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The company kept.

Kevin Drum is surprised by who turns up on Reason’s poll of prominent libertarians, and I suppose I am, too: any movement than can (avidly) count Wendy McElroy and Charles Murray as members is—oh, hell, one just doesn’t know what to say. —But at the same time, I’m not at all surprised: it’s the usual suspects who measure their liberties in tax cuts and care more about being right than trying to do right—and run the risk of fucking up. You all know these guys, if you’ll permit me a gross generalization: he’s in every comics shop and sci-fi club and weekly Dungeons & Dragons session—actually, let’s swap that out for Diplomacy, or maybe Starfleet Battles, or, yeah, Advanced Squad Leader. —There’s a certain social power that comes from digging into an argument and overwhelming the other side, and nothing fosters argument like making an abstruse, persnickety, anti-conventional choice, clasping it to your bosom, and defending it rigorously against all comers. (“The grapes are sour, as anyone with eyes can plainly see.”) Hence the impish delight that wafts from the screen when Reason asks its assembled panel for their favorite presidents: “Bush 41,” says Jonathan Rauch, almost daring you to ask why. “Grover Cleveland,” says Robert Higgs. Losers fall back on the classics: Washington, Lincoln; Jesse Walker scores over-the-top cool points: “Richard Henry Lee,” he says.

But that certain social power easily evaporates when you find you have to walk your rigorous defense back, and power’s a hard thing to give up, and maybe this is why so many libertarians on this list are voting for Bush again, in spite of. Tax cuts, they say, ignoring the explosive growth of a government that will never fit in that bathtub; Islamofascism, they say, and blithely order up another round of aerial strikes in urban areas full of people who mostly just want to get on with their lives—but really, it’s for much the same reason as the principled non-voters and the Elmer Fudd write-ins: I’d rather be right on my own damn terms, they say, than run the risk of ever being wrong. —The poetic justice of the reality-challenged candidate so many of them have backed into, who clasps his impetuous choices to his bosom and defends them against all comers, on his own damn terms, is chilly comfort. —It’s not that I think that Libertarians for Bush is a large-enough constituency to swing a state, much less the election; it’s just that it’s always hard to see a dream so shiny turn so foully rancid.

(I mean, the Greens at least have a basic faith in the enterprise, however touchingly naïve. —Us Greens? Oh, look: my own concern for coolth is getting in the way!)

The ice has gotten thin beneath my feet out here, so it’s time for me to walk it back. I had a much pettier point to make, before I got distracted; a bean-counting, politically correct point, persnickety in the extreme: reading my way down Reason’s poll, I was surprised to note there’s three times as many Kerry supporters listed as there are women.

One just doesn’t know what to say.

—Filed 1965 days ago to ; .

  1. Sure you know what to say. You just need reminding. Repeat after me:

    Women are so panicky about choice right now that they'd vote for anything zipped into a jackass costume that sort of vaguely promised to kind of maybe (or not) defend Roe.

    Except for me, because I'm a bitter, hate-filled, ankle-biting intransigent, you know. But all the other women, for sure...

    Come back tomorrow. I'll be declaring a 24-hr moratorium on politics at the stroke of noon and instead will be gushing about how adorable Aaron's new kitten is.
    — sacchi del ami    Oct 21, 07:57 PM    #
  2. When I read that list, my main reaction was being pleased that Wendy McElroy doesn't vote. Petty of me, I know.
    — Ampersand    Oct 21, 10:10 PM    #
  3. Your dedication to the cause is admirable, Amy, but once more it's led you to mistake my point: an informal poll has been taken of prominent libertarians by Reason magazine. A number of these libertarians are voting for the libertarian candidate, whether out of resignation or yellow-dog principle. A larger number are not voting at all, writing in a joke candidate, or, for God's sake, voting for Bush. And I went off for a bit (and not too terribly well) about why that might be, which was mostly an excuse to remind everybody of Advanced Squad Leader. (Adolescence is the stage where you think your actions have only the consequences you intend, to cite Teresa Nielsen Hayden citing Anna Vargo; one might contemplate a model of this particular subset as agents free to act within a tightly constrained and carefully laid-out system of rules: society as blind watchmaker's watch, philosophy as technical manual.)

    But I digress, again: the point is there are not that many Kerry supporters on this list. It's not that they ought to be supporting Kerry; there's perfectly good reasons for them not to. The point is: there aren't that many. Because this list of prominent libertarians compiled by a prominent libertarian organ has even fewer women.

