A while ago I wrote something of a broadside against self-styled “libertarians” engaging in rhetorical games over genuine matters of principle:
Liberty requires and deserves a defence that is not just robust, but pragmatic, nuanced and intelligent. Extremism in the defence of liberty is a vice, for it virtually guarantees its demise. It’s time we saw a little more pragmatism, and a little less rhetoric.
The problem is that there are a lot of people out there who find the rhetoric of liberty a fun thing to dress up in and construct an identity around, but fail to adopt anything approaching a principled defence of it. Liberty becomes a buzzword, something that your side is “for”, and everyone who disagrees with you automatically becomes “against”.
I bring this up because an example has emerged on Tory Bear, and has since exposed the shallowness of his convictions.
Ed Kozak, writing about Independence Day, opens with lofty rhetoric…
Two-hundred and thirty-three years ago American colonists were fighting and dying for their rights and liberties
… before veering somewhat wildly into hysteria:
we’re still fighting for our rights and liberties, guaranteed to us by the Constitution as Americans, yet denied us by a tyrant, Barack Obama. How long, I wonder, before Americans start dying again to protect and reclaim those rights and liberties?
Yet when called to defend his accusation, he couldn’t resist offering the following choice quote:
personally I don’t give a flying fuck who the CIA tortures as long as it’s not an American citizen. The AMERICAN government only exists to protect the life, liberty, and estates of AMERICANS
So much for universal rights and liberties; it’s simply a matter of birth and breeding old chap, and buggered if it’s going to interrupt my own personal convenience.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Certainly it helps to have an idea or two about the reality of liberty, and pragmatism, as you describe it; but I’d rather have people using the word than not at all, even if you have to nudge them in the right direction from time to time.
I don’t think the word should be put beyond use, but it would be nice if, as you say, people displayed a bit more realism and understanding.