Why You Should Never Trust a Libertarian

The True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda
Before Milton Friedman was earning plaudits as an economic genius, he was a shill for the real estate industry and an early pioneer for big business propaganda known as libertarianism.
September 6, 2013 |


This is an adapted version of an article that first appeared on NSFWCORP. Published daily online and monthly in print, NSFWCORP is The Future of Journalism (With Jokes). For more features,

This important article kicks off what will be a focus of coverage of AlterNet over the next few months on the corporate-funded "pro-market" arm of libertarianism in America and the sophisticated methods of inserting business propaganda into the public debate.

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Every couple of years, mainstream media hacks pretend to have just discovered libertarianism as some sort of radical, new and dynamic force in American politics. It’s a rehash that goes back decades, and hacks love it because it’s easy to write, and because it’s such a non-threatening “radical” politics (unlike radical left politics, which threatens the rich). The latest version involves a summer-long pundit debate in the pages of the New York Times, Reason magazine and elsewhere over so-called “libertarian populism.” It doesn’t really matter whose arguments prevail, so long as no one questions where libertarianism came from or why we’re defining libertarianism as anything but a big business public relations campaign, the winner in this debate is Libertarianism.
Pull up libertarianism’s floorboards, look beneath the surface into the big business PR campaign’s early years, and there you’ll start to get a sense of its purpose, its funders, and the PR hucksters who brought the peculiar political strain of American libertarianism into being — beginning with the libertarian movement’s founding father, Milton Friedman. Back in 1950, the House of Representatives held hearings on illegal lobbying activities and exposed both Friedman and the earliest libertarian think-tank outfit as a front for business lobbyists. Those hearings have been largely forgotten, in part because we’re too busy arguing over the finer points of “libertarian populism.”
Milton Friedman. In his early days, before millions were spent on burnishing his reputation, Friedman worked as a business lobby shill, a propagandist who would say whatever he was paid to say. That's the story we need to revisit to get to the bottom of the modern American libertarian "movement," to see what it's really all about. We need to take a trip back to the post-war years, and to the largely forgotten Buchanan Committee hearings on illegal lobbying activities, led by a pro-labor Democrat from Pennsylvania, Frank Buchanan.
What the Buchanan Committee discovered was that in 1946, Milton Friedman and his U Chicago cohort George Stigler arranged an under-the-table deal with a Washington lobbying executive to pump out covert propaganda for the national real estate lobby in exchange for a hefty payout, the terms of which were never meant to be released to the public. They also discovered that a lobbying outfit which is today credited by libertarians as the movement’s first think-tank — the Foundation for Economic Education — was itself a big business PR project backed by the largest corporations and lobbying fronts in the country.
It starts just after the end of World War Two, when America’s industrial and financial giants, fattened up from war profits, established a new lobbying front group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) that focused on promoting a new pro-business ideology—which it called “libertarianism”— to supplement other business lobbying groups which focused on specific policies and legislation.
The FEE is generally regarded as “the first libertarian think-tank” as Reason’s Brian Doherty calls it in his book “Radicals For Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement” (2007). As the Buchanan Committee discovered, the Foundation for Economic Education was the best-funded conservative lobbying outfit ever known up to that time, sponsored by a Who’s Who of US industry in 1946.

http://www.alternet.org/visions/tru...ny-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda?page=0,0

 

Ah, yes. Mark Ames. Author of such literary left-wing works such as:

America's Outrage Over TSA Naked Body Scanners Fits Right into Libertarian PR Project to Prevent Workers from Unionizing​

The right fears nothing more than unionized workers, and found a cunning way to scapegoat workers to derail a campaign to organize the TSA.​

April 27, 2011 | ​

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This is the year that the Republican right-wing, backed by corporate sponsors like the billionaire Koch brothers, have declared all-out war on public sector unions. It’s the culmination of a decades-long crusade against organized labor, which has only hit the national radar screen in recent months. The showdown in Wisconsin between Scott Walker and the unions has changed all that: suddenly, Americans had their eyes opened up to just how ruthlessly and cynically the Republican right was ready to fight to destroy public sector unions because they see it as a way to cripple the Democratic Party by killing off a major source of funding, as well as political muscle and votes.