    Now: I'm sure Reason would never count beans, and I know they find the least whiff of the politically correct anathema. One could, I suppose, protest that it's merely luck of the draw; one could scribble down some mad cult stud ev psych theory about why libertarianism is weighted toward the XY. (Perhaps the evolutionary pressures of ancestral giraffe-hunting led the Y gene to better appreciate individual liberty.) One might note that a philosophy of I got mine so screw you works best if you've actually got yours. There are many conclusions to be drawn; but my coffee has just finished brewing, so I'll leave them as an exercise for the reader.
    — --k.    Oct 22, 04:45 AM    #
  4. the point is there are not that many Kerry supporters on this list. It's not that they ought to be supporting Kerry; there's perfectly good reasons for them not to

    The Kerry supporters outnumber the Bush supporters 10-9. If you include the people who say they're leaning towards Kerry or Bush but haven't made up their minds, Kerry's ahead 14-13.

    Also -- as long as I'm correcting you -- most of the people polled are libertarians, but that doesn't mean they all are. I don't think Rauch would accept the label, for example, though he likes libs enough to write for us.

    Anyway. Thanks for the long-distance psychoanalysis and all, but I live in a solidly blue state, and even if I didn't the chances of my one vote affecting the outcome would be miniscule. So I see no need to treat my presidential ballot as an opportunity to do anything but blow a raspberry at the system. Sure, it's better to do right than to be right -- but there's simply no way to do right by voting for president. It doesn't have an impact. Period.

    You do right in real, concrete communities, not by a quadrennial abstract act intended to influence which collection of crooks is going to spend the next four years crushing those communities. I'm willing to make trade-offs and messy compromises in my neighborhood politics here in Baltimore -- in fact, I do make trade-offs and messy compromises. That's because here, my actions actually have consequences.
    — Jesse    Oct 22, 08:03 AM    #
  5. Oh, it's hardly long-distance psychoanalysis—more late-night raspberries. (And I was serious about the cool points: I always admire persnickety effort to no discernable benefit—hence my fondness for games like Diplomacy and ASL, no matter how badly I might play them. And which is why I maybe prefer quixotic attempts to do what miniscule amount can be done with quadrennial beauty pageants over gestures too easily dismissed as hipster indifference: but if there's any psychoanalysis to be performed, one should be sure not to miss the seething projection and even the smidge of self-loathing folded into the above. —But I'm down with trade-offs and messy compromises, and I'm gonna read that book one of these days, I swear.)

    So let's just note that, indeed, it's not a list of prominent libs; I hang my head in shame, as I'm only able to blame the hype of others for so mistaking it. Also, my count of Kerry supporters came up 12: I was weighing some more heavily than others, and lumping Bush supporters in with non-yellow-dog fuckits and non-voters on the Other Side.
    — --k.    Oct 22, 09:34 AM    #
  6. One suspects there would be more votes for Lincoln if there were more African-Americans as well...
    — Scott Lemieux    Oct 23, 07:44 PM    #
  7. Reading the Reason article made me recognize the basic problem with the Libertarian Party as a political organization: it is, more or less by definition, composed of people who don't like politics or have much interest in the political process. If any other party or activist group polled its most prominent members the week before a national election, do you think "I don't plan to vote" would come up as an answer even once?
    — Shaenon    Oct 24, 11:39 AM    #
  8. I was surprised to note there’s three times as many Kerry supporters listed as there are women.

    Actually, owing to the wee hours and a kitten crawling on the ol' keyboard, I believe that I actually mis-READ this as "three times as many Kerry supporters ARE women." :o

    Post in haste, repent in leisure. Sorry, k.

    BTW, I was on some Libertarian blog the other day... already forgotten the name or how I got there. They seemed to be spending a lot of time firmly insisting that Scandanavian Socialism is a dismal failure. I never did find out why, or at compared to what, because the postings were all in reverse-chronological order, much like this blog. I'm sure if I'd read back far enough, I would've found the actual stats, as opposed to just the seemingly endless paragraphs gloating about how the stats unfailingly, perfectly proved what an utter, complete failure it all was.

    Is it overly cynical of me to think that the last person one should ask to determine if Socialism is a failure is a Libertarian ? Ah, well, perhaps if I'd been stronger of heart, some actual Swedish and Danish Libertarians would've eventually surfaced. I imagine the gatherings of Libertarians over there must be even smaller and lonelier than the average Green gathering here. (Wouldn't they all want to emigrate here ?) But who knows ? My impatience is always getting me into more and more trouble... :o
    — sacchi del ami    Oct 24, 06:27 PM    #
  9. On the do right/be right persnickety meme: As I went through the Oregon ballot, reading the pros and cons of Measure 34, which would make medical marijuana more accessible to those who need it, I was surprised to see the Libertarian Party in opposition. Indeed, they seemed a little surprised themselves, but then explained that while they believe marijuana, medical or otherwise, should be legalized, they believed the establishment of dispensary sites and regulation of how the medicine was processed and dispensed was simply too much government.

    Cuz, y'know, who wants the gov't to ensure that medicine is safe or that an otherwise illegal drug is dispensed appropriately...? Good lawd.

    — Kevin Moore    Oct 26, 02:18 PM    #

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