Equality is a consensual hallucination (and I do not consent)

A casual reader might mistake me for a dope smoking gay rights activist or a cop hating social justice warrior – but they have not read the fine print. Libertarians may share some common ground with the progressive left on such things as same sex marriage - but for different reasons as I shall explain.

 

The left these days is all about equality, which I guess goes back to their roots as representatives of the working class striving for equality with the middle class. Or the women struggling to be equal to men, or the blackfellas to white fellows.

My sophisticated libertarian position on equality is that it is, in fact, bullshit.

Equality – really? In what way are you equal to me, or even want to be? Why the hell would I want to be equal to you even if I thought that was possible. I have $10,000 in the bank and you have you have $20,000 does that mean you must give away half your savings to be equal to me, or do I have to sell my car to be equal to you? Or maybe you should give me five grand to make us even.

Should I look like you, or should you look like me, or do we have facial surgery to both look like Che Guevara? Should my wife put on some weight or should yours lose a couple of kilos? I have two kids how many you got? Do we need to trade them away too? Mine are different colours though – so should we spray tan one of yours?

If we should all be educated to the same degree - do I have to go back and finish school or should you whip your kids out in Year 10?

Perhaps you mean the minorities? Equality for the blackfellas, the transsexuals, the migrants? I have met many and none of them have expressed an interest in being me - and I don't blame them.

All Australians are equal in the eyes of the law. All can vote. All can access an range of government services to make our lives easier. Health care an education are free for all. We live in a famously peaceful and secular society. So what the hell is it you really want?

What you want is exceptionalism.

You want aboriginals, gays, muslims and others to be different and to be treated as different so you can insist they are marginalised when they should be equal to the majority.

To achieve equality for the exceptional ones you now demand inclusivity. Having insisted that the peg is square, now you want to hammer it into a round hole.

And to do this you need force. You need discriminatory laws to discourage discrimination. You need commissions, agencies, tribunals and cops. You need a big government with a big bloody hammer constantly bashing away at those pegs.

All the while equality is but a consensual hallucination – we have it when we agree that we have it. But we will never agree, will we? No one ever says righto chaps were all equal lets go out and and have a fucking good time, do they?

No. They will fight for rights that don't exist, exclude the included, minoritise minorities or even majorities (women).

During my time in The People's Republic of China I saw a lot of people forced to be equal – they were uniformly cold, poor and pissed off about it. Now many of them are wealthy due to the fact that the government caved in on equality and let them be individuals. Now they might just take over the world.

I support same-sex marriage on the basis of freedom and fairness rather than inclusivity and equality. I don't want the government to be kind enough to include gay people in the Marriage Act - I would rather the government butt out of marriage entirely as it is none of their god-damn business.

Failing that, gay people should be treated fairly by the law - not to make gay people equal to straight people but because as Australian people we are all young and free.

The Marriage Act does exclude not anyone by way of their sexual orientation - it excludes us all. I am not free to marry another man if I choose to do so and my sister isn't free to marry a woman. Whether we wish to do so, or not, is irrelevant.

Their are no gay rights at stake here – just our natural ability to do what we want without interference from church, government or anyone else who wants to to tell us what to do in our personal lives.

So remember u r free (and equality be damned)

It's Christians vs Lions (and the Marriage Act be damned)

John Stuart Mill's great essay On Liberty is required reading for libertarians and a good place to start for anyone interested in the politics and philosophy of freedom. What may surprise the reader is how little has changed since 1859 with regard to the way individuals may be oppressed by their own society.

Mill's concept of liberty in its simplest form is comprised of: freedom of thought and expression of those thoughts, freedom of action to live according to our own tastes, and freedom to associate with others for any reason other than to do harm.

On Liberty is about the struggle between liberty and authority. Before the Enlightenment swept through Europe in the middle of the 17th century this struggle was between classes, between the rulers and the ruled.

Though freed from the tyranny of church and kings, of feudal despots and warlords armies, liberal democracy was and is still subject to a tyranny from within, that is, from public opinion and condemnation rather than legislative or executive action.

“Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

Yikes. Sound familiar to you? It might to anyone who has experienced a social justice warrior attack over a poorly judged tweet. Or has been banned, boycotted, blocked, trolled or ridiculed online by an enraged mob. Or who modifies their speech or any other form of expression to avoid persecution by such a mob.

But whose mandates are right? Whose can be considered wrong?

Mob rule is enabled by the notion that the opinion and feelings of the mob are the prevailing ones - what Mills calls the “tyranny of the majority”.

“The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”

In a democratic society the majority has the right to rule by electing its leaders - so we are conditioned to accept its authority. Note above, however “those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority” are included here. Outside of a polling booth it is not necessary to actually have the numbers - just that they believe they have them and/or can convince others to accept the prominence of their views as prevalence.

You could say that such people wish to exercise power over others that is illegitimate - a minority seeking to oppress others through the false impression of a majority.

These days this process is aided and abetted by social media. Secure in our own echo chambers we surround ourselves with like-minded people we call friends but who are mostly acquaintances with opinions similar to our own. We cherry pick our news from an infinite number of sources and denounce that which offends us as fake, biased or bigoted.

In this environment we can easily convince ourselves that our opinions are the most prevalent - that our feelings are shared by the majority and that it is the others who seek minority rule.

For example,

Same-sex marriage in Australia has turned into a pie-throwing beer-spilling Sunday school brawl of competing narratives of majority.

Those to my left claim that the vast majority of Australians approve of marriage equality but are thwarted by a small group of deplorable religious conservatives from the Lib/Nat coalition who just happen to be in power at this moment.

