Libertarians, Fossil Fuels, and Energy Self-Sufficiency

After the bumptious ruckus of the recent Libertarian convention, which I'll assume is the norm for every single Libertarian gathering ever, I found myself delving a bit more into the dominant school of thought amongst the "freedom loving" Mises Caucus, which has in recent memory controlled the direction of that movement.  

The devotees of Austrian economist Bubba Jo Mises have come to define American libertarianism, and...what?  

No, wait.  That's not his name.  Got that wrong.   

It's "Ludvig Van" Mises, which of course makes me think of Alex Delarge's obsession from A Clockwork Orange.  The depth of libertarian passion for Mises and his theories runs pretty much as deep, but it's...peculiar.  I have no beef with Mises, but his acolytes seem to have become something rather peculiar.

Like, say, in the absolute and fervent assertions of the Mises Institute on the subject of fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels, they argue in a series of essays apparently written for gullible children, are the very bulwark and foundation of all human freedom, and without fossil fuels, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are well nigh impossible.  Woe, woe to us should we ever forget this fundamental truth about the nature of human personhood.

Those who deign to suggest otherwise are "Green Tyrants," who are looking to place you and your loved ones in the authoritarian hellhole of renewable energies.  Wind is slavery!  Solar is serfdom!  The purpose of the environmental movement is nothing more nor less than domination, and globalism, and sadness.

This is all more than a little faintly insane, a bizarro world inversion of the self-evident truth.

Let's say you value your independence, that you desire to be as vigorously self-sufficient as humanly possible.  Which serves the cause of your freedom more: solar and wind, or fossil fuels?  Which makes you dependent on outside systems and interests, and which allows maximal self-reliance?

Wind and solar are infinitely renewable natural resources.  They are easily and freely accessible to anyone with even a modest plot of land.  My own home, for instance, would produce sufficient energy from a solar array to meet all of my energy needs.  That would include 90% of my transportation. 

Is that energy as cheap and energy dense as gasoline?  No.  It's not.  But through thrift and prudence, it'd do.

Fossil fuels provide only the illusion of individual liberty.  They rely upon sprawling and complex systems of production infrastructure and profit-seeking corporate bureaucracies, all of which work hand-in-hand with government.  They are also, as often as not, a resource produced directly and in the service of state power.  In some instances, like Norway, those states are respectful of individual liberties.  In most instances, they are not.  Even a fool knows this.  Only the delusional deny it.

What we also know is that these systems are the very farthest thing from resilient.  If even one element of a vast global supply and production chain fails, fossil fuels become scarce or vanish entirely.  In a crisis, when those systems are compromised, they cannot be trusted.  I mean, all you have to do is hack the billing system of a provider, and Americans panic, and every gas station on the East Coast is suddenly without fuel.  Lord, that was dumb...but illustrative.  Or when, after a Category 1 Hurricane, the very center of the entire American oil industry was suddenly a sweaty mess of argumentative Texans sitting in their SUVs and pickups, waiting in lines for gas so long they'd have embarrassed the Soviets.

For homesteaders and preppers and others who value their freedom, the choice is obvious.  Panels and windmills and water turbines, people.  C'mon.

Beyond this, there's the impact of fossil fuel use on climate.  This is a libertarian concern, because our planetary weather systems impact local ability to produce food.  If you destabilize that system, you take away the freedom to reliably grow crops and provide for yourself and your family.  Saying: we wish to be locally resilient, we wish grow and produce food, and do not want the greed of the elite to destroy our right to freely enjoy the fruits of creation?  

This ain't oppressive, unless by "oppressive" you mean "repressing the right of the powerful to take the freedoms of the average human being."

For any libertarian who is actually libertarian, rather than a patsy for oligarchs, state powers, and corporate interests, this is all rather obvious.  

Fossil fuel provides a form of freedom, true.  But it is one that comes at a cost, a cost that must be acknowledged and carefully considered.

Anarcholibertarian and Anarchocapitalist

Anarcholibertarianism is a peculiar thing, I'll admit.  

It is not the same thing as anarchocapitalism, because anarchocapitalism is a raging oxymoron and conceptually self-annihilating.  

Corporations and corporate power structures are no less a threat to liberty than political power structures.  Because capital is social power, eh?  Capital exhibits all of the gravitic tendencies of human power to concentrate itself, creates all of the same wild imbalances and injustices, and is ultimately as much threat to freedom and human dignity as any other form of collective power.

Wealth has always worked this way, which is why my moral teacher spent a remarkably large amount of time challenging the ethics of capital in his day.  Profit maximization and the relentless focus on the accrual of capital were, for him, fundamentally suspect and dangerous to our integrity as persons.  

At best, wealth represented a system that needed to be subverted and used slyly against itself.  

At worst, Mammon was the heart of our failure.  It is the system that enslaves us.

Which, again, is why it is so peculiar seeing those who are nominally libertarian so enthralled by the power dynamics of capital.  It is no less a danger to liberty than concentrations of political power.  Assuming that the accrual of socially mediated proxies for ownership and control somehow makes one more "free" is absurd.

Freedom, for the libertarian, is an essential state of being, a fundamental aspect of sentience and personhood.  It is an inalienable right.  It will always stand independent from imagined structural frameworks, be they legal or economic.

Of Trump and My Anarcholibertarian Predilections

Last year, I sat in front of a class of undergraduates and talked about my postapocalyptic Amish novel.  At one point, in response to a question from one of them about separatist/quietist movements, I described myself as having "anarcholibertarian predilections," which got a laugh from a couple of bearded young men at the back of the class.  