If there’s some good to come out of the right-wing’s war on Wisconsin and other state employees, it’s that we now have a better insight into the Republican playbook against public sector unions, which boils down to this: 1) Manufacture a fake budget crisis in order to frighten the state’s residents; 2) PR the false-crisis hard enough until it breaks out of the right-wing/libertarian pipeline and into the mainstream media; 3) Blame the fake crisis on a fake villain -- “greedy” state employee unions -- thereby pitting the public against state workers. That way, when Republicans pass new laws destroying teachers and firefighters unions, they’ll come off as heroes defending the public from greedy unions, rather than as sleazy mercenaries carrying out their corporate sponsors’ dirty work. ​

Republicans have used this playbook before, of course, it’s just that Wisconsin finally made us all too aware. Perhaps the most obvious example -- and the least understood -- is from last November, when the same basic strategy was used to wage war against the TSA’s 55,000 employees, who have been locked in a savage decade-long battle to gain the same collective bargaining rights that employees of all other federal agencies enjoy. Unlike in Wisconsin, the Republican right succeeded in burying the story about the TSA employees’ struggle for collective bargaining rights underneath a sophisticated, well-PR’d campaign demonizing TSA screeners as modern-day Gestapo agents, rapists and child molesters.​

But lost in all the media hysteria vilifying the TSA was the appalling story of labor abuse against the agency’s screeners, a consequence of Republican anti-union policies. If anyone is wondering why collective bargaining rights are so important to public sector workers, look no further than the TSA, whose employees suffer the lowest morale and highest attrition rates of any federal agency, year after year. Complaints and lawsuits abound, accusing TSA management of rampant sexual harassment, racism, bullying, wrongful termination and abuse of power. If that didn’t make working in the TSA difficult enough, the recent campaign demonizing TSA agents as modern-day Gestapo-agents turned them into the most hated of all federal employees; passengers, encouraged by incendiary PR, hurled abuses in TSA screeners’ faces, and in a few cases even physically attacked screeners.​

Last November, we published an article in The Nation questioning the media-driven anti-TSA campaign, which we argued smelled of AstroTurf. For one thing, it made little sense that an issue like TSA pat-downs, offensive as they were, could dominate headlines for two straight weeks at a time when America was suffering from unprecedented corruption, lawless evictions of homeowners, unheard-of inequality, and wars that barely make news.​

Sure enough, we uncovered numerous Koch-linked libertarian activists spearheading the campaign to demonize TSA screeners, DC lobbyists specializing in fake-grassroots campaigns setting up “Opt Out” websites while posing as regular Joes, and sleazy Republican hacks who had shown little interest in protecting civil liberties suddenly getting their ACLU on over the TSA’s intrusive pat-downs and “porn scans.” Progressives were understandably drawn into the anti-TSA campaign and hysteria, as the PR campaign cleverly framed it not as a union-bashing operation, but rather, as a purely civil liberties issue.​

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http://www.alternet.org/story/15076...ht-wing_pr_to_prevent_workers_from_unionizing

 

If you take what Democrats used to be (non-interventionists) and combine it with what Republicans used to be (fiscally conservative) and add in what the Founding Father's preached in writing but fell short of in practice (liberty and equality for everyone) - you have modern libertarianism.

About a quarter of the voting public qualifies as libertarian in ideology. But, since there is no political party that really represents them, they tend to be the 'independents' who vote for centrist Democrats or centrist Republicans - which is where you typically find the socially liberal and fiscally conservative members of each party.

 

The True History of Joe Nation: A Knucklehead Promoting a Liberal Agenda

 

That's such a great title, it's worth repeating.

