The Tyranny of the Politically Correct

by Keith Preston

  The core questions that emerge when examining a potential relationship between libertarianism and the cultural Left are these: How oppressed by the state or by society at large are those demographic groups favored by the Left compared to other groups? How inclined are those groups favored by the Left towards libertarian values? What is the likely standing of groups favored by the Left with regards to the state in the foreseeable future? How valuable are groups favored by the Left likely to be in a future struggle against the state?

  On the matter of racism, can it really be said at the present juncture in American history that African-Americans qua African-Americans are oppressed in any special way that is not also experienced by many other groups? Black Americans are only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, and there is obviously a lengthy history of oppression of blacks by whites in America, yet a black man has been elected President of the United States. The highest ranking diplomat and Cabinet member in the U.S. government under the ostensibly conservative Bush administration was a black woman. A black man sits on the U.S. Supreme Court and is in fact the court’s most conservative member! Blacks sit in Congress and in state legislatures, hold positions as judges, lawyers, journalists, academics, prominent entertainers and athletes, business executives, police chiefs and many other positions of prominence. Many American cities, where blacks are a numerical majority, have black mayors or black-dominated city governments. American blacks are one half of one percent of the world’s population, yet generate ten percent of the world’s income. The average standard of living of American blacks is higher than ninety percent of the world’s population. If black Americans were an independent nation, they would be the tenth wealthiest nation in the world. 15

  Similar arguments could be made concerning the position of women in American society. 16 The gray area in these matters may be more extensive when it comes to homosexuals, but every American city of any size has a thriving gay subculture and one of the most prominent U.S. Congressmen is an open homosexual, as are many popular celebrities. No doubt some individuals remain who would not give a homosexual a fair shake no matter what, but this is hardly the cultural norm at present and will likely be even less so in the future. 17

  Where is the evidence that anti-racists, feminists, gay liberationists, counterculturalists, multiculturalists, environmentalists or labor unions are generally sympathetic to liberty in any way that distinguishes them from other cultural or demographic groups? Do anti-racists simply argue that the state should remain uninvolved in racial matters and that members of races should be free from persecution by the state in ways typified by the Nuremberg laws, South African apartheid and Jim Crow, or private racist violence such as that identified with the Ku Klux Klan? This is hardly the case. Anti-racists, almost to a person, are advocates of all sorts of statist intervention into society for the sake of achieving desired levels of racial integration. At a minimum, they tend to insist on statist interference with freedom of association, freedom of contract and private property rights in favor of compulsory integration. They also tend to favor the use of an overarching central government for the purpose of preventing local communities from enacting perceived racist policies, no matter how dubious, marginal, mild or moderate. Indeed, most anti-racist activists favor rather extravagant levels of intervention of many different kinds for the sake of advancing their ideals. It could be argued that racists who simply wish to be left alone to practice racial exclusionism within the context of their own separatist enclaves and private associations are (relatively speaking) more libertarian than proponents of extensive interference in local communities and non-state institutions by the central government for the sake of advancing racial liberalism. 18

  What are the libertarian credentials of feminists? To be sure, there are feminists who are also libertarians, such as Wendy McElroy and Sharon Presley in the present day or Voltairine De Cleyre and Emma Goldman from past times, but are such libertarian feminists normal among feminists taken as a whole? Frequently, when I have heard feminists speak of women’s issues, I have inquired as to what exactly women’s issues are. The first thing that almost always comes up is abortion rights. Abortion prohibition may well be as unworkable as alcohol and drug prohibition, but there is no evidence that re-criminalization of abortion is likely occur in the U.S. at any time in the foreseeable future. A referendum for the prohibition of abortion in all but the most exceptional cases recently failed in the highly conservative state of South Dakota. This serves as powerful evidence that the struggle for abortion rights has essentially been won, and that the pro-choice cause is not exactly an emergency issue at present. Either way, most pro-choice feminists do not simply advocate that abortion remain decriminalized. They typically advocate direct state funding of abortions, and usually by the central government. Other women’s issues typically includes such demands as equal pay for equal work. Perhaps this is a noble ideal in its own right, but even if one accepts the dubious claim that gender disparity in remuneration rates is derived mostly from a misogynistic conspiracy, it hardly follows that the setting of wages by the state is the appropriate libertarian solution, but it is the frequently proposed feminist solution. Feminists are also frequently found among the ranks of those favoring censorship of sexually explicit literature and the persecution of sex workers or their associates by the state. Laws prohibiting women from voting, engaging in professions or pursuing education were repealed decades ago, and there is no constituency for such legislation today. How then are feminists identifiable enemies of the state in any particular sense? 19

