Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

When we show up, we win.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Let there be snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Open Thread: If Libertarianism Is the Answer, What Was the Question?

Open Thread: If Libertarianism Is the Answer, What Was the Question?

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Surprisingly good interview from Cracked — “Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out”:

… So, if it’s not A.I., what do you worry about?

Without being overly dramatic — but, I think, being accurate — there’s a small chance, but still real non-zero chance, that we’ve destroyed our country with monetizing hate and monetizing aggression and monetizing outrage. What makes you the most money is outrage and hate.

I’m beginning to think that the whole MAGA movement, it’s possible we can blame that on fiction — it’s so exciting to have that turnabout in a movie where you find out that there’s a deep state. I certainly feel the pull for that — so much of trying to live our lives to do it right is tedious. And truth is very tedious. Trying to figure out how a certain insect interacts with an environment in the tundra is a lifetime of work — whereas saying that Hillary Clinton has a pizza place where she’s blowing young boys in the basement is no work at all.

Einstein comes up with this idea E = mc² — a profound, powerful, mind-blowing idea — and he has to work forever to make people understand that and to share that reality. Woodward and Bernstein are pretty sure the president of the United States committed crimes, and they work their asses off to try to prove that. But if you’re deep in the MAGA movement, you can just type that Biden went to China and set up a secret nuclear arsenal, and you get this incredible amount of praise with seven-minutes work. Trying to get the news cycle to look as much like 24 seems to be the goal…

And yet, with all of this doom and gloom, everything is getting better by every metric we have. Things are getting better if we don’t destroy the planet with global warming and if Donald Trump doesn’t blow things up or Putin blows things up — those are the biggest “ifs” anyone’s ever said. But fewer people are starving. More girls are educated. Fewer people die at the hands of other people than ever in history. Those are big milestones. And some people argue — and they might be right — that art was part of that because the idea of reading a novel and putting yourself in someone else’s position, that (was) a huge deal…

For so long, you identified as Libertarian. What changed?

I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.” Now, you can make the argument that maybe you don’t need to mandate masks — you can make the argument that maybe that shouldn’t be the government’s job — but you cannot make the argument that you shouldn’t wear masks. It is the exact reciprocal of seatbelts because if I don’t wear a seatbelt, my chances of fucking myself up increase — if I don’t wear a mask, the chance of fucking someone else up increase.

Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.

So how do you identify politically?

Well, let’s go to empirical evidence: I’m going to vote Democrat, maybe that’s all you need to know. I will not vote for a third-party candidate. I believe all the clichés, I believe they’re true — I believe that Trump and MAGA might make the United States unrecognizable enough that it’s not a beautiful place to be…

(Trump’s) basic idea that, in a transaction, someone wins and someone loses is the most deeply anti-American, anti-capitalist idea you can possibly have. The idea of winners and losers being said about capitalism is a gross distortion of what that’s supposed to be. The way Penn & Teller run (our) business is I want everybody to make money. When we do a show, I have many friends who are freaked out if the promoter makes too much money — (that’s) a “bad deal” — but I just go, “Fuck, I want every promoter that books Penn & Teller to make a million fucking dollars clear. Wouldn’t that be great?” I’m certainly not talking about the way blues artists were treated — I’m talking about me who gets paid very well, that’s a whole different thing. But Trump says over and over again someone has to win and someone has to lose, and the fact that that’s being seen as American and as capitalism, that is the most unpatriotic thing…

Reader Interactions

129Comments

  1. 1.

    BR

    It was an astonishing interview for the amount of open self awareness he displays, and the ability to shift one’s thinking or even one’s own self definition.

  3. 3.

    lowtechcyclist

    It’s been obvious for eons that the fewer restrictions there are on what private interests can do, the faster the money goes to the top and gets consolidated in the pockets of a small number of people and corporations.

    But having fewer restrictions is exactly what libertarianism argues for. So fuck ’em.

  6. 6.

    narya

    Thanks for that link–I have to give him props for being thoughtful and being willing to change his mind.

  7. 7.

    BellyCat

    “I’d rather everyone believed in Christianity than what it’s turned into.“

    Failing to grock this part given the rest of his seemingly semi-sensible statements. Is he advocating for an Idealized Nonexistent Christianity, or a Hegemonic Sky Kitty, or eliminating All Other False Religions/Gods, or…? No clue.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    Oh.  The answer is not “How do we attract bears to our cities?”

