Welcome once again to Mises Weekends I'm your host Jeff Deist
and this weekend we're talking about the alt-right
and the Socialist Left and what both of those
emerging political forces might mean for libertarianism in 2016 and beyond.
Actually I gave a speech on this very topic about two weeks ago
in the Mises Circle event in Houston and I got quite a bit of feedback on as you might imagine
I got to all right people
telling me I don't understand the alt-right
and i got some Bernie Sanders progressive telling me I don't understand the left
So I thought it would be good to extrapolate a bit on my talk
and answer perhaps some of those criticisms or questions about it.
Now, sort of underlying all this is this notion
that the libertarian moment has passed, right?
Rand Paul didn't do as well as a lot of people hoped
and there's been some events around the world the rise of Isis
terrorist attacks the immigration and refugee crisis in Europe,
the shootings at the nightclub in Paris
so the mainstream media is telling us that will you put all this together and people have just sort of gotten over this
non-interventionist isolationist libertarianism
and then it's peaked perhaps with ron paul in 2012 and it's had its day
of course I certainly don't agree that the libertarian moment is
over and we'll get into that a little more here as we progress but
I will say that i don't see libertarianism per se as a political movement
and that I see political movements generally is at least
at the national level as not only
a waste of time but actually counterproductive to what we're trying to do
in terms of winning people's hearts and minds and and hopefully
separating and segregating us from this beast of a federal government but
what's so interesting about what's happening I think this year
is that we're really starting to see that this great lie this great myth
that there's a democratic consensus that can be reached in America
is being laid bare and social media does
so much to make this apparent to us right people say things on social media
people say things in internets comments section they would never say to each other face-to-face.
So in many ways for the first time in human history we really understand what other Americans think
of each other in a way that we never did before you in the past
maybe if you got really angry about something you saw on in a political debate
you sent a letter to the editor of your newspaper physical letter
and maybe that got printed or or
maybe it didn't but now we have this sort of instantaneous stream-of-consciousness commenting
and I think it is very healthy in the sense
that it's allowing us to move past this
notion that we can all decide things
on some mass democratic basis because we can't
and I think we're seeing this breakdown even mainstream media you know
just this past week we've had two articles one in the washington post
and one by Mona Charen, everyone's favorite neocon
just absolutely unhinged at the Trump phenomenon
you know the idea that Trump could win a majority of electoral votes
to become either the nominee or even the general election winner in the fall
has got new conservative so bent out of shape that
is interesting why I don't care what you think about Trump pro or con
but elites like Mona that are actually starting to exhibit in public what they really believe
which is that they don't believe in democracy they never have, right?
elites only believe in democracy when the right candidate wins.
And we see this time and time again we see this in domestic politics and we see this in foreign policy
where lowlifes like John McCain will support a revolution and say: "Well this is democracy in action."
When the Washington DC foreign-policy establishment candidate wins
the supposedly democratic election in country X or Y or Z,
so again i think from the Libertarian's perspective the idea that the myth of democratic consensus is being blown up is a healthy thing
and I'm not just talking about it a scenario where one side of the other
losses and says while the other side engaged in electoral fraud like we saw in the Bush vs. Gore debate in 2000.
And when you out talking about one side just saying, "well because of campaign finance rules, you know,
special interest money can kind of by-elections and the real democratic will of the people
is never really shown at the ballot box because, you know, their message is suppressed
or another message that is better funded prevails.
That is not what we're talking about today we're talking about a situation where millions of people in this country ordinary people
simply will not accept it,
if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States
and millions of conservatives in this country still simply will not accept it as valid and legitimate
if Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of United States
people have actually gotten to the point where they understand
that just because the other side is able to garner 51-percent of voters not of of the population but voters
know that doesn't make the resulting government legitimate, right?
Why should anyone be governed by someone they hate whose policies they disagree with
and whose supporters they don't like? right?
well it's a perfectly valid question, the answer is nobody should be governed
by such a person and there's no political or legal theory that has ever been forwarded
that answers that question and included that so-called that answers that social contract theory, right?
There really isn't a good answer to that question of why should I be governed by someone i hate
simply because that can he was able to get a tiny majority of voters.