  One might be inclined to think that surely proponents of gay liberation must have solid libertarian credentials. Well, not exactly. I recall an angry email I once received from a gay rights attorney and law professor associated with the ACLU in response to an article I had written endorsing the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. What was this fellow’s beef with Ron Paul? He was incensed that Ron Paul opposes federal antidiscrimination laws for homosexuals, as if federal antidiscrimination laws were some inalienable natural or constitutional right akin to freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Whenever I have asked gay rights activists exactly what gay rights would involve, the response usually includes much, much more than the demand that homosexual relationships not be subject to criminalization through so-called sodomy laws, or that gay oriented businesses and clubs not be subject to harassment by the police or zoning and liquor licensing boards, or that individual homosexuals should be free from fag-bashing violence or less than civil treatment from other individuals, or even for the rights of homosexuals to legally marry (interestingly, the cultural left does not appear to have the same level of zeal for polygamy as same-sex marriage). Instead, at least a substantial portion of the gay rights movement advocates further erosions of freedom of association, contract, privacy and private property with antidiscrimination laws, direct subsidies to homosexual organizations, the use of gay marriage laws to require taxpayers to finance state-funded benefits for same-sex couples, granting homosexual pairs equal if not preferential consideration so far as the adoption of children is concerned, criminalizing speech that is critical of homosexuality, the use of tax-funded public schools for the dissemination of pro-gay propaganda under the guise of sex education and teaching tolerance, enacting hate crimes (thought crimes) laws granting homosexuals legal protection above and beyond that of ordinary crime victims and many other such privileges. How is this any different from, say, right-wing Christians, organized racists or advocates of family values demanding similar favoritism? 20

  How are environmentalists libertarians? There are few political factions around who are quite as state-friendly as these. Of course, there are exceptions such as some green decentralists and neo-Luddites. 21 Environmental radicals and other similar factions, such as animal rights activists, have at times been the target of state repression, but no more so than pro-life radicals, religious fundamentalist sects or racists. As one who is sympathetic to the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism and
a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) it pains me considerably to criticize or attack labor unions, but the issue has to be confronted. Do labor unions in any way take a consistently anti-statist or libertarian line? Or do unions typically prefer privilege for their own members at the expense of other workers? The current support of the auto workers unions for another bailout of the automobile industry, whereby unions hope to acquire a share of this particular corporate welfare expenditure, with the costs being shifted onto the wider working classes as a whole, is an excellent case in point. 22

  A similar critique could be made of virtually every other left-wing political interest group. The question also arises of to what degree the Left’s coalition of victim groups allied with cultural and intellectual elites and educated professionals is a stable one. For instance, can the modern Left’s program of feminism, gay rights, abortion rights and secularism be successfully reconciled with other aspects of the left-wing agenda, such as the importation of ever-increasing numbers of Third World immigrants into Western societies and the granting of disproportionate amounts of political power to indigenous racial minorities, who tend to embrace social conservatism to a greater degree than the white majority? 23 As the constituent groups of the center-left continue to gain political power, it is highly likely that these constituencies will become even less oppositional in nature, more establishment-friendly and even more statist than they are at present. It is also likely that greater political success will result in a fracturing of the left-wing coalition along ideological, cultural, ethnic, and class lines. Examples might include not only the conflict between white cultural liberals and socially conservative minorities, but also the black bourgeoisie versus the black underclass, black racial nationalists and separatists versus liberal integrationists, affluent professional class women and homosexuals versus the lower socioeconomic orders, the urban liberal-bourgeoisie versus the urban underclass, immigrants versus indigenous racial minorities and many other potential conflicts.

  In advancing the struggle against the state, it is strategically advantageous for libertarians to establish what might be called a hierarchy of priorities. This means libertarians should single out the most pernicious actions of the state at present as the focus of attack. A rather powerful argument can be made that libertarian energies should be focused on combating military aggression by the present American regime, its ever-expanding domestic police state, and the assortment of economic policies that are collectively having the effect of reducing the economic standing of American working people to eventual Third World levels. This also means developing an understanding of the nature of the particular kind of state libertarians are up against, including such matters as its internal dynamics, demographic relations and ideological superstructure. It would not have done much good for citizens of the Soviet Union or the Eastern European nations in the 1970s to rail against czarism, given that czarism bore no relation to the actually existing state of that particular time period, and that czarism was in fact viewed as an enemy ideology by existing state authorities. Likewise, in politically correct twenty-first century North America it serves no useful purpose to perpetually rail against, for example, racism, sexism and homophobia as though we were in Germany circa 1933, Mississippi circa 1957, South Africa circa 1976 or contemporary Saudi Arabia, or to focus our critique of the state on those expressions of the state, such as communism or fascism, whose ideological proponents are on the fringes of American society. Virtually all educated people in the modern world recognize the illegitimacy of traditional forms of totalitarianism, whether from the Left or Right, and of older, more archaic expressions of the state such as aristocracy, theocracy, absolute monarchy or military dictatorship. It is only so-called democracy that is considered legitimate and not just any kind of democracy, but centralized mass democracy fused with egalitarian-universalist-multiculturalist ideology, the bureaucratic apparatus of therapeutic-managerialism, and the welfare state. Therefore, it is democracy in this particular form that should be the focus of our ideological assaults. 24

