Politics Corrupts Minds

by John Petrie
by John Petrie

There was a group of potential future elected criminals who ran in our student government elections under a party called "The Party." Now, in addition to it being a slightly foreign concept to me for students to team up in these popularity contests as members of a party, it almost bothers me because it reminds me of something that really bothers me: politics in general. Politics is often defined, roughly, as the organized and systematized use of coercion to achieve goals. Since people don't usually use force to make others do what they want in their private lives, the only reason they support it when the government does it is because it is sanctioned and done by the government. Generally the reason they think government fiats are legitimate is because the politicians who made them law were elected by the majority of voters in a given area (which is too often, in this un-federal republic, the whole nation). Force has legitimacy because the dumb masses voted for it.

Everyone in the Republican and Democratic parties, and everyone who votes for them, thinks whatever is popular is what is necessarily right. Whatever is desired by the most people should automatically win. To think something unpopular, i.e., something that has little leverage or power in numbers, is considered foolish, useless, or just plain wrong. It is wrong because not enough people believe it. I say it is wrong because the mob believes it. Robert Heinlein said, "Does history record any case in which the majority was right?" (which probably has the same answer now as it will in the year 4000 or so when his character Lazarus Long asks it.) If a Democrat or a Republican, upon introspection, realizes he doesn't really think the mob should rule, or that might makes right, it is irrelevant because that is what his actions have promoted.

These students in The Party are like the demagogues in the real world because they appeal to people's mass-mindedness, their desire to belong to something strong, popular, coherent. Eric Hoffer wrote the book on this (literally). They think, correctly, that students will vote for them because they belong to The Party. There is no other party, and if you don't vote for them, well, you don't belong to the right group, the best group, the most influential group, the group that's going to win, the group that is so "in" that it is The Party! I'm definitely not reading too much into this. That's why they call themselves that, to get people to feel like it is the only group that's worth anything and they can only make their vote matter if they belong to the biggest, best, most [fill in your favorite adjective] group. And that's why politicians and voters belong to parties in the first place, and it is why they appeal to mob mentality in every instance possible when seeking voter support.

I didn't plan on voting in our pointless elections, but just to do my small part in repelling this trend of student-government demagoguery, I voted for only the "independent" candidates. There weren't many.

A second thing that got me to thinking about the state corrupting people's minds was as follows. I was eating dinner with my liberal roommate and two friends of ours who are sort of dating (uuuhhhhh, college relationships…that's a whole 'nother topic I could write about at length). The other guy is a conservative Christian Republican and the girl doesn't know much about political ideologies. This was right after the Iowa caucuses, so we were talking a little bit about politics, and the liberal roommate said he isn't a huge Dean or Kerry fan, but he wants Kerry to get the nomination "because I just want someone who can win." This is an understandable feeling, and I could expound upon this desire for "your team" to win no matter what, but what I'm getting at is what the girl said, viz., "I can't decide if I'm a Democrat or a Republican." Oh, sweet Jesus! I visibly bowed my head and looked off to the side, thinking that very phrase to myself. She is a very devout Christian, but she is a female in college, so we shouldn't be surprised that she said, "I'm very conservative socially, but I think I'm more liberal on economic matters." Well, an authoritarian! I don't hold her accountable for being a bleeding-heart socialist, and I don't hold her accountable for thinking you have to be either a Democrat or a Republican unless you're in a crackpot fringe group like the libertarians but they don't really count. I hold the government, the media, the Democrats and the Republicans, the idiots who love and adore the state, responsible. Without politics, there would be no labels like Democrat or Republican, no need for them. What other people believed and what they called themselves would not affect me in the slightest. But I am forced to care about it because it does affect me.

I said something like, "Y'know…contrary to what everyone would have you believe, you don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican." I wasn't saying this in an attempt to push the Libertarian Party on her or gain a potential new proselyte to the philosophy of freedom (the only philosophy, incidentally, that is a truly Christian political ideology). The two guys sort of laughed and said loudly, "Ohhh, yeah, you can vote for Libertarians! Be a libertarian like John!" My being a libertarian is well-known among all my friends, so they were thinking, Of course John will say don't be a Democrat or a Republican, vote Libertarian!

But I wasn't trying to say that at all. My reason for saying it was exactly my reason for writing this column: I am disgusted and disturbed at the degree to which the state has engrained itself in the lives, minds, and souls of everyone in the world. Just because we are libertarians doesn't mean it hasn't affected us strongly, too. We are just aware of it and avoid it more than ignorant socialists and semi-socialists. Politics affects us all adversely.

The state corrupts everyone with mass-mindedness and collectivism. Mob-rule. But it's not just that. It infects everyone's mind with the presumption that the state should do almost everything, it is responsible for almost everything, it is necessary for almost everything, and if you want anything to be a certain way, government fiat is the way to go about it. It subtly instills in us the mindset that changing society—by use of the state—is how you should make your life, or the world, better, not by changing your life or living it privately with unbroken integrity. It encourages people to join factions (parties) not only to gain government power, but to prevent their opponents from getting what they want, engendering a bitter, competitive divisiveness between groups of otherwise good people, who are now more inclined towards aggression, force, hostility, and desire to control (or claim to be on the team that has won control). This seconds our innate tendencies to envy and hubris. The state encourages people to view the taking over of this or that level of government (via majority vote, of course) as productive, effective societal action. It precludes any instinct to worry only about our own lives and the lives of people who actually impact us, or to do things via cooperation and persuasion, and replaces this with an externalized, mass-minded instinct to rally 'round the fearless leader and join a group to follow and belong to, and take over the privilege of using force against others.

There are other examples, but I'll save them for another time. I figure it looks better to have two regular-length columns than one long one. Until then, I'll just keep going about my daily life on campus, listening to people spout about politics, feeling my blood pressure shoot up and inch back down again. I have learned not to proselytize because people don't like being told why they're wrong, so I write about it instead. With the popularity of LRC as high as ever and the demand for an alternative to the nationalist-socialist miasma on the rise among youths, I figure there's no better way to introduce a little clarity into state-polluted minds.

February 18, 2004

John Petrie [send him mail] is a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in genetics, and is the webmaster and vice president of the Libertarians of UGA club.

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