Saturday, February 15, 2014

Paranoid libertarians vs. angry liberals

The paranoid libertarian and his enemy, the angry liberal - Eric Posner, University of Chigago Law School:

"In a recent essay, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein identified an impulse he called 'paranoid libertarianism.' A paranoid libertarian is someone who distrusts the government to an unreasonable extent. Sunstein believes that many people who oppose gun control, health care reform, and progressive taxation fit the description. For example, a paranoid libertarian might not object to modest gun licensing requirements or background checks in principle but opposes these policies because he believes that the government will deny licenses to people who deserve them, or that a licensing rule will accustom people to gun control, paving the way to confiscation of all handguns.... Sunstein argues that these beliefs are unreasonable...."

"In fact, the fear of government is far more serious than the fear of flying or the fear of nuclear power. If people trust the government, they may accept its assurances that flying or nuclear power is safe. They may absorb the messages of its educational programs. If they don’t trust the government, then no go. 'Don’t worry, you can trust us' is, after all, exactly what an evil government would say....

"The angry liberal has distinctive characteristics just like the paranoid libertarian. He is distressed by significant social ills and seeks someone to blame for them. The social ills — inequality, inadequate health care, bad schools — are large ones. But it makes little sense to get angry at rich people for causing them.... The huge level of inequality that currently exists is mostly the result of social trends, not the bad acts of identifiable rich people.... As a political emotion, anger is just as irrational as fear is....

"In our current political climate, paranoid libertarians oppose government action that they often wrongly believe will harm them, angering the liberals who believe that government action is needed to solve society’s problems. The liberals’ anger further fuels the libertarians’ paranoia, which hardens their obstructionism, which in turn sends liberals into flights of rage."

Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2014/02/the_paranoid_libertarian_and_his_enemy_the_angry_liberal.html
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