It's such a silly, self-absorbed, overwrought way to think of yourself, which makes anarcholibertarianism a perfect match for silly, self-absorbed, overwrought me.

I've dabbled with the idea that I might politically self-identify as libertarian over the years, but if I am, I'd have to be of that peculiar variety.  Every time I think I'm there, when my frustration with the rigidities of bureaucratic folderol and the clucking propaganda of twitter pharisees and apparatchiks have me considering going full Ron Swanson, libertarians disabuse me of the notion that I could ever possibly fit within that "movement."  

Not that it's a movement, not really.  It's as incoherent as the language on the AI generated image I prompted for this post.

The news about Libertarianism recently, insofar as there is ever any meaningful news about libertarianism in America, is that the Libertarian Party has invited Donald J. Trump to speak at their convention.

It's yet another reason why any libertarian worthy of the name would steer away from the American party, and a reminder of how neofascist, corporatist, and "strong man" ideologies have devoured the concept of libertarianism in America.  If your libertarianism ends up justifying the power of a despot, an oligarch, or a charlatan, it ain't libertarianism.  

It's monarchism, and honeychild, there is a difference.

My libertarianism doesn't bend the knee to anyone, including myself.  Perhaps that's because it's less a political philosophy and more a question of my theology, which seems a better place for libertarianism to hang its hat.  That is, let it be clear, not me saying it is less relevant.  It's me saying it's more central to my identity as a person, my understanding of how human beings are to live together, and our relationship with our Creator.

There's probably some pre-existing definition of the word anarcholibertarian, one that was argued and fretted over by earnest folks with Germanic surnames a century ago.  I mean, surely there is.  I don't care.  I mean, being anarcholibertarian, why would I?

My libertarianism is "anarcho" because I don't trust human beings with power.  Put the prefix "an" in front of "arch," and that's really all you're saying:  "no power."  Whatever the power structure may be, there is within it moral hazard.  The concentrations of power that manifest in political systems become self-perpetuating, as power seeks to reinforce itself.   There is no form of political system that is immune to this, because political systems are human social constructs, and humans love love love power over one another.  

Which means...because no human community can function without power...that I prefer systems that check and balance the powerful.  Oligarchies and despotisms, being the self-serving things that they are, are the enemy.  Social democracies and liberal republics are invariably frustrating, but they do a far better job of preserving the average soul's liberty than any other system.  This is precisely because they put the brakes on power, because they make the concentration of authority in a single person or group more difficult.  We've forgotten this, we Americans, as we posture and bellow at one another from our position of privilege.

Preserving the liberty of the powerful is and has always been unnecessary.  The wealthy and the social elite have their armies of lawyers...or their actual armies...to ensure that they are free to do as they please.  Rules, like the covenant of marriage or the Constitutional process for the peaceful transfer of power?  These things do not apply to them.

The more someone loves power, revels in it, glories in it?  The less one should trust them with it.

Yet so many of us, once again, howl for a king. 

Bottom Rocker

I've been riding motorcycles now for most of my life, and as long as my carcass can handle it, I intend to keep doing so.

There are many reasons for it, but primary among them is this:  I like the freedom of it.

I'm not in a cage of steel and systems, not wrapped up in fifteen speaker surround and telematics.  I cannot be reached by text or by email or by phone or by Facebook.  The endless demand of social obligation is on hold, and I am at liberty.

What I know instead is the road and the world around me.  I know the heat or the cold.  If it's raining, I get wet.  I know to be cautious, how to move so that I cause no harm to myself or others.

I am going where I am going.  I am doing my own thing in my own time, as Peter Fonda once said.

Which is why I have never understood pack riding.  I know, I know, it's probably kind of awesome, you and your tribe rumbling across the landscape like a vast herd of iron bison.

But the more human beings there are, the more rules there are.  They begin simply, as all rules do.  You think about lane position and formation.  You think about pace, not your own, but the pace of the group.  There is planning, and more planning, and conversations and negotiation and the next thing you know, there's a committee.

And then the rules and regs pile on, one after another, until suddenly that libertarian vision of open-road freedom looks a heck of a lot like just another bunch of laws.

That was cast into light by the recent deadly explosion of violence between rival gangs in Texas, after an effort to negotiate a truce between the Cossacks and the Bandidos descended into gunplay.

It was such a strange thing.  Outlaw bikers, one would think, would be fighting over something nefarious and dangerous.  A turf war over meth distribution, perhaps.  But knives and guns came out and blood was spilled and hundreds arrested because of...patches.  Patches.

Grown up men died over who could wear a Texas "bottom rocker" on their vest, which seems no less bizarre than had Brownies and Campfire Girls gotten into a brawl over their bicycle merit badges.

The irony is mind bending.  Here, fiercely freedom-talking "outlaws," and yet they shed blood over the minutia of their own rules, the laws of their tribes, the peculiar pride human beings show in the systems and structures of the social dances we create.

We humans are so weird.

Christian and Libertarian

At a conference this last week in Washington, DC, a group of Catholic bishops and thinkers gathered to discuss the deep schism between Catholic teaching and American libertarian thought.  The title of the conference laid out the core premise pretty clearly:

"Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism."

The speakers and presenters weren't there for dialogue with the libertarian movement.  They were there to present the Vatican's position, which is pretty solid.  That position is that...as it is manifested in the United States right now...libertarian thought is fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching.

The reasons for this are various.

