for me to consider political office (beyond school board) as my
primary declaration is a matter of public record, meaning that I would not
pass any test of party purity.

What I really want is stacked-rank voting in the primaries and in the general
election. I think it would be interesting to see how the general public, used
to a Coke vs Pepsi choice, handle a spectrum of choices where you don't have
to Pick Only One.

~~~
bmelton
Agreed again. I'm still dazzled that after all the fanfare and hoopla over
instant runoff voting in the early 2000s that nothing changed. Note, dazzled
!== surprised, but still.

As for parties, I change parties multiple times a year to get the best
possible vote I can. Sometimes that means I'm voting for a particular
candidate, or set of policies, but sometimes also simply against... and yes,
it would completely disqualify us for any public position that couldn't be
voted into as an Independent.

I wonder what it would take for the issue to get real traction though, as the
more and more polarized American society becomes, the more entrenched the two
party system feels. Any fracturing of the system is certain to benefit
somebody disproportionally at first, and it seems like the timetable for
actually making a real push towards it would take longer than the state of
public opinion, so nobody moves towards it because nobody knows who will get
the advantage by the time it happens.

If we accept that the two party system wishes to perpetuate itself, second
only to a more monolithic one-party system, then the conclusion seems
foregone, but perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. Either way, the parties
themselves have shown resistance to warring factions within the party, despite
how much they both claim to prefer a competition of ideas.

------
afsina
Rothbard's view on the the issues like state, liberty and war altered my
perspective a great deal. Also, this video titled "How Murray Rothbard Changed
my Mind on War" may be worth watching to see his influence.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCiMxuX9_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCiMxuX9_g)

~~~
ninerdelta
Wow this is excellent, thanks for posting.

------
kardashev
If only more people read Bastiat...

[http://fee.org/resources/economic-
sophisms/](http://fee.org/resources/economic-sophisms/)

[http://fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_thelaw.pdf](http://fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_thelaw.pdf)

------
irixusr
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Rothbard. The excerpts from his book on
American history are gut wrenching as they are eye openers.

------
wes-exp
> And this meant that the great danger to the peace and freedom of the world
> came not from Moscow or "international communism," but from the U.S. and its
> Empire stretching across and dominating the world.

Can anyone explain how this statement makes any sense for a supposed
libertarian at that time? Any way you look at it, the Soviet Union 1)
suppressed freedom and 2) espoused militarism. I'm puzzled why it seems to get
a free pass here.

~~~
jessaustin
USSR did suppress freedom. It was a state after all; that is the purpose. USSR
had a military, but it never received more than a tiny fraction of the
resources that USA military received. The CIA and other liars continually
exaggerated the strength of USSR military in order to inspire paranoia in the
political and media elite, and to keep the world divided in ways that were
good for business.

Their military still might have been a match for USA military, because keeping
armaments manufacturers wealthy was never their purpose in the way it was in
USA. Fortunately that test never came, perhaps because USSR believed much of
the same hype we believed in USA. The Soviets were constantly afraid of what
USA might do, and nearly every action they made was a response to that fear.
Thus it was the actions of USA that drove the cold war.

The phrase I'd like to examine is "free pass". What constitutes a "free pass"?
Would we consider allowing people on the other side of the earth to live as
they will to be a "free pass"? How about not attacking those who have never
attacked us? Would _not_ spending more than the rest of the world combined on
our military deserve the classification of "free pass"? We anarchists are so
stupid, please explain it to us.

~~~
pandaman
> The Soviets were constantly afraid of what USA might do, and nearly every
> action they made was a response to that fear. Thus it was the actions of USA
> that drove the cold war.

Every newspaper, every magazine in the USSR had the "Пролетарии всех стран,
соеденяйтесь!" printed above the title. Which roughly means "Working men of
the world, unite!" and refers this Marx's quote:

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare
that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!"

~~~
jessaustin
I'm sure that the Soviets regularly found something in our newspapers that
upset their sensibilities. Our grandparents should have demanded better
justifications for the radical changes made to our nation.

~~~
pandaman
Except Soviets could not possible do this just for the simple reason that they
were not allowed to read your newspapers.

Anyways, the point of that quote was not to enrich the newspaper's contents.
It was to remind the citizens that the USSR's raison d'être was to bring the
world's Communistic revolution.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Not entirely. In fact, one of the main "insights" brought by Stalinism was the
rejection of the necessity of the Marxist international revolution in favor of
Socialism in One Country.

~~~
pandaman
Not entirely. Socialism in one country was a temporary measure since the world
revolution did not take on in the 1920s. The way that measure worked was to
build up military and political power to force the revolution even if some
countries were not progressive enough to do it on their own. Hence the slogan.
Hence the USSR forcing "revolutions" all over the world.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Rothbard's writings have had a great influence on me.

------
randomname2
Good read. It's scary how relevant this still is, 58 years later.

------
pinaceae
so, against the government and against big business? what's left then?

and, awesome how his stance is ultimately self-defeating as any other
political direction/movement will embrace the organisation of a big construct.
libertarians and anarchists are adorable.