Those to my right insist that they speak for the “silent majority” of everyday normal people who have no desire to change marriage in any way and are being bullied by a vocal minority of attention seeking virtue signallers.

So far the nays have it. But do they really have the numbers?

The left had its chance to legislate in favour of gay marriage when Labour Prime Minister and Christian conservative Kevin Rudd left power and was replaced by unmarried childless atheist Julia Gillard. But her minority government was too weak to tackle such a divisive issue unnecessarily and Julia was a fairly conservative individual. Same-sex marriage was not on her agenda - full stop.

Same-sex marriage reared it's divisive head big time when another Christian conservative came to power. It was used as a weapon against Liberal PM Tony Abbot to make him appear to be out of touch with the progressive majority and has been used against current PM Malcolm Turnbull to drive a wedge between factions in the Liberal Party.

The crunch came recently when the Turnbull government agreed to a referendum on the issue to find out once and for all who actually had the numbers. Fair enough we thought let's get on with it - but no. The Greens and Labour refused to play the ball, left the field and went home leaving a disappointed crowd to yell abuse and throw pies at each other.

The narrative of the left was well and truly busted that day, my friends. Obviously the only reason you would not want a vote is if you were fairly certain that you would lose and therefore lose acceptance as the majority.

For without a vote the show can go on ! And it does. The vocal minority has become louder and angrier while the silent majority starts to speak up and fight back. Things are getting ugly now it's Christians vs. lions. Who knows what ugliness tomorrow will bring?

But a referendum is not a perfect solution either as its effect is a tyranny of the majority also. Thus the libertarian proposition is that marriage is not the business of government or society, and should just be a contract between two consenting adults that is recognised as legal by government and no more. Society will come around in its own good time, it always does.

If it is not possible to change the Marriage Act to suit everyone - then abolish the damn thing and start afresh.

And remember u r free

Mixing beer, religion and politics (may result in a hissy fit)

Last week a promotional video was released online by The Bible Society  featuring two Liberal Party MPs discussing gay marriage while drinking Coopers Light Ale. The video titled "Keeping it Light" sparked a backlash against Coopers, though the Bible Society has stated that the brewery had nothing to do with the content.

The first I heard of Coopersgate from everyone’s best mate Graham Richardson in The Australian. Richo reckons that the big Gay/Green hissy fit and threat of a boycott of Coopers beer was “blind insistence against free speech” and “cruel as it was anti-democratic.”

Cruel, my word – but was the Cooper family denied their right to free speech? No. Quite the opposite in fact. They were given a free public platform where they could have exercised the hell out of free speech. We would have hung on every word. They just decided that the profits from selling beer are more important than going to the mattresses over marriage equality. And good luck to them.

Anti-democratic? No way. Democracy is a system where citizens elect representatives to form a government. Not under attack here, Richo.

Over on page 12 the delectable Jennifer Oriel (my current conservative crush) jumped aboard the freedom train under a heading of Gay censors don't want us thinking for ourselves and talked about a “grim week for freedom of expression”.

She did go on, however, to nail the issue squirmingly to the wall,

“ In their campaign for gay marriage, some activists have developed a regrettably totalitarian strategy. It is to target dissenters, gay or straight, and silence them through persistent bullying. 

They dislike civility and public reason because it exposes their intemperance.

… the video celebrated public reason on the question of marriage, which is an issue the PC class wants to monopolise. It targets dissenters, regardless of whether they are gay, bisexual or straight. The aim is to shut down all debate to create absolute ideological conformity.”

I agree (and I love your hair). But until the activists actually succeed in their aims to shut down all debate - this story is about bigotry and bullying.

Bigotry (intolerance towards those holding different opinions) is lawful in Australia and does not necessarily affect freedom of speech. A bigot's mind is closed to the speech of others. In a totalitarian state a bigot might achieve a position of power and use the forces of the state to silence dissenters. But Australia is not such a place.

Bullying is something we forbid in schools, regulate in workplaces but encourage in politics. Bullies are often admired for their ability to get shit done. Kevin Rudd was a notorious bully who became Prime Minister (twice). Mark Latham, Peta Credlin and Tony Abbott - all highly successful bullies. Outside of the schoolyard and the workplace – you can lawfully bully the hell out of all and sundry so long as you cause no physical harm to your victims.

The gay activists were exercising their lawful freedoms of expression and action whether we like it or not. They can use such freedom to campaign for or against anything they please. And so can you, so can we.

Bullies always pick the softest target - so Coopers Brewery became the focus of the attack because Liberal MPs and religious organisations are too hard to get to. Coopers however is a public company that relies on retailers to sell their product to the public making them susceptible to a boycott.

However, freedom of speech triumphs in the end by giving these bigots plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. In this case - the activists' actions will harden the hearts of the conservatives they should be wooing. They will alienate gay allies such as Liberal MP Tim Wilson who appeared in the video as an advocate of marriage equality.

And they alienate me.

And that matters because I am for marriage equality too – but simply because I cannot insist on freedom for myself but not for others. That would make me a hypocrite and no-one would take me seriously. As a libertarian I have to champion marriage equality and I will – but the intolerant shrieking of pack of bigoted bullying bastards ain't making it any easier.

As a libertarian I am seriously attempting to frame important issues from a perspective that is not Left or Right, that eschews identity and instead looks for common ground between warring parties. That common ground is freedom. I seek to persuade you that the irresistible force of freedom just might be able to shift some seemingly immovable objects. I do this by writing my most persuasive arguments in this blog – not by pissing in your beer.

If the hearts and minds of conservative people and politicians must be won for gay marriage to pass – then so be it. Bullying and beer boycotts will not persuade them - it will push them further away.

Instead, try inviting them aboard the freedom train (I'm sitting next to Jennifer).