Thanksgiving for me is usually a summary missionary experience with the Church of Libertarians - i am preached to by bright eyed, feverish sorts whose sermons - like any religious ideas - are positive and one sided and absolutely ungrounded in fact.
This is where I usually quibble with Libertarians - at least with Conservative Republicans you have a concrete grounding of history and data to give and take with. But Libertarians live in the air! You can't criticize them . . . well, you can - but for every criticism they have a ready and prepared answer. It doesn't matter what your criticism is, their answers are general and broad enough to cover all conflicting thoughts - and that's because there is not one single place on earth where Libertarianism exists. If you want to discuss Capitalism or Socialism or Marxism you have thousands of Real World examples and facts and data at your disposal. You can see how the glossy ideals lose some of their gloss when they are actually put into practice. Which is okay, of course. That's reality.
But there is not one country, city, county or small town that exists as a working example of Libertarianism. It's all theory, and theory can always be dressed up or excused with more theory. You don't have the boring, pedestrian examination of Real Facts to get in the way with your discussions. Libertarian theory is just that: theory. It's about as constructive as arguing about Revelations.
You'd think that after all this time of unbridled Common Man anger that the Libertarians would have managed to convince at least one small town in the Heartland, where their support is strongest, to at least try to create a small, working version of Utopia.
Is there anywhere? If you're reading this Blog please make comment so that we can look at it.
People don't seem to be buying it, however. They don't want to play. Perhaps deep down inside the Working Man has some vestigial memory of the fact that it was they themselves who rolled up their sleeves and marched on the capitals and demanded the very regulation that the Libertarians want to strangle off. It wasn't the Liberal Elite of the Eastern Seaboard - it was the farmers and the factory workers of Small Town America who joined the Populist Party and demanded that something be done with the predation and rape of Big Railroad and the Slaughterhouses and Big Oil. Which, I think, is just fine with the Libertarians. It gives them a zealot's fire to preach, preach, preach without ever fearing their ideas will ever be judged on their own concrete merits.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the way Republicans have been able to galvanize that same Heartland Population to vote into place economic theories that undermine their security by attaching it to Fire and Brimstone Moral Outrage about all kinds of things - and then they - the Republicans - take control of the Congress and the Presidency, as they have repeatedly since the 1970s - and they do absolutely nothing to further those ideals: e.g. Abortion is still legal. There has been no real assault on fire-arm ownership. Nothing has been proposed by those leaders that will actually help out the family. They talk about it and talk about it, but when the time comes, the Republican Party is a one trick pony: lower taxes for everyone and deregulation.
Which is fine, I suppose - but how come the voting public doesn't hold them accountable for these empty promises that seem to be at the center of the platform. They don't even try to work this Moral Legislation.
Because they know it will never happen. But they can sound True Blue by railing against a Straw Giant like everyone's David facing Goliath . . .
Again, if anyone reading this blog can quote me an example on the contrary side, please submit it in the comments.
