The Electric Tea Party Acid Test
This is a memo to America’s hippies:
Tea Party values are hippie values.
You heard me right. The Tea Party is the one social movement in contemporary America that can rightfully claim to be the ideological heir to the original hippie movement that started in the mid-’60s. And because of this, all current hippies and ex-hippies should support the Tea Party, and by extension Tea Party candidates.
I’d like to have a private heart-to-heart talk with my fellow hippies here, so can the rest of you please stop reading now and leave us alone for a while? Thanks.
Let’s Rap
If you, as a hippie, think the thesis of this essay couldn’t possibly be true, you’ve been paying too much attention to the mainstream media. The Tea Party has been intentionally misrepresented, villainized and smeared by the powers-that-be. But this too is a feature that the Tea Party shares with hippies — the hippie movement was itself misrepresented and smeared by a different mainstream media over 40 years ago.
This essay will elucidate in a fresh way how Tea Partiers are the true heirs to the hippie ethos. When you’ve finished reading, you’ll see the Tea Party in a new light and (hopefully) understand that you may have been on the wrong side of the fence until now.
In short, the Tea Party and the hippie movement share four fundamental core values:
- A craving for independence;
- A celebration of individualism;
- Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
- And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
The Real Political Spectrum
A necessary precursor to accepting any new worldview is to first jettison the previous worldview. So let’s start at the beginning: for the duration of this essay at least, pretend you’ve never heard of the left/right spectrum. Stick with me on this. As an intellectual exercise, just toss the notions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” out the window and begin your political education anew. Because it is this unnecessary (and now inaccurate) dichotomy between “left” and “right” which prevents most people from clearly conceptualizing the way that political thought is actually arrayed.
OK — is your mind clear? Now look at my newly conceptualized spectrum which schematizes political philosophies in a much more sensible and incisive way:
Now, I realize this may take a bit of getting used to. But soak it all in for a while as I explain.
The chart, as you can see, has not just one but two axes along which people’s worldviews are sprinkled:
The horizontal axis measures “government control,” ranging from a desire for less governmental power at one end of the scale, over to a desire for more governmental control at the other end of the scale. Most of you will understand this axis intuitively. But the vertical axis is a little more subtle, but also more eye-opening: it delineates people’s beliefs about human nature. At one end is the assumption that human nature is innate — that our personalities and other essential human attributes are built-in, unchangeable, and naturally occurring. At the other end is the belief that everything about humans is “constructed” — that we only are the way we are because of the particular cultural environment surrounding us, and that as a result people can be changed, through indoctrination, education, and/or alteration of the culture itself. I’ll expound on this more in a moment, but first I should explain the words in the ovals scattered across the chart.
Each oval contains the name of an ideology or social group positioned exactly where it fits on this new political spectrum. Note in particular the lower lefthand corner, where Hippies, the Tea Party, Libertarians and Hobos are all closely clustered together. That’s not random — they’re all near each other because their ideologies are in fact all similar.
(I include “hobos” and “bums” on the chart because the distinction between these two classic types illuminates the nature of the spectrum. In case you’re thinking that hobos and bums are just different words for the same thing, note: A hobo is an itinerant laborer who chooses homelessness because of the freedom it affords him, but who is proud of his self-sufficiency and will take temporary jobs to support himself wherever possible. A bum on the other hand is someone who is poor because he simply refuses to work or support himself, and instead is unashamed to survive on handouts and other people’s generosity. Because hobos celebrate individualism, freedom, independence and their own self-worth, they occupy the “sweet spot” at the bottom left corner of the spectrum, along with hippies and Tea Partiers. But since bums are essentially parasites on society and who survive on either formally or informally doled-out welfare, and often blame others for their predicament, they rightfully belong near the other end of the spectrum.)
On the right half of the chart are all the different varieties of political collectivism, or people who seek to impose or benefit from collectivist government. Those collectivists who think that human nature is malleable and a “cultural construct” are at the upper right; those collectivists who think that “people are the way they are” can be found at the lower right. What unifies the collectivist Nazis, Fascists and Islamists is not just their belief that humans have built-in attributes, but that their specific social, ethnic or religious group possesses built-in attributes superior to everyone else’s.
You will note that I neglected to include many political ideologies and social groups on the spectrum. That’s not an oversight. In fact, my original version of the spectrum did not include any groups whatsoever — I just wanted to introduce the idea of these two interlinked axes, and not clutter up the image with a bunch of other stuff. But I realized that some examples were needed for the illustration to be effective, so I placed some representative ideologies and identities at the appropriate places on the chart. Feel free to add your own. And if you think any particular group or philosophy is misplaced, you are encouraged to argue your case in the comments section — perhaps I’ll issue an updated version incorporating your additions and suggestions.
People who adhere to the outdated and overly simplistic left/right divide may have trouble grokking this new way of looking at society. Newsweek, for example, recently claimed that the Tea Party has an “anarchist streak.” I find this interesting, because the Newsweek writer understood that both Tea Partiers and anarchists are on the same end of the “Government Control” axis, but couldn’t grasp that, viewed from a different orientation, Tea Partiers are at the opposite end of the “Human Nature” axis from anarchists, who want to construct an (impossible) law-free utopia based on the assumption that people can change and control themselves in the absence of any authority whatsoever.
This brings up a good point: Scroll back up to the chart and think of it in terms of “halves.” Leftists want to highlight the fact the both Tea Partiers and Nazis are in the same “half” of the chart — the bottom half, as it is currently oriented (although of course the way I rotated the chart was completely random — there is no inherent meaning in the up-down-left-right placement, and I just as easily could have designed it to be 90 degrees or 180 degrees a different way). Of course, as mentioned above, the crucial difference is that Nazis and other totalitarians want to use government to enforce their idea of the natural order of things, whereas Tea Partiers have the exact opposite urge — to have no government enforcement at all, and to let the natural order of things play itself out — naturally.
On the other hand, The Tea Partiers (and I) want you to notice that all the “bad” ideologies, including Nazism and communism, also share space on the same half of the chart, in this case the “more government control” half.
So, the chart is viewpoint-neutral; each person can express their pre-existing political bias by pointing out how this-or-that political enemy is at least in the same half as some identifiably bad ideology. It just all depends on what angle from which you choose to view the spectrum.
‘People like Roger L. Simon and David Horowitz are among the best-known examples of an entire class of former hippies and radicals who now realize that modern-day “conservatism” — including the Tea Party — embodies the true ideals they had been seeking all along as hippies.
‘And yes, that includes me.’
Also Bill Quick http://dailypundit.com/?p=24230 “I was a red-hot leftist (marxist) revolutionary back then… I was an America-hating asshole and a coward. I’ve learned better, and I’ve learned to feel regret for my shameful actions then.”
1) America is like every other country. It is created by humans. Therefore, you are allowed to disagree or even hate America. I know, it sounds like treason. But you can disagree and hate a broken system – which the American system is.
2) Hippies believed they could change the world. This article is a grossly incorrect characterization of that. So they wouldn’t be anywhere NEAR Tea Party, and closer to Islamafascists and the left. Which, you know, makes obvious sense. Tons of Hippies tried to get on Welfare, so the whole lack of Gov’t thing doesn’t work.
3) And no, this statement below is very incorrect. They were angry at the Democrats because they didn’t live upto their high expectations. They shrugged off Republicans because they felt that Republicans were going to stick to the same old, white-privileged ways. It’s like shrugging off a crazy relative as ‘crazy’ regardless of what they do, because you expect them to do something stupid.
“So, the hippies of 1968 didn’t particularly like either major political party, but they showed a particular anger toward the Democrats for screwing everything up — while giving the Republicans a shrug. Which, amazingly, is exactly the way the Tea Party feels today: Anger towards Democrats, and a grudging acceptance of Republicans as the lesser of two evils.”
It seems from your comment that you are basing your assessment of hippies from things you learned long after the fact taught by people who have misrepresented the hippie movement to you. The original hippies were not welfare leeches; they tried to live outside the system. It was only when countless million wannabes glommed on the the hippie label that you saw so-called “hippies” living on government welfare.
As for hippies rejecting Republicans because “they felt that Republicans were going to stick to the same old, white-privileged ways” — that’s the giveaway that you are viewing this through a modern academic lens. The concept of “white privilege” had not even been concocted yet, so no hippie was worried about the “white-privileged ways” of the Republicans. You are conflating the original hippies themselves with the left-wing activists who later infiltrated the hippie movement.
If you think the “American system” is broken, I invite you to go around the world sampling other systems. You’ll soon learn what “broken” really looks like. As flawed as our system is, it remains vastly less flawed than the alternatives.
“Capitalism is the worst economic system — except for all the others.”
– WInston Churchill
Great, great, great commentary, Zombie.
I lived in Berkeley in the early ’70s with my long hair while I was doing “primal therapy”. I saw the difference very clearly between the original hippies, the welfare bums, and the Marxist political radicals who essentially hijacked the movement.
Could there have been anything farther from the original Merry Prankster vision than the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Jim Jones Peoples Temple?
The fifties home life was often stifling and authoritarians. We all wanted out of that. Those shows with the idealized family life only made it all very clear what was lacking.
I had a shop teacher in high school who was in some of those first LSD experiments, the ones that Kesey was in, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the main character of Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the definitive retelling of the origins of the hippie phenomenon. (That sentence was directed at the younger readers here, not Zombie.)
The stuff was all around us. Experimentation was necessary and natural.
Once again, thanks for your cogent commentary.
Uh, social conservatives are on the wrong side of the chart. Hello, they want to control a woman’s right to choose and forget about legalized marajuana. The want to make laws to control people’s behavior and border on fascist in many respects.
You don’t understand. Maybe social conservatives want to control behavior with laws somewhat — which is why they’re closer to the center than libertarians — but they’re far far from fascist. The number of laws they propose to control behavior is quite modest compared with true fascists or Islamists.
I’m talking in realistic terms here, not hyperbole. In many aspects, social conservatives want government out of their lives. And yes, combined with that they do want some unnecessarily restrictive laws. A bundle of contradictions? Sure. But that doesn’t mean they deserve to be unfairly grouped with the groups at the far end of the scale.
As an actual 60′s hippie, I have to say that Zombie is right and Heebster completely wrong. Both my hippie wife and my hippie self are totally behind the Tea Party and the Constitution.
To steal someone else’s observation: hippies wear the uniform of the non-conformists. Their descendents are those who dye their hair green like 95% of their friends to show their individuality, and penguinesque rebels who could hardly walk or sit with their low hanging pants.
Most hippies are empty headed yes-we-cannites high on hopium.
I’ll agree with you on that. I’m no hippie and, by my interests and actions, I do not belong in the “Big Hippie Tent.”
But this article does get it right about hobos versus bums. My grandpa was a hobo; he rode the rails to get from one coal-mining job to another.
A major difference between right and left is tolerance, that is, a tendency to view certain conditions non-judgmentally. The author, for example, describes “bums” solely as those who refuse to work and prefer living on hand-outs, a moral/social judgment rooted in a certain ignorance. Most true “bums” – or in more tolerant terms, the chronically homeless – suffer from mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and alcoholism; employment in such cases is out of the question. Also, I understand that the author would also mean to include “welfare bums,” but that too is a moral judgment that ignores sociological factors and assumes everything as a matter of objectivist choice.
As it turns out, the entire chart reflects such intolerance, as well as a subjectivity that could only be described as absurdist. Union members, for example, are on the same level as militia members, though on different sides of the spectrum. In other words, laborers who join establishment-sanctioned groups in pursuit of more livable wages and better working conditions are akin politically to working-class gun enthusiasts who form secret underground organizations in the event of either an apacoplyse, anarachy or totalitarianism. And on the same side the spectrum, FDR/Obama liberals are equivalent to Islamists, that is, only slightly more conservative than Maoists and Nazis (who along with Fascists are right-wing socialists, Hitler not having been a liberal in any sense, and Nazi Germany the result of right-wing sentiments and values).
But back to the premise of tolerance and the thesis that hippies are essentially libertarians, I’m reminded of the “classic” moral difference between Republicans and Democrats: Republicans close their shades at night even though they don’t need to, while Democrats don’t close their shades, even though they should. No self-respecting hippie – a follower of Ram Dass, Buckminster Fuller or Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy) – would ever embrace the narrow, self-righteous morality or political prescriptions of right-wing groups.
I don’t think that right and left differ in tolerance. There is an almost equal amount of intolerant hate spewing forth from both. Would you say that the Ultra Conservative is tolerant of the Radical Liberal or vice versa? I would not. Further, as I think Zombie says, those who align themselves with the Tea Party aren’t necessarily conservative. It’s this damned two-party system in our country that seems to demand the definition as such.
intolerantly stated. QED.
People tend to search for communities where they feel they can contribute and be respected. Few actually put any philosophical thought in to whether what they’re doing is reasonable or makes sense in the long term.
The Hippies were conformists too. Many conservatives are conservatives in name only. They’re conservative because the people in their golf club are conservative. They go through the motions and follow their leaders because they don’t know how to reason for themselves. Greenies are notorious for how they establish marching orders and follow them. This sort of conformance in non-conformity has been observed by editorial writers over many generations.
The interesting thing about Zombie’s essay is that s/he THOUGHT about what the hippies once stood for and asked them to think again. The Hopey Changy leadership has taken them a long way from where they once stood. Those who aspire to follow what their parents and grandparents stood for need to realize that they’re not standing where they thought they were.
Whether this essay will manage to get more than a few people to rethink what they stand for is doubtful. People do not like to have their noses rubbed in this. They have a social circle to attend to…
I was an original Hippie. I look at your pictures of “Hippie” protesters and can tell you those ain’t Hippies. Those are campus politicos. While they were protesting and preaching Marxist revolution, we were getting high and laughing at them as the other side of the same bogus coin. If anything we were pissed that the politicos were bringing heat down on us and making our lives unpleasant. They never converted us to anything. The Original Hippies moved on about 1970 and the wannabes in Hippie fashions bought at the local hip clothing store got converted to Marxism and became rabid Democrats.
I went from no party to foolishly voting for Carter because he seemed like a good guy to being a Libertarian who voted for Reagan in the 70s. I have always tolerated the Social Conservatives and Christian Right in the GOP because I understand that you need 51% to get anything done, but I have defined myself as a Libertarian since 1978. I have often bit my tongue as I listened to Christian Conservatives preach their Victorian BS because it is useless to debate people whose minds are made up.
I can tell you that all the Tea Partiers I know are genuine Hippies who once had long hair, smoked dope, and lived in Madison, WI, one of the great Hippie centers. And most male Hippies I know have been NRA life members since the 70s too. Hippies represented the ultimate expression of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We knew that we were the true expression of the American Dream.
Were still here, you just can’t recognize us in our disguises. We were born in the suburbs, we returned to the suburbs to spawn, and we are still here costumed as suburban parents. We haven’t changed all that much, just our uniforms look different.
Too funny! That’s me to a “t”: Former hippie doper who is now a libertarian living in suburbia with some firearms. I even drive a pickup, shave my head, and wear a western hat now, so there’s no way anybody would ever know by looking… but we know each other when we meet.
Wow! As another old guy, I guess I’ve been a hippie all along and just didn’t know it. One point of difference I’d like to point out though, I’m not strictly a libertarian but I am a strict constitutionalist. Been a life member of the NRA for a long time and feel right at home in the midst of a TEA party rally. As a professed atheist I don’t mind the christian background of most of the TEA partiers and mostly approve of their ethos. They are much better companions than the leftists who want to tell me what I can and cannot do.
Yeah, we’re out here. We dropped acid, listened to Quicksilver, the Mothers, and others. Zappa never strayed too far from the hippie– or freak–sensibilities. He helped foster free markets in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall. He never approved of strong central governments. In fact, we did subdivide– hippies were flower children, while freaks were hard-core individualists, not presuaded by the lefty nonsense. Freaks tolerated hippies only if we could score from them. Otherwise we thought they were simpletons.
And freaks we remain.SUVs, NRA, IRAs and all…
Old guy, you have just written one of the best reponses to a thread I have ever read. I have called myself a conservative hippie for years, because i didn’t really fit in to any other definition.
“I have always tolerated the Social Conservatives and Christian Right in the GOP because I understand that you need 51% to get anything done, but I have defined myself as a Libertarian since 1978. I have often bit my tongue as I listened to Christian Conservatives preach their Victorian BS because it is useless to debate people whose minds are made up.”
It’s worth noting that Christianity (well, Protestantism) has undergone it’s own shift regarding Human Nature (Calvinism vs Arminianism.) At the time of the Founding Fathers the predominant idea was Calvinist, which had settled on the Fallenness of Man- those ideas which generated “a society with the checks and balances against the natural human bastardliness.” The late 1800′s was a time of philosophical turmoil, with an upswing of Arminianism thought in American society, and consequently the idea of the perfectibility of Man.
