Price of Liberty: There Is No Such Thing as the "Liberty Movement"

priceofliberty:

I take issue with those well-meaning individuals who subscribe to the “liberty movement” or the “libertarian movement.” Specifically, I have a problem with categorizing the advocacy of absolute personal sovereignty as a movement at all; it is inherently collectivist and I believe that it completely undermines the entire foundation of self-sovereignty. 

This categorization is not simply a misnomer, it is an insult. It implies that any act stemming from an individual advocate of liberty must first be approved or accepted by the community at large. It is becoming absurd the veracity with which self-ascribed libertarians jump on any opportunity to “call out” non-libertarians.

Students For Liberty co-founder, Alexander McCobin, recently chimed out against so-called liberty lover Glenn Beck: “…if Glenn wants to call himself a libertarian, I am happy to accept him as one…on the condition…that he comes here to our community and proclaim ‘mea culpa’ for his past defenses of social and neo-conservatism…”. 

The emphasis is mine. McCobin employs, perhaps inadvertently, lofty collectivist language. He says that he is happy to accept Mr. Beck into “our” community - as though the legitimacy of one’s devotion to personal freedom is predicated upon acceptance by well-known figures in the “movement;” that Beck is not an ‘official libertarian’ unless he appears before a congregation of, no doubt, like-minded individuals. Let me be clear, I am not substantiating Beck’s libertarian views (or lack thereof); rather, I am calling into question the very idea that  we, as individuals, are furthering this eternal struggle against Statism by advocating collectivist behavior at all.

I understand that even classifying anything as a “struggle” connotes all sorts of historical progressive movements in solidarity, but self-sovereignty is not a multi-person struggle. Each of us is a being of unique (albeit similar) experiences which means that true empowerment against the State is internal. You and you alone know what it will take to be absolutely unshackled.

This is not an argument against the authority of individuals to come together, delegate representatives and subscribe to one body of law or another, but a reflection against the current trend to broadly, unjustifiably lump together many of us who share similar but distinct ideals. 

In his response to McCobin, Beck raises a valid point when he “begs” libertarians to consider the possibility that (he says generously) two-thirds of this nation would “come your way” if libertarians stop telling everyone that its “all or nothing.” Beck implores libertarians to compromise.

…libertarians I’m begging you please, see the opportunity you have with about thirty percent of this nation; maybe sixty percent of this nation. They will come your way. They live in that space until you go and say, ‘There’s no other way but this way!’ No one wants to hear that. You don’t want to hear that from the people in Washington in the Republican or Democratic Party. Don’t give us another choice where it is all or nothing…”

What Beck, his cohorts, and a number of other misguided individuals all fail to understand is that liberty is inherently all or nothing. Of course semantics dictate that I acknowledge ‘Constitutionally legal’ limitations on liberty; the most-ready example is the “fighting words” exception to the First Amendment (free speech can be constitutionally limited if the words present a “clear and present danger” to the public). But the heart and soul of self-sovereignty as a political and life philosophy is exactly that liberty is all or nothing. Naturally, what Beck is asking for, and what many liberty-advocates in the “movement” acknowledge, is the supposed necessity of an organization built on compromise. 

Categorizing this whole issue as a “movement” has also proved to be detrimental on younger ideological subscribers. Coupled with twelve years of education by the pressures of State-sponsored indoctrination in the public school system, many of these kids accept the legitimacy of the U.S. voting system, the Electoral College, and the so-called necessity of compromise. Too many people believe wholeheartedly that the answer must come from withinif it is to come at all - that the only possible way to achieve limited government is to first participate in a bloated bureaucracy which has been corrupted to its core.

If ‘we’ are to do anything, then ’we’ act, as individuals and as the sovereign-citizens that we are, to bring about the change in our own lives. ‘We’ denounce any attempt to collectivize the foundational principles of liberty-related ideology and recognize that every attempt to do so:

• is a step toward top-down authoritarianism
• incites infighting among people whose only common ground is often a vague understanding of personal sovereignty
• illegitimates real, individual efforts to stand against overbearing State authority by deferring to a mythical, centralized authority on “all things libertarian”

Not one person alive can tell you what decisions or regulations best work for you. 

You are your own authority and despite the fact that no one can ever be a card-carrying member of the “liberty movement,” you do not stand alone.