David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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For governance, ‘one size fits all’ is a bad idea — even if the ‘one size’ is your version of freedom

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Different people want different things. We accept that in most areas of life, so why can’t we accept that the same thing is true for how the places we live are managed?

I like steak, pizza and chicken. I don’t care for seafood, Chinese food or most veggies. (Don’t mention that last part to my doctor.) I would be rather unhappy in a world where the majority voted to adopt seafood and Chinese for all the restaurants. I would be happy if none of the restaurants served what I don’t like, but many other people wouldn’t be. Fortunately, it’s not an either/or situation. I have the places I like. They have the places they like. We can change our minds and move back and forth between restaurants.

So if this competitive model is good for restaurants — and cars and computers and pretty much everything the free market provides — why do most people tend to favor “one true way” for governing territory?

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THE McELROY ZOO: Meet Lucy, the dog who used to live on a chain

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About 12 years ago, I suddenly started seeing a beautiful chow mix dog in the yard of a home not too far from where I live. It was an unfenced yard, and she lived on a chain all the time. The couple who lived there didn’t seem to care about her.

I never once saw her off the chain, and I never once saw them give her any attention. When I’d happen to be walking by and the people came home, she would strain on the chain trying to get to them as she wagged her tail hard, but they would ignore her. She obviously wanted attention badly. It broke my heart, but I watched this for months — until after the dog got pregnant and had five puppies on that chain.

The puppies would wander around  — beyond the reach of her chain — and she would seem frantic in trying to get to them to care for them. It was upsetting to me to watch as I’d drive by or walk near the house. The last straw was when the couple who lived there left town for a week and left this mother dog and her puppies out in the yard. After making inquires across the street, I found out that they had asked a neighbor to feed her while they were gone, but that was all the provision they’d made for her or the puppies.

I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I wasn’t going to leave her there. There were already three dogs in my household at the time, so I didn’t need any more. I had no intention of keeping her, but I couldn’t leave her where she was with five puppies she couldn’t take care of.

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If you ever doubt that voting is a sacrament of the civic religion, remember this

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When you were in school, you were probably taught in civics classes that you have a duty to vote. It wasn’t just that you had a right to vote, but rather that you owed it to everyone else to vote. Many people still believe what was drilled into their 11-year-old heads.

The comment above was from a discussion on Facebook Saturday night, mostly between libertarians over the issue of whether it’s morally acceptable to vote or not. In the middle of heated exchanges over whether it was immoral to vote or simply being acceptably pragmatic to do so, a woman posted this. Clearly, she thinks it’s a trump card — duty. She has no need to lay out a rational argument. She has the faith of the state religion, and that’s all she thinks she needs.

There are too many angry arguments between libertarians and anarcho-capitalists and voluntaryists and whatever else we want to call ourselves over issues such as this. We can each choose our own path and let others do the same. But it’s important to realize that we have a common enemy. That enemy is a state that teaches children that they have a duty to obey it and perpetuate it. We have to quit fighting each other and get busy planning for what to do after that beast is dead or irrelevant.

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