Interesting reply. I sort of corresponds to my understanding of what hippies – real hippies, not wannabes – were actually about. Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t hippies pretty much dedicated to creating their own type of society outside “the system?” Isn’t that why a lot of them were attracted to the idea of forming communes, squatting, or moving out to the country and living the “natural life?” Well, those of them who were serious enough to do anything about it, I mean. Rejecting modern society, living off the grid – sounds pretty libertarian, to me. Does NOT sound leftist at all.
Like any “movement,” there was a certain amount of fadishness to it. For every actual, ideological hippy, there were millions of young idiots who wore the clothes and did the drugs and flashed the peace signs at every opportunity, but who had no intention of giving up their comfortable middle-class lives in favor of hairy legs and harvesting soybeans. But the same can be said for the political types you mention. They wore the clothes, did the drugs, flashed the peace signs, and attacked “the system” instead of retreating from it.
IMHO, that whole “free love” thing doomed the hippies. I mean, a feller will swallow and spew a hellova lota Marx if you dangle that taco in front of him.
“Interesting reply. I sort of corresponds to my understanding of what hippies – real hippies, not wannabes – were actually about. Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t hippies pretty much dedicated to creating their own type of society outside “the system?” Isn’t that why a lot of them were attracted to the idea of forming communes, squatting, or moving out to the country and living the “natural life?” Well, those of them who were serious enough to do anything about it, I mean. Rejecting modern society, living off the grid – sounds pretty libertarian, to me. Does NOT sound leftist at all.”
Some people created country farm based co-ops, but farming is a lot of work and most of those who grew up in the suburbs didn’t know how to water a house plant, much less plant a crop and end up with food. The people I knew were urban based. Most of my crowd was involved in Rock & Roll, either as musicians or technical support. The rest worked in retail or restaurants.
It seemed to me more of a rejection of the ethos of our parents. It seemed we had been indoctrinated to believe that life was mostly hard work and the only worthwhile goal was to have a boring lifetime job so you could raise kids who would follow in your footsteps. I don’t know if it was the Depression and WWII or what, but most of our parents lacked any sense of joy and wonder.
It was really just about having a good time in life. Free love wasn’t having sex with everyone randomly, but the freedom to go to bed with people you were attracted to. Yea, we smoked dope, and took acid, but my parents had 4 – 5 drinks each night. Long term, having done both to excess, I’d toss a coin as to which is worse.
The Hippie ethos was Libertarian, we were actually living it. It was about doing what made you happy and not being judgmental of others for doing the same. There wasn’t any one way of being a Hippie because it was about freedom to express yourself and live your own life. A buddy I lived with for a while was an avid duck hunter. Sometimes he’d even kill ducks and we’d have duck dinner and make jokes about how it cost him $100+ for each free duck. At the time I had a job selling sporting goods at a campus store and he was the janitor in a strip joint. My hobby was skiing. We were all different.
The old Libertarian test did apply; the right to swing my fist stops at the next guy’s nose.
Much of what was written about us at the time was BS created by staff writers for the establishment press. They got it about as right as they do anything else. Most went out on assignment, met some Hippies one day, talked to them for an hour fishing for sensational pull quotes, and then wrote the article their boss had ordered. Not much changes.
right on! this article and your response Old Guy really strike a chord with me–I was raised by hippie/freak/commune pacifist individualists who got off the bus when “hippies” started bombing and killing (weather underground, anyone?). yet when i got to college in the late 80′s, i grudgingly realized i was a libertarian, not a hippie, because the formulation of the good life i was raised to understand included the concepts of individual responsibility, the idea that each of us must be free to self-actualize, and must be guaranteed the liberty to choose our own destiny. these are original hippie values, best understood as a synthesis of the adage “follow your bliss,” and the challenge, “you’re not the boss of me!” the ideas/worldview of ayn rand, kerouac, milton freidman, thomas sowell, allan bloom, and joseph campbell, to name just a few unlikely bedfellows, resonated with me much more than the intellectually dishonest, overtly collectivist, anti-individualist, pro-new left establishment “progressive” agenda i encountered at school. i remember to this day my shock at the vilification i endured for not towing the party line. and being a staunch agnostic, pro-choice secularist helped not a whit. i would not pronounce the shibboleth, and was cast as a conservative (the horror!)–surely in league with the apartheid regime in s africa, and certainly not allowed to be considered serious intellectually.i have spent my entire adult life in the blue-est of blue places, and have always felt there is just no place for me politically because the fundamentalism of the social conservatives you tolerate just pushes the same anti-establishment buttons i mentioned above. the article helps illuminate my (our) predicament. so thanks, zombie!
Hippies – by definition, pacifists – never bombed, plotted or did otherwise. The Weather Underground was a militant group of disaffected intellectuals, who gave the anti-war movement a bad name. On the other hand, the government – at its right-wing best – slandered, snooped on, beat and shot protesters, who included a combination of students, radical (but peaceful) intellectuals, hippies and others in the late 1960s-early 1970s counterculture.
That’s funny, Old Guy, we social conservatives have always tolerated you amoral secular hedonist libertarians in OUR party because we know we need 51% to get anything done!
“we social conservatives have always tolerated you amoral secular hedonist libertarians in OUR party because we know we need 51% to get anything done!”
Agreed. I believe in Reagan’s advice that someone who agrees with you 90% of the way is an ally. My advice to every Conservative and Libertarian is to put aside your pet projects and realize that the financial mess and dealing with the Jihad are problems that could end the country if not done right and put social issues on the back burner. Fighting about that stuff is a luxury we can’t afford. We need to present a clear message to the middle on how we are going to balance the budget, deal with Islam, get the economy going, and fill the gas tank or we won’t be in power to do anything. They rightfully judge those issues as way more important than gay marriage.
Harumph!
Right on man! This original hippie is a Tea Party organizer now. Down with the man. Give me liberty or give me death.
Hippies are democrats. They vote democrat. They don’t work, therefore shouldn’t be on the conservative side. Remember conservatives work and liberals typically live off conservatives through social programs that they think are free. Hipsters which are the newer versions of Hippies, are liberals. The same liberals and socialists that are in Occupy Wallstreet with the support of Alec Baldwin. Here is a easy to watch video for weak minded liberals with IQ’s less than room temperature to explain the evolution of the hipster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbTI7eWaQbk
Enjoy
One other thing- Afghanistan was on the “hippie trail” you could go and smoke all the hash you wanted. There was mostly peace there at that time. Send the hippies back over there!
You lost the bona-fide hippies at “The Real Political Spectrum”.
The present day hippie doesn’t/can’t apply any more thought process than your average over-loved domesticated gerbil.
AND THEY ARE A PROTECTED SPECIE CALLED DEMOCRAT.
This article and idea will go nowhere because it’s not got any ghetto beat or rap music accompaniment.
And setting it to music will only help if it rattles windows when you turn up the bass.
Okay, wait: Can you add nerds and geeks on the graphic?
When I read the word “collectivism” in Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai, it was like finding the solution to a complex riddle. It was the exact word I’d been looking for to characterize misguided leftist policies — a word that was accurate, descriptive, and nonjudgmental. I even remember the sentence in which it occurred — the Chinese people dragged headlong into the Communist Party’s experiments, whether liberalism or collectivism. It needs to be pasted over Hillary Clinton’s face like that “Socialism-Joker” poster of Obama. COLLECTIVISM.
Oh, and Hello, ic. I often describe myself as an educated hippie. I changed my political affiliation on 9/11 but I still run around the world having fun and I blow my money on travel and foreign-language study.
At last! A Unified Sociological Field Theory. Take that, NPR.
Sorry, one more comment.
There is the Neoconservative Doctrine of the middle east which is opposite horizontally to the Trustafarians. The belief that no individual government can change the islamic fascist governments, but a generic democracy would moderate it through individual freedoms. That goal was to recognize human nature wasn’t changeable, but to try to mitigate it through constructionist intervention.
So zombie’s point about social constructivism is that communism doesn’t work not because of the economics, but because of the philosophy–you can’t change human nature because its human. If communism is to work you need to change human nature by CONSTRUCTING A SOCIAL REALITY so that people work collectively and accept communism, so they don’t try to make more money than other people and have shinier stuff than other people, who don’t ahave a bigger house or nicer car than other people. So the first order of bidness for philosophers who want to support communism is to prove that human nature can be changed by the state making a legal environment that will encourage people to be more communist in their outlook on life.
Now, in fact what we end up with is mass executions of course, but bear with me for a moment–I don’t know what side Searle is on (I actually started reading Construction of Social Reality a coupld of months ago, but found it a tough slog), but Foucault, for example, is trying to argue that things, like sexuality for example, are not coming from some biological human nature, but are coming from culture and society, upbringing, etc. So in theory we could change it if we changed the culture, society, etc. And even if we didn’t want to, we could de-legitemize the biological theory of human nature (Pinker–thanks Z for reminding me I should take his books down from the shelf and actually read them) by showing that there are all sorts of polymorphos perversities hanging around out there which would demonstrate that people confuse procration with getting whipped by a man (or woman) in black leather (Lotrangere’s Semiotext(e) gift to us all). Thats a mighty big confusion, and you could argue that if human nature were unchangeable, this shouldn’t happen. And further, that you can’t say that there is one human nature because there are so many different perversities out there–and if it were biological and unchanging that should not be the case. So if you support communism you would do so by social constructivism, arguing that sexuality is constructed from society and culture (Foucault, History of Sexuality), for example. Or, better example, racism or homophobia is a product of how children are raised and what tv they watch–therefore, if we raise children differently, or change the tv programs they watch, then there will be no more racism. So this becomes a very relevant and desirable goal–the social constructivists want to stop racism (which is socialy constructed), by altering the influences and incentives of a child’s upbringing in order to bring about a desirable outcome (so you can call it a social science, which sounds cool).
Its a nature vs nurture argument as well. We are not entirely free, because we are influenced by society culture, media, etc. But we can try to change those things that influence us in the direction we want to go. We are fundimentally free at first, but then our society is pushing us in a direction we should not go in because it is morally wrong. So it becomes our job to change society. What does this mean? Well, voting for liberals, passing liberal laws obviously, but we can see how this point of view would produce strange, otherwise unexplaiinable things like: hate crime laws, school bussing, afirmative action, the mistaken view that black people are discriminated against in 21st century america in places like Seattle (where I live). All those things don’t make any sense unless you subscribe to the point of view that society is evil and is influencing us and especially children to push them to be bad people morally. (Its not our fault by the way, we are all born good, but society makes us bad.) If society makes us bad, it could, if changed, make us good again too. Like being sent to prison to rehabilitate someone. Of course the recedivism rates are sky high, so there is no actual evidence that prison works to rehabilitate someone. But thats the theory behind it, as it is the philosophical theory behind so many liberal views.
This theory is behind all government regulation basically. Its behind all political correctness.
If, to the contrary, we were to say that, hypothetically, one was born the way one was born, and society could not change that, there would not be any need for laws to tell us not to descriminate against blacks, because we would inherently have a moral compass that would tell us that to begin with, because our inate human nature would be morally good. And if we were born morally bad, no amount of societal influence would probably change that i’m guessing.
So you come all the way around to Horkheimer and Adorno and the paramarxism of how to influence people (by, for example, the raising of consciousness of the workers, education, uncovering the capitalist impulse to spend money on shiney shit) to become good soviet men and women by setting up society so that it will be a positive influence on people’s characters–this time from an institutional rather than a philosophical direction.
Add the bell curve to human nature and it solves the problem. People are born with the genes and gut feelings they inherit and very few can muster the “will” (or whatever it is) to change much. We old hippies — and everyone else, too — are pretty much the same as we’ve always been. So, too, are the murderers and the saints among us. While the great majority of us are clustered about the middle of the bell curve…. generally law-abiding, fairly trustworthy, usually helpful to others, and so on; it’s those relatively few who are the furthest from the middle of the bell curve (or “the norm”)that cause most of the problems in this world and most of them probably can’t change or be changed/rehabilitated. They can only be removed from society in one way or another.
I wouldn’t say that human nature will NEVER change for the better. It already has and on many levels; but it’s a long haul and could very well be set back thousands of years if various apocalyptic disasters befall us that are always threatening.
It’s also interesting that the most dangerous people usually wind up in charge.
Excellent post. In psychiatry, and especially in psychoanalysis this topic is always simmering beneath the surface. Freud believed that aggression was innate; the “new” school of “inter-subjectivity” holds that aggression is only generated by frustration. One says there is an innate human nature, the other that it is society, either micro, ie parents, or macro, bad society, that causes trouble. Back again to Hobbes versus Rousseau.
One reason why Freud’s view of human nature appeals to me is that he acknowledges that people CAN change, but that it takes long and difficult PERSONAL modification to come out well.
The upper right quadrant of the chart holds that “goodness” is measured in terms of the macro — kind of a social justice theory of good.
The lower left quadrant of the chart holds that “goodness” is measured in terms of the micro — personal rectitude and self-restraint. SELF restraint, not state mandated restraint.
Where is the locus of “the good?” Is it in the refinement of the soul, or is it in the mandate of the state?
Rugged individualism used to be part of the American ethos. The communitarianism implied by the first Thanksgiving blended with the pioneer spirit of self-sufficiency blended with helping your responsible and upright neighbors. Now it has all been jumbled, just as what went for liberalism in the 19th century is now called either conservatism or modified libertarianism in the 21st.
“Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law.” That used to be the American spirit. We were responsible for SELF control, the law was responsible for preserving liberty. How the world has turned!
I completely agree with your final comment, “Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in Law”, taken from the second verse of “America the Beautiful” and discussed by many Christians. A few posters to this subject look upon Christianity and its precepts as arcane, hogwash, preachifying, fire and brimstone, all manner of degrading experiences for them as they have grown up in a country based upon the very same Laws of Nature layed out in the Bible and written about for centuries before the coming of Jesus Christ. These Laws handed down by God have been followed, or not, by Great and not so great civilizations to their peril. (read Cicero re:Rome) The Laws are meant to keep a society free of all manner of despicable act, how to carry out husbandry (farming to you all), et cetera, et cetera. They are there to help each and every one of us understand that we are not perfect and how to become closer to God to understand his Peace and Love he has for us. His Peace and Love is all about the Freedom we Hippies crave and strive for each and every day. Those of you stoking up your doobies or flying down the highway on your choppers know exactly the feeling I’m talking about. And I am a Staunch Tea Party Member taking my Country back from the ‘MAN’. No Socialist Red Commie here.
Wow Thorvald. I need some better drugs Man. You’re the best. PEACE.
Back in the days of “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” politics wasn’t much on the menu. Zap comics focused (not sure “focused” is the right word) on sex, pot and LSD, and exotic cosmologies. But then came the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and, while Freweelin’ Franklin was a kind of proto-libertarian, Phineas and Fat Freddy were Maoist all the way.
On the other hand, I can see Fat Freddy’s Cat in the Tea Party.
Yes, chewing up all the leaves.
WOW!! I haven’t thought of the Brothers in years. . . . brings back some memories. . .
Yes, like Fat Freddy going away for a few days and leaving his Cat with a whole bag of food and then coming home to an outrageously bloated feline. “I’ll get you for that, Fat Freddy!” And Freewheelin’ Franklin (sorry for the earlier misspelling) visiting his father in Texas and getting mixed up in a brawl between the different ethnic lineages–Saxon, Norse, Comanche, etc.–of the members of the local John Birch Society. … Fun times.
I was in Berkeley this weekend to visit my son (UCB class of 2014). We attended a tailgate party with a dozen Berkeley grads (now in their 50s and older). They had become yuppies, with jobs in software, receding hairlines and parroted the latest (Democrat) party line. As nice as they were personally (and the tailgate grub was first rate) I couldn’t understand how they had (well, 90% of them) had conformed to the conventional wisdom. Those evil Republicans screwed things up, and Obama is getting the blame for fixing their mess. One lady grumped that Sarah Palin really was stupid based on whatever left-wing rag she read told her. No independent thought. No – check out the details for yourself. Just parrot the received wisdom. I have my own thoughts about la Palin, but at least I’ve bothered to hear what the lady has to say. Epithets like “tea baggers,” etc. Liberty? Not on the menu. All that 60s “Question authority” and “Fight the power” stuff gone to hell. The hippies have become their old, un-hip parents.
Oh, and they did bring out the sheet music to sing the Berkeley alma mater. That was cool. And the Bears beat the Bruins 35-7. Its always a good day to beat UCLA. Meanwhile, I hope my son could pick up on the paradox. He’s been raised with proper values. UCB does have a fine College of Engineering, which is why he is there.