~~~
asgard1024
I kinda agree with you, and I think it's unfair you're getting downvoted by
fundamentalists.

I don't understand the libertarian stance either. They are against
concentration and misuse of power (big business and government), which I can
relate to, to an extent. But at the same time, they seem unwilling to help or
even compromise with the other people who are getting screwed (which is often
a majority). Specifically, they don't want to support poor in any way, and are
often against democracy.

Now I sympathize with the cause, but why should I (politically, economically)
help/support person (a libertarian) that is unwilling to help/support me? It
doesn't make any sense, in fact it sounds as a fishy proposition, where I am
gonna get screwed (though at least I appreciate the honesty).

I'd be happy to hear from libertarians how is this supposed to work - why
should I support you? Is your system going to help me when I am in trouble and
how? (Or don't forget to downvote me as a signal that you don't want to have a
tough but mature discussion about your precious beliefs.)

~~~
burntsushi
I am, at least, philosophically libertarian. But I'm not an activist and don't
participate in electoral politics.

Here's the first problem: the word "libertarian" is a huge umbrella term that
encompasses many different philosophies. Reasonable uses of word go from "fuck
you, got mine" all the way to "no coercion, please." I've seen plenty of folks
self identify on various parts of this spectrum, so I'm not even including
derogatory senses of the word. And of course, many would consider this to be a
"right wing" usurpation of the word from traditional leftists. So despite the
broad spectrum, one could still consider it wrong in a variety of ways.

With that said, I personally identify close to "no coercion, please." Notably,
I largely see this as entirely orthogonal to what it means to _help others_.
In contrast, "fuck you, got mine," is a clear statement that "helping others"
is to be looked down upon, and that those who are poor are weak or lazy.

The "no coercion, please" is also easy to conflate with "don't help others"
because such a position often entails an argument in favor of defunding or
abolishing many of the social welfare programs we see today. Often, this
argument is made without any attempt at providing an alternative, so it's
easily dismissed by conscientious individuals. However, many of these
arguments are not based on the proposition that the poor are weak or that
helping others is somehow bad, but rather, that these social welfare programs
are predicated on the use of force (as us libertarians see it, which is not
necessarily how others see it, because certainly not all people think that
taxation is coercive, but I certainly see it that way). Since they are
predicated on the use of force, they are generally incompatible with
libertarian philosophy. However, the part where social welfare programs _help
people_ is, to me, not incompatible at all with libertarian philosophy. For
example, there are uncountably many privately run charities in the world.
These are of course organized voluntarily, and are therefore compatible with
libertarian philosophy.

Naturally, this turns the discussion toward "well private charities provide no
guarantees to help folks in need." And yes, that is true. But now you've
arrived to the heart of the matter: the only way to provide a "guarantee" is
to use coercion. (I personally don't think of this as a guarantee, but
government institutions certainly have an air of longevity and stability that
isn't often associated with private organizations, so I can understand the
sentiment.)

I largely see this as a trade off between freedom and security. Freedom means
there are no guarantees; folks in need will only get help if there are others
willing to give it.

For me personally, I cannot ethically abide coercion, ever. This probably
makes me an absolutist. Of course, in real life, my pragmatism takes over. I
don't mind being an absolutist in theory. ;-)

~~~
chillwaves
>For me personally, I cannot ethically abide coercion, ever.

Do you support Basic Income? The system of "free market capitalism" is
certainly coercive in the way it walls resources off and forces people to play
into the system of exchanging labor for money so they can survive.

~~~
burntsushi
I think I made my position clear.

If "basic income" requires coercive force, then I'm against it.

If "basic income" does not require coercive force, then go for it.

> The system of "free market capitalism" is certainly coercive in the way it
> walls resources off and forces people to play into the system of exchanging
> labor for money so they can survive.

If exchanging labor for goods required for survival meets your definition of
coercion, then we do not share the same definition. I submit that you can keep
your definition. Instead, simply replace all occurrences of the word
"coercion" in my comments as "the initiation of physical force (or threat of)
by a specific person or group."

I'm happy to support the eradication of social ills that meet your definition
of coercion; but I will not abide my definition of coercion in the process.

~~~
asgard1024
It seems to me, since basic income didn't appear spontaneously so far, it
probably requires coercive force to appear, so you're against it.

Anyway, thanks for the reply to my original comment. Like user "solipsism"
though, I found your views somewhat contradictory. But it seems very apparent
that your answer to my question "would you help me if I am in trouble?" is "
_NO_ , if it would mean to coerce the other party to leave you alone". Which
is a rather weak ethic in my book.

~~~
burntsushi
> But it seems very apparent that your answer to my question "would you help
> me if I am in trouble?"

My answer to that question is: "yes."

I'm not sure how you arrived at your conclusion.

