January 4, 2009 – 10:50 pm by John

I have been meaning to write about this for a while. A former student of Walter Block wrote to him:

I read an Economist article yesterday praising the government for bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was shocked that such an august publication could be so short-sighted. I talked about it with my liberal girlfriend and for the first time admitted the extent of my libertarian sympathies. She cried when I said I didn’t think people had a right to food. What does one do? I am very tight-lipped about politics for exactly this reason.

“I am very tight-lipped about politics for exactly this reason.” This describes me perfectly. I keep silent when my friends discuss politics. This is partly because it’s hard to sound intelligent, informed, or convincing when you’re holding back and only saying part of what you know and think, and to divulge all I know and think would require calling my friends completely economically ignorant, morally bankrupt, and politically naïve. I don’t want to insult and ridicule them right to their faces. They’re mostly good friends and co-workers; they’re just patently wrong about most things and we have strong disagreements about lots of others. Having morally objectionable and empirically destructive politics doesn’t make you a bad person. It just makes you do bad things.

On the other hand, I could be extreme (the only way to be fully correct) while remaining level-headed, but that’s the second part of the problem. I have such a thin skin that I don’t want to expose myself for the complete libertarian anarchist that I am. Being socially “liberal” and fiscally “conservative,” even to a great extent, is one thing, but insisting upon the complete immorality of the very existence of monopolistic government and advocating a completely non-Statist society is another altogether. I fear their judgment. In other words, I’m kind of a pansy.

Part of my problem is that I’m not so good at discovering or enunciating simple, concrete policy positions that would improve this or that economic, social, or governmental situation; my solution is always to abolish the whole monopolistic State because the voluntary choices of free individuals would sort it out wonderfully. My arguments would always either end in me defending a completely free society, or lying and saying, “Well, now, I wouldn’t go that far….”

Maybe you’d say that if they would judge me so harshly for well-thought-out and well-meaning beliefs, radical though they may find them, they aren’t such good friends to begin with and I need to stop being such a chicken and find new friends. Well, no one’s perfect. (Where would I find them, anyway?)

It probably sounds a little weird for such an avid blagger (except during Christmas vacation without high-speed internet) who is staunchly libertarian in every way to say he’s timid and cowardly about discussing politics with friends, but writing is a lot different from speaking on your feet. Yes, this blag is public, but I neither know nor care which friends know about it. It actually doesn’t matter a whole lot how many strangers read it (though the exposure, discussions, and support of all the regular and occasional visitors make me very happy). This blag is a platform for venting my frustration at the Statist world, crafting my ideas and arguments for continual improvement, going on record as being correct about socialist Statism, and sharing ideas with Kelly.

Anyway, back to what was originally the real topic of this post. Walter Block reflected upon his former student’s dilemma:

…it is tough to be a young male libertarian. At most gatherings where they frequent, the male–female ratio is about ten or twenty to one. For example, at the recent Mises University (look at the picture; see how many women you can find), my estimate is that there were almost 200 students; about 15 or so of them were female. (Hint for young ladies: a word to the wise is sufficient.) Nor is this merely a modern problem for male libertarians. Things have always been this way; I can attest to this, at least from 1962, when I first became a libertarian. What to do? Well, get a non-libertarian girlfriend. Now what? Keep quiet about one of the most important things in your life? Well, engineers, computer nerds, physicists, mathematicians, etc., do not share their technical lives with their wives or girlfriends. Of course, libertarianism is different. It is the rare BBQ, dinner party or PTA meeting where such narrow scientific issues are discussed. But the state of the union, unemployment, foreign policy, elections, feminism, environmentalism, discrimination, etc., are usually at the tip of everyone’s tongue, and libertarians have passionately strong views on all of them. Three hints: one, keep dating until you find someone who can tolerate your views without crying or screaming at you. This girl need not be a libertarian; mere toleration is quite enough; hey, more than enough. Two, engage in a do-it-yourself project: try to convert your date to the one true faith. Three, don’t awfulize about your failures. Instead, keep trying. If at first you don’t succeed…

I don’t know many libertarian girls. I don’t know many girls who even have any libertarian leanings, much less girls who would be described as libertarians. My current girlfriend isn’t. She is fairly non-political, though, which is the next-best thing.

I knew three libertarian(ish) girls in college. One of them married a socialist and became an Obama supporter. The other two are still libertarian, I think. Hopefully even more so than we were in our naïve college libertarian club days. Both of them were pretty hot. One of them is still with her damn College Republicans boyfriend. Maybe he’s a libertarian now. I can’t imagine her staying with a neocon or even a conservative for this long (5+ years?). Oooh, I hate him so much…

I have met one libertarian girl after college, and she said the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me: “I think all taxes are evil.” She was engaged before I ever set eyes on her… Oooh, I hate him so much… Actually, no, I hung out with him a couple times and he’s really cool. On the whole I think I’d rather be able to hate him!