I cringe when I hear otherwise intelligent people spouting the leftist talking points.
are you sure there are intelligent people spouting leftist talking points ? or are you referring to mr. o’s form of brilliance ?
David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, designed the Nolan Chart in 1977. His 2 axes were economic freedom and personal liberty. Zombie, if you came up with this essay without hearing of the Nolan Chart you are very sharp. That would also be a comment on the difficulty the LP has had in publicizing its ideas. I myself am an old Hippie DFLer who joined the LP in 1986 and now am a Ron Paul republican Tea Partier trying to get the Minnesota GOP to do the right thing. The 2 halves that you mention in this essay I define as Constitutional, Capitalist Ecologists vs. Authoritarian Socialist Environmentalists.
If the Nolan Chart correctly illustrates the basis of the Libertarian Party, it’s no wonder that the party has gone nowhere. To believe that conservatism is closer to personal freedom than is liberalism is to seriously misunderstand both political ideologies. Misunderstandings like that are deadly for competing ideologies like Libertarianism in the real world.
Interesting. I use to be a Dead Head.
http://www.bluecollarphilosophy.com/search/label/I%20Followed%20The%20Grateful%20Dead%20Before%20I%20Followed%20Jesus
I remember how badly the hippies treated my cousin when he returned from Vietnam. Sorry, I’m not drinking this revisionist tea. The hippies I remember were stoned out, anti-war protesters who treated our returning vets like dirt. I would like to think they have changed, but this is the generation that gave us Bill Ayers.
Most of the hippies I knew of burned their brains on drugs, ended up dead, or were totally bummed out to the point where they destroyed their families. I guess I just don’t remember all the beauty of the movement. Then again I wasn’t all that old at the time.
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
There were never very many hippies and, as someone above pointed out, they had moved on and out by 1970. After the hippies came the druggies and then the left wing campus radicals. The whole progression took place in maybe five years.
Sorry, Zombie, but this little former hippie, who has always been a staunch conservative, recognized that the Tea Party was the bastion of former hippies over a year ago. Very good article and I love how you tied it all together so neatly.
While this is interesting and is useful in contrasting the various political views, it is fundamentally flawed.
It isn’t Right/Left. It is Up/Down. Up is natural rights, endowed by God. Down is the subjection of others.
The Libertarians seek some ideal, where folks are mature and wise and can be trusted to just do the right thing. If only people were wise.
Survivalists are pretty much the same, but some devolve to a control structure.
Social conservatives are also Up. We just feel society needs a few more rules than Libertarians think it does. The difference is our opinion as to what is the minimum necessary. Where is the line drawn? Both aspire to maximum possible individual freedom.
The tyrants are always Down. It is always about Power. They may dress that sow up in different silk dresses, but it the same pig. Despite all their claims of beneficence and munificence, it is only about Power, power over their fellow man. All else is the requisite lies to sell their tyranny.
“The Libertarians seek some ideal, where folks are mature and wise and can be trusted to just do the right thing. If only people were wise.”
Marc, this is exactly the opposite of what Zombie and Whittle said. Human nature is often very poor and nothing any state can do will change that. The best check on power is to decentralize it. The worst thing you can do in a world with petulant control freaks is give one of them a lot of power in a misguided attempt to stop others from being that way.
Excellent job. Very similar concept to a post of my own:
http://themadpiper.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/myths-of-the-political-spectrum/
The second axis is definitely helpful, but I was trying to reframe the traditional paradigm as much as possible, as I felt it would garner more acceptance.
Zombie
Your invention is neither new nor original, sorry.
http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm
Pournelle’s seems more accurate. As a whole social conservatives want to use the power of government to enforce their madness far more than the libertarians, and you can see this same argument at PJM repeated in microcosm (those of the libertarian bent are rightly suspicious of the so-cons.)
I’d seen those “Pournelle Axes” years ago and back then found them confusing and ill-arranged. Now, thanks to your link, I’ve been re-introduced to them, and I must say that they have not aged well. They seem even more awkward, clunky and badly phrased than I even remembered. Why are there two different “Statism” squares? Why is “Ultimate Evil” at the opposite end from “Nazis”? Why are “Welfare Liberals” and “Various Libertarians” apparently adjacent to each other? It doesn’t make any immediate visual sense.
And don’t tell me to read the accompanying text, which supposedly explains the chart. If the chart doesn’t leap off the page without any explanation, then it isn’t a good chart. Besides, the text only muddies the matter further.
Zombie’s “Political Spectrum” is much more elegant, visually appealing, understandable and self-evidently true than Pournelle’s failed attempt. The “Political Spectrum” has all the makings of an instant classic that will be referred to over and over again. The “Pournelle Axes” are deservedly forgotten, a well-intentioned dud.
Sorry. The nod goes to Zombie with this one, no question.
There are not two Statism squares; the label of the horizontal axis is Statism and it is simply labelled in two places.
But if you can’t be bothered to read the explanation, you probably shouldn’t assume you understand it well enough to comment.
There’s a brown spot on the end of your nose.
Libertarians truly misunderstand SoCons. We are not advocating pushing our agenda on you, except as a response to the attacks from the Left on traditional societal institutions.
Abortion was illegal in all 50 States before the SCOTUS re-wrote the law and trampled the 10th Amendment. Would we like it to remain outlawed in all 50 States? Yes. (It is now legal in 4 States, independently of Roe v Wade.) Do we agree that it should be done on a State-by-State basis? Yes. Would SoCons like a Constitutional Amendment to put an end to this once and for all? Yes, but don’t hold your breath for it to happen.
Gay Marriage. The Left attacks marriage every election, then accuses the SoCons of trying to turn back the clock. Turn it back? It hasn’t changed yet. We are trying to prevent them changing it. If they would stop attacking the institution of marriage, we wouldn’t have anything to say about it.
SoCons are about preserving tradition, freedom and the Constitution, not changing these things. Libertarians were fine, too, about all this, until the stupid Left started making a stink.
These things should not be an issue between us. Do Libertarians think that these traditional arrangements oppress them somehow? Would it be so terrible to them if the SoCons got their way? What if prayer were allowed BACK into school? So? Marriage stayed between a man and a woman? So? Abortion went back to being illegal everywhere? So?
Libertarians keep buying the Liberal lies, SoCons are not your enemies, as we mostly agree on everything else.
Marc, as a libertarian, I agree whole heartedly with you here. I personally do not find the SoCons to be the enemy, in fact I agree with most of the SoCons views. But, just because your pushing back to the left doesn’t make it the correct course of action. In the end both sides end up stealing my liberty through the use of government.
Like I keep telling my friends on the left, who think I should pay taxes as a way to help people as opposed to charity. Help through taxes do not contribute to my spiritual growth. Charity, properly done, does. Or as I more bluntly state, “why are you stealing my opportunity for spiritual growth.” See where I’m going with this. Spiritual growth and governmrnt are not compatible. The left will frame their arguement anyway they can, truth or not, to further their agenda. I will fight those that try to steal my liberty through the use of government. If you don’t use government I won’t have to fight you.
Social conservatives too easily go for statism for instance when they want to use government money to fund “adult abstinence education” to circumvent human nature. My biggest problem with socons is the way they’ve adopted Marxist feminism, including demands to check all males’ backgrounds to see if they were “sex offenders” which would then mean hundreds of thousands of men would lose freedom of movement, many because they were caught skinny dipping or streaking at a baseball game.
Not true. Grow up. Nobody cares where you’re hiding.
Libertarians truly misunderstand SoCons
I think you’re not getting the picture. The problem is one of bandwidth.
Essentially, the so-con attacks on women and gays soak up a great deal of the message of competence to deal with energy and security and things that really matter.
EXAMPLE: The left says they can solve US energy problems by embracing green. The electorate grasps that there are looming problems in energy. Competent GOP response would be to (as a party plank!) endorse the construction of (Nx10) nuclear plants which generate green energy and create jobs, etc. The GOP could easily demonstrate a relationship where energy = wealth. A reasonable GOP message would be where we want to make it easier for power companies to build nuclear plants. (For that matter I’d have been happy if the GOP would have used the stimulus money and had the feds pay for it, assuming we had to have a stimulus.)
But this doesn’t happen; the so-cons are polluting the message of competence and lending the illusion that the entire GOP is more concerned with whether or not Fred and Steve get hitched.
There’s only so much bandwidth. The GOP without the so-con silliness would never be beaten, partly because it would be addressing real world concerns, and partly because so-cons are a minority of the GOP. Unfortunately the so-cons via being passionate and disproportionately vocal have managed to trick the vapid GOP leadership into thinking the wingnut faction is the republican “base.”
The result is that the GOP message is polluted, incoherent, and unfocused. We don’t misunderstand so-cons. We simply reckon their collection of pet issues fails to resonate with the electorate and otherwise subtracts from the GOP message.
SPOT ON G.L.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is so perfectly said, I am going to blatantly steal the way you said it, and use it. Perfectly illustrates what I have been saying for years. A true Conservative party, that leaves the Social Conservatism message to the individual or religion, would be very hard to beat in any election. I personally believe in a Judeo Christian way of life, but it should not be legislated. It muddys up our message.
dead right g.l. wow, i’m finding a lot of common ground in this comment section, which is unusual for comment sections, to say the least. this is an intelligent group. i can only add–the political party that figures out that the VAST majority of americans are fiscally conservative and socially liberal will win every election for a generation…
Marc,
You asked…
“These things should not be an issue between us. Do Libertarians think that these traditional arrangements oppress them somehow? Would it be so terrible to them if the SoCons got their way? What if prayer were allowed BACK into school? So? Marriage stayed between a man and a woman? So? Abortion went back to being illegal everywhere? So?”
It is not possible to ban prayer in school unless your kid insists on praying out loud or you demand that your prayers be read to the assembled students regardless of their religion. I attended a school where we prayed all the time and had to attend Mass before lunch. It was a private Catholic school and my parents paid to send me there. You are free to send your kid to any religious school you want.
No one is advocating forcing you to marry a guy. If you can marry the person you desire, why should it bother you if someone else does the same? And for that matter, where is it written that it has to be a monogamous marriage? Exactly what is wrong with polygamy, other than it offends Christian sensibilities?
If you don’t want to get an abortion, don’t.
I realize that the above is going to make the So Cons heads explode, but that is just proof that they believe that they have the right to use the state to impose your vision of propriety on the rest of us.
I prefer to think that people are smart enough to make their own choices.
As far as I can tell Social Conservatism is just Victorian Morality, which Christian Morality, repackaged. Identical to the way Creationists repackaged themselves as Intelligent Designists. Whatever the name, if you trace it back you end up at the Bible. If you want to believe that, cool, but don’t force it on the rest of us. I am all for religious tolerance, but that only works if the religions themselves are tolerant. We have religious freedom because the Founders remembered the Ecclesiastical Courts, the Inquisition, and the the millions of victims of their terror.
If you get to use the power of the state to enforce Christian law, why shouldn’t Muslims get Sharia law, and for that matter why shouldn’t the followers of Allister Crowley get to have their own moral code enforced by the state? What puts your creation myth above the rest?
“It is not possible to ban prayer in school unless your kid insists on praying out loud”
So should students be required to check their rights at the schoolyard gate? I have no problem with banning compulsory prayer in school, but preventing children from praying (out loud) on school grounds? Libertarian that is not. Not is it particularly liberal (assuming the word actually _means_ anything anymore.)
So should students be required to check their rights at the schoolyard gate?
A right to free speech (to say what one thinks) isn’t a right for a student to stand up in math class and tell jokes on a whim. It’s not illegal but it is disruptive, and it is treated as such. Students don’t have a right to disrupt. Having a right presupposes a certain amount of responsibility regarding when it’s appropriate to exercise that right. The cliche’d “yelling FIRE! in a theatre” analogy applies. You have a right to bear arms, too, but that doesn’t make it appropriate to carry an AK-47 to the local HS football game.
A student praying can be disruptive. One kid praying silently is not a bad thing but a student praying audibly is the same appropriateness area as standing up in math class and telling jokes. What’s the line between a lightweight personal prayer and some kid using this to preach the holy gospel of jesus? The issue schools have is that a given student may be clever enough to be appropriate but others may not.
And yet… prayer is not banned in schools. What passes thru a student’s mind as s/he’s handed a difficult math test could well be a plea to his/her deity to do well or to strike down the Evil One with a bolt of holy lightning. S/he may pray. What happens inside the mind is up to the owner. What s/he may not do is pray such that it’s a disruption to others.
So-Cons tend to wear a cloak of persecution. Rather than teach their kids to pray silently but effectively they instead screech about how their persecuted offspring aren’t allowed to exercise their rights. I’m quite sure that god — who is reported to know all things — can tell when a stressed student is thinking about him. What need does god have that the student is audible? (None, if god is all powerful.) As such this persection claim is based solely on artifice (i.e. claiming the all knowing god can’t tell you’re praying unless you say it out loud, apparently) rather than reality. In short So-Cons wish to use the levers of State to impose their views (why else insist on audible prayer?) on others.
In short, the answer is YES. Students have the same limitations on rights we all have.
“So should students be required to check their rights at the schoolyard gate? I have no problem with banning compulsory prayer in school, but preventing children from praying (out loud) on school grounds? Libertarian that is not.”
I was educated in Catholic schools. Anyone who started praying out loud in class while we were either listening to the teacher, taking a test, or having classroom work time would have been told to pray silently.
I also remember learning that praying aloud where it was inappropriate is putting on a show for others. Such behavior is an outward show of faith, a form of self aggrandizement, indicative of excessive pride. It is better to be humble and direct your prayers to God.
Matthew 6:6:
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
“A right to free speech (to say what one thinks) isn’t a right for a student to stand up in math class and tell jokes on a whim. It’s not illegal but it is disruptive, and it is treated as such”
You don’t actually need to ban _prayer_ to prevent disruptive behavior. A student outside the classroom but still within school grounds could easily pray out loud without being disruptive.
“Matthew 6:6:”
So now we’re codifying the bible in law? How very… established.
Dear Old Guy
You asked what was wrong with polygamy…
Givien on the surface it looks fairly good. After all look at all the men who sleep around and have 15 children with six different women and support few or none of them. A proper polygamist cares for all his wives and children. I never understood the back lash of secular society on this.
However… we always speak of one man and several wives. Never (with the exception of “Paint Your Wagon”) one wive with several husbands. This is where the problem begins. Say you have Adam. Adam is married to Amy, Beth, and Carrie. Amy is married to Adam, Daniel and Evan. Beth is Married to Adam, Evan and Fred. Now what happens if carrie is Bisexual and then is married to Adam and Gracie. Gracie is simply a lesbian and spends her time with Carrie and Helen.
Quite a mix up! But wait there’s is more…. Where are they going to live? How do you know whose children are whose? and (this is the reason it will never fly) How on earth do these people file their taxes???
Polygamy poses a problem (and that starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stands for Trouble!!!
)
Marc,
“What if prayer were allowed BACK into school?” Which prayers? One of the reasons Catholic schools grew to the extent they did in this country, is that Protestantism was being taught in the schools and Catholics who sent their children to public schools, found that their children were being mistaught Christianity (in their opinion, which is the important issue here). I disagree with a lot of what my kids hear in their public school, but I know and the kids know that it isn’t Catholicism (which is what I want my kids to learn). Schools sometimes go overboard and forget “nor prohibit the practice” of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment, but when would my kids ever have been encouraged to make the sign of the Cross before eating lunch at a public school? So now there’s a little bit of “what goes around comes around” for Protestants in public school. So be careful how you go about this, or you’ll alienate would-be Catholic allies.
Oh good grief. Social conservatives want to blah blah blah blah by shoving it down our throat. Libertarians are so great, blah, blah, blah. This is so tired, self-serving and obtuse that I don’t even know why I’m responding to it. Yet I’m certain you’re quite proud of your intuition in coming to such a sophistic conclusion.
I don’t know about Libertarians being so great — IMO what I call the “big L” Libertarians are impractical self-centered whack jobs — and I speak as a “small l” libertarian myself. However way too many “big S” Social conservatives do want to use big government to jam their viewpoint down everyone’s throats. There are all kinds of things they don’t like and are just fine with having the Federal government legislate against them, have them declared felonies, and enforce them with federal police — rather than have them handled at the local and state levels.
Agreed. It’s very nearly a direct copy of Pournelle’s work, although I don’t doubt that was unintentional. Far downstream, Zombie remarked that he was careful not to look at other mappings while thinking this through. That might have been a mistake, considering he’s pretty much re-invented the wheel here. The very idea of a two-axis method method for mapping ideology is decades old.
Note that everyone proceeded to completely ignore your comment, except for mister “it’s too hard to understand.” Apparently they’re more interested in Flash animations, or introducing unnecessary complexity with “spheres.” That, or arguing who’s cooler, libertarians or social cons.