    Will give this a look when I get home.

  9. 9.

    phein64

    Gillette provides an important insight:  What Qanon, Fox News, Trump, and other con artists provide is “knowledge” without effort.   I’ve found that the value of what I know is directly related to how much work I had to do to obtain it, and that the reverse is equally true.

  10. 10.

    Brachiator

    A very humane interview. I love that one of his kids is named Moxie CrimeFighter.

    Years and years ago, I saw Penn and Teller perform at a small theater in Hollywood. It was a hoot. And I learned a lot about magic and misdirection. I love it when a performer tells you how a trick is done, and dazzles you anyway. Of course, they lie a bit. Misdirection.

    British comedian Jimmy Carr also does some of this with his stand-up routine. Explains a joke in advance and still makes you laugh.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    People who were right from the beginning about the nature of the right-wing don’t have to search their souls.

    Just saying.

    But if he’s voting blue, he’s a better person than a small subset of libs who won’t. So kudos to him.

  12. 12.

    Alison Rose

    @BellyCat: He’s an atheist, and he’s saying that, as far as living in a world where people believe in things that he doesn’t or believe in bullshit or whatnot, he’d rather it was Christianity than, for example, “school shootings are all false flags” or whatever.

  14. 14.

    Mallard Filmore

    My issue as someone that was formerly registered as Libertarian, and also with conservatives, is that they make a wild assumption that power (money, politics, social status, access to courts) is somewhat evenly distributed among the population.

    For instance EULAs and arbitration tilt the power balance in favor of the well funded.  A poor person cannot even ante in for a court fight.

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.”

    Glad he saw what self-centered whackjobs Libertarians are.

  16. 16.

    The Thin Black Duke

    It’s said that you can tell a lot about a person’s character is seeing how he apologizes. Major props to Jilette. It’s more than what Aaron (Good QB, garbage human being otherwise) Rodgers did, for example.

  17. 17.

    Bill Arnold

    If Libertarianism Is the Answer, What Was the Question?

    “What is a philosophical justification for selfishness?”

    As an answer, it is a decent one to the question. But the question opens up counter questions, such as, “What are the philosophical arguments against selfishness?”. Starting with “what is “self”?

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    Man, if libertarianism is the answer, I want people to quit asking the question, LOL.

    Great read – thanks AL!

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Elizabelle:

    Oh. The answer is not “How do we attract bears to our cities?” 

    No?  How to build a grizzly, black, and brown bear* utopia isn’t the question?

    *I don’t know or care if those don’t exist in the same area.  Don’t make me throw polar bears into the mix.

  21. 21.

    Ailuridae

    @mrmoshpotato: It speaks volumes about his character and his intellect that it took him to be 65 years of age and facing a pandemic of a disease that directly threatened his life to realize the grift he had aggressively advocated for at least thirty years was horseshit.

  22. 22.

    Ohio Mom

    I almost scrolled past this post, could take or leave Penn and Teller but absolutely have no patience for libertarianism. But I trust Anne Laurie so I looked.

    Yes, props to Penn for being able to change his mind. It seems to me that you can’t be a successful magician without being able to imagine yourself in an audience member’s shoes — how will what I am planning to do look like, “read”, to the people in the theater?

    Maybe that flexibility of thought is what allowed him to reevaluate his beliefs.

    Next up for Penn: it’s the DemocratIC party, not Democrat.

  23. 23.

    trollhattan

    His insight on Trump seems obvious but is perhaps uniquely, usefully framed—life is zero sum: each transaction results in 1 winner and 1 loser. Because I’m always a winner….

    Trump voters think they’re riding a craps bet placed on PASS. With Trump rolling you CAN’T LOSE.

  24. 24.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: Thq question was “What’s the best way for a right wing white guy to get laid in college?”

    Manually.

  25. 25.

    JaySinWA

    @Ohio Mom: I believe he used the word correctly in that sentence. I don’t vote Democratic, I vote [for the] Democrat[s]

    ETA I could say I vote for the Democratic party candidate. But that’s a mouthful.

  26. 26.

    Splitting Image

    I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.”

    Damn. I wish more people could look at themselves and say this. Mad props to Jillette. This sort of failing is really easy to spot in other people and damned hard when it’s your own turn to look in the mirror.

  27. 27.

    kindness

    @phein64: Knowledge without effort isn’t right so much as belief without effort.  Knowledge does not equal belief.

