I’ve never opposed voting on moral principle. Of course, I oppose government on moral principle, but, Patriotically Correct mythology to one side, the notion that casting a vote has any meaningful relationship to controlling the apparatus of government is one of the more ridiculous lies that representative democracies — that is, elective oligarchies — such as the United States government love to promote. Defensive voting is not immoral; it’s a strategy. But strategies may be foolish. And if the last few election cycles have proved anything, they’ve proved that this is a strategy with no pay-off. No matter how many times you change out the party in power, the interests of power remain the same, and even when you win, you lose.

So I am boycotting the election today. I hope that you will too. I will not vote for any candidate for political office, Democrat, Republican, or other, no matter what promises they make, and no matter what party they come from. I do not support them as candidates, and I do not support the oligarchical political machine they represent. If the last few election cycles prove anything, they prove that power-plays beat promises every time. It’s not just a few radicals who have noticed that something is deeply wrong; it’s not just a handful of malcontents who know that we need a radically different direction, away from the insane and destructive Beltway consensus — away from this government’s wars, this government’s bail-outs, this government’s secret surveillance, corporate health-insurance cartels, PATRIOT Acts, runaway police powers, catastrophic economic policeis, shameless fear-mongering and constant, unremitting power-grabs. But people have HOPEd and parties have CHANGEd and if it all accomplished anything at all, it was only to prove that we’re never going to get anything but more of the same as long as we maintain a false hope in electoral politics. If what you want is social progress, there is no shortcut around principled agitation, grassroots social movements, community organizing, civil disobedience and direct action. There is no low-calorie political substitute for D.I.Y. social transformation. Elections and party politicking are no way to make a revolution. They’re not even a way to make small change.

No matter who you vote for, the winner is always the government.

• "That Show By Those Hipster Know-It-Alls Who Talk About How Fascinating Ordinary People Are" Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-10-25). “Most of those broadcasters enjoy support from the government in one form or another (though not all of them do: WFMU is subsidy-free as well as commercial-free). But they’re not a top-down project. They’re a decentralized set of shows that seek funds where they can find them, and they could survive if the CPB were fully privatized. They might even do better, if the new CPB decided to spend less of its money on actual stations (which haven’t always benefited when the corporation funds them) and more on independent producers.” (Linked Monday 2010-10-25.)

• WikiLeaks Removes the Cloak. David D’Amato, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-10-25). Late last week, major media outlets announced, to the bated breath of the world, the latest disclosures of classified materials on the war in Iraq from Wikileaks. The documents — almost 400,000 files comprised mostly of the U.S. military's daily field reports — detail a staggering civilian death toll and… (Linked Monday 2010-10-25.)

• Mantid of the week. Jill, I Blame The Patriarchy (2010-10-26). Greetings from Spinster HQ, O ye commenters and readers of comments! The "Latest Blamer Invective" sidebar function upon which you have come to dote so warmly has experienced a warp core breach. Two female characters with names are discussing it, and should have it back online before the third act…. (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-26.)

• At the bottom of the 178 countries Somalia scored 1.1, just. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-10-26). At the bottom of the 178 countries Somalia scored 1.1, just below Afghanistan and Myanmar (1.4) and Iraq (1.5). surely someone somewhere is actually worried about the fact that the countries we invaded and 'liberated' are two of the four most corrupt in the world. we said we brought you this… (Linked Tuesday 2010-10-26.)

Appearing this month in The Freeman (60.7, September 2010):

Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

Charles Johnson, September 2010 / Volume: 60 / Issue: 7

Just after winning his Republican primary in May, Rand Paul got himself into a political pickle over his views on property rights and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Having reluctantly discussed concerns about antidiscrimination laws with the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR, Paul made his now-notorious appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow grilled him for 15 minutes on whether he opposed government intervention to stop racial discrimination. After saying he favored overturning government-mandated discrimination, Paul finally admitted that he opposes Title II, which forbids private owners from discriminating in their own businesses.

As he told the Courier-Journal: I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism; I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant; but at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. . . .