Interesting post, Zombie, and I have always respected your takes as an anti-establishmentarian from San Francisco. I too am a former Deadhead who curiously found that among that crowd were so many people who were clearly libertarian and yet seemed to parrot the progressive agenda. I always said that I loved the Grateful Dead MUSIC because it embraced great American ideals such as freedom, self-reliance, and individualism. I never thought that the message in the Dead’s music was incongruous with my enlightened Midwestern brand of conservatism and common sense. I just never understood how so many Deadheads seemed to think that the “live free or die” beatnik philosophy at the heart of the Dead’s music (I’ve always thought that the Dead were beats, as opposed to hippies) somehow leapt to the “free stuff for everyone!” philosophy of the American Marxist left.
Not bad, but needs revision. The real maps is like a ball, not a sheet. The problem is that the more extreme you are on one axis the less the practical difference of where you are on the other axis.
Takes Nazis and Communists. On the axis of “human nature” the are opposites. But since they both want total government control of everything, it de facto doesn’t matter — they will get the same sort of dictatorship, only with different slogans as to why this or that group must be genocided (they have inferior genes / they are “enemies of propgress”).
Take libertarians and anarchists. Both strongly disagree about human nature’s perfectibility. But since both want NO government control at all, they both de facto support the same thing, a dissolution of society where those who are stronger get everything. They only difference is in the excuse they give as to this won’t really happen in their “ideal” society. (It will).
On the other axis the same occurs. Imagine people who are somewhere in the middle (compared to anarchists or communists) about government control, but disagree on human nature. Take those who think human nature is infinitely malleable: extreme liberals who think all Black criminals are “victims of society”. Now take those who think human nature is fixed at birth, and their own subgroup born superior: the KKK. Both agree that Black people are all potential criminals. The only difference is the excuse: one thinks it’s because they were MADE criminal by “our racist society”, the other they were BORN criminals. But the practical conclusion is the same: avoid Blacks, they just can’t help robbing you. So what’s the difference?
P.S.
This reminds me of a saying. Who said: “what is the use of teaching a Black child mathematics, when it is completely irrelevant to his life? We need to give relevant education for everyday life”?
Give up?
Well, a million “progressive” educators calling for a “relevant” curriculum… and South Africa’s minister of education justifying inferior schools for Blacks (he used the word “Bantu” instead of “Black”). All Blacks should learn, say both of them, is how to survive in menial jobs and/or the ghetto. They just disagree as to why: whether it’s because society is “racist” or because Blacks are naturally suited only for such a life.
SEE what I mean about the extremes meeting?
Interesting elaboration of the spectrum. If I could make the chart curve inward and outward from the screen, maybe I could incorporate your “ball”-like schema.
Maybe the solution is simply to think of my flat spectrum as the Mercator Projection of your more-accurate spherical chart.
But if that’s the case, are “Green activists” like Greenland on a Mercator map, appearing to take up vastly more space than it actually occupies — just like Greenies dominate the culture far beyond their actual numbers?
Thanks for replying! Yes, I was imagining the “real” map is more or less like a ball, with the four corners meeting “at the back”.
As for the extreme “greens”, they are mostly ex-communists who simply changed their bogeyman from the “evil oppressing capitalist” to the “evil polluting capitalist” once the crimes of communism became to large to ignore.
If you end up with a sphere for this analysis, won’t it depend on where the true “center” is placed? How can you determine that? Or is there no “black hole” there? And what if there were… would the whole construct collapes into itself?
No. It is not a ball, circle or any other connected shape. You can’t go to the extreme far ‘right’(left on your diagram) and find yourself a nazi or communist. Collectivism and Individualism cannot ever be the same thing.
The only purpose the ‘ball’ idea serves is to allow the ‘they’re all the same’ attitude to prevail–and that, for some reason, always seems to lend itself to the slow spread of collectivism.
Reality is more rhizomic — ideas and attitudes permeate the whole structure and proper radicals move throughout, examining and deconstructing what they find, becoming Other, constructing closer approximations to Truth.
I disagree with your location for hippies; they should be up there just below the true anarchists, although hippies were generally non-political. I’m thinking of the Acid King, Timothy Oleary, but “tune in, turn on, drop out” had more to do with reconstructing human nature than getting in touch with some basic intrinsic human substratum. I mean it wasn’t called consciousness raising in hippie communes for nothing, and it was counter cultural, which meant antithetical to country club republicans and limousine liberals.
Great article.
Why my dopey hippie friends vote for a bunch of wannabe facists like the “liberal” Dems eludes me.
Well, then, email the link to your dopey hippie friends and maybe together we can make a few converts.
If I can convince at least one hippie to vote Tea Party in November, then my work on this planet is done.
Social cons are further down on that innate axis, definitely.
Though like all charts, it oversimplifies things – a fair number of people, myself included, would be all over the chart. For example, I’m a foreign policy / national security hawk, but an environmentalist and safety regulations specialist. I also support draconian drug war techniques and tough criminal penalties.
I’d say the moderate Democrats are split into an older style and a newer style. The older style was often more focused on government control, but regarded man as imperfect – the view was that government control is the best way to handle the imperfect people in an imperfect world. It’s an honest system – some people just can’t hack it, and we don’t want to leave them to fend for themselves, so the government takes care of them.
Then you have the Bill Clinton style of neoliberalism. It’s a very pragmatic, practically focused form of liberalism, and often includes competitive, market-like solutions. Basically, it sets the sights lower, and proceeds more gradually, but keeps the same worldview as those further left.
So, basically, you’re a statist.
In re. draconian drug war techniques: have you considered the strong possibility that, by doing intensified versions of what we’re already doing, you will wind up with intensified versions of the results we’re already getting?
What is it about “drugs” (OMGWTF11!!ELEVEN11!!BBQSAUCE!!!) that provokes this sort of viewpoint in otherwise reasonable people?
I have a doctorate in clinical pharmacy, by the way.
As a retired crime lab test-tube jockey, I was sort of in the front ranks of the “War on Drugs” a couple of decades back (although my specialty was ballistics, not drug testing). Even then, our thing was busting dealers, not users.
The reason was that you just can’t arrest every casual user. You can’t even arrest every full-blown idiot who is determined to get, and stay, high from now until he goes to That Big Bong in The Sky. It’s the Volstead Act Prohibition paradox all over again. (BTW, my mother made beer all through Prohibition, on the grounds that she didn’t want her one brother and his buddies getting sick from some crap somebody else brewed up in an old car radiator or some such. Yes, we Buckeyes are an anarchistic lot.)
The bottom line is, the drug trade as it exists supports crime. And there is a true “authoritarian/ libertarian” dichotomy in how we debate handling it. Just not what most people who hear those terms think it is.
On the “anti-legalization” side, you find a weird confluence of doctrinaire social conservatives who just don’t like drugs, and the baggage they see going with them (think long hair, leftism, etc.). This confluence is with extreme anti-nationalist leftists, who see illegal drugs as a powerful weapon against the governments they hate (like ours- except when they are in charge, of course), as well as a tremendous source of funding for causes they espouse. It’s no coincidence that everybody from FARC in Columbia to the Mexican cartels to the Taliban are major drug producers- they aren’t in it just because Nancy Reagan wanted everybody to “Just Say No”.
On the “pro-legalization” side are genuine libertarians who feel that what they put in their bodies is nobody’s damn business but their own (my mother, oddly for a serious Methodist who didn’t drink or smoke, fell into this category), to the trendy types you run into at cocktail parties who not only want their tokes and nose candy with their Tom Collins’, but also want Taxpayer Funded Free Dope For Life for all “truly good, sensitive, and caring people”- like themselves.
In between, you probably find people like me. I personally do not care who uses what, or how badly they fry their alleged brains, as long as they don’t harm anyone else doing it. Most “dangerous drugs” are called that because, well, they do damage to the body, and the nervous system, and the brain. Pot does about the same damage as booze and tobacco combined (neurological effects plus tars and nicotine). Cocaine is worse, heroin even worse, and methamphetamine- playing Russian Roulette with a loaded Erma MP-38 is actually safer. (That’s the one with no safety notch for the bolt handle, BTW.)
But as with booze, you can’t really stop people who are determined to use the stuff, and you absolutely can’t stop people who are determined to carbonize their noodles. Those types generally have something worse than drugs going on in their heads, anyway. My take is, again, as long as they don’t hurt anybody else, I don’t care.
Of course, if they do hurt others, by driving under the influence, beating their spouse and/or kids, committing crimes to support their habit, etc., I believe in throwing the book at them. And an addict who kills somebody, even inadvertently, in the process of any of the above gets no sympathy from me. Far from their drug-induced state being an “extenuating circumstance”, it should be classed along with using a gun as a marker for extra penalties; in each case, the perp did something, deliberately, which made them more dangerous to the victim. At the very least, it should get them a doubled sentence, or even life, both without parole’.
In closing, I also note that on the part of the “enlightened elite’”, the more strident advocates of drug legalization, even or especially the ones who believe that drugs are both fun, harmless, and even good for you, are also the ones who are equally strident in their demands for the abolition of the Second Amendment, the banning of all civilian firearms ownership (up to and including capital punishment for gun owners- but never for murderers!), and equally Draconian measures against tobacco. All in the name of “the common good”, and while lecturing you on how harmful these things are, and how well a “Prohibition” against them would work.
And they never see the innate contradiction, and hypocrisy, in their position. Anymore that their exact opposites on the extreme conservative side do in their 180 degrees opposed positions.
Just food for thought.
clear ether
eon
My solution to the war on drugs is to enlist the tort system.
Make drugs legal to use while keeping them illegal to sell (or distribute) in most circumstances. Further give users standing to sue illegal dealers for damages. Also, give standing to the parents, the children, the spouses, the employers, and the employees standing to sue these dealers for damages — including non-economic damages. Heck give neighbors, third cousins and community groups akin to fair housing councils standing to sue for damages.
Betcha this would be a lot more effective than the existing model.
Agreed. History shows over and over again that the best way to hammer people who are determined to be a nuisance is to hit them in the pocketbook.
Eventually, they either get the point, or run out of money.
cheers
eon
That sounds pretty darn good, actually- Though it might be hard to find the guys to get them in court, having to be on the run and all. Fear of the Feds isn’t enough to get them to stop dealing, but fear of a lawsuit would probably work wonders!
–Though it might be hard to find the guys to get them in court,
Give the small drug dealers immunity and offer them a chance to join the lawsuits against the big timers with the big homes and bank accounts. It could make things pretty interesting
And if they don’t show up in court, they forfeit the case making it easy to take the big homes & bank accounts & such.
Yep. And don’t forget, they never did prove that Al Capone was behind the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. What Eliot Ness & Co. actually nailed Snorky on was income tax and tariff evasion from his bootlegging operations. Even if you’re engaged in illegal commerce, it’s still commerce, and taxes are supposed to be paid. And generally, Federal courts aren’t too sympathetic to the defense that doing so would be self-incrimination, either.
Even the IRS can be useful- sometimes.
cheers
eon
Thomas Sowell also was a far lefty back in the day.
Right on brother!
You have put into words/charts something I have been trying to express for a while. I’m with you, if one old (real) hippie finds this and gets it you have earned your place in history. Sadly I doubt that will happen, most of the old (real) hippies already knew it, even if they hadn’t found the ways to express it so well. The tea party does a bit too much ‘god’ stuff, but they are on the right road.
Blessed Be
Excellent analysis, as always, Zombie. And I agree with Alfie that your chart is more understandable than Jerry Pournelle’s (that I’ve been familiar with for a long time).
The one thing I think should be pointed out, regarding the government power advocates who advocate the “perfectibility” of humans, is that they share an attribute with those at the “human nature cannot be changed” cluster in the lower right corner (Islamist, N***s, etc.)- namely, that they are only interested in perfecting everybody else, because they believe that they, themselves, have already achieved perfection, or possibly were born with it.
This is one of the several reasons they feel justified in using force to impose their will on everyone else, and are absolutely resistant to criticism or any attempt by anyone to challenge or question their dogmas. They write it off as the unenlightened being too stupid to recognize their innate superiority and general wonderfulness. Which causes them to redouble their efforts to “convert” said unenlightened into good, obedient, enlightened… peasants.
Or, failing that, fertilizer.
cheers
eon
Your two axes bear a great deal of resemblance to Jerry Pournelle’s proposed 2-axis division from 30 years ago.
That said, the two axis divisions make a great deal of sense, and more accurately describe the political spectrum than the traditional left right divid.
“[T]he more extreme you are on one axis the less the practical difference of where you are on the other axis.”
The Nolan chart is diamond-shaped for just that reason.
“Take Nazis and Communists. [S]ince they both want total government control of everything, … they will get the same sort of dictatorship, only with different slogans … .”
I visualize the chart on a cylinder. Left and Right unchecked each tend toward dictating everything, ultimately. On the other hand, Libertarianism and Totalitarianism are mutually exclusive.
Hmmm … . Come to think of it, maybe it should be a triangle: Libertarian at the top, Left and Right on opposite ends of the base.
–
Chas C-Q
Here it is again–this illusrates one of the courses ‘they’re all the same’ takes.
Tell me, Chas, what stated goal of the actual Right(not the ‘right’ that was named relative to it’s position in relation to communism) are compatible with statism and collectivism?
The ‘right’ is that side of the political spectrum that ends at individualism. Libertarianism is simply one point in that path. Libertarianism is very near to the endpoint of the ‘right’.
I always liked how, in Forrest Gump, Jenny’s hippie boyfriend, when he was apologizing for hitting her, blamed that “lying bastard Johnson!” It still surprises me a bit that they didn’t take the easy route and go after Nixon.
Wow. Haven’t read any PJ media writing as good as this!
As an aging ex-punk rocker, I’ve always been mystified by the punk rock “movements” embrace of lefty ideas. I thought we were supposed to be railing against the system, not increasing its scope and power.
Most of the punkers I do know are actually Libertarian, they just don’t know it. If you mention freedom, less government, etc – they nod their head in agreement. Once you bring up Bush / Republicans / etc – they shake their heads in disgust.
I look at the Tea Party as a return to America’s natural, older Libertarian roots. If this doesn’t work out, the grand idea of America will be forever altered.
I do not find th political axis chart used to be accurate. A better representation is provided by Dr. Jerry Pournelle in his Doctoral thesis. http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm
“The Starfish and the Spider” has been co-opted by many trying to understand the tea party movement and it has a very strong hippie undercurrent.
Zombie, good article.
You can see the change from hippie to leftist in famous people of the time. Take The Beatles: from Taxman and All You Need is Love, to Revolution, where Lennon was attempting to fight off the Leftists who were hijacking the hippie movement (“if you go carrying pictures of Chaiman Mao…”) to the album version of that song, where he starts to give in a little (“if you talk about destruction…count me in/out” instead of just “in”) to the perfect blend of hippiedom and radicalism in “Give Peace a Chance” to the collectivist utopia theme song, “Imagine,” which sounds like Mao’s Little Red Book set to music.
Americans on both sides of the political spectrum want a fairly high degree of government involvement and oversight. Whether it is protecting the environment, protecting our food supply, regulating financial institutions, or protecting civil rights – the Libertarians and (according to the chart) Tea-Party types, expound a kind of no-government philosophy that sounds uncivilized.
If only people would just mind their own business and follow the golden rule.
The problem is that people don’t. Libertarians are dreamers.
The entire phenomena was small and misunderstood. ANY party in power was subject to the scorn of the “hippies”. God, how I hate that term. It is and was nothing more than a media pin to allow the print version of the sound clip. I have often wondered how the values that we had and the goals we strived for became so distorted. Hate mongers like Bill Ayers, SDS and the black panthers, were never part of the broad movement but were accepted simply because they represented resistance to authority. We even accepted Saul Alinsky because he gave us tools to subvert the system.
I think the ‘Social Conservatives’ oval should be a bit further to the ‘right’, into collectivist territory. Like social liberals, they often seek to use the power of federal organs to nationalize their own morality. I don’t see Social Conservatives as being any friendlier to the 10th amendment than any greenie or union activist.
Here’s one: Republicans today are like the Dixiecrats. There, we’re even.
While searching for the right bluff, a kandy kolored tangerine flaked booby was, during a van fire of the bounties, found to be a man, full of it.
These sorts of things are always arbitrary. One dimensional left-right views are childishly over-simplified. Two dimensional views like this are an improvement, but still project a complex multi-dimensional reality onto a simplified two-dimensional view. Three dimensions would be better, and perhaps the true representation of human ideology might be ten or eleven dimensions.
