link to original reddit post by /u/Lurkinstein
Okay, full disclosure. I didn't write this screed, it's something put up by one of the commentators at reason.com. However, it sums up perfectly my issues with the Trump era right-wing.
I'm posting because I feel the liberty movement is being..... I won't say "infiltrated" because I don't believe it's a nefarious conspiracy, but it seems to be attracting waves of people (at least on the Internet) who are trying to use libertarian logic to justify what are ultimately unlibertarian policies. I see this with users on r/Libertarian sticking up for cancel culture, or trying to say Biden was the most libertarian candidate in the last election.
But it's coming from the right, too, and that I've seen up close and personal. Without further ado here is the screed:
Libertarian ideas are overrepresented in policy debates; Americans are not, by and large, libertarians. Indeed, the big issue I have with the Trump movement (and the post 2016 hard right in general) is that they tend to be almost exactly the opposite: socially conservative but also fairly fiscally liberal, concerned about government waste and spending on foreign aid but open to big public programs that directly benefit *worthy* Americans.
I think this is central to the worldview of the modern Right: that the nation should be divided into those who are “worthy” and those who are “unworthy”, and the job of government is to protect the “worthy” from external forces which might disrupt their lifestyles.
The “worthy” are the Real Muricans, the “silent majority”, the saltiest of the salt-of-the-earth Middle American Heartland family. They should get tax breaks, subsidies, benefits, welfare, government assistance, whatever is required to make them prosperous and thrive. The government should protect the “worthy” against: illegal immigrants, globalization, China, Antifa, Big Tech, “elites”, and every other enemy which seeks to upend and alter America’s traditional values.
So when the Iowa farmer gets farm subsidies, that’s okay because they are going to a worthy cause, because Iowa farmers are high on the list of worthy Americans. But if the poor single mom in the inner city gets welfare benefits, that’s an outrage, even if she gets LESS money than the farmer gets, because it’s going to the “unworthy”, whom we “all know” is just going to use those benefits to perpetuate a cycle of undesirable behavior. Never mind that the Iowa farmer might take his subsidy check to run out and buy a pickup truck he probably can’t afford, or to make foolish investments gambling on continued taxpayer support down the road. No one talks about that and no one cares. But it is of course an important matter of public policy to micromanage the life of the poor single mom if she deigns to accept one penny of welfare assistance.
If poor people in the inner city get hooked on crack or meth, we are supposed to regard that as a self-destructive act borne of a result of poor moral choices, and the ‘victims’ here should get a stern moral scolding and sent to jail where they can clean up their lives. But if poor people in Appalachia get hooked on oxycontin, we are supposed to regard that as a cry for help from an underserved population that is really struggling economically and who require government action to set things right. The proper course of action here is counseling and economic assistance, and throwing Perdue Pharma execs in jail instead. Because poor people in the heartland are high on the “worthiness” list, but poor people in inner cities are low on the “worthiness” list.
This modern right-wing viewpoint of course has little connection with liberty as an abstract concept, because the only liberty that matters to them is the liberty of the worthy. It goes even beyond that: violating the liberty of everyone else is justified if it means merely upholding the lifestyle of the worthy. So imposing tariffs on China violates everyone’s liberty in one way or another, but it is justified in this view because it presupposes to help those who are “worthy”, the blue collar American heartland factory worker. This factory worker doesn’t have any sort of right to a factory job, but the government should act as if he/she does, and violating everyone else’s liberty is justified in realizing that result.
Same deal with immigration more broadly, illegal or otherwise. It is justified to force everyone into government-mandated burdens and regulations, because it’s imagined that these regulations benefit the worthy – the local businesses in Heartland America. Never mind that these regulations, were they imposed by any other government agency, would be considered an onerous burden and government overreach by these same people who complain about government regulations. But here, government regulations concerning immigration are totally fine because they benefit “the worthy”.
This is why we can’t treat right-wingers as reliable libertarian allies. They will stick up for liberty, but only conditionally, and only if it benefits their coalition of “worthy Americans”. But the moment anyone suggests that hey, immigration regulations are just as burdensome as OSHA regulations or EPA regulations and maybe we should cut back on ALL regulations, then we’ve lost them.
Discuss among yourselves.