David McElroy

The great science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was one of my first favorite writers, back when I started reading his juvenile fiction when I was about 12 or 13. I had no idea that he had already arrived at some of the conclusions it would take me decades to find.

There’s a widely held belief that Heinlein was a libertarian, but that’s much more complicated than most people think. He was pretty much an outright socialist in the early decades of his life, then a hardcore cold warrior after that. Still, libertarian themes emerged, most famously in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”

Whatever he was in the early parts of his life, he gave us some of the best literary efforts on ideas related to freedom. I was reminded of that earlier this week when I saw this quoted, which comes from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long“:

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When I attended a meeting earlier this week about a new sales tax for my suburb, there was a continuing theme that was disturbing. What I heard from supporters of the tax was bad, but what I heard from opponents was just as bad, because many of them were hypocrites.

In order to sell the tax, politicians are throwing out bait in the form of various projects that they promise to do with the money. The disturbing thing I heard from many tax opponents is that they’re adamantly against the tax, but they want the projects done anyway.

We’re a nation of people who have had costs disconnected from benefits — to the point that most people don’t seem to make the connection anymore. People want good things to just magically happen. It doesn’t occur to them that it’s their responsibility to find a way to provide what they want. They’ve been trained to believe that The Government will take care of everything.

You can see how out of touch people have become by looking at things said during the health care debate last year. Many of those who opposed the Democrats’ efforts to take over even more huge chunks of the medical system didn’t seem to understand that much of what they have now is already “socialized medicine” — and nobody better threaten to take it away from them.

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It was big news in Alabama Thursday when federal prosecutors in Montgomery suffered a humiliating defeat in a public corruption trial. A jury returned not guilty verdicts on many of the charges, but were split on the remainder. There wasn’t a single guilty verdict.

It was a mix of gambling industry tycoons — including Milton McGregor, the guy on the right in this picture — plus state legislators and lobbyists who were accused of trying to give bribes or take bribes to influence legislation that would have legalized new forms of gambling in the state. (The legislation had passed one chamber of the Legislature, but the arrests spooked the politicians and the bill died.)

During the trial, federal prosecutors played tapes of conversations in which politicians, businessmen and lobbyists talked about what it would take to get the bill passed. The lobbyists and gambling people promised campaign contributions to legislators who supported their position.

But here’s the big question. If you can show that certain people wanted legislation passed and were willing to give money to support the politicians who were favorable to what they wanted, how is that any different from anything else in politics? Do people think that campaign contributions are given out of the goodness of people’s hearts? Of course not. Contributions are made to candidates who support whatever you want, whether you’re a business or union or representative of any other narrow interest. How else would you expect people to decide who to contribute to?

I’m not saying that I don’t believe the gambling industry was buying votes. I’m merely saying that’s the way the majoritarian system works.

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