What's that old saying about people getting less liberal as they get older? You know, I think I'm actually starting to notice it with myself.
See, when I was young, I was convinced that I was clever enough to work out any problem that came my may, so why would I ever need somebody else to tell me what I should and shouldn't do. Growing up has been a process of realising just how little I know about anything; and looking back on my life, I can see how lucky I am that stupid over-confident younger me didn't fuck things up irreparably. I can also see how much I've benefited from having older, wiser, more experience, and non-fucked-up people around to help keep me from going off the rails completely. Without proper guidance, the right opportunities, and a fair amount of luck, I could have easily ended up as an unemployed, obese, alcoholic, single-mother with six kids to seven different fathers—just like half the girls I was mates with at school.
To be clear, when I talk about liberalism, I'm talking about the broad philosophical notion that we should never ask the questions "what are the outcomes likely to be?" or "how does this affect society as a whole?" The purpose of society should be to protect the rights of the individual, and the individual should have the right to do anything they want—regardless of how stupid, naive, or irresponsible said individual is—so long as they don't cause directly physical harm to another person or their property. Right, so what does liberalism tell us we should do with my old school mates who are now unemployed, obese, alcoholic, single-mothers with six kids to seven different fathers? Well, on the far left end of the spectrum, we have the more socialists liberals, who think we should just throw taxpayer money at these people until they get themselves sorted out; and on the far right, we have the American-style libertarians, who reckon it's better to give them nothing, and then bung them in prison when they inevitably turn to crime.
I have reached a point in my life, where I no longer find either of these answers—nor anything in between—particularly satisfying. Instead, I'm looking at the underlying philosophical principle, and wondering if it's all it's cracked up to be.
A while ago (can't remember if it was months or years now) this music video, put out by NITV to encourage indigenous children to stop sniffing petrol, went viral across certain corners of the internet. Basically, people from other parts of the world were laughing at the fact that there were communities that were so fucked up and dysfunctional that they would even need something like this. Once you get over your knee-jerk feelings of anger and disgust, give that point some serious consideration, and see how sad it makes you. I can't listen to that song now without shedding a tear or two.
On my current inland journey, I've been through a couple of outback Queensland's newly minted "meth towns". The locals tell me that when they were growing up out here, nobody locked their doors—in fact, a lot of houses didn't even have locks on the doors. Now, people are afraid to go away on holidays, because as soon as the neighbourhood junkies realise a home has been left unattended, they break in and ransack the place. I mentioned in a previous post, that one of my cousins is looking into importing a mail-order bride from Eastern Europe, because he can't find a single woman in his home town who doesn't have needle marks in her arms.
According to liberal principles, there should be no prohibitions on recreational drugs. In fact, truly liberal-minded people will go as far as telling you they should be advertised and sold openly, just like alcohol. In fact, we shouldn't even have any negative social stigma attached to using them. After all, who are you to judge someone else for what they put into their own body? Huh? What business is it of yours, ya nosy judgemental cunt? … Well, let's talk about that, shall we. Maybe if the number of junkies living in your area is significantly less than 1%, you can manage the issue through either welfare or incarceration. What happens when that number gets to be over 10%? 20%? 30%? The problem with liberalism is that it's a philosophy that tells you no matter how much of a filthy, crime-ridden shit-hole your community becomes, you must always stick to cleaning up the mess, and never ever look at tackling the root cause of the problem; because then you're getting onto the slippery slope that leads to a repressive authoritarian nanny-state.
Well, maybe sometimes the nanny state needs to strap on a pair of jackboots, and give things a fuckin' good kick up the arse.
And before anyone points out that the main reason we have so many junkies is because there's a lack of jobs, I'd just like to point out that the main reason we have a lack of jobs is because ECONOMIC liberalism provided us with the philosophical rationale for moving so many of them to the fuckin' third world.