The trick is to find truly orthogonal axis that don’t have too many or too severe built-in dependencies which corrupt the model. This one is better than many I’ve seen. The question is whether “human nature” and “government control” are truly orthogonal, and even if they are, what other dimensions need to be added to truly map the model.
Some of the potential additional dimensions I’ve seen other models use are:
Foreign policy – isolationist vs. interventionist. (This is an important axis since it is one that influences the likelihood of an ideology promoting warfare on its neighbors.)
Theology – atheistic vs. theocratic (this is not the same as the human nature axis above, innate vs. constructed arguments exist on both sides of the theology axis. And the appeal to divine authority is a powerful behavior motivation tool that atheistic ideologies lack).
Will – Deterministic vs. Free will. (This is not the same as the human nature axis above since both extremes of the “innate vs. constructed” spectrum include both those who believe human behavior is deterministic, either through divine intervention or through genetic programming, and who believe human behavior is non-deterministic, through either through divine grace or through quantum mechanical probabilities).
There may also be a racial axis, but that’s a bit harder to visualize for me. The racialist extreme is, of course, the “super race” as in the Nazi ideology, but I’m not sure there’s an actual opposite pole which would make that truly an ideological axis. Perhaps racialism is a singular aberration that can pop up anywhere. If so, perhaps there are other “singularities” in the ideological topology that create pockets of extremism with no true continuum to spread across the fields.
It would be interesting to get a group of bright folks together and brainstorm the orthogonal axis and then model the result in a multi-dimensional matrix which could be modeled on a computer in any number of dimensions. Then we’d be able to plot the “distances” between competing ideologies to see which ones truly are ideological brethren…
The multiple axes suggested merely confuse things. The diagram Zombie sets forth is adequate, although there are certain certitudes that should be taken into account
Humans tend towards individualism. Humans rejected collectivism a long time ago–so long, in fact, that it is evolutionarily incompatible with our species. humans have difficulty maintaining the communities that enable their relatively easy lives. The concept of ‘politics’ is an outgrowth of the systems that have been created in pursuit of that maintenance.
This means, essentially, that the two axes Zombie provides are actually one. Collectivists fight human nature to simply theorize their ideas–their own. Which one of them sees themself as one of the cogs in the great societal machine rather than as a controller of some sort?
I really like your political ideology graph — it has real merit. But to make it even more accurate, it needs to have three dimensions, not just two. The plane you show mainly represents views on economic issues. A bisecting plane should represent the same bi-axial relationship for social/moral issues.
For instance, your chart currently has social conservatives situated relatively close to the vertical centerline because they support laws restricting certain moral behaviors. In a 3D chart, social conservatives would be down in the lower left corner with the Tea Partiers on economic issues, but slightly on the right side of the vertical line on the social/moral plane.
Such a chart would also highlight other distinctions. For instance, Islamists and Nazis do indeed inhabit the same ideological space when it comes to economic issues, but they are on opposite sides of the vertical line when it comes to moral issues.
I’ve had the same I idea regarding modeling homosexuality, transvestitism etc to account for the wildly different variations we see.
My axes would be:
1. the sex you feel like you are
2. the sex you are attracted to
3. the degree of aversion to the opposite sex (sexually) –this in conjunction with 2 distinguishes between a pansexuality versus an inversion of attraction
another candidate…
4. a spectrum of ‘innateness’ from biological to psychological to merely situational
Regarding #4, the idea that all homosexuality is purely genetic is shown by the most cursory observation to be nonsense. My older sister with 30 years in social work talks about the striking ‘coincidence’ of lesbianism and and prior sexual abuse by a male among her clients over the years. Also, ‘not amenable to treatment given the relatively sorry state of psychiatry-as-science’ does not mean ‘biological’.
A while ago, I was walking on the campus of a local university. I saw an aging hippie couple walking toward me. They had the beads, hair, beard, sandals, tie-dyed clothes, the whole nine yards. When they got close enough for me to hear what they were talking about, it was the most recent movement of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. It was too early in the day for a costume party.
I have tried to point out in Village Voice comments to articles attacking the Tea Party the irony that their paper and it’s readers (including me) were the Tea Party of the sixties. Of course I got no where. But if I could get into their archives, I could show how they distrusted the mainstream media, all of Washington (not just the GOP) and wanted government and the elites out of their affairs
Also,the first time I heard Reagen speak, in ’74, while in high school, I was confused: I thought he was supposed to be conserative,, but his anti-government talk sounded so much like what I had heard at rallies and read in underground newspapers just a few years back.
Everything about America in 2010 was predicted by the skinheads in Britain in 1969. Tea Party is not hippie, it is ska loving skinhead.
“Wake up in the morning slaving for bread sir, so that every mouth can be fed!”
Better dead than Ted.
Great article, Zombie. My quibble would be to put the Fascists & Nazis above the government control access, as they did think in terms of the perfectibility of the human race — it’s just how they defined what the race was.
I never understood why hippies & many associated with them would whine about “the man” keeping them down and how bad “the system” was, but then advocate for more government through socialism et al., I liked the anti-big government slogans & ideas, but then why go for even more government. While I’m not a hippy (born in 1964) or even a wannabe, I did trip (shrooms) at a couple of Dead shows in the late 1980s. It was a bizarre mix of libertarians plus utopian-socialists (I doubt any Stalinist would attend, as Dead shows are ostensibly about free expression & Stalinists are the ultimate conformists.)
I do have a beef with social conservatives to a degree. First of all, let’s take abortion off the table, it is it’s own issue, coming down to when you believe the entity (to try and choose a neutral term) is a human being, and when that human being has the right to it’s own life. It’s deep, profound question and you can be all over the map WRT the proper role of government and be either pro-life or pro-choice. As for gay marriage, I tend to support it, but the courts are not the proper venue. Marriage has always been defined by law and the proper way to redefine it is through the political process.
But what does annoy my from the social cons was the whole Edwin Meese anti-porn crusade, the Jerry Falwell put prayer back in the schools, and the Ten Commandments being posted every where. Those are government attempts at telling us how to live our lives.
Thanks for the great chart! It is much better than the ones Libertarians use.
The most important insight is the fundamental difference between the left and right on the mutability of human nature. The Communists took this to an extreme, which explains Stalin’s emphasis on Lamarkian genetics (inheritance of acquired characteristics) and all Communist regimes’ use of “re-education” and “self-criticism” sessions.
Peel a leftist down to his core beliefs and you find them based on the blank slate theory of human nature and the ability of government to correct this for the betterment of all. BTW, this peeling process is very difficult because the leftist will freak out with cognitive dissonance as his deeper views are progressively exposed.
FWIW, I am a Vietnam vet, then hippie (who cast his first Presidential vote for Nixon), then Libertarian (and, therefore, libertine), now religious right social-con.
Frickin’.Brilliant.
I would wish Zombie had acknowledged the debt he owes to Pournelle’s Political Axis’s for the spectrum illustration.
Actually, I’d never even heard of it until this comment thread. Sorry!
I knew that there existed other earlier attempts to reconceptualize the political spectrum (many of them made by libertarians, now I see), but I purposely avoided researching them or even looking at them because I wanted to approach the issue with a fresh mind.
And I’m glad I did. One can get bogged down when awash in other people’s visions.
Now that I look at the Pournelle chart for the first time, it seems somewhat out-of-date, an artifact of an earlier era of political analysis. It’s not that I find it “wrong” or “bad,” but rather that the concepts measured by the axes — e.g. “Attitude toward planned social progress” — are far too obtuse, even more obtuse than my admittedly hard-to-immediately grasp “human nature” axis.
I think any and all attempts to break away from the left/right spectrum are worthy of a nod of respect, so I definitely give that to Pournelle (and everyone else who has made similar attempts). But obviously, when assessing various “political spectrums,” I’m going to prefer my own creation!
So, can we call them tippies?
Zombie – I’d be interested in how much you believe the pursuit and use of drugs served, if at all, as a foundation for hippies’ core values of individualism and independence. Chicken, eggs, etc. Obviously, drug use is part of the caricature of the hippie but is that more of a late 60s/early 70s development, or was it always at the center of concern about “the Man” and government agents ruining everyone’s fun. In other words, was preserving access to and use of drugs the single motivating force behind the Hippie movement, one not overwhelmed by the Grand Commie Plan upon the ascent of Nixon?
I was on to this even before it became a movement. I voted Palin in ’08.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2008/11/window-stickers-hippies-for-mccain.html
Very nice stickers! Maybe you and your friend could quickly make an update to them for the 2010 elections: “Hippies for the Tea Party,” or some such. I think you have at least 50 customers in this thread alone!
The left is pretty good at co-opting counter culture movements. It’s not just the hippies. I remember a lot more political diversity among other waves (goth, punk, et cetera) but now that people in their 30’s and 40’s most have turned into brain dead leftists. It seems to be around ‘cultural issues’. You know the drill, pick a target, and polarize blaw blaw blaw. They usually pick an issue they know ‘conservative’ factions will have to oppose and then hammer away at it while accusing anyone who doesn’t agree of being a bigot.
Also, to a large degree they use the same playbook with ‘minorities’ (be they gay, black, whatever).
Considering the degree to which it works and demographics, we need to figure out a way to counter it.. then again, our way might be Obama as he is alienating people to an amazing degree by showing them leftism with mask off.
52.,
Chicken or egg? I was there in the 60s. A friend of Art Kleps (look him up). The hippie movement was a spiritual movement. Politics didn’t enter the picture much until Nixon declared his war on drugs in an effort to have a legal tool to attack the left.
It took me a long time to overcome my fear of the Right after that episode. Starship’s “Mau Mau (Amerikan)” was going round. A LOT.
These days? This hippie is a libertarian Republican. Peace through superior fire power and “leave me alone” politics.
Zombie,
Excellent analysis, but there is one key item that is missing in your discussion of human nature, and that is the fact that a So(Theo)Con’s beliefs are rooted in the ancient doctrine of Original Sin. The items you’ve highlighted in Bill Whittle’s video could easily be characterized as a restatement of one of Paul’s main themes in the book of Romans (Egad). Not only that, but it is difficult to avoid the corollary: that Original Sin ALSO constrains any collectivist shenanigans (promoted by conservatives OR liberals) for the simple reason that any attempts at social control tend to promote the opposite behavior (goes all the way back to Eden), because true redemption is ultimately an issue between the Creator and the person. I freely concede that most folks (Tea Partiers or otherwise) won’t accept Genesis 2 as literal truth, but can it at least be considered metaphysical truth?
As a recovering hippy, I thank you. The essence of hippy belief was a desire to be left alone to grow as a person organically. I sometimes wonder how all these people became statists. Maybe they never got it in the first place.
Old ex-hippies need to remember their roots. Republicans need to get better haircuts.
I’m a self confessed “ganja Republican”. I have my own theories about the conservative roots of rock ‘n roll (invented in the Bible Belt, a by product of American post war prosperity, and hated by they Commie Folkies who called Dylan a traitor when he strapped on an electric guitar).
However, the fact is, the hippies were just spoiled brats rebelling against mommy and daddy’s suburban lifestyle. They weren’t into individualism, they were just rebelling against “the establishment”, which in America meant capitalism. It didn’t occur to them that a businessman in a grey flannel suit carrying a briefcase was more of an individualist than some brick layer slaving away somewhere in the Soviet Union. The American businessman could choose what kind of car he liked, according to his own personal style, what kind of designer suits and shoes he liked, what kind of golf clubs he liked, etc, etc. Yeah, he might be a square, but he was a square on his own terms.
The hippies had this knee jerk reaction against the materialistic upwardly mobile businessman and professional. It never occured to them (and still doesn’t) that in the socialist paradises that they wax romantic about, individualism is completely looked down on.
First, I think you make a mistake when you conflate “hippies” with the anti-war protesters of the 1960s. I am not of that era, but from what I’ve heard, they were as different as bums and hobos.
Second, I think you make a mistake in the distinction you try to draw between Maoists, Stalinists, and fascists and Nazis. In each of these historical cases, the philosophy sold to the followers was that human nature could be molded (top corner), but the leaders themselves were corrupt, cynical, and villanous (bottom corner). All four should probably be at the bottom corner, while “honest” fools like the EU and the UN should go at the top corner.
Hey Zombie!
This the most briliant essay on what we stand for I have ever read. This is a subject that is BEGGING to become a book. PLEASE write one, or someone else will. I have called myself a conservative hippie for many years, because I am a fiscal conservative, but believe in personal freedom and liberty. THIS IS A BESTSELLING BOOK SUBJECT IF I HAVE EVER HEARD OF ONE! Opportunity is knocking Zombie. Are you gonna answer the door, or let someone else?
Libertarian Hippies in the NRA? Phuk yeah!!! American as apple pie!
(I expect a signed copy by the way!)
I’m unsure whether the Tea Party is a genuine movement for less government and more freedom or whether it is just going to be co-opted by the same-old Bush-McCain Republicans or the theocratic wing of the social conservatives. I am a libertarian and was one of the numerous younger people who voted for Ron Paul in the last election. To a great extent, alot of the Tea Party rhetoric sounds like what I heard from Ron Paul in 2007-2008, but there is a long history of “conservatives” hijacking libertarian rhetoric and only making government bigger. The litmus test for me that identifies the genuine believer in limited government is opposition to foreign wars (not opposition to national defense), since these wars are the “health of the State” (this quote is from Randolph Bourne). I can understand why somebody in the past would have supported a hawkish policy against the Communists (although I think libertarians were right to oppose even those wars), since the Soviet Union could credibly be said to pose a threat to the United States, but I don’t think the “Islamists” are a credible threat to do anything more than the occasional act of terrorism. We can handle the threat posed by “Islamists” by repealing all gun laws (and encouraging people to carry guns to protect themselves) and through letters of marque and reprisal (Ron Paul has endorsed letters of marque and reprisal). I am actually not opposed to social conservatism, as long as it is voluntary social conservatism rather than coerced social conservatism (many libertarians like to say that they are “socially liberal” but social liberalism is intolerant of voluntary social conservatism and includes the “tolerant” intolerance of political correctness).
I like that the chart in this article considers one’s view of human nature. I’ve noticed that this is what separates genuine libertarians like myself from leftist organizations like the Zeitgeist Movement’s Venus Project (a movement of conspiracy kooks who think that abolishing money and adopting a “resource-based economy” will bring about a crime-free utopia; Zeitgeist, of course, is a popular conspiracy theory film). Since libertarians are usually isolated from mainstream conservatism, we often end up infiltrated by leftist groups such as the Zeigeist crowd or the Greenbackers (a group of leftists that advocate abolishing the Fed and instead allowing the Treasury to print a virtually unlimited amount of “debt-free” paper money; the libertarian position on money, of course, is to restore the gold standard).
The Fop – I think you over-generalize. A lot of the hippie movement was libertine (and yes, often in rebellion against parents) – free love, drugs (psychedelics and pot), no jobs, etc.
Another driving factor was the Vietnam War draft, which alienated a lot of spoiled boomers. When the draft was eliminated, not only did the “anti-war” movement shrink to insubstantiality, but also the hippie movement mostly died out (although a need to get a job, and the intrusion of nasty drugs like speed were also important).
Lots of hippies weren’t leftists, because they were only vaguely political (“hey, man, uh, the war, uh is bad, uh, ’cause like getting drafted would be such a bummer, man”). As a vet, that part wasn’t an issue for me. However, when they left hippiedom and got a job, they often turned left because it appeals to libertines, and doesn’t require much critical thinking.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment: who says human nature doesn’t change? Slavery was the norm for the history of all of civilization until about 200 years ago, when it became the exception (although I guess it just went from private ownership of slaves to state ownership, a la communism). The status of women in society was so constant for so many millennia that no one could have predicted the changes that came about in the last few decades. Same with acceptance into society of homosexuals, the handicapped, and others. Maybe the real issue is whether the state can force humans to devolve into beasts of burden and unlearn their sense of freedom, and individuality, or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Human nature does evolve, but in the opposite direction the collectivists want it to.
This isn’t human nature changing, it is social views changing. There’s a huge difference.
For example, humans in much of the world still kill gays, subjugate women and hold slaves (check out Sudan which has open slave markets in the capital, for example).
Also, I doubt you would find a DNA change in the US population between 1860 and 1865 (or even now) that is related to slavery or the status of women.
Human nature changes VERY slowly. Human opinions change rapidly at times.
I don’t think it’s human nature that has changed, but an advancement of technology has made it cheap to be “advanced” and “sophisticated” and “enlightened.”
I’ll give you an example — if in 50 years molecular assemblers allow cloning of delicious meats without slaughtering animals, people will look back at us as barbarian who were cruel to animals.
Why? Because it’s cheap to be sanctimonious and judgemental when technology obviates cruelty and barbarism.
A subconscious but important point: top right is good, bottom left is bad. You have it the wrong way round.