Many people, especially men, do, say, or think things that result in pushing people (good friends or significant others) away when they feel they’re getting too close to them. As Adam Sandler said in one of my favorite of his songs, something inside them makes them want to screw it up. This is probably similar to a simple fear of commitment, but I notice myself doing this and I don’t think I have a fear of commitment (I certainly didn’t used to). I think it’s more like a fear of being completely open, exposed, and vulnerable as who you truly are, in the words of Adelai Niska. So we rationalize why this or that girl/girlfriend wasn’t Ms. Right by citing examples of supposed incompatibilities that shouldn’t necessarily have been deal-breakers: we don’t like her parents, we might want to live in different parts of the country in the future, she doesn’t like going to the bars that we do, she doesn’t like watching sports, she despises our favorite band, she isn’t libertarian enough to truly understand us. Maybe they are sound objections sometimes, maybe they aren’t other times. Either way, people of all kinds do this to keep from getting too close to that precipice of complete and total commitment, that point of no return. We say, “Well, our career paths precluded staying together permanently…” “You know, I’d probably always have to choose between going out with my friends and spending time with her…” “We’d always be disagreeing about politics…”

A lot of people with differing politics marry each other. (Then again, they share one ludicrous belief: Democrats and Republicans have opposing political philosophies.) Is it any harder for a libertarian to stay with a Statist? Is this fundamental difference a valid reason for giving up on the relationship, or for doing things consciously or subconsciously that sabotage the relationship? Should libertarians hold off on revealing the extremity of their politics until they’ve gotten to know someone well enough that they know the other person has similar leanings or they know the other person will like them or love them just as much, regardless of their extreme politics? These are some of the things I ponder, and wonder where I stand, where I should stand, where I will stand. Everyone handles it differently, I guess.

“Keep quiet about one of the most important things in your life?” Libertarianism is different. There is scarcely such thing as a casual libertarian. Certainly not a casual real libertarian (anarchist). To have such radical and life-changing beliefs means that you must feel strongly about them. And, regardless of what other libertarians think about their politics compared to others’ and how this affects their relationships with them, it is a very defining characteristic of who I am. Individualist anarchism defines a very large part of how I see the world, my relationship with it, and all of humanity’s relationship with each other. That is a pretty major part of who someone truly is. I’m not sure if Walter Block’s advice of finding someone who is apolitical is satisfactory for me, and I’m not sure I have the temperament to proselytize to people who are apolitical or Statist. I just don’t know where to find a libertarian girl, because all the girls I know, and especially the pretty ones, are either conservative Christians or tree-hugging socialist hippies.

The founder of the aforementioned college libertarians club would ask people who claimed to be libertarian, to test their true libertarianness, “Do you think all drugs should be legalized, including cocaine and heroin and crystal meth?” That would often be the first substantive thing he said to someone. That’ll put you on the spot! How many girls do you know who would give a libertarian answer to that? I know very, very few. It’s really frustrating. (No, I’ve never asked anyone that, but I encourage you to try it as an icebreaker on your next first date.)

Since political economy and moral philosophy are so important to me, I feel like I am missing out by not being really close to someone who sees the world the same way I do, to whom I can open up and say what I really feel and offer my own intellectual, philosophical, and moral support. I feel like if I married a Statist, I would always be blaming her, silently or openly, for all the things her evil government and her stupid politicians did. Obviously I wouldn’t marry someone who didn’t know exactly what my politics were, so she’d probably know what I felt about everything political. She’d read my web page whenever she wanted. She’d know what I thought of her politics. Maybe she’d think the same thing about mine. That’s too much conflict, too much strife. I don’t want a choir to preach to; I want another principled person with whom I can share my thoughts about politics instead of being afraid to all the time. Who will challenge, but reinforce and help me improve upon, my analysis of every political issue. Who sees our relationships with the world, the State, and other people the same way I do. Who can make me feel less alone in this unfree world instead of feeling suffocated by socialist Statism everywhere I go.

Libertarian girls are rare, and I feel that emailer’s pain. My solution so far has been to bottle up my frustration at the rampant Statism we live under, swallow my derisive criticisms of the socialism my friends endorse, and hide my principled moral stances from everyone who’s appalled at the notions of individual sovereignty and peace. Something has to change sometime soon.

Posted in Philosophy, Rants