Recently, president Obama warned graduate students about libertarians, saying, “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
Mr. Obama, you completely misunderstood. Tyranny is not just around the corner. It’s here. When half of your earnings are taken from you and used for foolish or harmful purposes, that’s already tyranny. When a government tells you how much you can eat or drink, or how you can enjoy yourself, that’s already tyranny. When your money is used to fund immoral and unneeded wars that serve only to enrich crony corporatist defense contractors, that’s already tyranny. When you are not allowed to exercise your natural and fundamental right to defend yourself or your children, as is the case in “gun free” school zones, that’s already tyranny.
And when you are not allowed to exercise your fair and fundamental right to vote your conscience, because a two party duopoly won’t let any challengers on the ballot, that is most definitely, absolutely, unquestionably tyranny. Whether it’s Democrats in Maryland or Republicans in Pennsylvania, both agree that it’s appropriate to use immoral, underhanded tactics to keep Libertarians off the ballot.
President Obama, we weren’t warning about tyranny. We were describing the current tyranny.
US Libertarian Party (via souliberty)
When unaccountable private power makes most of the major decisions that control your life, that’s tyranny.
I agree with everything this post says. Obama has perpetuated and accelerated the destruction of our freedoms.
But why do Libertarians ignore the power corporations have over our life and our government? As John Dewey said, “Government is the shadow cast over the people by big business.”
To be anti-politic, to be anti-government, is to be against the one thing that’s actually designed for you to control. It’s horribly broken, and in no way does that now, but in a democracy (of which the US nominally is), the control of the government by the people is in the DNA.
Power doesn’t just go away if you take it away from the government. It will be seized by private tyrannies that have no such core construction. They are absolute top-down hierarchies, who want to control your life right down to the food you eat, the water you drink, and even what you think.