No matter which way one organizes a visual representation, one runs into clashes with existing social norms.
In this case, if I had rotated the chart 90-degrees, I would have unintentionally arrayed communism/fascism on the left-right scale, something I was consciously trying to avoid.
As you suggest, I could have flipped it 180 degrees along the horizontal axis, but that runs into other problems. Because we English speakers read from top to bottom, we subconsciously think of things at the “top” of an illustration being dominant or preferable. (Of course other languages historically have read things the other way [right-to-left, down-to-up, or my favorite, often used in ancient Greece, ox-plow-style, zigzagging down the “page.”) But I didn’t want to be shackled to this cultural bias either. So I oriented it as I did, with the area I prefer being at the lower-left of the illustration, simply because, to me personally, that feels to be the most natural corner. It was a conscious decision to violate cultural expectations in the chart’s orientation, though as I say in the essay, the orientation is viewpoint-free and essentially random, and could easily have gone any other way.
If you want to make your own similar chart oriented differently, you have my blessing.
The US Constitution plays a major role in Tea Party thinking. I don’t recall anything like this in 60′s hippie thinking.
Constructed-Innate axis is also known as the Rationalism-Irrationalism axis.
Not really. The communists think of themselves as entirely rational. So do the Fascists. In fact, everybody thinks they’re the rational ones. The problem with a Rationalism-Irrationalism axis is that there is no neutral way to define which ideology is rational, since all will claim the mantle.
Conversely, the “Innate-Constructed” Human Nature Axis follows each ideology’s own definitions of themselves. The communists will gladly tell you that they want to construct a “New Man” through cultural shifting. The Nazis will insists that Aryans are and always will be superior to unchangeably inferior races. Etc.
This is exactly why I stayed away from looking at other people’s “political chart” attempts before writing this essay, because these off-target structures (or axes) would only serve to muddy my thinking on the subject.
As the 37 yr old daughter of two hippies (the conservative kind), I’ve known this my whole life. I have always been a staunch conservative from before I was 18 because I love liberty and could not find that in the Democrat party. Early on, my mom said she was a “liberal”, and I asked her why? Her answer was, “I think of myself as being more free and liberal, so I am a liberal.” I said, “Mom, that is not the definition of a ‘liberal’ in politics. A liberal is someone who wants the government to be more liberal, wants it to colelct more of your tax money, and wants to take away your freedom to do as you please.” She was shocked. She had just not ever given it much thought and just thought that of course she was a liberal person. It has always made me wonder how many people don’t like the ‘conservative’ label for that opposite reason. They may think it defines themselves as opposed to the role they want their government to take. Just a thought.
I agree with just about everything about this chart except the positioning of hippies. From very early in the movement, they were, as a group, unusually dependent on government social services to meet their needs — much like members of certain religious fringe groups — Mormon polygamists, Haredi Jews living in upstate New York — who force the rest of us to subsidize their lifestyles choices while claiming independence/disassociation from social norms.
The Tea Party stands firmly against this. I have known self-reliant, libertarian-identifying hippies. But historically, as a group, they demanded, and received, and felt entitled to vast amounts of public entitlements (as do many of the allegedly free-thinking folks who populate Burning Man et. al. I’ve never heard of the cultural moment when opposition to Great Society programs were a driving force within their ranks — but that is interesting, and it is true that a small number of people, mainly Marxists and ex-Marxists, have written the received history.
But the early infatuation with fascists states argues against them as individualists as well. And the Chicago riots were more infantile than coherently aligned against the Democrats.
Does geography matter?
I don’t think the chart accurately reflects the location of the Tea Party. A little more to the right, but not much. Government doing the job that was intended, not social programs.
If I had coding skills, I could have transformed the chart into an interactive Flash game, in which viewers have the ability to slide the ovals around like air-hockey pucks. Then, the code calculates the combined placements, and constantly updates the chart to reflect the averaged-out placements of all viewers.
Anybody up for it?
Zombie:
I’d say that would be a nifty idea, but far to amenable to being flooded by other groups, who would probably self-notify and spam the chart to death with their particular agenda.
For my own part, as an objectivist/small-”l”-libertarian, I find that the Social Conservatives and country-club Rep-wingers should be further to the right-hand side of the Government Control axis, since they always and invariably appear to wish to impose their particular cultural phobias on others through use of law. But that’s a mere quibble.
What I find more interesting is that the libertarian concepts have been so mangled by the lame-stream media that is accepted almost without debate that to be libertarian is to be against government in all forms. With the exception of the anarcho-libertarians (a minuscule but vocal minority), most libertarians simply want government limited to its primary function of preserving the rights of individuals, through the (government) mechanisms of:
– Police
– Courts
– National defense
Pretty much everything else could be phased out and privatized.
Now, that’s what I’M talk’n about. I’ve been saying this forever. The ’60s was all about NO GOVERNMENT. It was about FREEDOM. Liberals like L.B.J. were despised. Kennedy and the other ‘liberals’ had kept us in the war. We weren’t no ‘liberals.’ SDS was a small, easily ignored table on the fringe of Sproul Plaza. It was an insult to be called liberal.
“Environmental” ment protecting the WHOLE EARTH, ending deforestation and over pavement, not redistribution of wealth in the form of carbon credits.
THe whole notion of HIP has been co-opted by the liberal Democrats and the Hippies don’t seem to get it. They aren’t being freed by liberalism, they are being co-opted and imprisoned.
Amen!
(After-thought: Is there an agnostic equivalent of “Amen”? How about, “On the off-chance that God exists: Amen!”)
Right on!
(But surely you knew that).
“I’ll drink to that!” Mmmm, never mind; I guess that’s a Catholic response.
‘hear,hear!’
There, you have blown the lid off of what the old hippies and Zombie really believe in – a kind of sophisticated anarchism based on an essentially liberal view of human nature. In other words, you’re all liberals of the old kind. Thus the comments about ‘statism’ – as if having a coherent governmental structure was somehow essentially fascist, or a necessary precondition to it. Whatever. There are different ways of ‘killing G-d’ or replacing such a belief system with ‘the religion of I.’ None of this is a revelation (so to speak).
Interesting way of looking at it. Based on this, I might consider myself a tea party if only I recognized the tea party desribed here…
* A craving for independence;
Until it comes to MediCare or Social security, we should be able to lower taxes and have a smaller government with a balanced budget without touching these two items.
* A celebration of individualism
Unless you think or worship differently, then you are either a communist, Nazi or terrorist..
* Joy in the freedom offered by self-sufficiency;
Except if it means I have to adapt to continue finding employment that can support my expectations about my standard of living.
* And an acceptance of the natural order of things.
Except when it comes to adamantly supporting market skewing subsidies for energy and corn to name a few.
I love the fact that Zombie uses a word that almost NO ONE here will remember “GROKKING” and the book that spawned it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_in_a_Strange_Land.
Heinlein used Science Fiction in a way that I always felt was kind of a blast at Christianity – that ultimately more embraced its basic principles verses rejecting them – while still cracking at the sullen, dead, structured, and compromised world that faith and our whole world have become.
Hippies = the TEA Party.
Ahhhhh … interesting times we live in indeed.
Really grokked the piece Zombie. Should be required reading on college campuses. As a pseudo-hippie coming of age in the 60′s I’m not sure what I really thought of the movement then. I was always conflicted by patriotism vs. the anti-war movement, and tended to support the soldiers despite also identifying with many aspect of the the hippie movement – free love, and as Old Guy says, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness without the government preaching to me or telling me what to do. Hated the draft but felt duty bound to go if called, etc. I was ultimately drafted and did serve, though was never a baby-killer despite the repeated accusations from the anti-war crowd. But I smoked dope, sampled free love, and marched on campus too, fighting for co-ed dorms, student rights, and the like. Was never quite sure how the hippie free love thing morphed into the virulent SDS Bill Ayers radical movement. I believe it was hijacked by the avowed communist/leftist/red diaper movement of the 50′s still reeling from and seething over McCarthyism. Seemed to me the loudest and most obnoxious in the movement were also the most radical, and that the gullible youth sort of blindly bought in without really thinking things through – much like the youth of today who blindly buy into the left wing philosophy, e.g., young adults who dream of starting their own successful businesses and making tons of money while decrying all things capitalistic. Logical absurdity rules.
Really like the reference to the “The Electric Tea Party Acid Test” also, spurring memory of Tom Wolfe’s amazing and frenetic novel, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” That too should be required reading. One cannot fully understand the hippie movement without having read that book.
“The Tea Party has been intentionally misrepresented, villainized and smeared by the powers-that-be. But this too is a feature that the Tea Party shares with hippies — the hippie movement was itself misrepresented and smeared by a different mainstream media over 40 years ago.”
—
Tell me about it.
I recently encountered an alternative view about where the “Tea Party” is heading, from people claiming to be staunch fiscal conservatives.
These are people who are essentially paranoid that a theocracy is imminent, or something like that. They think the “Tea Party” will be, and has already been to some extent, co-opted by religious extremists (AKA, “extremist SoCons”).
According to this hypothesis, these closet “theocrats” are infiltrating the “Tea Party” and once they have political power they will forget all about fiscal conservatism and attempt to force their extremist religious morality on the nation.
I have actually seen this hypothesis seriously presented by people claiming to be staunch fiscal conservatives. That is what they claim to be, but I can’t say I believe them. If they were really staunch fiscal conservatives they would be more concerned about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. They would support the Tea Party movement for now and deal with this possibility later, if it seems it might come to pass.
IMO people subscribing to this hypothesis and promoting these fears are people for whom “social issues” and their irrational fear of theocracy are the highest priorities. Fiscal issues are secondary.
This article is crap. I don’t buy it one bit.
Tony! Excellent analysis. Incisive and compelling.
The fact that you hung out with privileged/idealistic morons for the benefit of enjoying “sex, drugs and rock-and-roll” back in the 60′s doesn’t make you a former hippie. If you showed up at Woodstock, took some acid and dropped some seed in a couple of “skanks”, then quickly went home to wash your genitalia and schedule a doctor’s appointment in case you “picked up the clap”, you were as much of a hippie as I am at this moment in time.
For some. For many, it was about demonstrating against the war (for personal reasons in most cases, as evidenced by the virtual end of the movement with the end of the draft). Those were led in most cases by socialists and Communists. I personally went to several demonstrations, some in Kansas and one by 300,000 folks in San Francisco. In Kansas, the leaders were Communists (I knew some personally and the primary instigator was a member of CP-USA and SDS). In San Francisco, the Communists forcibly took over the rally from the peace-niks (who were merely socialists). As you can imagine, a lot of folks picked up leftist ideas from association with these characters, many of whom were cynically using the anti-war movement to spread socialist/communist revolution. The communist leaders, btw, came from the Red-Diaper babies who went to college in the 50′s and hence were about 10 years or more older than the boomers.
For others, it was about hippiedom, which was far more varied than one might think. About all that tied it together was hedonism, self-absorption, rejection of conventional ideas, and the use of certain drugs.
Maybe we mean the human character, which does seem pretty malleable, for better or worse. You CAN turn hardworking, family-centered people into dysfunctional wards of the state by enacting liberal or Marxist policies. Socialized medicine DOES change the character of the populace. Europe had hippies, but have no tea partners. The governments there did succeed in making a “New Man,” unfortunately.
There’s a Russian proverb – The poet always cheats his boss – that pretty much says it about hippies. Of course the quick comeback from a hippie would be that “I don’t want a boss!” But the fact is that the hippie has to put bread on the table just like everyone else so he either cheats his boss or preferably steals his bread. The hippie is no more than a criminal with a bunch of hot air rationalizations for his criminality.
Excellent ideas in this post and in the comments. I never understood the straight GOP types who loved to bash the 60s, for these very reasons.
I went to an anti-war demonstration in the late 60′s with some friends, and we had a high old time. (Great place to meeet girls.) We were listening to some speeches downtown, and a young woman spoke. She had just returned from a summer in Cuba chopping sugar cane, and she wanted us to believe how happy she was because her summer vacation showed “what it was like to live in a free country for a change”. Her exact words, more than 40 years ago.
My friends and I looked at each other as if to ask, “What planet did she come from?”
One quibble with the chart: Islamists are all about constructed rules and penalties, and everything inside the umma (state) and nothing outside. I’d put them at the top right.
The bottom line is that the social movements of the 1960s were all nonpartisan.
Racism, sexism, pollution, militarism, and homophobia were all considered to be national problems. Then, when the 60s ended and all the smoke cleared, the Democrats saw an opportunity to exploit these social movements for their own political gain.
They instantly transformed themselves from being the party of the working class to the party of “the good half of America” and have spent the past 40 years portraying Republicans and conservatives as “the bad half of America” who, if they had their way, would drag us back to the days when a Black man’s place was sitting at the back of the bus, a woman’s place was in the kitchen (barefoot and pregnant), and a homosexual’s place was cowering in a closet. And to prove their point, they’ve also spent the past 40 years pandering to the most extreme elements of the so-called champions of equality and tolerance, who are really nothing more than Cultural Marxists who understood that all these social movements served as the single greatest boon to Gramsci’s desire to portray all of humanity as being either “oppressors” or “oppressed”.
The reality is that 98% of Americans support all the truly positive accomplishments of all these social movements. And those who believe otherwise are being led by the hand by the gatekeepers of our liberal popular culture to the magic mirror of moral vanity.
http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle_chart
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2265
Just a couple of pointers that 2 dimensional political planes instead of the left-right spectrum have been around for awhile now. Jerry Pournelle’s dates back to his 1963 dissertation. (After the French Revolution the left-right spectrum of the French Estates was replaced by “the Mountain” where the powers that be sat in the higher seats the better to look down on others no doubt.) A politician named David Nolan had a similar idea back in the day and the last link contrasts and compares the two charts they came up with. Originality is hard.
Humans unnecessarily complicate.
Consider this–
The Five Senses
You see when photons touch your retinas
You hear when soundwaves touch your eardrums
You taste when particles of food touch your tastebuds
You smell when particles touch sensors in your nose
And you touch well, pretty much everything, no?
How many ‘senses’ do humans have?
Indeed. The real “hippie” inspiration had little to do with politics. The best political slogan I saw at the time (in the UK) was: “Why vote – it’s a double X?”
The politicisation of a yearn for freedom was simply another step in the ruling elite’s operations to control wayward tendencies.
Very successful, too, as are most of their activities.
Quite amazing how “the people” have been educated to clamour for their own slavery.
It subsequently became clear to me during the 1970s that the libertarian action in the UK was the closest follow on in the yearn for freedom, albeit, political.
Being as it was so different from what the “hippie” ethos had at that time become I even wondered if it was a CIA plot. Good on them if it is, I thought.
i didnt leave the democrat party the democrat party left me.
As a ‘hippie from Miss’sippi’, I have been aware of this since first reading of the tea parties. Actually, since the Nixon era, the Jeffersonian tendancy of the ‘freaks’ seemed obvious. The devisive activity of RMN worked like a dream for him and politicians following, driving a wedge between conservatives and their natural allies in the soi-disant counter-culture. Why those who distrust big government buy into that War on Drugs, which was never more than a war on American citizens, I do not know. The United States as the land of the free is and has been a marvelous ideal which our political leadership has been subverting for a long,long time. If the Tea Party(s) can resist this artificial divide and enfold its natural allies, it will be the future and freedom of the American people. If not, then another opportunity will have been missed, and who knows how many more we will have before we are just another country, as flawed and fallen as those lands people fled in hope of freedom here.
I don’t find your vertical axis to be significantly helpful. Your explanation is inadequate. Maybe I’m just slow.
At best, the idea of innate v. constructed human nature seems to provide a reason why groups found on one side or the other of the “government control” spectrum have different approaches to implementing their policies. Perhaps that’s useful, but I don’t find it to be particularly enlightening.
I’d noticed the visual similarity between the hippies of my young childhood and my homeschooling friends (long skirts, socks with sandals, homemade soap, big white vans from that Mennonite dealer in PA are the modern version of VW buses, etc). They belong down there next to the hippies.
This is a breath of fresh air and a relief from the boilerplate partisan bashing. It shows that we are more “diverse” (gulp) than one might think.
Nobody asked, but although I despise many things about the nanny state, I don’t want toxic sludge flowing in our streets or serious doses of pesticides and pcbs in our water, food, and air. I am prepared to pay some taxes, whereas there are some here who feel as if ALL taxes are a form of armed robbery. Some people are unbelievably protective about what they have worked for and accumulated. To me, what the hell, it’s only money and whether I have a little less, or a little more of it, has not been a core value in my life.
Always work? Yes. Freak out because someone is taking my stuff? No. Hell, I know that I am an individual and almost always do what I want to do, but I don’t spend time obsessing about those who want to limit my freedom in a few areas. How much are politics determined by personality type? OK, more enough rambling for one post.