    I used to think Libertarians were cheap ass Republicans.  They liked/wanted those government services, they just wanted someone else to pay for them.  I still believe that’s the case

    @Ailuridae: It’s in poor taste to shit on people who are on your side.  Just sayin’.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    We’re having what I just learned is called a “murmuration” of blackbirds. They’re flocking in huge groups, landing in our backyard, then on trees, then they swoop somewhere else. It’s amazing.

  30. 30.

    Geminid

    @Baud: That made me think someone ought to stage a revival of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, and set it in a contemporary liberal arts college.

  32. 32.

    RevRick

    @lowtechcyclist: When the Supreme Court junks the Chevron principle of deferral to executive agencies on regulations, we will see libertarianism in action. And it won’t be pretty.

    Letting a bunch of egotistical lawyers override decisions made by scientists and other experts in the field is a sure formula for disaster. It’s Dunning Kruger elevated to the highest level. But that’s the intent — to destroy the regulatory regime that has been carefully constructed since the NewDeal.
    It will unleash corporations in all their rapacity.
    Far from increasing freedom it will reduce us to serfs, beholden to our wealthiest overlords.

  33. 33.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @JaySinWA: People generally don’t go to college with the intent of doing manual labor. /s

    That’s part of the beauty. If you do the job manually, there’s no labor involved. Double plus good.

  34. 34.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @RevRick: Far from increasing freedom it will reduce us to serfs, beholden to our wealthiest overlords.

    AKA true freedom for the overlords. The only freedom that matters.

  35. 35.

    sab

    I just found out I have a nephew in law. Wasn’t invited in my sisters wedding althougb his drug addled sister was a bridesmaid. 30 years ago.

    I have drug addled step children. Apparently the gayness was the issue. I am incandescent with anger. At my baby sister. I don’t know if I will ever get over this.

  36. 36.

    twbrandt

    The thing that libertarians and MAGAts share is they want to do what they want, when they want, where they want, with no consequences for their behavior, and no regard for anyone else. If someone else is harmed by what they do, tough shit. They are completely selfish. It’s why they love Trump.

  37. 37.

    dmsilev

    @Elizabelle:

    Oh.  The answer is not “How do we attract bears to our cities?”

    Open garbage bins will do that quite well.

    Any analogies to a gathering of Libertarians are entirely non-coincidental.

  39. 39.

    RevRick

    @BellyCat: Maybe he had in mind the early church which affirmed that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female.*In other words, all distinctions of race, class, and gender are false, that there is no privileged group and a group of despised, contemptible others.

    *Galatians 3:28

  41. 41.

    karen marie

    @Brachiator: I saw them in Boston in the ’90s. It was wonderful. I’ve ignored them over the time Penn was FYIGM – basically a Republican. I am delighted he’s turned a corner.

  45. 45.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Kudos for figuring things out eventually. He sums up why I’m a Democrat, sort of, when he talks about empiricism. Back in the 1980s, in final days of some modicum of bipartisan unity, the conservatives used to say we agree on the end goals just differ on the means to get there. It was always pretty much BS but when you investigated whether liberal or conservative policy proposals actually achieved the ends both sides supposedly agreed on, it sure seemed like the liberal policy was always the effective one.

    I mean I’m older and wiser now and know that that slogan was just a misdirection to justify cutting taxes for the rich on the grounds that it would supposedly help everyone prosper. To me, looking at it, it seemed like the means the Democrats proposed were always the ones that empirical studies found support for. So I became a Democrat because they were the ones that proposed solutions that were shown to work. Meanwhile the conservatives could never show any evidence that their approach worked and refused to embrace the means that we’re shown to be effective. Now with the Trump movement it’s clear that they don’t want the ends I want either. They never did. But Josh Marshal at TPM talks about empiricism and how Democrats aren’t inherently in favor of big government, they’re just in favor of doing what works to address problem X and that thing is usually a new government program or policy.

  47. 47.

    eclare

    @Michael Bersin:

    They want to smoke pot, and they are pro-choice, at least in my experience.  I broke up with one around 2002 because he refused to ride in my car that had an “Attack Iraq? No!” bumper sticker, but he also whined about having to drive us anywhere.

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    And truth is very tedious. Trying to figure out how a certain insect interacts with an environment in the tundra is a lifetime of work — whereas saying that Hillary Clinton has a pizza place where she’s blowing young boys in the basement is no work at all.

    That is a good summery of it.

