Even the Right-Libertarians aren't fooled by faux 'Tea Parties'

Over at Lew Rockwell, we see despite what some may say, libertarians aren't really very supportive of the 'Tea Party' phenomena. Anthony Gregory lambastes the Republicans and the "right" taking part in these protests for their rank hypocrisy and their blind stupidity for being willing participants in - and "useful idiots" of - a fake grassroots campaign.

"The contradiction is a wonder to behold. In one breath, they talk about the fundamental violations of natural rights and constitutional law that modern American statism represents. In the next breath, they decry the president for being insufficiently enthusiastic about American imperialism and the national security state. He is too soft on foreigners and not proud enough of the history of the US war machine – this is still a key rightwing criticism of Obama, right alongside the contradictory claim that Obama puts love of the national government ahead of individual rights."

Anthony Gregory is, by the way, a writer and organizer for The Campaign for Liberty so hardly a "socialist" or "lefty" as some I am sure will want to characterize him.

The right-libertarians aren't fooled. Nor are many of us left-libertarians. I wonder why they Republican base seems to be?

Reality Check

This week it seems that the mindlessness if flowing like water. On all sides of the political spectrum, critical thinking has given way to strange, herd-thinking and cheer-leading for "our team".

Take the US election for instance.

To a person, those on the "left" like and support Barack Obama as a fellow lefty and 'liberal'. Yet, his policy and record show that he is, from a Canadian political perspective, the equivalent to a Diefenbaker-Stansfield-Clark Progressive Conservative, not a Liberal. Ironically it should be the Conservatives who support Obama, yet they, almost to a person, stampede to the McCain camp and the Republicans who really are even further right than even the Reform party was. The same people who scream 'Adscam!" when the Liberals are in the room and "Free Speech!" when Human Rights Commissions are mentioned happily support a person - Sarah Palin - who is alleged to have abused her power as Governor to have her brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers during a messy divorce from her sister and who tried during her term in office as mayor to have books banned from the public library.

And why? Because of the perception that these people are "on your side" or "on your team" - the American right must be naturally allied with the Canadian right, right? American 'liberals' are exactly like the Liberals, no?

No.

This knee jerk, collectivist tribalism allows all kinds of cognitive disonance to take place. Liberals who support same sex-marriage have no issue with Obama, who does not support it. Conservatives who support "family values" and "abstinence only sex education" seem to have no problem singing the praises of Palin, whose 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and is having a shotgun wedding to the 18-year-old father. Or of McCain calling his wife a "cunt". Imagine the reaction if it had been "the other side" with these things happening.

(To be fair, Lore Weaver seems to be the only intellectually honest blogger on this - he is an Obama supporter and a Conservative).

And then there is our own (unofficial) election campaign.

The supposedly "fiscal conservative" Stephen Harper and the CPC promising billions in corporate welfare to Ford, even after running a deficit for a short time this spring and after cutting arts funding less than a week ago under the guise of being "fiscally responsible".

Or of Stephane Dion claiming his failed summer "Green Shift" tour was "consultation" that resulting in major changes to the program, after the multiple polls that showed how unpopular it was.

I could go on but you get the picture.

So, tell me again why its better to have a state, run by uncritical, unthinking, unprincipled, intellectually dishonest dolts who seem to want to equate "left" and "right" to their favourite hcokey team?

So to sum up for those who have trouble understanding:

Obama==Progressive Conservative
Republicans == far right of the Reform Party
Sarah Palin == authoritarian who would be ridiculed even by Conservatives if she were Canadian.
Stephen Harper == mean-spirited political whore in a blue tie
Stephane Dion == mousy political whore in a red tie.

In the end, when the smoke clears, we'll still get taxed too much, we'll still get crappy service from the government, we'll still be fighting religious fundementalism, the US will still be in Iraq and (October Surprise!) maybe Iran, and we will still be bribed with our own money by people who want power for their own good, not ours.

It really doesn't matter who "wins".

Tragedy In Virginia

Well, that didn't take long did it? Mere hours after a tragedy, every opportunistic wanker, left, right and centre is jumping on the Virginia Tech shooting as proof positive that their own particular political idea is right.

For instance:

1. Dr. Phil seems to think violent video games are to blame.
2. The Gun Control crowd is screaming that the tragedy could have been averted if guns were banned
3. The Pro-Gun crowd is screaming that the tragedy could have been averted if guns were more plentiful.
4. Fox News is blaming anti-depressant drugs.

While I am loathe to link to some of the more sensational media on this, I think I need to, to make a point. And the point is this:

The shooter was a disturbed young man. He is to blame and no one or nothing else is. There may have been very little that could have been done in the immediate past or on the day of that could have prevented this.

It wasn't "video games" as Radley Balko points out:

"He's right, you know. Video games + psycho/sociopath _+ dose of rage = potential mass murderer. Here are some other recipes for potential mass murders:

Baseball card collecting + psycho/sociopath + dose of rage.

Furry fetish + psycho/sociopath + dose of rage.

Only eating orange foods + psycho/sociopath + dose of rage.

Napping + psycho/sociopath + dose of rage.

School shootings haven't increased since the onset of violent video games. They're as exceedingly rare as ever. In fact, juvenile violent crime has dropped over the last 15 years (though there was very slight blip upward last year), the period over which we've seen the rise of violent video games."[emphasis mine].

The shooter is an almost textbook example of the suicidal spree killer along the lines of Charles Whitman, Pierre Lebrun, and various postal workers as Prof. Elliot Leyton points out in his book "Hunting Humans".

This is a "school shooting" in so much as it happened to take place at a school. Given the shooter's pathology and seeming mental condition, it could easily have been a shopping mall or a place of employment. The setting is really irrelevant when dealing with a mentally unstable and violent person.

Would gun control have prevented it? Maybe, because the shooter may not have been able to get a gun. Of course, he may have resorted to other weapons, homemade explosives, knives or something else, in which case we would be referring to him as "the bomber" or "the attacker". Its seems likely he was going to kill himself and take people with him at any rate.

Would more armed students have prevented it? Maybe, as this has happened in the past, albeit under circumstances that would not be normal (one of the students was a police officer). Its just as likely that groups of scared, armed students flushed with adrenaline would have ended up shooting other scared, armed students flushed with adrenaline. Or innocent bystanders. Or themselves be shot by the first responding police. It could easily have been a much bigger tragedy.

Anti-depressants? There is no proof the shooter was even taking them. Just more of Fox News being fear mongering arseholes (what else is new).

In other words, mourn the terrible tragedy and try to learn what we can from it. Were there signs that could have led to an earlier intervention with the shooter, breaking him from his psychosis and getting treatment? Could Virginia Tech have handled their response differently to better protect students or reduce the number that were killed? These are the things that need to be learned from this.

Everything else - EVERYTHING else - is political opportunism and positioning and those that delve into this deserve not our attention, but our derision and disgust. They need to get the hell of their favourite hobby horses and concentrate on the real issues in this - how a young man's mental state deteriorated to the point that he wanted to kill and how the school's administration reacted to the tragic events when they occurred.

Everything else is self-serving bullshit. Ignore it.