And look as libertarians we understand the dangers in this breakdown of democracy right?
when the great questions of a society are no longer decided by politics well there's
two ways that society can go, one is that it can evolve into authoritarianism
but there's another way can evolve and that is to a more libertarian society,
society where the great economic and social questions of the day
are no longer decided by the state or their decided by the state less often or less frequently
and to me that's my definition of a libertarian society where we don't decide things politically
so in that sense I think we should applaud what's going on with this sort of division in America
but I do think as libertarians we should celebrate the death of the democratic myth and
I think as libertarians we should be fundamentally opposed to democracy
because it in itself is fundamentally incompatible with human liberty
so one last point on this democracy issue i'll leave you with a great quote from Hans Hermann Hoppe,
writing in his book "Democracy the god that failed" of course Hope makes the point that
democratic mechanisms are a disaster both economically and morally
so quoting Hoppe here is he says:
"democracy promote shortsightedness capital waste
irresponsibility and moral relativism
it leads to permanent compulsory income and
wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty
it is counterproductive it promotes demagoguery and
egalitarianism is aggressive and
it is potentially totalitarian internally vis-a-vis to its own population
as well as externally in some leads to a dramatic growth of state power
democracy is doomed to collapse just a soviet communism was doomed to collapse." End quote.
So I think that pretty much sums up everything I have to say or feel
about democracy so that's the good news is that the death
of the libertarian movement has been overstated and that the
faltering state of American democracy is something to be celebrated.
But as I said much of my talk in Houston was devoted to talking about these two forces that seem at odds with each other
the progressive left, I will say the socialist left versus this newly emerging alright phenomenon.
So it's fun and it's interesting and I think educational to talk about both of these forces and understand them a little bit.
So what is the new progressive left embodied by the Bernie Sanders phenomenon?
Well you can find it in places like black lives matter you can find it in places like Occupy Wall Street
democratic underground salon.com
feministing.com, another website and
I think to understand today's socialist liberal
today's progressive this course how they turn themselves
you really have to use the term social justice warrior
because that's at the heart of today's progressive
this is not your parents or your grandparents democratic left-wing politics from a few generations ago
which was much more focused on money and economic issues and union power that sort of thing
today's social justice warrior is almost completely focused on identity politics.
right? Identity politics and social justice
is at the heart of the Bernie revolution.
So every issue from the social justice warrior perspective has to be view
to this filter of sexism and racism and homophobia and privilege and transgenderism, etc.
And so America's past viewed through these filters is ever and always shameful
and hence we have to progress past that all the bourgeois America
into a new greater society, right?
so that's really at the heart and the
mind set of socialist americans today.
and of course the socialist left believes in internationalism and global government they love the UN
they love the IMF, they loved the World Bank and and ironically of course they call themselves democrats
but they hate localism, they hate secession they hate actual local control where things are most democratic
and of course they hate the marketplace which is that the only truly democratic mechanism we have in the world
on foreign policy your left progressives will tend to be a little less bellicose at least in rhetoric
than neoconservatives you might call it sort of a peace corps foreign policy
but they still believe in meddling, they still believe it's the role of the United States to spread democracy
may be your typical Bernie border would like to see this done more with foreign aid
or with NGOs and that sort of thing but they're not really against guns and butter and
and we've seen this in the disappearance of the code pink types
who who were so busy when W (Bush) is still present but who
went strangely silent during the Obama administration because at the end of the day
they're not so opposed to Wars when Democrats prosecute them.
On monetary policy Bernie likes to talk about the Fed so I'll give him credit
there but he doesn't understand it and he's mistaken about the harms it does
he has a dim awareness and I think social justice warriors have a demo weariness of how the Fed creates
inequality but they don't understand that
what we need to do is get rid of the political control of money altogether
and return money to the marketplace and let money operators commodities.
So they certainly don't understand that
and Bernie is actually shown that he's a bit of a green backer
he's hired a professor who's behind the modern greenback movement as one of his Economic Advisers.
Now on economics of course the progressive left is completely socialist they believe in
outright if not de facto nationalization of whole industries, education, energy, banking
of course, they believe in vastly increased
amounts of welfare and entitlements to give us more of what they would see is a just
european-style safety net.
They believe in outright wage and price controls and they're open about it to their credit.
They believe in guaranteed minimum income which unfortunately some
libertarians have adopted as well
they also believe in income limits something,
they're very open about the no one should be allowed to make more than X dollars per year.
They are of course entirely animated by the notion of global warming and that government ought to have overarching policies
to prevent this calamity that's coming from the earth overheating and to that end
most progressive socialist actually believe in banning fossil fuels outright,
and of course free speech is not a cornerstone of the new left in America on the contrary,
a significant number of democratic voters in this country would
vote and would advocate criminalizing certain types of hate speech and banning it,
and you know on the non-governmental quasi-private level like media outlets, facebook etc
they certainly worked very hard to suppress conservative and libertarian speech with which they disagree
and we're seeing that you know unravel today in Twitter for example
which is using different out rhythms to sort of dampen the voices of conservatives and and the alrights and libertarians
so the final point I will make about progressives about today
socialist left in America it is very interesting because it's something they actually share
with you all right and that is that the left is not seeking consensus,
with you or anybody else, okay? they're not trying to win your vote
they're not trying to engage you in some intellectual debate and when you over.