The most obvious, is that the "libertarian" thought typified by Ayn Rand and some right-wing masters of global capital is utterly alien to the teachings of Jesus.  You cannot hold the poor, the outcast, and the weak in contempt and consider yourself a Christian.  You cannot have personal profit or "shareholder value" serve as your primary moral compass and consider yourself a Christian.  That cannot be so.

This is the thrust of the Vatican's case against what often passes for "libertarian" thought in American political discourse. What does this look like?

It looks like the cretin wandering through Target with a faux-assault long gun.

It looks like the CEO who couldn't care less about workers, customers, clients, or community, but only thinks about maximizing profits.

If you use your freedom to threaten or prey on others, Jesus has beef with that.  In that, I find myself in agreement with my Catholic brothers and sisters.

I'm not totally there, though, because I think it's easy to assume from the morons and magnates who tend to become the public face of libertarianism that that's all there is to it.  That's a flawed assumption.

I'm also aware that Catholicism is a deeply hierarchical and authority-based faith tradition.  If you are a traditional Catholic, all autonomy is erroneous.  Final authority for all spiritual matters rests with the Vatican.  One can resist, of course, or disagree.  And I know folks do, and still consider themselves Catholic.  But within that system of faith, autonomy is not a core value.

Or to put it another way, when Catholicism errs, too much freedom ain't the error.

While it is not possible to be an acolyte of Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman and also Christian, it is entirely possible to be libertarian and Christian.

I can speak this with confidence, because I've bothered reading the Bible.  Jesus has plenty to say about freedom and the law, in both his actions and his teachings.  While he honored the intent of the law in both his actions and his teachings, he was also not willing to be bound by authority when authority itself transgressed against the purpose of the law.

The Apostle Paul--not "deutero-Paul," but the Apostle himself--taught precisely the same value set.  Honor and respect the law, even if it kills you.  He'd say this.  But at the same time, he recognized that following Jesus meant we no longer felt under the pressure of coercive power.  There's one law.  Just one.  Other than that, we're completely free.

That's the same position held by the Letter of James.  The "Royal Law" is also the Law of Liberty.

The Gospels and Epistles make it clear: liberty exists so long as love is the rule of our life.  If we do not love our neighbors as ourselves, then the systems and cultures we create will become the enemies of our own freedom.

If this is how you live, valuing your neighbor's freedom as deeply as your own, then liberty is a meaningful value for you.  You're both Christian and libertarian.

If not?  If all that matters to you are your rights, your wealth, and your power?  It is not a love of liberty that guides you.

That so many in our culture choose to understand liberty otherwise creates an interesting and observable irony: profit-driven capitalist "libertarianism" is the enemy of human freedom.  It controls with hunger and fear, and zealously defends its selfish freedom even if the liberty of others is trampled in the process.

So we can talk endlessly about liberty, while doing everything in our power to destroy it.  It never ceases to amaze me how many novel ways human beings can come up with to screw things up.

The Most Dangerous Faith

From my reading of Reza Aslan's peculiar and confounding Zealot, I turned back to reading Tolstoy.  In particular, I turned to reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, his spiritual and theological magnum opus.

It is, in its own way, every bit as challenging as Zealot, but for completely opposite reasons.

Reza Aslan spins out a Jesus who--oddly enough--looks exactly like the zealous warrior-prophet who founded his faith.  Tolstoy presents us with something that could not be more radically different. He goes to the core teachings of Jesus, and says, in a very straightforward way: this is what we are meant to do.

No violence. Resistance to injustice, sure, but it must be nonviolent. No retribution. Selflessness. Love for all creatures, as if they were our own children.

Period.

All the energies we pour into arguing about doctrinal issues and power struggles and rooting out heresy?  Pointless distractions.  That energy needs to go into being the human creatures that can legitimately say: we are inhabiting and manifesting the Reign of God.

What he has been casting out, as I have read this book, is the most detailed Christian anarchist manifesto I've ever read.

And it is also the most dangerous.

Oh, it's tempting to look at the Jesus of Reza Aslan, the one who is willing to take up the sword, and say, "Yikes! Threatening! Scary man with a weapon and a furrin' name!"  We want to go to FoxNews, and to instapundit, and to townhall.com, where we can angrily rant in the comments section about islamofascism and global jihad.

But the armed and violent Jesus is no threat to our way of life.  In fact, Tolstoy would suggest it is no different from our way of life.  Christendom, and any form of Christian faith that vacillates and equivocates about the use of force to coerce others? That form of faith poses no threat at all to the status quo.  It is already the nature of our world.

But the faith that says: I will not seek power over you, even in opposition? I will not take up the sword, no matter what? This is a frightening, dangerous faith.

It is a direct threat to the entire structure of our society, which rests on power. It does not allow us the swelling heart of pride in the power of our nation, when fighters fly low and in formation. If we did as Tolstoy suggests, we'd be vulnerable.  We'd be unprotected.  Anyone could harm us.

And it threatens us, personally. It does not permit us our revenge fantasies. It does not allow us to yield to the sugar-sweet yearnings of our pride and our fear, and to arm ourselves so that we might be able to take the life of any who come against us or our families.  Again, we are asked to set that aside, and we recoil.

I can't do that.  I struggle with it.  Imagining it feels terrifying.

It is the kind of faith that cuts deep into the heart of who we are, as a people, as persons.

And that is how you know it is real.

Libertarians and the Paradox of the American Revolution

There's always been an odd flavor to the American libertarian.

The commitment to freedom and liberty as a primary value makes perfect sense to me, which is where my circle in the socio-political Venn diagram strongly overlaps with that worldview.  Oppressive governments and regimes are an offense to our created purpose, and can crush the joy and hope out of human existence.