  52. 52.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @OzarkHillbilly: The 12th Mechanized Armchair Brigade in action.​

    I was thinking more in terms of the 80-Something Chairborne (“Band of Bothereds”)…but yours will do.

  53. 53.

    Don K

    @Tony G:

    I formerly identified as libertarian until the Dubya years, after 9/11 and the clusterfucks in Afghanistan and Iraq, once I realized the cliché about libertarians being Republicans who like to smoke dope was basically correct. I voted for Granholm for governor in ’02 and Kerry for President in ’04, and haven’t looked back, usually voting in the primary for the leftmost electable (in my judgement) Dem. So yeah, redemption is possible.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @sab:

    Sorry. Sounds awful.

     

     

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    Yeah, I think that’s the liberalism. Liberals tend to be less into strict prescriptions about how things should work and more focused on evidence and trying different things out.  It’s often the reason we’re seen as all over the place, and why we can be indecisive at times.

  56. 56.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @RevRick:

    When the Supreme Court junks the Chevron principle of deferral to executive agencies on regulations, we will see libertarianism in action. And it won’t be pretty.

    Letting a bunch of egotistical lawyers override decisions made by scientists and other experts in the field is a sure formula for disaster. It’s Dunning Kruger elevated to the highest level. But that’s the intent — to destroy the regulatory regime that has been carefully constructed since the NewDeal. It will unleash corporations in all their rapacity. Far from increasing freedom it will reduce us to serfs, beholden to our wealthiest overlords.

    Surely, Biden, Senate and House Dems saw this was a possibility. So why didn’t they push harder for SCOTUS expansion to prevent this? Apparently, there’s a group of Dem Senators who hid behind Manchin/Sinema because they like the filibuster and wanted them to take the heat

  58. 58.

    sab

    @eclare: She had a gay nephew and thought we would be embarrassed. By a gay nephew. Thought we couldn’t know about him. My high school boyfriend was gay. He was my debutante escort. This was on her not on me. Fucking bigot bitch. I am so angry.

  59. 59.

    Oclarkiclarki

    @RevRick: No, I think that Alison Rose has it right @ 12.  Jillette has no use for Christianity, but is saying that he has even less regard for the MAGA worldview.

  61. 61.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Without the filibuster, it would only be 50+1, right? You mean to tell me Manchin, Sinema, etc wouldn’t have voted on legislation to expand the Court? Or are there more that wouldn’t?

  62. 62.

    Ailuridae

    @kindness: I’m glad that Jillette, at 70, is going to cast a vote for the Democratic party.  It is a good thing that, again in his sixties, he realized some of his schtick was stupid and toxic.

     

    Let me know when he disavows all the nonsense he has said, written and produced against the EPA and the IRS or even when he comes full circle about claiming during the second Bush administration that second hand smoke wasn’t a health concern.  Dude’s just the glibertarian asshole version of The Lincoln Project folks.

  67. 67.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Part of Trumpism is that not only someone has to win and someone has to lose is that it’s not winning unless someone loses. I.e. it’s not a win unless you thoroughly dominate the other person.

  69. 69.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Well, yeah, it would’ve been a nonstarter after the midterms. I get the impression that SCOTUS reform was quietly abandoned and given up on before that. I don’t get why DeJoy is still Postmaster General either

  71. 71.

    eclare

    @sab:

    That is weird, she thought you would be embarrassed by that?  It’s such a loss.  I’m an only child, and I was always so jealous of my dad’s relationships with his sisters.  Sibling vs sibling is tragic.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @kindness:

    I used to think Libertarians were cheap ass Republicans.  They liked/wanted those government services, they just wanted someone else to pay for them.

    I know libertarians and anarchists who seem to have a chip on their shoulder about having to observe the rules of any society. They may be willing to band together with others in the short term, and many libertarians are willing to be bound by contracts, but some of them believe that they can get along without government or government services.

    I also know some people who very stubbornly refuse to vote because they deny that there is any value in organizing any aspect of life around political activity. They are very hard core “do it yourself” types. But of course they ignore all the social culture and infrastructure that makes their life possible.

  75. 75.

    Citizen Alan

    @Oclarkiclarki:  Well, yeah. I mean, Christianity has its problems (as eversor will expound upon at tedious length), but MAGA is a literal Satanic death cult.

  78. 78.

