Micheal Kinsley Misunderstands the Concept of Freedom
October 19th, 2007 by Steve
I noted that I’d been talking with several national reporters about just exactly who supports Ron Paul. Robert Stacy McCain of the Washington Times is one of those reporters, and he’s currently blasting a piece Micheal Kinsley wrote for Time on the topic.
I’ve only met Kinsley once. Sometime back in the 90s, my wife and I were at a DC filming of Crossfire. The program topic that day was assault rifles and the Brady Bill. Bob Novak sat opposite Kinsley on the issue; I don’t remember who the guests were that day.
Afterwards, I ran into Kinsley on the street outside the auditorium where the program was taped. For some reason, he looked very scared of me — I still don’t know why, as I hadn’t acted in any threatening manner. It had been raining that day and Kinsley was carrying an umbrella. I tried to “disarm” the situation by smiling and asking Kinsley if he was carrying an assault umbrella. Kinsley still looked scared, and obviously didn’t understand that I was trying to be friendly.
Based on the title of his article, Kinsley seems to be trying to paint libertarianism (and support for Ron Paul) in a positive light. By reading the article, one can see that he has as little insight about freedom as he did about whether I was a threat to him that day in DC.
Here’s an example:
Libertarians are against government in all its manifestations. Domestically, they are against social-welfare programs. They favor self-reliance (as they see it) over Big Government spending. Internationally, they are isolationists. Like George Washington, they loathe “foreign entanglements,” and they think the rest of the world can go to hell without America’s help.
With the exception of the anarchist wing of libertarianism, most libertarians believe that government does have a limited role in the protection of liberty and provision of justice. Therefore, any blanket statement suggesting that libertarians are against all manifestations of government is absolutely inaccurate.
He claimed that libertarians are isolationists, which is untrue. This is a falsehood that we will have to continually debunk this election cycle. There is an important and clear distinction between isolationism and not wishing to play policeman to the world.
And what is the opposite of libertarianism? Libertarians would say fascism. But in the American political context, it is something infinitely milder that calls itself communitarianism.
Again, Kinsley doesn’t get it. To most libertarians, fascism and socialism are equally abhorrent. One is merely authoritarianism from the right; the other is authoritarianism from the left. There is little difference to us between the health care “solutions” provided by Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney. Both are health care plans backed with government force that one can’t refuse; neither are free market solutions.
Libertarians aren’t afraid, as Kinsley suggests, of community. Many of us have a strong sense of community, but it has to be voluntary. Most libertarians I know are very social and charitable, so long as we aren’t forced into the situation.
To his credit, Kinsley did note that libertarians “are not the selfish monsters you might expect.” Then he tried to paint us with the broad brush of “a generation of smart loners, many of them rich and some of them complacently Darwinian, convinced that they don’t need society–nor should anyone else.”
I’ll note that in my single encounter with Kinsley, he was the one who seemed socially awkward. He was the one who seemed the “smart loner” in that situation.
I’ve a suggestion for Time. If you are going to have someone write about libertarianism, either hire a libertarian or have the writer interview people who actually know something about the topic. Alternately, you already have someone on staff who actually hangs out around libertarians enough to know the general subject matter.
Kinsley hit the nail on the head when he suggested that a love for freedom is on the rise. The article would have been more insightful if he had some concept of what freedom actually means, though.
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GordonUnleashed » Blog Archive » Ron Paul and the Neocon Squirm wrote on 10/19/07 at 7:09 pm :
[…] not sure which is more fun, making liberals feel uneasy or watching neocons squirm. The latest round comes from the Weekly Standard, which criticizes a […]
Libertarian wrote on 10/19/07 at 7:39 pm :
When I read Kinsley’s column earlier today, it drove me up the wall when he said that libertarians had no use for society. What an juvenile/ignorant concept of libertarianism! Just because we have little use for gov’t doesn’t mean we don’t like society! Confusing the two, as he does, just supports the notion of how far we’ve fallen from liberty.