Aren’t libertarians the logical folks? So why are so many irrational now?

By David McElroy · January 22, 2012

In South Carolina, Ron Paul finished in last place — fourth out of the four remaining candidates. This isn’t exactly the “revolution” that my friends have been expecting. So how are they dealing with this dose of cruel political reality? And where do libertarians go from here?

If you’ve read much here, you know that I believe Paul has no chance of winning. None. Zero. Nada. It’s not that I don’t like him. He’s probably my favorite statist. But he can’t win, because he’s advocating things that the majority just plain don’t want. After the complete collapse in the first southern primary, I thought I’d skim through what my Facebook friends were saying about the situation. Without calling any names, here are the sort of things that were being said Saturday night among my Paul-supporting friends:

— “Obama must go, so no matter who our nominee is, he’s far better than the current occupant of the White House.” Really? In what ways is Mitt Romney — the father of RomneyCare — an improvement over Barack Obama? In what ways is Newt Gingrich — the man who wants to attack Iran — an improvement over Obama? As bad as Obama is, when it comes to substantive issues — not rhetoric — how are any of the other GOP choices an improvement over Obama?

— “The MSM [mainstream media] is silencing Ron Paul’s message, so that’s the only reason he’s not winning.” Actually, Paul has gotten a tremendous amount of television time over the last year or two, especially compared to the percentage of the electorate that supports him. He’s had plenty of chance to make his case and he’s spent millions of dollars on ads, too. Anyone who believes he’s being silenced isn’t paying attention. It’s just not true.

— “The election was a fraud. The networks were already calling it for Gingrich before half the votes were counted, so it was obviously rigged.” Networks call elections based on exit polling and projections based on how key precincts are going. It’s a combination of art and science that’s pretty accurate in predicting what’s going to be a result when the rest of the votes are counted. They’re projections. They have nothing to do with rigging elections.

— I stumbled upon one discussion of a convoluted conspiracy involving the establishment funding both Gingrich and Santorum in order to stop Paul — who they’re afraid of — before they let Romney win. I’m only mentioning this looney theory because it shows the lengths to which people will go to find reasons to explain what’s going on. Instead of just accepting that others don’t support their candidate, they make up things that have no evidence to support them.

— “The campaign is just about educating people and I’m sick of people who don’t get that. If you don’t support Ron Paul, you’re opposed to liberty.” I saw a lot of that general sentiment last night. There was a good bit of anger toward those relatively few of us who have withdrawn from the system, as though we somehow caused hundreds of thousands of South Carolina voters to flock to Romney, Gingrich and Santorum. Ummmm, no. We’re not responsible. (And we’re not responsible for following whatever path you believe is the right one. You do your thing. We’ll do ours.) Besides, anyone who believes that a campaign is an educational mission is being fooled. An effective campaign is about finding people who generally already agree with you and organizing them to collect others who generally already agree with you. Some tiny fraction of people change their minds in campaigns — every election. A statistically tiny number of people will become libertarians because of this campaign, but not much will change. Roughly 10 percent of the public was generally libertarian 10 years ago. That’s still true today, after countless libertarian “educational” campaigns.

— The other things mostly fell into the category of denial and boosterism: “Ron Paul will still be the president, so just relax,” and, “We refuse to accept anyone but Ron Paul as president.” No, Paul isn’t going to be president. Not this year. Not in four years. Not ever. It’s a fantasy. Refusing to accept that is stopping you from spending your time looking for alternatives that might work.

I’m sympathetic to what Paul supporters want, so I’m not opposed to them and I’m not one of those trying to paint Paul as a crazy uncle who wants nutty things. (My biggest concern is that he doesn’t go far enough toward individual freedom.) But libertarians are supposed to be the hyper-rational people of the political world. What I’m seeing from them right now is just as irrational and conspiratorial as the worst of the people of the major parties.

At some point, libertarians have to accept that most people don’t want what we want. They have to accept that continuing to talk and hand out literature and put up signs isn’t going to change the world. At some point, they have to admit the reality that neither Paul nor any other libertarian is going to get elected to change the country or the world.

So the real question is when the alleged rationalists are going to get rational and join those of us who are trying to figure out how to prepare for the coming post-statist world. The evidence is all around you that you’re not going to elect someone to save you.

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I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

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