    Citizen Alan

    @eclare:  Eventually, I’m going to have to force a partition of the land I own jointly with my RWNJ sister so I can sell my half. After that, it is very likely that she and I will never speak again. I am honestly a bit disappointed that she didn’t say anything at Christmas that would have justified me going no contact.

  82. 82.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Michael Bersin: Libertarians are like cats, full of confidence of their complete independence and freedom to do whatever they want without consequences, while utterly dependent on system they don’t comprehend, or even realize they exist.

    Except cats are cute and can be house trained.

  84. 84.

    Citizen Alan

    @Brachiator:  I have nothing but contempt for people who want all the benefits of living in a decent, prosperous and modern society but refuse to give anything back for the preservation of that society. Deep down, every Libertarian wants America to be “Somalia for White People” because they think they’ll magically become the Regional Warlord instead of just another peasant who dances when the bandits shoot at his feet. And I utterly hate them for it.

  85. 85.

    wjca

    @RevRick: Letting a bunch of egotistical lawyers override decisions made by scientists and other experts in the field is a sure formula for disaster. It’s Dunning Kruger elevated to the highest level. But that’s the intent — to destroy the regulatory regime that has been carefully constructed since the NewDeal. It will unleash corporations in all their rapacity.  Far from increasing freedom it will reduce us to serfs, beholden to our wealthiest overlords. [Emphasis added] 

    That’s the intent.  But my guess would be that it will backfire big-time.  As in, make the reaction to Dobbs look like a tempest in a teapot.

  87. 87.

    RevRick

    @sab: For your own mental health, please forgive them. Don’t let their massive dysfunction and dishonesty drag you down. They clearly don’t deserve an ounce of your emotional energy.

    I pray you find some peace. I know how hard it is to let go of pain.

  89. 89.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Thanks for your replies. I suppose some of it was just bad timing and circumstances for SCOTUS reform

  92. 92.

    Kelly

    @Brachiator: I love it when a performer tells you how a trick is done, and dazzles you anyway

    I had a roommate in college that told me he could deal me the card off the bottom of the deck and I wouldn’t catch him. He was right. I know my limits. I never play cards for money.

  94. 94.

    SpaceUnit

    I used to believe that any libertarian would be quickly disabused of their notions if a roadhouse, hog farm or chemical plant set up next to their home.  But honestly the moment their problem was removed they’d go right back to complaining about zoning boards and regulatory agencies.  Libertarian is just a fancy word for idiot.  I’ve known too many of them.

  95. 95.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    I have nothing but contempt for people who want all the benefits of living in a decent, prosperous and modern society but refuse to give anything back for the preservation of that society.

    Not every libertarian is American or white. And there are people who feel alienated from society in every human culture. I get the feeling that some people hated having to give up being hunter gatherers and becoming part of the first civilizations, and there are still people like this in the modern world.

    This is why I think that anarchists are spiritual cousins of libertarians. And also why you have something like the stupidity of the ideal proletariat society advocated by Marxism.

  98. 98.

    Another Scott

    @Mallard Filmore: +1

    [ tangent ]

    It’s the old “who cleans the toilets in Galt’s Gulch?” question.

    Everyone isn’t Howard Roark or Dagny Taggart or John Galt.  That doesn’t mean everyone else is a looter or lazy slacker or that the H, D, and J’s of the world get to grab everything they want and destroy the rest.

    [ /tangent ]

    There’s no such thing as a free market.  Or, maybe more precisely, it exists only in places where the warlords and drug-runners have control.  We need rules or the system of society breaks.  That means, no, you can’t tune your 426 Hemi dragster in your backyard at 2 AM, or do target practice on stop signs, or sell your children into slavery.

    Rules enable us to keep our stuff, and keep us from being killed by our neighbors, among other things.  Paying a little bit to back up those rules with civilization is not “theft” or “tyranny” – it just isn’t.  It’s a category error to lump them together.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  99. 99.

    Anne Laurie

    @BellyCat: Failing to grock this part given the rest of his seemingly semi-sensible statements

    As I understand it, Gillette thinks of ‘Christianity’ as the Love-Your-Neighbors, Turn-the-Other-Cheek stuff… which not that many modern ‘Christians’ actually practice, unfortunately.

    What he’s saying, in the interview, is that it would be better if more people chose to live by the pro-social ‘Love’ stuff in the generally-accepted Christian scriptures, than by the ‘F*ck you I got mine’ all-too-widely accepted Libertarian doctrine.

