Around the world we are presented with a false dichotomy; a false choice between two parties - The Democrats and the Republicans, whilst in the process being denied 'real choice'. Consider the nature of the 'choice' you have:
1. A choice between giving your vote (aka 'power of attorney') to a Democratic vision of a slave state, or alternatively, the Republican vision of a slave state. Now, given that you did not frame the 'choice', and given that neither 'choice' entailed you determining the candidates, it was not really a 'choice'. It was just a bad joke.
2. Systems which discount the value of certain choices. i.e. In the 1990s, Ross Perot won 17% of the popular vote in the USA presidential elections, yet his supporters were entitled to No Representation. The First Past the Post (FPP) voting system in the USA entrenches the two main parties. Ross Perot, a billionaire, could not even sustain that type of spending. It pays to have friends in the media right! Well, you might wonder why.
The media largely determines the choices you are presented with, who simplifies the message you are presented with. Why? I would suggest that the media wants to retain a centralised division of decision-making. If politics was divided by different schools of thought, you would need different newspapers or media outlet right. More critically, you would need different content to appeal to those different schools of thought. By controlling the content, the media largely determine how you think. They are actually more important than the education system, because the media went through the same education system as you, and so its only the media and their own 'passive', bureaucratic minds which are going to challenge the system. Sorry, no, the media wants to preserve a concentrated market share, and they want a favourable government to preserve that position. They have that from the two major parties. So what if there was ever an alternative? Well, there are alternatives. The Green Movement is a grassroots movement canvassed by the media. The media has been very sympathetic to its cause. Why? Because it is a grassroots collective, so a powerful threat; they have many members, they are ideologically powerful, and thus they are dedicated to their cause. They are a market which is very appealing to media groups. One hook for one collective head.
So what about individualists like me? Well, we are marginalised by several factors. Whilst collectivist do everything in their capacity to convey a sense of belonging to the collective; individualists like myself tend to differentiate or personalise any issue, so if we are not disagreeing, and even emphasising our point of differentiation, our line of thinking is destined to find a personal context in any such conception. We are notoriously difficult to organise, because we are self-assertive, critical, and running our own agenda. Not the mettle of a person who will proscribe to a single newspaper. We are more likely to critique it for its imperfections. We are often anti-institution. We project a pride in our own mental efficacy. You can therefore understand why a media group is likely to marginalise any such individualist. They are divisive. So when Ross Perot was able to get 17% of the popular election, he was able to win a lot of popular support from business, people who support entrepreneurism. Not the media; and most particularly any journalist who is going to fight to change the system to give the Libertarians the political identity they deserve.
In terms of political identity however, libertarians are their own worst enemy. Consider New Zealand, where there are 3 libertarian groups - there is the campus based Libertarianz (mostly university students), and then there is the Christian dominated ACT Party (with one seat) and the Christian-led Conservative Party. That's right, you have two parties and another splitting their political identity, and thus their capacity to gain profile and extortion-power in our political system. The problem of course is that:
1. It is silly to have 2 Christian parties when there is no separate representation for atheist libertarians
2. It is silly for libertarians to sanction a political system that demands that they spurn their personal identity or political sovereignty to a collective identity which alienates their minds. It is most particularly senseless for atheist libertarians to surrender their personal identity to Christians who are as mindless as their political counterparts. They should instead forge their own political identity, and renounce the system which is destined to marginalise them.
Here is a video which captures a 5-minute speech by former Supreme Court judge and media commentator Judge Napolitano. He lost his job from his Fox Cable TV show for this speech; in which he is critical of the media groups, and their coverage of Ron Paul in the last election. Hopefully, his Supreme Court buddies respond to his case. He was sacked for supporting Ron Paul; and criticising the mainstream media for not giving him air time. In case you are questioning the partisan support of the media groups, let's switch to New Zealand again. In NZ, the ACT Party holds the balance of power with the National Party. There parliament has just ended an inquiry into the curtailment of the MMP electoral system which favoured minor parties, i.e. The ACT Party. But more critically, the media showed a great deal of bias in this election on a number of occasions:
1. It was contemptuous and disrespectful of the former ACT Party leader - hounding him over non-issues, in order to take a political scalp.
2. It blew up the leader John Banks over a 'Tea gate' scandal which was not misconduct; scathing of him for doing what other MPs do all the time.
3. It dropped a case of Green supporters defacing electoral posters for the National Party.
There seems to be a complete over-statement of the ACT issues; but a dismissal of the issues of vandalism by supporters of the Green Party. Why is this important? Well, the Sea Shepherd incident, a litany of vandalism, break & enter cases by the Greens Movement are a reflection upon their lack of respect for human rights and due process. This perspective is of course sanctioned by the liberal media.
You might wonder why. The reason is most poignantly conveyed in this series of interviews by a libertarian at a Democratic Party convention. He interviews democrats on the question of choice. Expect no better from Republicans. If libertarianism is going to advance, a number of things need to happen:
1. Atheist libertarians/individualists who possess a sense of mental efficacy or critical thinking skills need to distance themselves from Christian libertarians. The reason is that they are engendering moral ambivalence in their thinking. Christianity is incompatible with individualism or freedom. Causeless values are a contradiction in terms. Society is shifting towards collectivism by default. As long as true individualists don't have a legitimate political identity and 'organise' they will continue to be undermined.
2. Libertarians need to highlight the ploy of the media and governments to marginalise them in order to preserve the two party system, or more importantly two-party coalitions. The left-right dichotomy is a false dichotomy. The media wants collective vs collective. It wants individualists out of the equation.
If you short rights for minorities - support the rights of the smallest minority - the individual. There is no notion of personal sovereignty when the mind is subordinated to the collective, however that is a topic for another blog article.