But the idea that the only threat to human liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the gummint?  Pish posh.  The man with the uniform and the gun is nowhere near as dangerous as the man who pays him.  

Or, in the case of American society, the man who made the campaign donations that elected the man who pays the man with the uniform and the gun.  Power and wealth are the same thing.  Seriously.  They are.  Power is the ability to effectuate an action.  That's what capital is, eh?  It's the whole basis of our economy, and every society ever.

And if you don't think businesses can be oppressive, you haven't run a little mom and pop store in a small town when the Big Box comes to play.  Or spent any time dealing with a health insurance provider.  Or worked the floor at Foxconn or an Amazon fulfillment center.

So when I hear American libertarians talking about resisting the enemies of freedom, it sounds a little half-caf to me.  It's not quite totally libertarian.  Only sort of libertarian.  American libertarians are the skim-milk of liberty, to paraphrase Ron Swanson.  

That, however, is not the irony that hit me yesterday.  That went rather deeper, into the conceptual foundations of American liberty itself.   I was blogging about William Belsham, the guy who coined the term "libertarian" back in 1789.   

What hit me, hard, was a strange paradox of the American Revolution.

Belsham's essay, which presents the "libertarians" of his day as fundamentally irrational and ignorant, is steeped in the ethic of the Enlightenment.  Belsham found the whole idea that human beings had  free will offensive.  It was an insult to reason, and an insult to the Creator of the Universe.  And then things get strange.  Belsham, though British, was a strong philosophical supporter of the American revolution.  And yet he thought that libertarians were delusional and philosophically weak.

The "why" behind Belsham's seemingly paradoxical opinion was a little bit of a gut punch, theologically and politically.  Because the God of the Founding Fathers, the Creator of the Universe as understood by the Enlightenment Deism that helped craft our Revolution?  That God was the Clockmaker God. 

The universe, as seen by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, was a carefully crafted and seamless system.  It was remarkable, and intricate, and astounding.  It was also rationally comprehensible.  In those earliest days of modern science, that seemed clear.  Everything happened according to a particular order, an order which a reasoning being could come to understand through experimentation and deduction.

In that system, though, everything was predetermined.  Providence followed a single track.  Destiny was made manifest, but it was still immutable, inescapable destiny.  It was a vast and beautiful automaton, fashioned by a distant and unknowable Creator, in which our whole lives were cogs and wheels.

And it hit me: this is a really strange conceptual foundation on which to base fundamental principles of human freedom.  If your operating principle is liberty, and your view of the universe is linear, preset, and deterministic, there's an inherent dissonance there.

Most peculiar.

The First Libertarian

On a recent evening, I found myself digging around online for some baseline data on the term "libertarian."  It was probably because of a bit of sermon research that had involved Ron Swanson, America's Favorite Libertarian (tm).  As is often the case with sermon prep, I found myself swirling down a wild rabbit hole of concepts and ideas.

My interest, entirely unrelated to anything resembling the sermon that needed to be written: finding the root of the term libertarian.  Where had it come from?  What was its original meaning?  Given my preference not to wander far from theology in my preaching, I needed to do that on my own nickel.

Like most net-denizens, that meant starting out hitting wikipedia, where I learned that our conflation of "libertarian" with what amounts to a peculiar anarcho-capitalism is a more recent phenomenon.

The term first entered into broad usage to describe a particular flavor of communist.  The word "libertarian" in the late 19th century was primarily used to describe continental anarcho-syndicalism.  Or, if that term isn't exactly ringing a bell, it means the folks who trusted neither state nor big business, and who felt that a blend of radical personal freedom and voluntary association was the only way for a society to go.  

Still and all, it's a bit funny to know that the American conservatism of today not only uses a term that was a vital part of primal Marxism, but uses it in pretty much the same way the early Marxists used it.  This wasn't surprising.  If you've ever read any Trotsky...particularly where he talks about the curse of bureaucracy, or the need for every citizen to have access to guns...you know that there are some weird resonances between the very very far left and the very very far right.

But the first use of the term, as deep back as our wiki-brain could find it, was in a collection of essays by obscure British Enlightenment-era philosopher William Belsham.  Here, a big thank you to Google books.  Lord, but this one would have been hard to find twenty years ago.  But there it was, scanned and ready and part of our collective subconscious.    So of course, to that essay I went, looking to stand in encounter with the very first libertarian.

Which, after a few minutes of reading Belsham, I realized I wasn't.  It took a little bit, because the structure of Belsham's essay wasn't exactly immediately accessible.  To be fuceffful in furveying philofophical effays of that era requires getting past a different way of thinking and using language...and writing the letter "S."  I still can't read original texts of that era without imagining they faid ftuff like thif back in the Fixteenth and Feventeeth Fentury, which actually makes it a little more fun.

What became clear, though, was that the term was coined as an insult.  Belsham, very much a creature of his day, was using the essay to snipe at those who stood in opposition to the hard determinism of the Enlightenment era.  Divine providence and design were the nature of things, as established by the Necessitarians.  Necessitarians,  Belsham argued, understood that Divine Providence was immutable and as set as Manifest Destiny.

In the face of the insight of the greatest philosophers of the day, there were fools who suggested that the Deity was not in charge of every last instant.  Their insistence that we were free beings, able to make meaningful choices that did not hew to a single preordained order of being?  Absurd, and an insult to both reason and the clear design that could be found in the unchanging deterministic will of God and God's Providence.

To those fools, whose arguments against determinism were so absurd that they barely merited a response, Belsham gave a name.