Maddow responded: I think wanting to allow private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race, because of property rights, is an extreme view. Within a day Progressives were touting the interview as proof of a deep conflict between libertarian defenses of private property and struggles for racial equality. Meanwhile, compromising libertarians like Brink Lindsey reacted by discovering exceptions to libertarian principles—to make room, again, for federal antidiscrimination laws. The entire debate has played out as an argument over libertarianism and extremism, with Progressives and many nominal libertarians both condemning Rand Paul’s simplistic extremism about private property and libertarian rights.

I have little interest in defending Paul but it’s strange to treat him like some case study in the dangers of libertarian extremism. Rand Paul is a conservative, not a libertarian—let alone an extreme one. He’s said as much, in so many words, in repeated interviews. Now, you could simply say, He may be no libertarian, but never mind Rand Paul—what about the issue? Libertarianism opposes government control of private business decisions; taken to extremes, doesn’t that include laws against racist business practices—the civil rights movement’s crowning achievement?

Well, I do have something to say on behalf of extremism. Not on behalf of sacrificing the civil rights movement’s achievements to extreme stands on antistatist principle. Rather, extreme stands on antistatist principle show what the civil rights movement did right, and what it really achieved, without the aid of federal laws.

. . .

[I]f libertarianism has anything to teach about politics, it’s that politics goes beyond politicians; social problems demand social solutions. Discriminatory businesses should be free from legal retaliation—not insulated from the social and economic consequences of their bigotry. What consequences? Whatever consequences you want, so long as they’re peaceful—agitation, confrontation, boycotts, strikes, nonviolent protests.

So when Maddow asks, Should Woolworth’s lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? neither she nor Paul seemed to realize that her attempted coup de grace—invoking the sit-in movement’s student martyrs, facing down beatings to desegregate lunch counters—actually offers a perfect libertarian response to her own question.

Because, actually, Woolworth’s lunch counters weren’t desegregated by Title II. The sit-in movement did that. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott onward, the Freedom Movement had won victories, town by town, building movements, holding racist institutions socially and economically accountable. The sit-ins proved the real-world power of the strategy: In Greensboro, N.C., nonviolent sit-in protests drove Woolworth’s to abandon its whites-only policy by July 1960. The Nashville Student Movement, through three months of sit-ins and boycotts, convinced merchants to open all downtown lunch counters in May the same year. Creative protests and grassroots pressure campaigns across the South changed local cultures and dismantled private segregation without legal backing.

Should lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? No—but the question is how to disallow it. Bigoted businesses shouldn’t face threats of legal force for their racism. They should face a force much fiercer and more meaningful—the full force of voluntary social organization and a culture of equality. What’s to stop resegregation in a libertarian society? We are. Using the same social power that was dismantling Jim Crow years before legal desegregation.

I oppose civil rights acts because I support civil rights movements—because the forms of social protest they pioneered proved far more courageous, positive, and effective than the litigious quagmires and pale bureaucratic substitutes governments offer.

— Charles Johnson, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (September 2010): Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

You can read the whole thing at The Freeman Online, or in the forthcoming print issue.

Many thanks as always to Sheldon Richman and FEE.

See also:

• GT 2010-06-20: Ridiculous Strawman Watch (Part 4 of ???)
• GT 2010-06-18: In a freed market, with no government anti-discrimination laws, what will stop bigoted business owners from resegregating America?
• GT 2010-05-23: Shameless Self-promotion Sunday / on Rand Paul, Rachel Maddow, and grassroots social movements
• GT 2009-06-12: In a freed market, who will stop markets from running riot and doing crazy things? And who will stop the rich and powerful from running roughshod over everyone else?

To-day at The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty:

Guest Column | by Charles Johnson

Is the Problem Really Too Little Trust in Government?

Posted August 23, 2010

There is one point where I can unequivocally agree with E.J. Dionne's column "Can We Reverse the Tide on Government Distrust" (Washington Post, May 6, 2010) – when he tells us that So far, the Obama administration has missed the opportunity to demonstrate ... how it is changing the way government works. How is its approach to ... regulations different from what was done before? ... How are its priorities different?

How indeed?

