Left Libertarianism

From time to time I find myself having to explain my politics to friends. The following is excerpted from a conversation with an old classmate from Pittsburgh:

Because Pittsburgh was a one-party town when I lived there, the only elections that mattered were the Democratic primaries. I happen to think democracy is a good thing, so I found that objectionable. I switched my registrations among Independent, Republican, and Democrat for a while, usually supporting the underdog or third party candidates because I thought that it mattered. When I realized that a corporatized duopoly actually ran things under the guise of a “two-party system," I stopped wasting my time. I happened to be a registered Democrat when I had that realization (around 1990). I remained a registered Democrat in PA, then in North Carolina and Colorado until Bernie Sanders (for whom I caucused in Colorado) conceded to HRC rather than take the fight to the convention as he had promised.

Just one more political betrayal, nothing to get upset about.

I then re-registered as a Green because they actually run candidates in Colorado. I’m still registered as a Green for voting purposes, but I give money to the CPUSA to try to keep it viable just in case any of my fellow citizens are ever curious to learn what a leftist political party actually looks like. Philosophically, I am a Left Libertarian—Noam Chomsky is the most prominent living representative of that persuasion.

The Libertarian side of my thinking agrees with you that the Religious Right has no business using the institutions of government to force its theology upon women via their reproductive organs. That’s just heinous. But the Leftist side of my thinking finds the slaughter that the duopoly underwrites around the world in the name of American imperial supremacy just as heinous, if not more. It’s hard to measure these things, but body count strikes me as a fairly compelling point by which to make comparisons.

The bottom line for me is, as I’ve said, the political system itself (of which the legal system is a key component). The political system runs on the Kool-Aid of American Exceptionalism that we were fed from childhood on. It takes years of intensive mental effort to find the antidote (foreign travel helps—though not with the military—traveling to other countries in order to kill anyone who resists our appropriation of their natural resources will not produce the necessary result).

And where the system is concerned, Rita Mae Brown’s definition of insanity applies: Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

Political involvement within the current system is tantamount to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The difference between a Neocon and a Neoliberal is aesthetic, not political.