    Because being communal was a positive survival trait for humans going back to the earliest forms of humanity, most modern humans — at least 85%, in my lived experience — want a communal belief system they can use to explain the world, to themselves as much as others.  As an animist, I think that if we can’t ‘get rid of’ our primitive hard-wiring for a belief system — and people who argue for such belief extinction unfortunately tend to slip into arguing for the extinction of those who hold them — we can at least encourage the acceptance of widely prosocial (love thy neighbors, even the weird barbarians who don’t look like you) systems!

  101. 101.

    C Stars

    @Sister Golden Bear: It is a bizarre obsession with binaries. There is a complete denial of the existence of nuance or complexity. And I believe that denial is driven by fear, it usually is.

  102. 102.

    moonbat

    @Anne Laurie: ​
      Thanks, AL, for bringing this interview some attention. I admire anyone who has the courage and honesty to admit when they were wrong and openly change course, just as the blog father here has done.

  103. 103.

    C Stars

    @Brachiator: I only know one self-proclaimed libertarian and his beliefs seem primarily driven by the fact that he thinks he’s smarter than everyone and has much better solutions to all municipal/governmental problems than the chumps who are actually doing the job, so why should they get his money. There’s no argument against this other than “maybe you’re not as smart as you think” and that’s not something I want to say to my cranky brother in law

  104. 104.

    Anne Laurie

    @Brachiator: I get the feeling that some people hated having to give up being hunter gatherers and becoming part of the first civilizations, and there are still people like this in the modern world.

    Unless I have been deeply misinformed, hunter-gather bands were extremely communal… within their own clan.  And even in situations where clans regularly came in contact, ‘rules’ were quickly established so that murder & pillage was minimized.

    It was the advent of ‘civilization’ that gave a few people at the top of the hierarchy the idea that they didn’t have to network with their ‘lessers’.  And a lot more people, lower on the local pyramid, the fantasy of being ‘free’ by getting the chance to boss everyone else around.

    But storytelling, and history (which started as a branch of storytelling) have always been used to warn people that if you don’t want to network with others, they will eventually network againt *you*…

  106. 106.

    Anne Laurie

    @C Stars: I read today that “Barbarian” means non-Greek-speaking.

    Yup!  To the Greeks, all those vulgar outsiders were yapping Bar-bar-bar rather than speaking decent Greek.  I knew this from an early age because my baby sister is named Barbara Ellen.  (It was our dad’s choice to name me after his favorite ‘folk’ song; my mother got to name their next daughter, nine years later.)

  108. 108.

    RevRick

    @Sister Golden Bear: I’m not suggesting that sab do it for them… at all. I’m suggesting he do it for him. That he cleanse himself of the pain they caused. After all, they’re probably blissfully unaware of all the damage they have inflicted. It’s sab’s wellbeing I am concerned about.

  110. 110.

    El Muneco

    @Don K: “I formerly identified as libertarian until the Dubya years, after 9/11 and the clusterfucks in Afghanistan and Iraq, once I realized the cliché about libertarians being Republicans who like to smoke dope was basically correct”

    Also, the 90s were the time the racist Ron Paul wing were cementing their control over the party apparatus and institutionalizing the idea that any amount of government power was too much but that no possible amount of corporate power was.

    This ended any possible continuity of the well-intentioned left-libertarian streak left over from the 60s. So by 2000 pretty much everyone from that tradition was either an anarchist or a mainstream liberal (based on how they feel about capitalism in general).

  111. 111.

    wjca

    @Anne Laurie: Unless I have been deeply misinformed, hunter-gather bands were extremely communal… within their own clan.  And even in situations where clans regularly came in contact, ‘rules’ were quickly established so that murder & pillage was minimized.

    As we have seen with other flavors of reactionary, they routinely ignore such reality-based details.

    For example, suppose you, the mighty hunter, have stalked and killed the deer (which ain’t that easy, especially relying on hunting equipment you made yourself).  Now you have to gut it (messy!) and carry it home (if it’s worth hunting, it’s likely as heavy as you are) and butcher it (using a knife you made yourself, probably by banging two rocks together to create an edge).

    There’s a reason all those hunter-gatherers embraced civilization when they got the chance.  And traded with civilizations which wouldn’t embrace them back — accepting the rules for doing so.

  112. 112.