"Libertarians."

So in what I thought were my wanderings away from theology, I found myself right back in the thick of it.

Funny, how often that happens.

Riding Like a Libertarian

I heard him coming, as did everyone for two hundred yards in every direction.  He came up fast on the right, slicing at speed between two cars and leaping over three lanes of traffic to lock himself into the crawling fast lane.

It was a Harley, a Street Glide, modded with a large single exhaust that amplified the already sufficient ruckus of Milwaukee Iron into a din that drowned out everything around it.

The rider was wearing the uniform that identified him as A Loner and a Rebel (tm).  The leather jacket.  The black leather stomper boots.  The little beanie helmet and the aviator sunglasses.  His face, as I caught it for a moment, was red...to be expected in forty degree weather.  

It's why I wear gear designed for function, not to help me pretend I'm an extra on Sons of Anarchy.

He leaped to and fro in traffic ahead of me, roaring in front of cars, tossing himself from lane to lane in a futile attempt to get ahead of the pack. 

I signaled and moved my Suzuki to the far right.  Traffic is best understood in terms of fluid dynamics, like you're dealing with a thick semi-sentient particulate sludge, shoving itself through a pipe on tiny cilia and flagellum.  I knew, ahead, that there was an outlet, and that being in that place relative to the flow would gain me time.

I passed him on the right, moving easily with the new flow created by the exit.  His machine bellowed and snarled as he pointlessly bullied his way into each momentary advantage, and he fell behind me.

I wondered if the rider knew that he wasn't making the impression he thought he was making.  Loud pipes don't save lives.  They just make people dislike motorcyclists.  I'm sensitive to that, as a rider.  No one looks at the roaring, aggressive biker or the testosterone-addled crotch rocket pilot and sees freedom.  "Freedom" isn't the word people mumble under their breath as you tear past them, kids.

Which is a pity, because riding is freedom.

It brings out the libertarian in me, riding does.  I don't ride to be part of a herd or a group.  I have never understood the desire to be trapped in a column with a hundred other identically-dressed loners and rebels.  It looks less like freedom, and more like commuting, or marching in a military drill.

I ride because it's pleasurable, and because it feels freeing to be able to move through traffic like it's nothing.  And I do that, whenever I need to.  When traffic has locked down completely, when the grid has seized up in a vast steel stroke, I move out of it, and into the spaces in between.  Yeah, I know.  I'm a lane-splitter.  It's legal, sort of, meaning it's legal in Europe and in some states.

But I do so quietly and respectfully.  My bike is bright, tall, narrow, and quiet.  When I "filter," which I do in locked down urban traffic, I do so slowly and systematically, and in such a way that I'm not going to startle or upset anyone.

Why should I sit in traffic, if my vehicle allows me to move through traffic without harming others?  Why should I add to the problem, when I can flow through it like light through water, like a subatomic particle through matter?

Use your freedom, while respecting the liberty and integrity of others.  It's the only way you can really claim to be a libertarian.

Faith and Freedom

Funny thing, freedom.

I've been reflecting on liberty a whole bunch this last week, as my book has extended a tender first sprout into the world.   Playing faith off against Many Worlds cosmology has left me with what amounts to a radical theology of freedom.  Given that "Liberation Theology" is already taken, I'm not quite sure how to describe it.  But it's pretty cool, in a creative, boundless way.

Whichever way, the assumption that we are created as absolutely free beings is a vital part of a faith that can engage with the wild, open creation in which we find ourselves.

Faith that redefines liberty to mean something quite different, that...well...that's rather less creative.  Rather less hopeful.  Just a tich.

Having listened to some of the speeches and followed the conversations at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's recent gathering, I do find myself wondering:  Why is there so much difference between how I understand liberty and how it's defined by this "teavangelical" movement?

I mean, shoot, as the World's Most Bourgeois Anarchist (tm), the words liberty and freedom are some of my favorites.  I think we're created free, each given both the gift and the immense responsibility of telling our own story.

But when I use the words "freedom" and "liberty," there are some assumptions that I make.

The first assumption is that freedom, by necessity, means we can screw up.  We aren't just free to live that best, most joyous, most gracious and noble life.  We can make the wrong decisions.  We can do real damage to ourselves and those around us.  We can take a bite of that fruit, and be cast from the garden.  If those things are not true, then we are not free.

When one says things like "Freedom means striving to be your very best," as was said at the conference, that's all well and good.  But it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.  Freedom is a peskily neutral thing.  Yes, it's a heck of a lot better than oppression.  It is not actively negative, abusive, or monstrous.  It is simply the absence of constraint.

Another assumption that I make is that my liberty cannot define yours.  I understand the good in a particular way.  I see value in duty, and responsibility, and commitment.  I do so because both reason and faith dictate it.  But if you see differently, and you approach existence differently, then my commitment to liberty dictates that...so long as you're not impinging on me...I let you go at it.  I might disagree.  I might tell you so, or offer up a differing opinion.  But if you want to screw up, I cannot stop you.  I will not use the law to coerce you.  I will not bully or oppress you with my own personal power.

I also understand that just because you aren't me, that doesn't by necessity mean you're wrong. You are free to not be me.  You are free not to think as I do, and sometimes that's not you being wrong.  It's just you being different.  When we define liberty as just one thing, or just one set of values, then we just don't get it.  If we think freedom means "You are free to obey my rules," then somewhere, we've missed the point...not just of our Constitution, but of the way we were created.

