Over to the dark side...

Been reading a lot of Libertarian literature, cruising Libertarian websites lately, being an Anarchist at heart I have always felt an odd kinship with Libertarians at the very least on issues of personal freedom and responsibility.

Every shade of the political rainbow seems to have a fairly firm grip on its philosophical basis, freedom. But the flavors of freedom vary differently from camp to camp. As do the inconsistencies between their founding philosophies and the reality of the larger world. The so called "rationality" of Libertarians is, in my mind, not all that rational when it comes to the issue of supplanting government power with corporate power.

I have had conversations with libertarians concerning this and the answer is always the same, remove trade barriers, privatize social services (to varying degrees) and the "market" will take care of the rest. Now I can't help but think that there is a great deal of latitude given to highly authoritarian and collectivist organizations, so called "private" organizations accountable only to those who directly participate in them (i.e. the shareholders, the board of directors, and lastly the consumer). This has always struck me as an intolerable inconsistency.

Libertarians often focus on the tyranny of the state in economic matters yet gloss over, or all but ignore the fact that in removing trade barriers, labor laws, and minimum wages they will be replacing the tyranny of the state with the tyranny of private enterprise. A tyranny that is dismissed in the phrase “government will only interfere in private enterprise when coercion is a factor,” well what constitutes coercion? Does the greed of individuals equal their freedom, and are they free to consume the majority of the resources when they are in the minority? Moneyed interests already have an inordinate amount of power and hold the lions share of resources, land holdings and more importantly CONTROLL over the lives of the individuals who rely upon them. How does freeing them from government restrictions make the rest of us more free?

This is the great puzzle of free-market capitalism. Libertarians, and anacro-syndicalists both have this inherent flaw in their philosophies.

And meanwhile...

The Flag burning zealots are at it again, this time taking the back-door route to creating a bronze cow out of our national symbol. The same folks who brought you the constitutional amendment “protecting marriage” bring you this little piece of legislation. It, with little fanfare and media coverage has already passed the house and will likely pass the senate. The new improved amendment will allow the states to determine the punishment for “Flag Desecration” finally deifying the stars and stripes. As the definition of Desecration goes, something has to be sacred in order to be desecrated, we will now not be required to salute the flag, but worship it as well.

I would expect that, for this reason, the religious right would be up in arms. They play fast and loose with semantics when dealing with marriage, yet ill bet that no one will raise even the slightest opposition to the meaning inherent in the language of the amendment.