The Libertarian and New Conservative flaw

When I was 17 and 18 – 1968 and 1969 – I was a Libertarian. Libertarians value individualism and freedom intrinsically and extrinsically, alpha and omega. There is a long, illustrious history of political freedom-fighting and intransigent, principled men and women that anchors the Libertarian movement. Many books and papers on the morality and practicality of liberty and its embodiment in capitalism were written or endorsed by Libertarians. In those days, there was a fundamental, if discreetly expressed, bifurcation in the thinking, which could be described in this extreme: Should there be a government over us, whose only purpose would be protection from force and fraud, or should individuals acquire (buy) their own services, such as private post offices, streets, police forces.

In that early Libertarian ideology (I've been away from it for fifty years), individualism, liberty and capitalism were a unity, and that unity was both an intellectual edifice and a feeling. It was a feeling that built the edifice. It was not a kind one. Many people would say it was an immoral one.

I remember owning that feeling. And now, as a studier of psychology, I can discern the various chemical elements that constitute not one feeling, but a complex of different emotionalized sensations.

There is the noble element, what might be called the Ayn Rand element. The heroic, hard-working, self-made person who has a passion for a personal goal from which he will not be deflected: Roark and his architecture; Galt and a free society. There is the self-esteem element: I care about myself, I have every right to keep what I earn and produce. There is the narcissistic element that wants to put aside, whenever one's felt needs importune, the fact that we live in a society: I am ok to destroy all of my competition by any strategy. I may pollute the air.

And then there is the element of contempt, which is also the Ayn Rand element. There may be pure nobility somewhere in the human soul, but it is not here. We high school and college Libertarians didn't care about the poor people who wanted to take our charity by force. We had no different, kinder feeling about the handicapped, the children, or other oppressed people. All were worthy of being ignored and yes, looked down upon.

It is this molecule of contempt, the ignoble part of Libertarian pride, that has spread on carrier waves of politics and religion throughout the land, turning the mind subtly like a kaleidoscope to hateful and coercive feelings, enabling millions of people to admire – admire – a narcissist and sociopath, Trump. This contempt is born in pain and loss in childhood, injustice and alienation, all morphing to a philosophy of individualism: the alone, unhelped person. Libertarians and New Conservatives feel the ghosts of their injustice and alienation that become false nobility and wounded disdain. Soaring on the wings of political victory, they are sanctified, happy. In defeat, they are angry, hurt children.