A final assumption, related and absolutely essential:  to value freedom, you have to value the freedom of others.  So much talk of "liberty" is focused on "my liberty."  I want to defend "my freedom."  I want to be free to do what I want.  And of course, we do.  But if your primary concern is for your own right to do/believe/act however you please, then you don't really have freedom as a primary value.  You have your own power as your primary value.

To care about freedom, you need to defend the liberty of others.  Here, political movements don't do so well.  In defense of the "us," umbrage and outrage are turned outward at the oppressive other.  The ethics of victimization and manufactured oppression become a way to justify oneself.

If you're going to be faithful about freedom, and really attend to the Law of Liberty, then you do kinda need to steer away from that.

Liberty and Responsibility

In the thickets of other things going on in the world, one bit of news that stuck in my mental craw this week was the announcement by Adam Kokesh, a libertarian blogger/self-promoter/provocateur, that he would be leading a march on Washington this upcoming fourth of July.

The purpose of the march?  To declare the fundamental right of a citizen to "open carry," meaning to visibly carry a loaded firearm wherever and wherever one wants.   This is the law of the land in the great state of Virginia, but it is very much not so in the District of Columbia.

So what is planned is this:  A thousand gun rights advocates will cross the Memorial bridge from Virginia into DC.  Every single one of them will be carrying a loaded weapon.  From pictures of prior demonstrations, most of those weapons will be AR-15s and the like.

They will be met by law enforcement for several reasons, not the least of which is that on the 4th of July, security in DC is considerably tighter, as families from the entire area and around the country arrive for the evening's firework display.

So a thousand armed individuals, many of whom are convinced that the government is inherently tyrannical, will be asked to put down their weapons by police on high alert.   Does this sound like a good idea?

Actually, to many of the event supporters, the answer is "Yes."   It's extreme, but what is called for, they say.  It's bold!  It's defiant!  Sure, there could be violence, but we won't start it, they say.

I tend to strongly favor individual liberty.  In fact, my theology increasingly demands it.   Human beings...all sentient life...has been created fabulously, terrifyingly free.  That's taken me to increasingly view morality and ethics not in terms of the One Right Choice.  Unlike deontological ethics, which are grounded in an absolute duty, or consequentialist ethics, which assume particular outcomes, probabilistic ethics are squishier.  They leave space for freedom.

That ethic involves making decisions that frame and shape possibility.  No guarantees.  Just increased likelihoods.

So let's look at this libertarian decision from the standpoint of the ethics of probability.

The scenario imagined by the organizer is a peaceful march that draws out the sympathies of liberty loving Americans.  Fifty-five hundred patriots, all good-hearted and true, march to the city bearing the arms that guarantee our freedom.  Law enforcement, impressed with their discipline and evident love for America, approach them and there is a constructive and mutually respectful exchange.   Media coverage shows the real nature of the libertarian movement, and national sympathies sway more towards the right to individual freedom.

Is this possible?  Why yes it is.  In some universe, it might happen.  But it is not likely.   Why not?  Because it is an ideal that isn't grounded in reality.  It is so improbable that it amounts to delusion.

Here is the reality, which both reason and compassion permit us to see.

The reality is that being Cop is hard.   Law enforcement professionals have a hell of a job, and for all of Kokesh saying that he respects what they have to do, he doesn't.  He's a paleolibertarian, dangit.  Not respecting the law is that entire worldview in a nutshell.

What a cop will see as that march approaches is a thousand individuals, all of whom at best adhere to the idea that he/she is an agent of tyranny.  What that cop will feel is tense, knowing that his/her duty is to disarm those individuals, all of whom believe that setting down their loaded weapons would be an affront to their person.   The entire armed march does not respect Cop, or the law.  That is why they are marching.

"Put down the gun," says the cop.  "No," will say the marcher.   So we have tense, frightened, angry human beings with loaded guns, confronting tense and angry human beings with guns.

And not just tense human beings.  Reading through the Facebook page set up to organize this event, you read some posters who are libertarian, and defiantly so.  That is their right.

But you read others who are insane.  Not eccentric.  Actually mentally ill.  There are posts that can only be typified as paranoid schizophrenic, incoherently ranting about the Zionist Occupation Government and the end times.   As of a few days ago, Kokesh had tried to delete these posts, but he doesn't seem to totally know how Facebook works.

So in this crowd of armed citizens, there may well be several gun-bearing individuals who are there to kill and die, to start an armed conflagration that plays into their delusional fantasies.  How can you tell them from a sane armed citizen who is expressing his legal right to open carry in the state of Virginia?

You can't.  Not until they start shooting.

From the standpoint of the ethic of probability, what this march creates is a tiny likelihood of a positive outcome, and a vastly higher likelihood of violence and bloodshed.

It isn't bold.  It's blind to both reality and compassion.   And that, by the standard of the Law of Liberty, is just plain wrong.

The Social Libertarian

During a morning conversation with my wife about copyright law...yes, we do live inside the Beltway, how did you guess...I was expounding on one of the things that I find most irritating in our culture.  It's that strain of copyright enforcement that requires Jesus folk to fret and worry before we drop a snippet of a praise song into a church video, or that requires us to check in with an organization before we sing a sacred song in worship.

I've never bought this.  If I buy a song, and I want to give it to all of my friends so they don't have to buy the song, well, then I get the concern of the musicians who created it.   I'm taking bread from your table.  Fair enough.

But if you write a song about Jesus, and you tell everyone it's to give God the glory and to bring more people to know His love, then honeychild?  That song don't belong to you no mo.

Oh, I'll still buy it.  I'll still go to your concert.  Well actually, I won't, because I have never trusted highly-choreographed big-stadium mass-emoting as a legitimate form of religious expression.  Too Leni Riefenstahl for my tastes, I guess.