They are interested in federalizing or better yet globalizing all decision-making it,
with or without popular support.
So the left is very comfortable with the idea of using executive orders
of using the judiciary to accomplish things through judicial activism which they cannot accomplish at the ballot box.
So for all our talk about democracy
which we could think of as the popular will
they don't really believe in it, right?
They intend to enact their programs for America with or without your support for your blessing.
And they're also very frank and honest about how they want to use demographic shifts,
to accomplish bring in millions of new voters who will vote left
and the through demographics older more conservative voters dying off
and the younger more conservative voters having fewer kids.
So they're not shy about about saying this that you know,
Oprah said something to the effect that we have to wait for some of these older white people to die
to eliminate racism right? So i think this is that one of the interesting hallmarks
of today's left is that they're not seeking consensus with you, they intend to do this one way or another.
So with that said let's talk a little bit about the alt-right.
The alt-right is sort of a new term of art that has come into being in the last year or two.
Its origins have been described to a couple of different bloggers
I'm not sure exactly who owns it but
the thing to understand about the alright is that they're conservatives
but they're not part of the Republican Party they're not part of the right-wing establishment of this country ,
there's certainly very anti establishment
they hate people like cases they hate organs like National Review
and they hate neoconservative organs like the Weekly Standard for example
so really the alt-right is is very much defined by what it's against,
there's not a natural home in a certain publication for the alt-right per se,
you can find certainly alt-right thinking in a website like Breitbart which is a very high traffic right wing website
but really the alt-right finds its home primarily in social media, especially on twitter
there are some alt-right people who are very active on Twitter
and who have managed to advance a narrative using social media
without any kind of mainstream publication behind them.
One interesting thing about the alt-right is that they are too much younger,
traditional conservatives really are dying out, the left is right about that.
Whereas alt-right people tend to skew younger more millennials
and there's certainly more active on some of the newer platforms.
One hallmark of the alt-right is populism, populism combined with nationalism, right?
Unlike the left the alt-right says that it's okay to have a uniquely American identity
and then America's past is not necessarily an inherently shameful
other certainly things that are regrettable but by and large America's a good place in a great country.
And I think one of the great things about the populism we've seen in the alt-right is there is a suspicion of elites, right?
Which I think is always a healthy thing because most elite in this country became elite
through nefarious state connected means, so to the extent the alt-right is hostile to elite,
I think we should welcome that.
Now where they all right parts with libertarianism rather abruptly is that the alt-right tends to be non-ideological,
and they look at libertarianism with great suspicion because they don't like the idea of ideological movements
they're more interested in identity politics like the left.
On the issue of borders the alt-right certainly disagrees with the left and with many libertarians
they think that we should have limited or no immigration into America, certainly not Islamic immigration.
Now on culture and Christianity and religion you really start to see the split
between the old right and the new emerging alright.
I would say the alt-right is culturally christian,
but they're not animated by Christian in the same way that the religious right or the pro-life right is,
they don't believe in this sort of weak simpering Christianity that has
taken root in America has turned the other cheek Christianity,
this Christianity that says 'we have to welcome immigrants from third world countries'.
So while the alt-right is certainly not pro-abortion and while the
already certainly sympathetic to Christianity it's more of a cultural Christianity
Rather than an Evangelical or a Zionist Christianity.
Now this distinction between what we might call cultural Christianity and evangelical Christianity
shows itself reveals itself also in the alt-rights view towards foreign policy, right?
The alt-right is much more in the Pat Buchanan camp of an america first type foreign policy,
the alt-right is tired of endless intractable wars in the Middle East and and I think most people
on the alt-right feel like we shouldn't be expanding American blood and treasure to save Iraq
or any other country Syria in the Middle East.
So in that sense there's some room for agreement between libertarians on foreign policy,
but there's less room for agreement certainly between the alt-right and libertarians on economic issues.
The alt-right is openly protectionists, while suspicious of central banking not necessarily clamoring to end the Fed.
I think what's most importantly here is the alt-right is not made up of free-market ideologues, right?
they believe that there are other issues the health of the nation the identity of the nation that are more important
than just dollars incense or GDP.
So to that end they're openly protectionists they believe
that we ought to have trade policies that benefit american workers at the expense of cheap imports
and they're not afraid to criticize right-wingers and libertarians as sort of these
actually as a tyrannized economic actors who only care about the financial bottom line in our country.