Now, moving on to the obesity crisis. According to right-wing liberals, we can't put any kind of limits on food or food advertising, and left-wing liberals tell us that all body types are beautiful, and we mustn't stigmatise being overweight. Meanwhile, I'm going to family barbecues where P.E. teachers are telling me it's now common to see ten-year-olds with type two diabetes who are so fuckin' fat that they can't even WALK a hundred metres without getting out of breath. It's one thing to say that this should all be a matter of personal responsibility, but if enough people aren't being responsible, this is the sort of thing that's eventually going to collapse the health-care system. And unlike the liberal fuck-heads on the far right, I actually want to keep public health care in this country.
Which brings me to the story that nudged me over the edge and into writing this post. About a week ago, the podcasts I follow were full of the news that the internet's most infamous thot—Belle Delphine—an English teenager, who makes a quarter of a million pounds a year filming herself playing video games in her undies—had sold, overnight, five hundred bottles of her used bathwater, at $30 US a pop, and that the bottles were now being resold on eBay for several times that amount. As you might expect, most of the coverage was fairly lighthearted in tone, with flabbergasted admirers congratulating the young entrepreneur for turning herself into such a marketable commodity. Ten years ago, I probably would have agreed with them without giving it a second thought. Now all I get from hearing a story like that is the uneasy feeling that maybe there's something not quite right about a culture that can even produce that kind of market … and maybe there's something not quite right about the fact that nobody else even seems to be questioning it.
Actually, it reminded me of a story I read around four or five years ago, about some bloke on the British board of education (or something similar), who was sacked, after he proposed that guidance councillors should be able to recommend that girls with low grades look at getting into sex work. In his mind, sex work wasn't something to be vilified or stigmatised, so why wouldn't schools push young women in that direction? And really, if you're a liberal-minded sort of person, how can you argue against it? Actually, now that I think about it, that might have been the story that started me down this line of questioning in the first place.
Behold Belle's most iconic image. I can't remember what the proper name for that facial expression is, but the important thing is that it's meant to resemble the way Japanese cartoonists draw women having an orgasm. Not even joking.
Three years ago, I was listening to a fair number of libertarian podcasters. Now I listen to almost none. And it's not that I stopped listening to them, so much as that most of them stopped being libertarians. I'd say about 80% of them gave up their liberal views when either they, or someone they knew, got banned from one of the social media giants for saying something a moderator didn't like. Of course, from a liberal point of view, there should be no limits placed on how big a private company can become, and private companies should always be able to refuse a person service, for any reason they like, or for no reason at all. Hell, even the people running the power company should be able to cut you off if they feel like it.
The other 20% or so, mostly live in parts of Europe where there have been large numbers of refugees resettled. Of course, a good liberal should believe in open borders, allowing for the unfettered free movement of people, goods, and capital. Once again, a fine sounding philosophy, so long as an extreme case doesn't actually manifest itself in reality, and find some way to impact you directly.
I found this video on the YouTube channel of a former liberal from Ireland, who has now turned to white-nationalism. I plan to start writing a post on white-nationalism as soon as I get this one out of the way. The video is of Tucker Carlson, an obnoxious Fox News presenter who is not a white-nationalist. He is, however, a former libertarian, and in the video, he absolutely rips into his former belief system, and shows it up for the unrealistic pile of flaming dog shit that it actually is. If you can overlook the fact that Carlson is a rude prick who doesn't let the other bloke get a word in edgewise, you may be able to appreciate the consistently good points he makes throughout the entirety of this forty minute ramble.
Reading back over what I've written here, I think this post sounds angrier and more combative than it's actually meant to; and look, I don't have any intention of going full-authoritarian when it comes to my views on social policy; but I think I've reached a point where I can no longer put the freedom of the individual over the good of the community as a simple matter of principle. And if someone wants to convince me that I'm wrong about something—which I wholeheartedly invite them to do—it's not going to be enough to point out that something I've said is philosophically illiberal. Tell me why my ideas are going to yield shitty results. Simply put, I think my patience for principles and philosophy has just about run out.