    Roberto el oso

    I’ve known a few libertarians (self-identified) and I generally got the impression that they imagined they would be wealthy were it not for all the government regulations. Whether they actually had skills, ideas, talents, etc., which would make them wealthy was something of a secondary matter. This assumption, of eventual wealth, meant they would be able to have servants to care for them should they grow old (again, I got the impression they were not entirely convinced that they would grow old). Having wealth and servants meant they would be able to bypass any aspects of the social welfare/healthcare aspects the rest of us have to deal with, and they resented having to pay for anything that they didn’t directly benefit from.  Also too, they very much liked drugs and exotic sex, and weren’t religious, so they were offended when they were placed on the right of the political spectrum, no matter that they checked a lot of those boxes.

  113. 113.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @C Stars:

    One of the hallmarks of the dangerously stupid is the consistent belief they’ve found great solutions that experts somehow missed.

    And something a posted a couple of days ago:

    Glibertarians are not unlike house cats: they are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.

  114. 114.

    Brachiator

    @Anne Laurie:

    Unless I have been deeply misinformed, hunter-gather bands were extremely communal… within their own clan.

    Human beings were hunter gatherers for more than 300,000 years, over a wide range of environments. And even though we are social, there still were probably many different types of societies established. We don’t know how malcontents got along with everyone else. But we know that traditions like the Australian indigenous walkabout is not only a rite of passage, it gives individuals an acceptable way of leaving their main group to go off and establish a new tribe.

    And even in situations where clans regularly came in contact, ‘rules’ were quickly established so that murder & pillage was minimized.

    We simply do not have enough information about prehistoric societies to know how these matters were handled.

    It was the advent of ‘civilization’ that gave a few people at the top of the hierarchy the idea that they didn’t have to network with their ‘lessers’.  And a lot more people, lower on the local pyramid, the fantasy of being ‘free’ by getting the chance to boss everyone else around.

    There have been some fascinating discoveries of possibly egalitarian civilizations in various locations. And there is much we don’t know about the emergence of hierarchies and aristocracies.
    Both the development of farming and the domestication of animals might have helped spur a sense of individualism. We went from sharing collected foods to staking claims. “These are my dogs and herd of sheep. This is my plot of land.”

    But storytelling, and history (which started as a branch of storytelling) have always been used to warn people that if you don’t want to network with others, they will eventually network againt *you*…

    I love how the Epic of Gilgamesh embodies a parable of a wild man who is tamed and brought into society, but with a sense of loss and alienation. I also like how one of the most important developments of civilization is not the creation of temples, but the establishment of a bar or tavern, someplace to get a drink.

  115. 115.

    Anne Laurie

    @Brachiator: I also like how one of the most important developments of civilization is not the creation of temples, but the establishment of a bar or tavern, someplace to get a drink.

    Thing is… you can make your own beer (although not necessarily *good* beer), but you can’t make your own tavern.

    We’re descended from people who wanted “a place where everybody knows your name”.  And then spent every free minute telling each other stories!

    (Thus, the oldest human joke of which we have a record:  Dog wanders into a bar… )

  116. 116.

    PJ

    @C Stars: ​
     
    This is true in other languages. In Slavic languages, the word for German (some variety of “němec”) is the same word for “mute”.

  117. 117.

    Redshift

    @Anne Laurie: I think Allison Rose has it right – he’s not talking about some positive version of Christianity. He’s an atheist, and he’s saying it would be better if everyone shared a belief in Christianity (something he vehemently disagrees with) than our present state of refusing to have any shared reality at all.

  118. 118.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Brachiator:

    I know libertarians and anarchists who seem to have a chip on their shoulder about having to observe the rules of any society.

    I’m reminded of the story of a guy who was a Libertarian until he took Ecstasy and realized that other people had feelings too. Both are a very teenage “you’re not the boss of me” worldview in which that’s also about (their) rights and no responsibility.

  119. 119.

    soapdish

    I always say that every libertarian thinks they’ll be the one sitting on the throne made of skulls instead of one of the skulls.

  120. 120.

    Barry

    @Bill Arnold: “It is also always amazing that the USA has a corporation called “General Atomics”.”

    It sounds like something from a 1950’s Heinlein novel.

  122. 122.

    Matt McIrvin

    I recall someone on Crooked Timber calling a British communist-turned-anarcho-libertarian group “the kind of stupid you have to be really smart to be.”