One thing that's very interesting to me about the alt-right
and then one thing that distinguishes them from more traditional mainstream conservatives
is they are not afraid of this identity politics game, right?
The left considers most right-wingers and certainly most alt-writers as racist or xenophobic or homophobic or whatever it might be
and the alt-right actually pushes back on this and says: "Look, identity politics is a two-way street,
and the fact that whites or white males have been marginalized in demonizing society
gives us a rallying cry to mobilize
those white male voters and we're not going to be apologetic about it so in that sense
it is more honest and open and refreshingly so
than mainstream conservatives has been,
because mainstream conservatives have unfortunately falling into this
trap of accepting the premises and left and trying to co-opt
and talk about nonsensical statist programs about diversity and inclusion, etc.
So in that sense I think it's refreshing
and finally you know one last point I'll make about the alt-right is something they share
with the socialist left in this country which is that they are not really seeking consensus any longer, right?
They're not trying to win people on the left.
there are very much unafraid of being marginalized or called names
and I think a lot of this stems from the fact that alt-right people are younger,
and they've grown up in a political era where they don't feel like there's anything left to lose, right?
mainstream conservatism has utterly failed to stop the incremental march of progressivism throughout the 20th century
so for a lot of these younger people the dream of a nice affordable house,
and no student loan debt and
getting married and having kids and a white picket fence has really been blown up ,
it's blown up in their faces,
and so they blame conservatives for not conserving this element of America,
and so you know they're really ready to go to battle with the social justice warriors
and they're not afraid of it they're not afraid to use course your language were to be more strident
and just admit it so I think what's so interesting about the alt-right is that
just like the far left they're not
trying to obtain consensus for their views,
they are just trying to find an avenue for their views to prevail.
So that being said let me wrap up with just a few thoughts about what we can learn from all this, now,
a lot of people in libertarian circles
feel that populism and demagoguery are always bad things and
and maybe there's an element of truth to that but,
is there anything good that libertarians can take from these two emerging movements,
let me give you a quote from Murray Rothbard on demagogues,
this is from 1954 but it really reads perfectly today and I think it especially applies to the Trump phenomenon
quoting Murray he says:
"Is a fashion belief that an idea is wrong in proportion to its extremism
to the professional middle of the rotor a species that has always found in abundance
the demagogue invariably comes as a nasty shock,
for is one of the most admirable qualities of the demagogue that he forces men to think,
some for the first time in their lives.
Out of the model of current ideas both fashionable and unfashionable he extract some
and pushes them to their logical conclusions i.e. to extremes,
he thereby forces people either to reject their loosely held uses unsound
where to find them sound and pursue them to their logical consequences.
Far from being an irrational force then the silliest of demagogues is a great servant of reason
even when he is mostly in the wrong."
So I think that's a fantastic quote and I think it tells us that there's something
we can gain from the environment that's brewing today in America behind this 2016 election.
So just a few thoughts in conclusion.
If we understand that the Socialist Left opposes what it sees as an unjust economic elite
and if we understand that the alt-right opposes what it sees
as an unjust cultural elite and maybe we can make some headway with both sides
in arguing that you know these elites are to a large extent created and funded by the State,
if you were to reduce the size and scope of the state in our lives
I would argue that you would reduce the power of both cultural and economic elites over the rest of us,
so I think we ought to stand ready to make this point that we can ratchet down
some of this lack of social code even in society by reducing the State.
And really I think that we need to make
the point and we need to make it more frequently we need to make it better that
the future is really what works versus what doesn't.
Americans are not necessarily ideological animal so,
what we know about liberty and markets is that they work,
what we know about the State and democracy is that they don't work.
So since the State can't work we ought to make the case to people that
the solutions to our problems are actually non-state solutions, right? the State can't remake the Middle East,
it can't win wars it can't pay entitlements and welfare much longer,
particularly with the actuarial reality behind the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit,
and most of all the state can't create social cohesion, right?
in fact you can only make the social disruption worse.
So we don't necessarily need to convince people on either side who are hostile liberty to become libertarians,
but we need to explain to them how the State makes things worse
and more importantly for our own self-interest we need to focus on the process
of unyoking ourselves from them, right?
Because at the end of the day I think that the alright and the progressive left
represent far more of a cultural divide than they do a political divide
So I think what we need to explain to people and do a better job of explaining is
that radical decentralization of political power may be the only way
to save America from some sort of unpleasant and authoritarian future.
So that being said ladies and gentlemen have a great weekend.
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