I Prefer Liberal Democrats

Since I’m in the investment business, some might assume I’d prefer discussing Adventure Capitalist, by Jim Rogers, or Financial Reckoning Day, by Bill Bonner – if only because the authors are, a) both old friends of mine and, b) I agree with almost everything they put forward. Maybe later.

But I generally prefer reading classical history. Notwithstanding, I just couldn’t help but pick up a copy of Al Franken’s new book, Lies, and the Lying Liars That Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

A brief philosophical sidebar

Perhaps you’re shocked. Franken is a notorious and outspoken liberal Democrat. As a libertarian anarchist, you might think I’d have no more in common with him than with conservative Republicans, like Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh. And you’d be right – in some ways. But first, let’s define our terms. The words "liberal" and "conservative" are basically just shorthand for a person’s views on freedom.

"Liberals" say they believe in social freedom (the right to be gay, to smoke dope, wear their hair long, and badmouth their country – according to conservatives). But they don’t much care for economic freedom, because they think some people wind up with more money than others when society isn’t heavily taxed and regulated by omniscient and benevolent bureaucrats and politicians.

"Conservatives" say they believe in economic freedom (the right to plunder our dear Mother Earth, and send the Marines in to secure markets in Third World countries – according to the liberals), but they definitely don’t believe in social freedom. At least not for other people.

"Libertarians" actually do believe in both economic and social freedom, in both principle and practice. "Authoritarians" believe in neither, in principle or practice.

The fact is that neither liberals nor conservatives have anything like a coherent philosophy – to my view, they’re equally arbitrary, thoughtless and dangerous. Whether someone is a liberal or conservative doesn’t reflect so much on how smart or nice they are, as to which sets of aberrations hidden in their psyches they choose to dramatize. The things these people argue about aren’t capable of being rendered by intellectual discussion simply because they’re generally so banal and trivial.

You’ll never, for instance, hear an argument about whether or not taxes should exist, only whether they should be "high" or "low." It becomes a matter of psychology, not philosophy. That’s why when you tune into any political talk show, you won’t hear a polite discussion of principles – you see anthropoids hooting and panting at each other, using ad hominem and ad populum arguments, and every possible mutation of Aristotle’s fallacies of logic on each other.

I shouldn’t say you’ll never hear a discussion of principles. The liberals actually do have principles – even if they’re almost all screwy. The conservatives don’t even have principles of their own. They more or less agree with all the liberal principles ("Well, sure, we need regulations, taxes, controls, welfare, foreign aid, government schools, etc."). They just think the Democrats go too far, too fast. Which is why Republicans are, correctly, seen as unprincipled opportunists. They actually don’t stand for anything.

Al’s book

That’s why, sad to say, I often prefer the company of liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans. At least the Dems tend to take ideas seriously, even if they’re bad ideas. I guess something is better than nothing. The Republicans tend to fall back on bluster, and an inchoate idea of "common sense." Perversely, they usually are more commonsensical than the Dems.

Now, to Al’s book. I think you should read it for several reasons. One is that it performs a real service in debunking lots of annoying personalities (liars) on the strident right. And exposing many of the falsehoods, prevarications and half-truths (lies) that they use. I especially liked his first-person, first-hand telling of what he thinks the facts really are, stemming from personal experience – notwithstanding the fact he had access to 14 Harvard students to do research and check facts for him.

I’m not a comedian, at least not intentionally. But I find Al and I use the same humorous-obnoxious techniques of performing field research – we both like, whenever possible, to engage our prey hand-to-hand, in preference to just commenting on what they say and do in public. I’ve had funny and unpleasant experiences with Republicans Dick Cheney, Barry McCaffrey (at least I think the ex-drug czar is a Republican – but sometimes it’s almost impossible to tell with military types) and Bill Bennett, among others. Al’s had funny and unpleasant experiences with Republicans Barbara Bush, Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter, among others.

The most disappointing thing about "Lies" is that Al turns out to be just a funny leftist Sean Hannity in that he seems to believe that Democrats can do no evil, and the Republicans no good. Instead of dealing with the very credible allegations surrounding Mena, Ark., and the strange death of Vince Foster, he just dismisses them. Making me think he’s at once nave, and intellectually dishonest – although he tries not to be. Pity. One difference between Al and me is that he just seems incapable of also having unpleasant experiences with Democrats. That automatically takes half the fun out of political baiting.

In other words, as nice (and funny – I had to laugh out loud any number of times) a job as he does of exposing today’s Right for the creeps that most of them are, it turns out that Al is just as much a reflexive flack for the Democrats as Rush or Sean are for the Republicans. And that’s the pity. Because Franken is clearly smart, thoughtful, a decent human being and would probably be a lot of fun to hang with – unlike most of his prey.

And that makes me think that, if he was exposed to the arguments for economic freedom from a source other than bogus and fascistically inclined Republicans, he might recognize he’s probably not so much a liberal Democrat as a gut libertarian. As it stands, his fear of the "corporate hegemons" – that pay him to entertain them with his speeches – impresses me as just knee-jerk liberal silly.

But maybe I’m wrong. Sometimes people are just the way they seem when they write a book. And other times you’d think it’s their evil twin. I give Al the benefit of the doubt.

December 13, 2003