    Penn has always been a clever guy but for much of his life he was also kind of like that–railroaded by his libertarian-smartypants politics into poisoning his own advocacy. Penn and Teller did a show called “Bullshit!” years back that about 70% debunking paranormal and pseudoscientific claims, and 30% carrying water for shills like Steven Milloy: there was an episode about how secondhand smoke couldn’t hurt you, an episode generally about “environmental hysteria”, an episode about the absurdity of gun control, as if these things were as bogus as Uri Geller bending spoons with his mind.

    I think it’s really interesting that the guy has come around. It sounds as if COVID idiocy was a major contributor since he always hated alt-med snake oil and now realizes that the libertarians he used to hang with have moved around to supporting it. The secondhand-smoke business should have been the warning, but I suppose sometimes it takes more.

  123. 123.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Brachiator:

    Human beings were hunter gatherers for more than 300,000 years, over a wide range of environments. And even though we are social, there still were probably many different types of societies established. We don’t know how malcontents got along with everyone else. But we know that traditions like the Australian indigenous walkabout is not only a rite of passage, it gives individuals an acceptable way of leaving their main group to go off and establish a new tribe.

    Decades ago when I was in Alice Springs, Australia, I did a visit with one of the last Aboriginal tribes living fairly close to their historical life style. Which was on the bare edge of survival. Traditional groups in the area had no more than 18 members, because the area only provided enough food to support that many people — and there was so little that women only menstruated when someone died and that meant just enough extra food was available that they could reach the necessary body fat to be able to do so.*

    There were a number of taboos aimed at keeping the peace, and those who broke the most serious ones would be punished by a spear to the leg — which effectively was a death sentence because you couldn’t hunt or gather food.

    Interestingly there were complex rules about how was eligible to marry who, which essentially mandated one person married into another group. The rules ensured that child-bearing couples were at least third- or fourth-removed relatives, effectively preventing interbreeding problems.

    *As a result, girls were married off at 12 to men who were in their 20s, in order to maximize the chance of the pregnancy during the girls’ fertile period during the coming years. Although interestingly, it was the girls’ mothers who decided who the husbands would be, based on their hunting/gathering abilities. But one consequence of the age disparity was that one of the biggest taboos was for men to have relationships and sex with women of their own age. It was a crime was punishable by a spear to the leg.

  124. 124.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Bill Arnold: One of the first things they worked on was Project Orion, which was a concept for a spaceship literally propelled by nuclear bombs.

    One of the problems with it is to really get the biggest benefit from the design, you’d use it even for the launch from the Earth’s surface, which presents problems, shall we say. You could probably launch whole cities into space but you’re treating the planet you’re leaving from as disposable. I think its advocates tend to compromise on that, though.

  125. 125.

    Tehanu

    I’m always happy when I see somebody wake up and realize they’ve been wrong and admit it. Heck, this whole blog is what it is because that’s what happened to John Cole. So props to Penn Jillette. If only more of the MAGAts would do the same.

  127. 127.

    BethanyAnne

    Just quoting the first part of his Libertarian answer misses some relevant bits:

    For so long, you identified as Libertarian. What changed?

    I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.” Now, you can make the argument that maybe you don’t need to mandate masks — you can make the argument that maybe that shouldn’t be the government’s job — but you cannot make the argument that you shouldn’t wear masks. It is the exact reciprocal of seatbelts because if I don’t wear a seatbelt, my chances of fucking myself up increase — if I don’t wear a mask, the chance of fucking someone else up increase.

    Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.

    and I liked his answer on a Biden question:

    Back in 2020, you offered newly-elected president Joe Biden advice on how to unite the country after that contentious election. How do you think he’s done as POTUS?

    Biden’s done an incredible job. Accomplished almost the impossible. His stuff on Israel and Ukraine is four-dimensional chess. And what he’s done with the small amount that he has anything to do with the economy — the small amount he has to do with jobs — that’s all going well. I don’t think how well a president speaks off-the-cuff matters at all — I mean, it matters in terms of showbiz and it matters in terms of getting elected, which you could argue is all that matters. But it’s got nothing to do with the job.

    I’ve seen current libertarians bitching about Penn and how much he hangs around Gavin Newsom these days, and that amused me. It also struck me that Penn is growing up and learning. Several of the previous comments here have been “He used to be wrong, so fuck him” and I disagree. Put me in the camp with Dan Savage “If you want to change the world stop punishing people who change their minds and start agreeing with you.”

  129. 129.

    Ramalama

    @sab: wait..you have a nephew in law who’s gay? Your nephew, son of this troubled sister, married a man…and the whole family hid the marriage from you?

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