“Nobody asked…” That is correct D-White. Nobody asked.
“…I don’t want toxic sludge flowing in our streets or serious doses of pesticides and pcbs in our water, food, and air.”
Then stay off the street, don’t go swimming, stay out of the supermarket, don’t eat beans, and cut the blathering gas.
Can that be done from a picket fence?
Commanding his very own tank.
But Lather still finds it a nice thing to do.
I attended some early Tea Party rallies because I am some weird cross between libertarian, hippie, and ‘rational anarchist’ (see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for a definition).
The problem I ran into though was that a lot of the people at the rallies didn’t sound libertarian or hippie or anarchist. They sounded like angry social conservatives and Republicans.
I was yelling about big government during the Clinton and Bush years. I was very angry at the smashing of our civil liberties post-9/11… I felt that indefinite detention of citizens, extraordinary rendition of suspects, the USA PATRIOT ACT etc. were EXTREME acts of government taking over our freedoms, not to mention the blatant act of authoritarian control seen with Terri Schaivo. Yet, the people I saw at rallies were upset about abortion, gays and the TARP program. They were screaming about a President that was less than six months in office… when the last guy had dropped load after load of Authoritarian BS and Crazy Government expansion on our heads.
Even now, I haven’t heard any member of the Tea Party argue that the crap under Bush should be repealed… I only hear about Bailouts, abortion and gays.
To be clear, I don’t give a damn about gay marriage… I think abortion is a regrettable situation for anyone to be in, but that situation shouldn’t include the government in any way shape or form. I firmly believe that the US is a secular nation, not a Christian one. I believe that government should be small and most decisions should be handled at the state or local level. Yet, that isn’t what I saw and heard at rallies.
So while the ideas that are often espoused to be Tea Party ideas, fit well in the Libertarian/Hippie corner… the majority of Tea Party people I’ve run into at rallies were not libertarian or hippie. They were social conservatives (not at all in line with Founding Fathers) with a smattering of Libertarians. Maybe its just this part of the country, I dunno.
“Maybe its just this part of the country, I dunno.”
That could be the explanation. At the few Tea Party events I’ve been to (in California), I never saw a single mention of gays, sex, abortion, race — any of that. It was all focused on fiscal matters. True, not much Bush-bashing either, but foreign policy was not a big concern.
Not sure where you live, but I imagine there are regional differences in Tea Party beliefs.
You might want to check this out, too:
Few signs at tea party rally expressed racially charged anti-Obama themes
Thanks for the response! I’m making no claims about racism… that didn’t register with what I saw at the rallies. I mean there’s always a few crazies, but I ignore them
I’m glad that things appear more sane in California, cause it was not so much in Ohio. If the Tea Party around here shifts from loud social conservatives to sane fiscal and social libertarians, I’ll be right with them. So far though, not so much, too many there seem to be confusing the job of government with the job of religious institutions. I never joined the GOP (who in theory were about small government and personal freedom) because since I came of age, they have been dominated by people that believe in some Stone Age god and his crazy rules for humans. As an independent, I’ve often voted for individuals that are running under the R, because they seemed sane. At other times I’ve voted for the D because the R was a crazy Religious nutjob.
I’d love to vote straight T, but only if they aren’t busy worrying about who’s doing what in the bedroom or with their personal lives. So far, around here the ticket looks no different than it did 2, 4, 6 or 8 years ago. Steve Chabot is one of the few I’ll be voting for, but I was voting for him before there was a Tea Party. Around here, at least… I’m just not seeing any evidence of actual libertarian/hippie values.
I’ve attended some Tea Party rallies where Steve Chabot might get a mention, and I’ve gotta say that gays and abortion never really came up. Ballooning debt, fiscal irresponsibility, creeping socialism, these things were on the agenda. Gay marriage? Not so much. There were RTL people, but they’re at any rally where they think they might find a sympathetic ear–they were not part of the program. I think they might’ve been, at one of these things, pointing out Driehaus vote for Obamacare, which was fiscal to the general crowd and evil to the RTL folk.
I created a modified Nolan Chart that I thought better described the layout.
I will see if I can find it.
Yeah, here it is- http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6c609ebf597d.jpg
Tea Party backer, Constitutional Libertarian.
I hate control freaks.
You could have a 3rd axis that was pacifist-to-warmonger. That would separate hippies from libertarians. Hippies would be all the way on the pacifist side, while libertarians would be in the middle.
I have to admit I never knew that about Kerouac. eye opening.
Not news to this old hippie. I went Tea Party right after Rick Santelli Blew that conch horn on the trading floor. Somebody tell Glen Beck.
” Attracted to alternative spiritualities? … Love nature? … Wear ethnic clothing?… Like world cultures? ”
So Victorians were hippies?
You want further proof that Zombie has nailed this? Listen to the Doors. Free. Off my back. I’ll help you when you need it. But I’ll get into this car with these people…if you mess with us. The government was on Jim’s ASS because of his shows. He was wild, and that’s America.
I don’t know where Jim would be now. But I do know in the early days, he was the epitome of leave me alone, I’ll get it done, and I’ll be there to help ya. No secret why his early stuff was so right. Like all the greats, he knew how humans really are.
Kudos to Zombie (and others who came before) who understand that trying to “construct” human nature, always for the greater good, leads inevitably to murder.
My one problem with this entire essay is that you completely ignore the fact that the Tea Party was founded by the Koch brothers, Dick Cheney, and several others who were never hippies. Everyone at the top of the Tea Party “grass roots” movement are people who have spent their entire lives working in, conforming to, and milking the very same system that the T.P. sheep claim they want to limit. If the T.P. has its way we will end up paying Haliburton and Blackwater and others like them billions of dollars for zero return; we will look the other way when it comes to mine and drilling safety; and companies will be allowed to India-source their employees while Joe the Plumber’s family starves on the street. If the T.P. has its way the tax breaks enacted during the prior administration will come back–stronger (for the top 2% anyway). If the T.P. has its way Americas paranoia will return with a vengence, and we will have more Big Brother activity monitoring than former President George W. ever dreamed he could have had. You think airport sniffers and telephone line taps are bad now? Just wait until you have to ‘show your papers’ to cross from Iowa into Nebraska.
For two decades, the Republican party has been working toward a dictatorship with marshall law rule. When a “liberal” was elected President, they changed tactics, not goals. Although the leopard changed its spots, its still a hunter. Right now, this particular cat is hunting power, money and status quo.
Halliburton — check.
Dick Cheney — check.
Joe the Plumber — check.
Koch Brothers – check.
Blackwater — check.
Big Brother, George W., dictatorship, martial law — all check.
Wait — no Karl Rove? Dude, you disappointed me.
Please go back and try again. And this time, along with Rove, toss in some chemtrails and 9/11 Truth. A little KKK or John Birch Society might help spice things up, too.
/Sheesh, O.F.A. is really hiring amateurs these days.
My apologies. It was late and I was a tad tired from a 12-hour shift and 2-hour round trip commute. I will endeavour to try harder next time. Until then:
“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders.” –Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
All I can say is that I pray that the truth will out. Once the blinders are removed and people again begin to do their own research and stop relying on news bites and angry radio DJ’s, knowledge will again win over universal ignorance.
Gwen0000
Thank you!
You have clarified my life for me. I traveled much the same route and have been conflicted about my “hippie” youth and my present “conservative” self. Thank you for the epiphany!
In the 1970′s I spent some time with Rennie Davis after he came back from Vietnam (with the guru). His assessment at the time was that war got so outrageous that the hippies and the anti-war people made common cause. Then the war ended, suddenly. Not the 1975 fall of Saigon, but the Jan 1973 cease-fire and the Aug 1973 Case-Church amendment that prohibited US troops from participating. With the war gone, there was nothing to push against and we hippies went to school and got on with life and became frump’ies. As I recall, he thought that there may have been some overproduction and diversion of downs (anyone remember quaaludes)and supression of pot, to alter the “energy of the movement”.
Having grown up in the 50s and 60s, I agree with most of what is written, but am still in a wait-and-see mode with this movement. Yes, they have influenced some elections, but seems that in the long run, they must either fade away, coalesce into a new party, or amalgamate with the Republicans. No, they are not monolithic with respect to social conservatism, but the taint is there (Palin endorsements are a frightening example), and another spate of religious fundamentalism in government is a greater threat to my personal freedom than the prospect of structuralism, which has been the long term trend anyway and inevitably ramps up in crisis (9/11, Civil War, whatever). I wish the Tea Party well in navigating this minefield, but am not optimistic given that the path to political success seems to involve pandering to the lowest common social denominator (true, people as a whole do not change, only individuals). Meanwhile, I’ll vote for whomever keeps the fundamentalists out of office.
Great Essay!
While watching from the “sidelines” during the Viet Nam Era, it seemed to me that the motivation of those whom many described as “hippies” were the just-turning-adults whose grandparents survived the Great Depression and whose parents were only 1-2 decades removed from the challenges of WWII.
These “hippies” very stongly expressed a “disgust” at the “hypocrisy of ‘any one over 30.” They “Question(ed) Authority!” as a knee-jerk reaction to the times at hand with very little introspection as to why they were so dead-set against the “status quo.”
The “hippies’” parents and grandparents were previously taught (and embraced) specific “life values.” “Life values” that helped these two immediate generations overcome the “obstacles” interrupting their own lives during the same “age bracket” of their children… These fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the “Greatest Generation” benefited from the “wisdom of their elders” and relied on those learned lessons to face down the high unemployment and poverty of “the Depression,” and later, the “evil of Nazism.”
Once these two previous generations began to acquire some of the “delayed wealth” anticipated in their embrace of the “American Dream,” they “forgot the principles” and began to “go along to get along” in politics and at work.
Many began to “bless” their children financially…. children who had never really had to employ the work ethic of their parents and grandparents. Many parents “justified” this largess because the financial stress of the Great Depression was still ever-present in their minds. In love for their children they used their earnings to pay for little-appreciated college educations because they “Didn’t want their children to have to go through what they had experienced.” ["Tough love" developed later, primarily as a response to drug-addled family members.]
Other parents (and grandparents) “supported” the Viet Nam “war” because they saw it as an extension of the World War they had “just waged.” They truly wanted to “keep the world safe for democracy.”
The ‘hippies’ rejected what they saw as the “selling out” of priniciples they instinctively “knew” their own elders were no longer practicing. They “responded” to this “hyprocrisy” by “dropping out” and rejecting un-principled authority in their lives.
The “fault” for the difficutlies that arose lies in the fact that many Americans (especially parents)”abandoned” the institutions (famiies, churches, and synagogues) where past wisdom was taught. They then “put their trust” in big government, big business, and in “professional educators” tenured in “instutions of public learning.”
We would be well advised to “return to the faith of our childhood” and to once again begin bestowing the “wisdom of the ages” upon our children and grandchildren…. to tide them through the “history” that will soon “repeat” itself.
Most of them (the “hippies,” though, turned out OK.
I miss the simple life! When will the tea be ready?
As a fellow former hippie who’s ended up on the conservative side of many (but not all) important issues, I really appreciated your article.
But I think you’re probably missing some axes. For instance, many liberals I know want both to BE virtuous, and to be THOUGHT OF as virtuous. They wield disapproval as though it were a serious political/philosophical argument. So I think that there’s a “cares about social acceptability” axis that needs to be added, or maybe it’s “cares about being seen as a good person.” I think that once you added a few missing (but important) axes, the Tea Party might end up pretty far from The Hippies.
You were right that it’s not just one left/right axis. I’m pretty sure it’s not just two either.
I grew up with plenty of hippie influences (and actually know someone who was at the ’68 convention as a protestor) but I think this underestimates the influence of other, older Americans: Theodore Roosevelt and Henry David Thoreau.
The idea that the hippie movement was not Leftist in its original pre-1968 form, jibes with what my original-vintage-hippie wife tells me.
But that “innate versus constructed” human nature is a complete disaster — it’s a false alternative, just like the left-right axis. It is nothing more than the “nature versus nurture” alternative, and the falsity therein is this: it operates on the assumption that nature ==> character. By “==>” I mean: human nature, whether malleable or immutable, determines character.
Determinism, in other words.
Just as the left-right axis presents us with the false alternative of “fascism” versus “communism”, where our only choice is between different forms of rulers but not the fact of rule, the “innate-constructed” axis only offers us a choice between the innate “id” and the social “superego” — blame human nature for your failings, or blame society, but either way it’s not your fault. It’s Freud all over again, telling us that “the ego is not master in its own house.”
The option left out here, is the principle of individual self-authorship and moral responsibility for who that individual is — the notion of character as distinct from human nature, in other words, the idea that the ego IS master in its own house — and is responsible, therefore, for its content.
When Martin Luther King said that men should be judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, he was rejecting genetic determinism (in the form of racism), the “nature” half of the false alternative. If the innate-constructed axis were valid, it would mean that King must therefore have been in favor of social construction, or some middle-of-the-road “hybrid” of the two.
But that is plainly false. What King meant, was that individuals should be judged as individuals — that individuals were neither a product of “nature” nor “nurture”, neither genetic robots nor passive conformists nor some blend of the two, but were authors of their own character.
That’s called “free will”, and is the genuine meaning of “tabula rasa” — not the Leftist straw man that Stephen Pinker and other conservatives attack.
Human nature is indeed a given, immutable and unchangeable — but a man’s character is not; it is the blank slate upon which each one of us authors his own character, by means of the choices that he makes throughout his life.
That slate is human nature; it is what it is, and we do not change it by writing on it. The slate does not, however, determine in any fashion whatsoever what we choose to write on it, which is to say: it does not determine our ideas.
It is man’s character which is tabula rasa, not his nature.
It is this absolute fact upon which the Left’s programs, all seeking to “fix” mankind by remaking men into something they are not in accordance with some arbitrary prior standard, have indeed foundered.
What you and Whittle, and all conservatives, fail to acknowledge is that the “nature” side of the axis has foundered just as badly, and for precisely the same reasons. Instead of trying to make human beings into something they are not, they sought to prevent human beings from being what they are — again, because they found man qua man to be “flawed” as judged by some arbitrary prior (religious) standard!
So, as you can see, your axis unfortunately does not map to liberty, anymore than the left-right spectrum ever did; the impulse to statism can be found equally at either end. In fact, something I find most striking of all here, is that your “constructed versus innate” axis maps much more cleanly to the old left-right spectrum than individualism-collectivism does; “nature” forms of determinism maps to rightist/racist tyrannies, while “nurture” (social) forms of determinism are clearly associated with the Leftist form. I have long wondered what was the single variable defining the conventional spectrum; I think I may finally know.
I have to hand it to you, Zombie; I have never seen anyone spot the trap and step away from it into the light, as you have done — only to reconstruct another version of it, give it a different name, and step right back in (SNAP!)
Statism, in all its varieties, fails not because it chooses the wrong version of determinism, but that statism is based upon determinism as such — and THAT is its error.
Contra Whittle, liberty is not based on constraining men against their nature (how Orwellian!) Liberty is based upon the idea that every individual is morally responsible for who he is — and therefore, to achieve the greatest that is possible to him, he must be free to author himself without interference from others. In other words: these facts of human nature, including moral self-authorship, determine what sort of society ought to exist. What is, allows us to discover what ought to be.
Human nature, like the nature of dogs, cats, rocks and oceans, is a given, morally neutral. It is not “flawed”, and has no “tendencies” to good or evil. It simply is.
This is what it is: individual human beings, by their nature, possess free will and the unencumbered ability to choose the content of their minds (their ideas), and therefore to author their character — and they are 100% responsible for the results.
It’s not in the cards you’re dealt; it how you play the hand.
does not follow from Whittle’s notion of the immutable human nature as cbeing innately “human bastardliness” must be constrained does not derive its origin in the arbitrary notion of “flawed” human nature and the determinist consequence of “constraining” those flaws. It takes human nature as a given fact, morally neutral like the rocks and oceans, and derives from those facts the conditions under which living beings like humans *ought* to live in order to flourish. That it works as a check against evil is a secondary consequence, not its primary concern.
Liberty is not about chaining the evil; it is about unchaining the good.
If that second to last paragraph above looks like rambling, it’s because it is; it’s the chaff of editing that I forgot to clear out, sorry!
But keep that last sentence, as it’s key.
