No, Rodney King, people in this country can’t just ‘all get along’

By David McElroy · July 18, 2013

Every time there’s a national controversy in which race plays a part, there are calls for people to come together, be reasonable and agree on “common sense solutions.”

“Can’t we all get along?” was the line from the late Rodney King that I always associate with this sentiment. The people who say different forms of this line mean well. They think that if we’ll all just “play nice” and love each other, the world will be a better place. But the bad news is that, no, we can’t get along. The delusion that we can get along — by agreeing to “one best way” for everyone — leads us to lie to ourselves and sets us up to be disappointed again and again.

So am I saying there’s no hope for race relations? Actually, I’m saying something far broader. This point isn’t really about race. It’s about intelligent and well-meaning people who disagree about fundamental principles — in ways that are never going to change.

No matter how intelligent and well-meaning people are, they’re always going to come to radically different conclusions about what’s true, what’s right and how society’s rules should be structured. Even before you factor in all the people who aren’t bright and don’t have goodwill, there’s no way we can all agree.

This is why the “one size fits all” nature of majoritarian political systems is always going to leave many millions of people angry and feeling oppressed. Even if you don’t understand the moral case for self-sovereignty, consider this the pragmatic case. As long as the majority have the power to give you orders and take your money, you are going to end up in a minority which doesn’t get its way at some point.

On every controversial issue, there are many good, well-meaning and intelligent people on each side, even though the common reaction is to write off people on the other side as stupid, ignorant or evil. Progressives do it to conservatives. Conservatives do it to progressives. Pretty much everybody does it to libertarians. (And libertarians have an unfortunate tendency to look down on the intelligence of those who “don’t get it.”)

Look at the vitriol between those on different sides of the George Zimmerman trial. (Take a look at the comments on my article Monday about the outcome as an example.) The people on different sides are sure that they’re right. They’re sure that the people on the other side are wrong. Even when I laid out the case that both men made mistakes and should share blame, the partisans don’t want to hear that. They only want to hear that what they already believe is true, so they find reasons to keep believing that. There tends to be venom for those on the other side.

Traditional thinking about this says that we just need a “marketplace of ideas” and the best idea wins, but I think that’s pure fiction. Everything about socialism was a lousy idea, yet this country has slowly adopted piece after piece of its principles over the last hundred years. It’s a pipe dream to think that the best ideas win — or that we’re so smart and persuasive that we can convince others of our “truth.”

For the most part, “objective truth” ends up meaning “the things that my friends and I agree are true.” I believe objective truth exists — and there are some things that I certainly accept as true — but I believe what I believe for my own reasons. You believe what you believe about truth for your own reasons, too. Only one version of truth can be right, of course, but if we could somehow know all objective truth, I’m sure that we would see that different ones of us have understoond different bits and pieces of it correctly.

So what does the search for truth have to do with politics or how society is structured? Everyone seems to want one perfect answer to everything — and pretty much everyone is convinced that the world would be just fine if everyone else would adopt his or her beliefs. (Those who don’t think they have all the answers exist, of course, but they’re in a tiny minority.)

So we argue and evangelize, sometimes finding other people who agree with us. We form political parties or groups of one kind or another. And we’re smug in our belief that we’re the ones who have the truth — and we battle against other people who are equally clear that they’re right and we’re wrong.

So when it comes to how we structure the rules of society, we have two choices. We can either admit that we all want our own very different outcomes and find ways to structure society so we can all have a shot at what we want or we can accept that some dominant power group is always going to get its way and the rest will simply have to live with the rules they dictate. Those are the only honest choices.

So you can keep trying to angrily talk everyone into agreeing with your “obvious” truth — and continue being angry and disappointed when the majority choose things you believe are wrong — or you can consider that maybe you should be working for a decentralized system of competitive governance that allows different ones of us to live in places with very different rules.

One way to think of this change is to think of startup cities. If new companies can come and go — and die when they’re unsuccessful — why can’t new cities emerge that are established on different sets of rules? Why can’t those who favor conservative ideas about the world start their own cities and attract those who want to live by those rules. Guns can be freely available and everybody would know to be nice, because the neighbor might be packing. Why can’t those who favor progressive left ideas start their own cities and attract those who want to live that way? Guns could be banned from the beginning and nobody would move there who wasn’t OK with that.

There are dozens (or hundreds) of different ways to structure the rules of cities. Some people might want to voluntarily live under religious rules. Some might want very libertarian rules. Some might want all sorts of variations. Why not let these variations compete for residents — customers, really — and see which ones work in actual use?

The things that are obvious to me are nonsense to you — and vice versa. Why should I be required to live under the rules that you and your friends think are obviously best? Why should you be required to live under my rules? Why can’t we go our own separate ways? Why can’t we ditch the old concept of the indivisible nation-state and make the individual sovereign instead — and allow those sovereign individuals the right to voluntarily enter into agreements with others about how to live?

We’re not ever going to all agree on the right set of rules. We’re not all going to get along. We’re going to keep disagreeing and acting as though those who disagree with us are idiots and evil people. Why can’t we work toward a system that accepts that as a starting point and structures itself so that we can all have a shot at getting what we want — so we’ll have a better chance of living in peace?

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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