But I'm be [gosh-darned] if I'm going to feel guilty about using it to spread the Gospel without your permission.  Worship is fundamentally free.   If there's a song about Jesus, we can sing it and share it, because it belongs to him.

Well, anyway, I was up on that favorite soapbox, and my wife said, "Honey, you sound like a libertarian."

I'm not sure that's entirely true.  I know and like libertarians, perhaps because that ethos reflects the actual reality of our created nature.  We are made free.

But, bless 'em, I'm not totally there.   In large part, that's because the American libertarian movement seems driven by an ethos that is often best described as "Don't touch my [stuff]."  And by [stuff], I mean either my guns or my weed or that 1961 Buick I've been restoring in my front yard since 1986.

What American libertarianism has never grasped is that we do not exist in isolation.  Because of this, there are inevitably tensions between freedoms.  You may wish to let your pack of hunting dogs out into your yard at 11:45 at night so you can stream your favorite episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.  I may want my colicky infant son to not be woken up by their incessant barking.  If I ask you to bring them in, you are perfectly free to tell me to mind my own business.

But your freedom is no longer freedom, because you have taken away mine.

That's the great challenge for the libertarian.  As an ethos, it works great if everyone is both radically compassionate and shares the same worldview and interests.  Once Jesus gets back, I'm sure that's how we'll roll.

Until then, though, the libertarian reality is a messy one, and one that can dangerously favor the interests of the powerful.   Ownership implies power over something, and as the libertarian ethos focuses intently on the right of ownership and property, it struggles conceptually as it encounters the ramifications of that power.

"Don't tell me what I can do" means one thing coming from the lips of a man just looking to cut through your property as he hikes through the woods, and another thing from the CEO of a multinational conglomerate whose private security forces have seized your land.  That is perhaps why those with power are so very interested in furthering and developing an ideology that would place no limits on their power.

The purpose of good government is to defend the liberty of the less-powerful.  The best governance is that which acknowledges and embraces the tension between liberty and life together.   It acknowledges and challenges both individual power and state power, and demands that they exist in balance.

So no, I'm not libertarian.  Social libertarian, perhaps?  Hmmm.

Paul, Powers, and Principalities

Poring over the slate of GOP candidates, I find myself compelled to admit:  I like Ron Paul.  I really do.  Perhaps that's a factor of the odd way in which right-leaning libertarians and left leaning anarchists come right back around to being essentially the same critter.   Paul is admirably consistent, and seems to be that rare politician with considerable integrity.

But though I'm theologically quasi-anarchic, and very much in favor of limiting the scope of governmental intervention in individual life, I just can't quite bring myself to consider voting for him.  Why?

Because I think weakening the state in our democratic republic would have a negative impact on individual liberty.

What is the role of the state?  A good and well-run state balances the interests of constituent members of a culture, insuring that the liberty of one does not impinge on the liberty of others.   That is the essence of justice within the realm of human societies.

The reality, though, is that as cultures become more complex than the local or the tribal, the requirement for the state to maintain balance becomes more challenging.  You are no longer balancing individual rights with other individual rights.  You're dealing with collective and transpersonal entities, whose power is considerably greater than that of individuals.

Our society, for good or for ill, has decided to treat most corporations as if they were individuals.  Those "persons" bring considerably more weight to the table than a single individual.  Their interests, driven by the amassed wealth and resources that these "immortal beings" bring to the table, are difficult to counterbalance if you are just a single human being.  My ability to influence the direction of culture is considerably smaller than that of NewsCorp, for example.  The same is true for ExxonMobil, or NorthropGrumman, or ConAgra.   If they want something, they're likely to get it.  They control both the means of production and, increasingly, the media through which we communicate.

If it is truly representing the people, government provides a counterbalance to the power that corporate entities wield in a culture.  It can break up organizations that are too potent.  It can regulate those corporation's activities...and what are regulations but laws governing the behavior of these odd semi-human leviathans?  And the behavior of corporations needs to be governed, because they could otherwise easily become the lords, barons, and dukes of a new feudalism.

Assuming they are not already.

In the absence of that counterbalance, those entities will pursue power and profit above all other things.  That's their purpose, and that's the biggest challenge facing both anarchists and libertarians.  Maintaining individual freedom and liberty in the face of those very real and active powers seems to demand both an engaged citizenry and a government that is empowered to act on the behalf of the individual.

Given the Corporate Colossi that now tromp and rumble through our world, we each need all the help we can get.

Rand Paul, Racism, and the Libertarian Conundrum

This morning, I read yet another piece on Rand Paul, the libertarian son of libertarian icon Ron Paul. Dr. Paul, an ophthalmologist, is currently a Tea Party favorite, having won the Republican primary for one of Kentucky's Senate seats. He's...well...interesting. Yeah, he's youngish, and photogenic, and his family is photogenic. But unlike other tea party folks, he speaks with what to me seems strangely flat affect.

Though the talking points coming out of his mouth are red meat to the Tea Party folks, they are delivered as a slow, deliberate, passionless mush. In terms of rhetorical style, he makes Al Gore sound like Benito Mussolini. Populist firebrand he ain't.

I can appreciate that.

Dr. Paul has been attacked vociferously on the left following comments he made about the Civil Rights Act, which enforced integration in the South. This has been taken, I think, as some form of tacit pandering to the racism that still weaves it's way through some corners of the American South. That may in some ways be true. When politicians speak of the rights of the states and localities and corporations and individuals and against the federal government, it's hard not to hear echoes of the Confederacy.