Interesting. I could critique all of them, but let’s single out one train of thought with constructed human nature and the left. Racism. It is so important to Obama democrats, the Green party, etc. Their policies depend on who you are, when you are born and that “who” can’t change. Blacks and all the statistical background regarding poverty, education, and crime in the view of the left, are mired in this identity. A policy of victimization depends on it. The truth is they are not, it is only those blacks who subscribe to what I would call “modern popular black culture” who match these social statistics. And culture is something you could choose, change, or abandon. You can’t change your skin color. The American left can’t have that, so they popularize this notion and minimize the idea that a black American could go from bottom to top without government intervention merely on culture choices. And they actually believe it as much as the Klan did. They would similarly compare it to statistics of the number of flash lights purchased by blind people. While black poverty in the first half of the 20th century (and before) can certainly be linked to government policy, anti-crime attitudes and the importance of education were up front tenants of black culture in that era. Therefore that whole left group needs to move south to “innate”.
“The truth is they are not, it is only those blacks who subscribe to what I would call “modern popular black culture” who match these social statistics. And culture is something you could choose, change, or abandon.”
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Textbook example of how out-of-touch libertarians are with reality. Yes, black people are poor because they CHOOSE to be that way!!! Of course!! And the icing on the cake is that you are so oblivious, that you can’t even see how racist that suggestion is. And now that I dared utter the word racist, you’ll whine about precisely that, and then claim that I played the race card, and so on.
Maybe you ought to have a looksee at the hundreds of studies on workplace discrimination that have been performed in the last decade or so, involving- that’s right, the PRIVATE sector, and then run your ignorant mouth about how blacks choose their plight. You are right about one thing, they can’t change their skin color, which is why, to take one example, black applicants with a clean criminal record and good qualifications are more likely to be passed up for white applicants.
Yes your right, blacks are passed up in job applications. I have researched employers who have done it, even though they haven’t a racist bone in their body. But what you can’t say out loud is that a minority who is hired is a walking discrimination law suit, should you have to fire him. Affirmative Action laws breed contempt, and dissuade a potential employer from judging a prospect solely on his merit. Jessie Jackson gets large amounts of his “donations” from corporations who are threatened with these sort of suits because they are easy to “prove”, and expensive to defend. It’s a new version of the mob protection rackets. This same sort of discrimination happens to the handicapped for the same reasons.
It is not racist to point out a culture that accepts more than 70% of pregnancies out of wedlock and unfinanced. I am observing a culture that labels a black youth as “acting white” when he excels in academics. Black skin doesn’t make you say that, culture does. Amongst the desperate poor of all races, blacks represent twice the percentage of convicts in prison. This is a cultural choice that many blacks do not choose and lead productive lives.
We went from a country of my youth that ordained racial discrimination to one that tilted the table in favor of minorities. In 1965 I think we needed that kick in the balls to atone for the times. But most of that generation is dead now and the policy has worn thin and is causing more harm than good. I don’t like our president politically, but I was proud our nation was able to elect a black man and I believe very few Americans feel different. I wish Walter Williams would be president, over any person I know. Don’t you believe Dr. King when he said “..a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”? I do.
Lastly, I can see how racist these statements are. They are not at all. I am not superior to any race in general, and neither is my race. I’ve never said it. Bill Cosby has made similar statements to these – is he a racist? I am not ignorant, every statement here is researched and is not merely “how I feel about things”. Maybe you should study that word “racist” before you toss it out there so…ignorantly.
Calm down there, Beck, don’t mess up your nice white robe. Yes, I’m sure those employers who pass up blacks do so ONLY because they are afraid of discrimination lawsuits, because we know how easily working class black folk can hire good lawyers. It CERTAINLY has nothing to do with racism. That’s why they don’t even call back applicants with black sounding names- because they stereotypically assume that anyone black will raise a discrimination suit if they are fired- because we ALL know how uppity them negroes are, right Beck?
“It is not racist to point out a culture that accepts more than 70% of pregnancies out of wedlock and unfinanced. I am observing a culture that labels a black youth as “acting white” when he excels in academics. Black skin doesn’t make you say that, culture does. Amongst the desperate poor of all races, blacks represent twice the percentage of convicts in prison. This is a cultural choice that many blacks do not choose and lead productive lives.”
Please, oh expert on “black culture”, tell us the source from whence you divined this nonsense. Do yourself a favor some time and compare the statistics of drug use among white and black youth, the stats on teenage alcoholism, drunk driving, and so on.
You can talk about MLK and squirm all you like- you are a racist, get over it.
My robe is Bill Blass orange. Sure, why not. I don’t know why this is germane to the topic, but here it goes.
Blacks come in second place in teen drug use with 21%, behind 25% of Hispanics. Whites are 18% and Asians are 10%. http://health.msn.com/health-topics/addiction/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100262946
According to a recent report prepared for the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), black males in younger age groups “are at
substantially less risk for high rates of heavy drinking than younger whites”…
But…”Consumption among blacks, however, is relatively low in the 18-29 age
group, rises dramatically among those in their 30″
“….The report prepared for NHTSA concluded that blacks are at greater risk than whites
for traffic accidents due to drinking”.
Sounds like a tie. The 9 page report drones on like this, you can peruse it here. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/B/C/Y/L/_/nnbcyl.pdf
So what. I don’t know what favor I did for myself because all of this is too close to draw a cultural identity. That’s why I didn’t. I’m not interested in racial identity, I am defining a cultural identity that happens to comprise a large number of blacks to demonstrate ones fate is not determined. Much less than a third of blacks would qualify for what I called “modern popular black culture”.
You can’t seem to stay on topic, but I did notice your grammar did improve on your last post to just beyond the level of a 16 year old girl texting while she drives to the mall. Congrats. LOL, etc…
Oh yes, my source for this nonsense. Hmmm. Besides real research, for 5 years, I was a touring lighting director on 6 major rap tours during the early 90s. These people were productive and my friends, and we had serious social discussions on long flights and bus rides. You can scoff now.
This article is retarded, absolutely retarded. There is no redeeming it in any way. First of all your ridiculous political diagram. Yes, I know it’s ever so popular on Facebook and libertarian sites. It’s also useless. Just as a left-right spectrum is often unhelpful, so is a digram which happens to have a Y access. Oh it measures how much “government control” people want? And how do we measure government control? Does anyone ever say, “I would like 300ppm of government control in my ideal state?” And Tea Partiers value individual rights? No my friend, you need to stop being so naive, and watch what they DO, not what they say about themselves when making sound bites. Tea Partiers tend to be white, middle class, often with government benefits, stupidly believing that government spending which benefits them is alright. This has been verified dozens of times by various surveys. Moreover, they LOVE government control when it comes to abortion, drugs, or using the power of the government to violate the constitution so as to prevent Muslims from exercising their right to lease private property for a community center.
Ok I guess Tea Partiers and Hippies DO have something in common. They are both groups of self-righteous retards who are stealing precious oxygen. Perhaps thanks to this realization, they should both exercise their 2nd amendments rights to purchase guns, and promptly kill themselves, thus saving America from sliding further and further down the list of industrialized nations.
I just have one observation – if the Tea Party members are all about individualism and the idea that the characteristics we exhibit as humans are innate, that we are born the way we are and cannot be changed by society, then why are so many of them (particularly the political candidates) anti-gay? Scientific studies have shown that most homosexual people are born that way – they may fight it to conform to society and end up being “outted” through a scandal in a men’s room even though they have a heterosexual marriage, but they are homosexual from birth. Straight or gay is therefore an innate, human characteristic. So based upon the author’s theory, shouldn’t the Tea Party (and also all conservatives since they fall in the “innate” realm) be accepting of our country’s gay population?
Instead, the opposite seems to be happening – the conservatives and Tea Party politicians call gays names, tell them they are evil, are trying to brainwash children, etc. A group that claims to have a philosophy of “we’re born the way we’re born and you can’t change us to fit an ideal” seems to be hypocritical if they are anti-gay, anti-illegal immigrant (illegal immigrants are just trying to do what is best for themselves as an individual – the gov’t controlling them would just be collectivism), and anti-Muslim (again, they are what they are!).
I am trying to understand where the Tea Party is coming from because I do follow the news and don’t live in a bubble, but I am not angry or afraid (except of angry people with guns) and I don’t see the world going to hell in a hand basket either.
You are conflating the Tea Party with social conservatives. The actions you are describing — being anti-gay — are more closely associated with social conservatives. I’ve never seen an anti-gay sign at a Tea Party event, and if they did crop up here and there somewhere in the country (let’s assume), we can safely say that it was an “off-topic” sign, because 99% of the messaging at Tea Party rallies is about economics, not sexual issues.
And as you can see, I placed social conservatives further up the “consructed” axis, just as you requested.
Now, are there social conservatives who are also Tea Party attendees? Sure. But the whole point is, they do (or they’re supposed to do) the moralizing in church, and their fiscal griping in the Tea Party setting, and keep the two separate.
Right…there MIGHT be some social conservatives at Tea Party rallies. Believe me, they would be far better off if they went back to social conservatism because they don’t understand dick about economics. Fiscal responsibility? Nonsense. The bulk of these morons didn’t let out so much as a peep while Bush squandered a budget surplus and got the country involved in two losing wars. Nationwide surveys have been done of Tea Party rallies and groups and large amounts of their participants receive some form of government funding(e.g. medicare, medicaid, farm subsidies); in some cases they work full time for the government. But of course the government spending that directly benefits them is necessary- everything ELSE is pork. It is the epitome of childish, selfish behavior. These people do not understand economics, they do not understand the tax system, and they don’t even understand history(which is proven by the name Tea Party itself).
And again, your grid is worthless. I am familiar with these political tests which often are rigged in some way to cram people into various categories defined by whoever made the test. Perhaps more importantly the answers are limited and there is no room to consider mitigating circumstances under which one’s answers might be totally different. Look at your test- since when did “bums” constitute a political ideological group? And somewhere near fascism no less. No wonder bums would always goose-step around my old neighborhood. Trustafarian anarchists? I didn’t know that was a valid political ideology either. Oh wait, it’s just bullshit names and ideas that the test-maker pulled out of his ass! If you take that graph seriously you are retarded- go on and start collecting disability payments.
I might also point out it’s interesting to hear someone espouse the glory of individual values while simultaneously believing in innate human nature- all the while not seeing the glaring contradiction with this.
It’s not a movement until it’s got a facebook group
Here ya go, “Tea Party Hippies”
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_150583898307185
As an old hippie / Tea Party member, I agree with the article and I totally get it. And, although I hadn’t made that connection then, I have to tell you I saw about 10 of my old HS hippie buddies at the last Tea Party rally at our State Capital, with their old hippie wives and kids. Some, like me, had the grandkids there too.
I do have to tell you most of them are moderate Dems. (a stance that boggles my mind) I know this because we’ve butted heads at School Board meetings, PTSA meetings, family BBQs, over politics.
BUT, and it’s a huge but, our old hippie liberal friends have moved away from Obama, Pelosi, Reid and our own beloved local Dems, without finding a need to to change side.
I think the tone of this article is infantile, and in that I can hear the sing-song tone in which it was written, personally I find it offensive. Most of the real hippies I know are well read, and educated, many have advanced degrees.
I think the writer makes the mistake, which many people make, and confuse the words “hippie” for “druggie”, or “hippie” for “stoner”. And while many hippies WERE druggies or stoners back in their hippie youth, in order to become OLD hippies that crap stopped years ago.
Maybe the writer could have written this with less smarm and more warm.
The difference between the hippies and the Tea Party is that the hippies meant it.
This essay is true. I’ve seen them. I know.
Tea Partiers love psychedelic rock. They engage in free love, are 100% antiwar and dig dropping LSD on the weekends for fun. They take a pro-choice stance on abortion. They live in communes, tribes and colonies.
They all have long hair. They’re mellow too, and seek a contemplative lifestyle. They support gays and lesbians, follow Eastern religions and philosophy, and they hate guns.
They smoke pot and they want it legalized. They support all minority groups and their rights, and believe that all peoples of the world are equal and due equal respect and dignity.
Those are Tea Party values, baby. So get back to where you once belonged.
“while many hippies WERE druggies or stoners back in their hippie youth, in order to become OLD hippies that crap stopped years ago”
I hate to break it to you, but it didn’t. You just did, so to speak. But at any rate, this is about more than drugs fer cripes sake.
From your few inferences (and your lack of specifics), I suspect you considered yourself to be a “hippie”, or saw friends as hippies, in the 70′s.
There were a lot of suburban kids post Woodstock who thought because they wore sandals and a peace symbol, grew some long hair, bought a black light and an Escher poster, and smoked pot while listening to Led Zeppelin, they were hippies.
Truth is, they were just pretending. They never lived it. They were spoiled-rotten suburban kids. They just bought Crosby, Stills & Nash records and granny glasses. They owe far more to Madison Ave. than to the counterculture.
Later, when they figured out life was actually hard and that certain choices needed to be made, they, like most other people, chose the easy route, the one our social order and status quo provide. Go to school. Drink beer. Get a job. Drink beer. Get married. Drink beer. Have kids. Drink beer. Buy a boat. Drink beer. Die.
Haha. True! Meanwhile the real counterculture went on to invent things like the computer hardware and software industries, so the whole country wouldn’t slide off of the table and into a dumper full of beer cans.
Dude, if you ended up the way you have, and if you truly believe the Tea Party is any kind of positive force, than you were never a hippie. You were, like millions of American boys and girls in the 70′s, just having fun playing hippie for a while, and you certainly never understood what “counterculture” means. If you ever had, it would have saved you and bettered your life, and it would have provided you a keen lens with which to see the Tea Party for what it is.
Needless to say, you have it entirely reversed. You obviously didn’t bother to read the article fully, nor many of the comments here.
Not only am I not talking about the latter-day pretend-hippies of the ’70s, I’m not even talking about the mass-movement co-opted hippies of the very late ’60s. I’m talking about the original hippies of the mid-’60s, pre-’68 elections.
Furthermore, your shallow references to the surface artifacts of hippiedom have nothing to do with the underlying values uniting the two movements. To quote a section of the article you obviously skipped over:
Thank you abraxas. Maybe the hippie culture collapsed because of a lack of corporate sponsorship, unlike the tea party.
So why are militias and unions located where they are ?
You would think that militias are based on some common theme(racial and/or religious, perhaps innate), and unions say that people should be treated the same despite their differences in performance (constructed ?).
Also, I posted your chart and a tiny excerpt in a forum!
Just thought I’d let you know.
the article and the comments are all great, a cluster of smart people, for me is very relevant try to find those who have different opinions but are still receptive to debate and dialogue, and those who are actually so far away allowing only a ground to stand. I am a rather older fellow more into the capitalism versus marxist dichotomy. I wish I would have more time to read all the posted comments.
Zombie makes some good points about the early hippie thing being non-political.
I’m a native of San Francisco and got back from the Army (3 years in Germany) at the beginning of ’67.
I was active with the anti-war movement mostly because the US Army did it wrong in Vietnam under Westmoreland. Counterinsurgency is a thinking man’s sport and Sam just didn’t get it and betrayed a lot of people who trusted us (over there) in the process.
But the Berkeley anti-war mob was VERY different from the SF mob. They were very ideological and their leaders inherently anti-American. I found their intellectual elitism and their preaching from an imagined moral high ground really annoying. There was considerable friction between the Berkeley radicals and the SF hipies/crazies. We were having much more fun and we had no problem at all being American.
Eventually the leftie ideological crowd won but by then the war had ended (for us at least, not for those poor dinks we walked out on!)and most of us had moved on.
I had two kids, a career as a journalist (in Australia) and am now retired out in the bush half a mile from my front gate, on solar power, grow a lot of my own food. Some things never changed for a lot of us I guess.
The Tea Party movement is really interesting to me. I have trouble with religious wowser types but they can’t claim the Tea Party for their own. I think it’s the best hope Americans with traditional values have to pull Washington back into line. And that’s the main game at the moment, pulling government back into line.
Nice article Zombie.
Bob,
I remember having the same argument with a communist chick at the rally before “Century City” in LA. I said that the way was through individual change. She was up on the collective and confronting “the man”. We left Century City when the vibes started getting bad. Just before the police riot.
Next day I saw the communist chick getting her head bashed in on the front page of the LA Times.
That diagram is awesome! Interesting take on things but I follow what you are saying on Tea Party & Hippie’s. When I look at the average age in that movement, it fits even better.
As I have said, this is a company tool. It’s not just a miracle machine. It could without difficulty develop into a different expense if you don’t put the effort and time into learning how to exploit it.
Got here on a link from American Digest – totally missed the date! I don’t know how I could have missed this the first time it came around – maybe I didn’t and it’s early alzheimers. Time for an update, Zombie!
With havin so much content do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright infringement? My blog has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my authorization. Do you know any ways to help stop content from being ripped off? I’d certainly appreciate it.
Thank you for putting Objectivism in what I think would be close to its proper place. I would actually put it slightly further away from the center, and if I were you I would make a mirror image so that Collectivism is on the left.