Two years in, if there's any noticeable difference between Bush's policies of corporate privilege, endless warfare, bailouts, executive power, and bureaucratic expansion, and Obama's policies of corporate privilege, endless warfare, bailouts, executive power, and bureaucratic expansion, I'd like to know where to find it. The difference between me and E.J. Dionne is that Dionne is apparently surprised by this outcome — why hasn't Obama done better? At issue is what used to be called Good Government – the problem of ensuring that a centralized managerial State, with expansive powers to intervene in all matters economic, social, or hygienic, will be run cleanly, and competently, by qualified experts. Dionne insists that financial market meltdowns, oil spills, and coal-mine disasters reveal the catastrophic results of a few years of Bush-era government neglect. Those of us who remember the Bush administration may have a hard time accepting the claim that it was an era in which government was not doing enough; and we see these headline-grabbing catastrophes as only the tail end of a decades-long crisis – a bipartisan, politically created crisis of institutional incentives and industry best practice-ism, created, nurtured, and protected by government itself.

. . .

Dionne may present his article as a commentary on recent news, but the headlines are only carelessly chosen illustrations for a message that seems copied out of a children's civics textbook circa 1948. Elected government's task is to stand up for the many against the few, to make sure that corporations are properly supervised, and to protect those with weaker bargaining positions ... against the harm that those in stronger bargaining positions might inflict. Our problem is simply that we do not trust the political means enough. According to Dionne, if we are ever to solve these politically created crises, we need to know that government in a free society is not a distant force but, rather, something that all of us influence and shape.

To be sure, government is not very distant from the downtown offices of the Washington Post.^[1] For the rest of us, though, access is somewhat more limited, and not "all of us" have the same influence in shaping government policy. That is done by political insiders and economic incumbents: As scholars like Gabriel Kolko and Butler Shafer have repeatedly shown, government regulatory bodies from the FTC to the MSHA to the SEC have consistently been captured by the incumbents in the industries they are supposed to regulate, systematically rigging government regulations in such a way as to build up cartels, exclude competition, and protect businessmen from liability for harmful practices.

Even with the record of regulatory capture and industry-driven policy, Dionne, like many Progressives, simply insists that politicians need even more trust and fewer restraints on action to give them the independence to do the right thing. You might call this kind of Progressivism a theory of trickle-down politics: When government devotes the overwhelming majority of its power and resources to foolish or destructive programs directed by concentrated interests – subsidies, bailouts, anticompetitive regulations, or an ever-growing military-industrial "National Security" complex – the proposed solution is to give that same government even more strength and greater resources to dispose of, on the hope that some of the surplus will eventually make it through the net of insider control to reach programs that offer a pittance to the little guy.

Individualists know that when you reward the institutions that created crisis, you are going to get more crises. Greater regulatory powers will only make government more attractive to industry incumbents; the more politics is involved in industry, the more that political pull pays off for the industrialists. The root causes of the crises we've faced in recent years are not problems of competence or corruption. They are problems of cartelization and capture. The solution is not more trust in government; it's to realize there are things the political means just cannot accomplish, which should instead be addressed through decentralized, peaceful social cooperation. . . .

— Charles Johnson, The Freeman Online (23 August 2010): Is the Problem Really Too Little Trust in Government?

The article also includes some brief recapitulations of the Money Monopoly, the Land and Natural Resource monopolies, and the recent history of BP, Massey Energy, and the MSHA. You can read the whole thing at The Freeman Online to-day.

Thanks to Sheldon Richman, again, for making this possible, and for his invaluable aid as an editor. My only complaint is that I think The Freeman really should have chosen a better author photo for me than the one they have at the top of the story. In that one the camera adds about 20 years, and a lot of corporate liberalism.

1. ^[1][Less than a mile from the Executive Branch! Check it out on Google Maps! –R.G.]↩

A. We will.

Context-Keeping and Community Organizing. Cato Unbound (2010-06-18):

David Bernstein makes the strongest libertarian case I can imagine for Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His key point—which I fully embrace—is that the Southern states operated the equivalent of a "white supremacist cartel" in public accommodations….

But as Sheldon ultimately argues, there’s more than one way to break a cartel, and starting out with the notion that the *only* options are one kind of federal law or another kind of federal law, is simply to beg the question. We can't dismiss [direct action by nonviolent social movements] as impractical because it had been working several years before Title II was enacted. … Title II, in other words, was unnecessary. But worse, it was detrimental…. [W]hat is given like a gift can be more easily taken away, while what one secures for oneself by facing down power is less easily lost. … The libertarian answer to bigotry is community organizing.