While the old nursery rhyme “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me” draws a useful and true distinction, it misses the reality that sticks and stones along with missiles and drones are wielded in the midst of the sound and fury of our language, i.e., aggression always occurs in a given culture that provides a setting of where, what, when, and why aggression occurs. This is especially true of the institutional predation of the State, which by definition is given the legal privilege to use legitimized aggression.
Accordingly, State power does not exist in a vacuum nor does it exist as a sort of separable entity like an operable cancer. No, the tumor of State power is diffused throughout the culture, or put another way, the State resides in the hearts and minds of the people who legitimize its aggression.
It is my contention that if we wish to effectively call out power-hungry politicos as different sides of the same coin, if we wish to truly stand up for the marginalized who need a helping hand, if we wish to promote the visionaries and innovators of tomorrow, then we would be wise to understand most of the political culture is contrary to all these ends. Politics is little more than advanced rhetorical warfare, professional myth-making, and a menu of false choices meant to always serve the colossal walking shadow that is the State’s power and privilege.
Much like an economy, culture is more a product of spontaneous human action than of conscious human design, i.e. culture is emergent, polycentric, and subject to constantly competing interpretations of the self, the other, and the world at large. Culture is something we absorb as much as we affect, and in many ways, culture is immune to regimentation and central planning.
This fact bodes well for liberty lovers because, in terms of the State, culture can be viewed in two ways: (1) culture is produced by State coercion or (2) State coercion is produced by culture.
Speaking to the former idea that State power creates its own culture, we need only turn to that wall of noise emanating daily from the political scene as a testament to this fact. And it’s an ugly fact indeed.
Our political culture is a perpetual game of blame, bribery, extortion, and imbecility packaged on a grand scale whereby the powerful divide and rule the public through smear and fear. Just flip on the television, the radio, or peruse a partisan website, especially the comment sections. There you will have your proof.
But the latter idea of culture and the State–that State coercion is produced by culture–is of particular interest to liberty lovers.
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Libertarians see the State as a superfluous institution, an unnecessary evil that continually corrupts the peaceful relations of commercial and cultural exchange. Therefore, libertarians hold a strong conviction that other than directly arguing against the State’s legitimacy (indeed a worthwhile endeavor), rebellious actions outside of the State’s imposition–counter cultural movements if you will–are not only possible but vital to the cause of spreading human liberty.
And here’s the rub, even if libertarians were to do nothing more than think this idea true and say it to their fellows on occasion, just the idea that the State can be resisted as an unnecessary evil is already a dangerous form of rebellion that undermines the culture of State power because, as said before, the authority of the State does not rest in its blatant uses of aggressive force but in the people’s acceptance of that force as legitimate.
The most effective tools at your disposal for delegitimizing the State are not only your ideas but your example of living a life of liberty.
Be the freedom you wish for the world.
One way of performing such counter-cultural action is to use the tools of partisans and statists not to seek but to neutralize power.
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For instance, take political slogans. Most people are familiar with Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change” slogan from 2008, a phrase that might as well have been “Poppy and Cock” or “Bull and Shit” considering the lackluster tenure of the Obama administration, but libertarians have also been playing the slogan game for some time.
I particularly like the libertarian slogan “Don’t tread on anyone!” or Larry Reed’s pithy suggestion, “Long Run, All People.” Both of these slogans grasp not only the essence of libertarianism as a philosophy of peace and community but also serve as a subtle warning against further State action. They are not rallying cries meant stir up the passions of the mob for this or that policy. They are instead wry quips meant to illuminate that our current political culture–and especially our democratic contests–are indeed only focused on deciding what few people in the short-term will be allowed to tread on others with State power.
In a phrase, they invite you to question the salvation offered by politicos the world over.
A quick aside on the question of political salvation: it is my opinion that our task as liberty lovers is not to “save” others from their folly. Beware this Puritan impulse. It only serves your lust to dominate others and your false notions to bring about utopia.
After all, we libertarians may be wrong in certain ways, and we should be humble in our fallibility. There is no salvation offered by libertarianism, just liberty plain and simple. We are denied utopia on this side of paradise, a fact many of those involved in the political culture fail to understand.
There are many ways to live a life in liberty.
I will not go into a list here and now, but do allow me to suggest one route: a life of upsetting the culture’s sacred cows, the life of an iconoclast.
H.L. Mencken describes the Iconoclast as such:
“The Iconoclast proves enough when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing–that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe–that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.”
And as a model of iconoclasm, below is Mencken again on one of my favorite iconoclasts, Oscar Wilde, the first Bunburyist.
From Mencken’s Preface of Wilde’s “A House of Pomegranates:”
“I see Wilde himself–as one who cried up too impudently, too eloquently, and, above all, too persuasively a philosophy that was out of his time…here was a man who done a great deal more than bring a passing stench into the synagogue. Here was one who had brought a scarlet woman there, and paraded her up and down…and invited the young men to consider the dignity and preciousness of beauty. Here, in brief, was one to be put down in swift dudgeon if disaster was to be avoided–if the concept of life as a bondage to the implacable law was to stand unshaken–if the moral order of the world, or, at least, of that little corner of it, was to hold out against a stealthy and abominable paganism. Wilde was the first unmistakable anti-Puritan, the first uncompromising enemy of the essential Puritan character–the fear of beauty.”
So, if you have the stomach for it, throw out your dead cats and let out your horse-laughs!
Let your blasphemous liberty ring!
O, mighty, D.C! We have witnessed your hypocritical human hearts on display as a parade of your partisan princes and paupers blather and blame their opposition for things they would do and have done themselves.
O, you smarmy, media elites! We have beheld your spectacular productions full of insidiously simple answers, as a whole cast of your culture critics prey upon the marginalized and the poor in order to bolster so-called conventional opinion.
O, you old fuddy-duddies, stretching from sea to shining sea! We have seen your privileged forces of yesteryear longing for a golden age that never existed as you beat back any change promoted by visionaries, entrepreneurs, and artists.
The world is growing wise to all of you clowns.
Let this be a warning, we who love liberty are growing stronger by the day, and our plans are clear: we are coming for you.
Prepare to be left alone.
We certainly know this brings a chill to your busybody hearts.