  With this idea in mind, what kind of state will we in the Unites States be facing in the future, and what will be its guiding ideological principles? Historical and demographic patterns indicate that the Republican coalition that emerged triumphant in 1968 and in subsequent decades has just about run out of steam. It is likely that the Democrats and, by extension, the center-left will emerge as the dominant national party in the years ahead with the support base of the Democrats rooted in expanding racial minority and immigrant populations, the soon-to-be elderly 1960s generation, the increasingly powerful feminist and gay movements, an expanded class of educated urban professionals, environmentalists, urban blue-collar Catholics and white ethnics, and enough WASPish middle class centrists and liberals to maintain an electoral majority.25 At the same time, the American political and economic system has become increasingly militarist, imperialist, corporatist and police statist in recent decades and there is no sign this will discontinue under Democratic rule. There was certainly no discontinuation of these trends under the reign of Bill Clinton and there is no evidence that a ruling party composed of the likes of Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein will be any more benevolent, competent, restrained or fair-minded that the Bush Republicans have been. In other words, what we will soon have in the United States is a multiethnic, multicultural, secular, feminized and gayized political class presiding over a crumbling imperialist empire and decaying corporatist economy. This ruling class will have at its disposal a massive police state apparatus that has been built up in recent decades under the guise of the wars on drugs, crime and terrorism.

  Further social and economic deterioration will likely generate increased social unrest, and the ruling class will respond by attempting to tighten the grip. We can expect that the state will continue to become increasingly pernicious, and justify its actions in the name of supposed liberal ideals, given center-left ideological dominance. Remember how Janet Reno justified the massacre at Waco in the name of combating child abuse and right-wing, religious fundamentalist, gun nuts? This synthesis of liberal ideology and fascist methodology might be properly described as totalitarian humanism.26

  So the most relevant future political question for libertarians will be, How do we go about combating the totalitarian humanist state? If the center-left is likely to be politically dominant in the future, it naturally follows that a viable anti-state resistance would have a certain conservative dimension to it. Yet this conservative aspect would function only as a component part of a wider strategy that is simultaneously libertarian, populist, pluralist and class-based. Such a movement would be libertarian, in the sense of defending all groups who come under attack by the state, irrespective of their particular beliefs or cultural background. These could sometimes include groups favored by the Left to be sure, such as transvestites subject to police harassment or urban racial minorities imprisoned en masse under the guise of the war on drugs and the related prison-industrial complex. Yet it might also include groups despised by the Left, including social conservatives, religious fundamentalists, ethnic preservationists, cultural traditionalists, tax resisters, racists, odd religious sects or cults, firearms enthusiasts, motorcycle clubs, Holocaust revisionists and other politically incorrect persons who fall prey to the repressive apparatus of the state. It would no doubt include still other groups ignored or despised by both Left and Right, including drug users, prisoners, prostitutes and other sex workers, truants (school resisters), psychiatric inmates, indigenous people, the homeless, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, gang members or racial nationalists among the minority groups. It would be populist in the sense of positioning itself as a movement of the people against the elites. It would be pluralist, in the sense of recognition and inclusion of a diversity of cultural identities out of political necessity and out of recognition of the legitimacy of Otherness. It would be class-based in the sense of having a primary eco
nomic orientation towards the lumpenproletariat (the urban underclass), the petite bourgeoisie (small businessmen and the self-employed), the neo-peasantry (small farmers and rural agricultural workers), the déclassé elements (persons from the middle to upper classes who reject their class values of their class of origin), and the dispossessed middle class that is rapidly sinking into the ranks of the underclass.

  It is clear enough that those who are most under attack by the state and those from the socioeconomic groups that might be said to be the vanguard classes of the struggle against state-capitalism display many considerable cultural, religious, racial, ethnic and regional differences among themselves. The implication of this for the relationship of libertarianism to cultural matters is that serious libertarian opponents of the state and its institutional tentacles would necessarily be advocates of neither cultural conservatism nor cultural leftism, but would instead display a bias towards an authentic cultural pluralism, primarily by recognizing the right to sovereignty and self-determination of a variety of cultural groups, many of whom may be in conflict with regards to core cultural values. It is crucial that a distinction be made between meta-political structures, which may contain within themselves a myriad of cultural forms, and the specific cultural orientations of individuals and particular groups. A libertarianism that positioned itself as a genuine third way in opposition to both the totalitarian humanist Left and the plutocratic-corporatist Right and appealed to all those under attack by the state across the cultural spectrum would likely attract at least some level of sympathy from an unusual assortment of demographic groups. These might include elements of the populist far right, including persons with quite conservative value systems, refugees from middle America who are culturally mainstream but have been politically and economically radicalized due to their deteriorating situation, socially conservative but politically radical racial minorities, the sectors of the far left and the counterculture that exist outside of the totalitarian humanist paradigm, the lower socioeconomic sectors of the center-left constituent groups who will likely splinter from the bourgeoisie elite within their own demographic milieu at some point in the future, rebellious youth inclined towards political radicalism, or the urban lumpenproletarian class of ordinary street criminals.27