But when Dr. Paul was asked about the Civil Rights Act by progressive talking head Rachel Maddow, it was something of a loaded question. His response...which was to muse in the abstract about whether it was a good thing for government to mandate actions on the part of businesses (meaning, in the context of that law, you have to serve non-whites) was immediately attacked as coddling racism.

Honestly, though, it wasn't. I don't for a moment think that Rand Paul is a racist. He's just articulating a consistently libertarian position. Government is bad. Period. Unfortunately, that philosophical resistance to all things federal works under the assumption that localities and groups of individuals will always act in ways that respect the liberties of others.

They...um...don't, you know. That, I think, is the biggest challenge for anarchists and libertarians. If every human being acted in accordance with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, living a life filled with compassion for strangers and the Other, then we could be anarcho-libertarian and all would be well. That's the character of the Basilea Tou Theou, way I see it.

But we are not now in that place, or rather, we are only there in part. Which means that in the here and now, there are individuals and groups of individuals who actively work to impinge the liberties of others. Government...particularly if it is by the people, for the people, and of the people...exists to protect the liberties of those who are oppressed. The exercise of the power of the state in defense of those liberties is not monstrous or oppressive.

It is, as both Paul of Tarsus and St. Augustine recognized, necessary.

So Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, and Jesus Walk into a Bar...

Whenever my theopolitical ramblings show my disdain for capitalism, an old friend has taken to calling me a commie. This is just not true. I am not a communist. I would never, ever, ever describe myself as such.

I prefer the term anarcho-syndicalist.

Yeah, I know, I know. I'm the world's most insufferably bourgeois suburban anarchist. I've named it and claimed it. When I sit in the breakfast nook of my little two-story rambler, I'm not plotting the overthrow of the global hegemonic power structures. I'm just bustling kids off to school, drinking my coffee, and doing church work on my laptop while my puppy snuffs and chews in the background. Yet still and all, if I had to define my political philosophy, it would be some peculiar fusion of Ron Paul and Noam Chomsky, some blend of hopeful American libertarianism and clear-eyed free-will collectivism.

The reason for my perspective is, unsurprisingly, theological. Christian faith is essentially anarchic. It is also syndicalist. Why?

An honestly examined Christian faith leads to an anarchist perspective because Christianity is a faith tradition ungoverned by laws. We do not have laws. We have a single defining principle. That principle is the ethos of radical love of both God and the Other. It is a principle not just written down, but fully lived through the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

This "law" is not something we perceive as a "law" at all. It is not a coercive mandate, to be imposed upon others by force of arms or force of wealth. Those of us who have tasted of the presence of the Holy Spirit know that those ways of enforcing social norms are shallow, empty, and destructive. They are, to use biblical terms, "powers and principalities," and they cannot define our life together. When we are radically oriented towards the sovereignty of our Creator, those sociopolitical forces cease to have any governing meaning for us.

Instead, our governing purpose is an expression of the purpose and design of creation. We act on it not out of fear of physical or spiritual punishment, but out of joy in participating in a grace that radically transforms our reality. Jesus-followers are a people who have moved beyond the need for the Law to enforce social norms or moral behavior. The reality of our participation in Christ renders the law unnecessary. We haven't rejected it. We've just transcended it.

That does not mean, of course, that we're out there wearing black bandannas and lobbing Molotov cocktails at our local Dennys. That would defeat the purpose of our liberation. That purpose is...well...not just about us as individuals. Being rooted in a transcendent love, the goal of the Christian is not the furtherance of our own hungers or needs or wants, but the furtherance of that love. We do not burn with the fires of righteous hatred of those who oppress...because in Christ, we love them.

It is from that love that the syndicalist part comes in. Here, I wander off a bit from the classical form of anarcho-syndicalism. The "syndicates" that traditional leftism is talkin' 'bout are typically trade unions. According to that model, the way to get things done is to wave flags and parade around and go on strike. Stick it to the Man! Fight the Power! The Free People's Widget Collective demands twelve weeks of paid vacation, dental benefits, and a dark chocolate fondue fountain in the break room!

Therein lies the problem. Trade unions and other associations of common material interest are absolutely crappy at expressing the ethic that Jesus taught. While individual members of those associations might live according to the Great Commandment, the associations themselves seek their own collective power and profit. Individual human beings are capable of repenting and changing their attitude towards others. Nations and corporations and unions and associations have a much, much harder time doing this.

So instead, I see the shared expression of our anarchic faith played out most perfectly in the church. Why? Churches...real ones...are free associations. They act collectively out of a sense of shared purpose, undertaken devoid of coercion. While they have governing structures, real churches view those governing structures as structures of convenience, ones that are inherently imperfect. I follow the Presbyterian Book of Order because it helps frame and guide our life as a community. It does not make me better than Baptists, or Pentecostals, or Episcopalians, or Catholics. Well, maybe a tiny bit better than Pentecostals, but not so much that Jesus cares.

Real churches...meaning ones that exist for the joy of expressing Christ's love...also intentionally struggle against the power dynamics that can corrupt the lives of secular collectives. The church exists to serve others, and to support others, and to share joy with others. Healthy congregations look beyond themselves and don't see a world full of infidels, heretics, and enemies. They see children of God who are worthy of the free and generous application of God's love. Period.

I may have some difficulty persuading my session that we are, in fact, all Christian anarchists. A presbyterian anarchist seems almost a contradiction in terms. And yet, if we have the awareness that it is not our structures but the Spirit that matters, we are.