My car is easy to recognize in this rural town. I bought my Toyota Echo in 2000, the first year for this model. I selected this car because it had the best gas mileage of any make and model at the time; I get 43 mpg in the summer, 40 mpg in the winter. They stopped making them only three years later; I guess they could generate more profits from their hybrids. That’s OK, I’ve got mine, and with only four years worth of Echos out there mine is distinct.
My car is also distinct around town because of the one and only bumper sticker on the back of the car; the one and only bumper sticker I ever had on the back of any car. With the use of a heart icon it says “I love mountains.” The most common bumper sticker found on the backs of cars, particularly at this time, have the names of presidential candidates on them instead.
I could never do that. I might favor one candidate right from the start, but the day before the election find out he’s done something that would make it impossible for me to vote for him. That’s not a concern for party loyalists, of course. These are the people most likely to have a bumper sticker of a candidate on their car. As I explained in the previous entry, these people are led by cherry-pickin’ party scholars whose authority they trust. There would have to be solid proof that their party’s candidate was something like a serial killer before they abandoned this trust.
Not too many people are concerned that their beliefs have become fixed dogmas rather than flexible theories. Indeed, most people are probably proud of this; certainly this is true of the scholars leading the pack, from the time of St. Augustine on down to Milton Friedman. As political opinion-makers, I don’t get the impression that either Bill O’Reilly or Al Franken are particularly humble about their beliefs. There is one aspect about this dogmatism that should make these scholars just a little bit wary. They have constrained their liberty mightily.
Take Puppet Libertarians and the Powell Cabal for example. Much of the economic essays in Systems out of Balance reveals how laissez faire economics departs from the literal meaning of free markets. An even bigger problem for Puppet Libertarians is how far astray they are from being libertarian. Having fixed beliefs makes them a slave to their dogma. This robs their liberty to interpret experience naturally. When natural experience clashes with fixed beliefs they have to slave away at mental gymnastics to “prove” a point.
Puppet Libertarians make incredible arguments that our government has been moving towards socialism, when the empirical data clearly does not support this. They make these arguments because, being a slave to laissez faire economics, they want us to move further in this direction. They make shameless arguments that we should not get ourselves into a tizzy over cyclical data, when clearly there are long term trends that have been quite harmful to the middle class. They dismiss wealth disparity with claims that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” when clearly there are “boats” out their capsizing from the burden of inflated costs; inflation that partly occurs precisely BECAUSE of wealth disparity.
I suppose these Puppet Libertarians are dedicated to the task, but I feel sorry for the restriction they have placed on their liberty. Think about how much freer they would be if they just acknowledge that housing costs as a proportion of our incomes have doubled since the seventies. Maybe there is a twelve step program that can be created for these folks.
But I digress a bit. What applies to Puppet Libertarians also applies to party scholars, and to those party faithful sporting bumper stickers on the back of their cars. Why endorse a candidate early? Why endorse a candidate at all? Why not keep the liberty to think freely at all times, independently of what your party and party scholars want from you? It is in our nature to be empirical, to leave ourselves free to react to different experiences as they happen. I’m afraid that Puppet Libertarians are doomed to be puppets, but most of us middle class folks can exercise our liberty.
Being at liberty does not mean being wishy-washy. I’m fairly certain who will get my vote for President, based on the “checklist” I have prepared for what matters in this election. But I’m still open to learning something new that might challenge my current beliefs.
Tags: Democracy, Middle Class Politics, Political Misinformation