 

Well Yaky, I guess you are no different than any of the Righties here. When your ideology is challenged, you resort to the same playground name calling the rest of the children of the Right rely so heavily on.

But please, feel free to dispute any of the article's points/actual history once your done with your playground behavior.

It's funny to watch Coiny parrot you since he is so against parroting. Raaaaaah! Coiny wanna cracker?

 

Joe, you're missing half the story. Anarchist are libertarians too. I feel so left out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

 

I just have always found that the Libertarians tend to be wealthier white men that have benefited from white privilege their entire lives and want to preserve the status quo purely for selfish reasons. It's one thing to favor a free market approach to all social problems and ignore anything resembling social injustice, prejudice, and class privilege because you think that everyone has the same access to the system you were simply born into and quite another to espouse a philosophy because it works well for you personally no matter the costs to society in general. In other words, read my signature.

 

Just as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are two sides of the Libertarian Coin, so are the rich trust fund brats from the liberal elite part of the same coin as these white men of privilege you described. Neither party I would consider to be Libertarian, both Koch and Kennedy seek power to manipulate and control others. One side uses corporate advantage, the other governmental decree. Most of us just want to be left alone to live life on our own terms. After all, isn't that the American Dream, which actually has nothing to do with a big house or being rich. That's just bad marketing.

 

You really don't leave me much choice! If you're not going to put any thought into your posts, how do you expect anyone else to? You post liberal "shill" articles as "proof" of a topic without providing your personal analysis of the material.

There are two (2) dangerous groups on the left...

1. Progressives: Similar to Anarchists, they simply want to destroy America as it stands and rebuild it in their image...aka...EVIL!

2. Liberals: Folks with a clear idea of where they think we should arrive...as a society, but with incredibly stupid ideas of how to get there!

I've read quite a few of your posts and don't feel you have evil intentions on American or the Constitution. Therefore, I can only ascribe you to the second group..."Liberals". I try, as best I can, to identify areas where both Liberals and Conservatives agree...there are many! We really only seem to disagree on method.

Liberals (as you insist) feel that Conservatives only want to selfishly keep the fruits of their labor for themselves and concentrate political power in a very few. That may be true for the top 0.5% (of BOTH Liberals AND Conservatives), but not Conservatives in general.

In fact, it was Liberal "Quantitative Easing" that's concentrated more wealth in the rich at the expense of those on fixed incomes...such as union pensioners and the elderly. Conservatives HATE the idea of manipulating revenue collection or monetary policy as a means of effecting "social justice".

You're missing an opportunity to move forward by not letting go of (or purposefully promoting) a phony stereotype. Conservatives want to protect the environment, improve the economy, expand opportunity for the poor and working class. Conservatives simply don't believe that higher taxation and Government handouts are the answer.

So...if you're going to post articles and expect others to take the time to give them serious consideration...please offer your own analysis of the material. I know what John Kenneth Galbraith thinks...I want to know what YOU think.

...so we can correct it!

 

Moderators: I request that you put this post as a "sticky" on this forum. Everyone should read it.

 

Question: Where will so-called "conservatives" find the money to protect the environment, expand opportunities for the poor and working class (which are the same, btw), etc.,?

Seriously, do you anticipate tight-wads to pony it up freely, out of the goodness of their hearts? That includes businesses too, do you expect businesses to give-up money freely, when their goal is make profits, for themselves and shareholders?

I don't see it. Sure, there are some generous wealthy people around, but most are not THAT generous, and most others can't afford to be.

it sounds to me like you're describing conservatives as having the desire to build a utopia, or a Shangri-La, and that just doesn't pass the sniff-test.

 

So posting something for the sake of discussion without putting any kind of Right/Left spin on it is in your opinion an inevitable march towards name calling by you and your ilk? I think you simply reinforce my original point that when a Righty can't argue against something like actual history such as I posted, well, the name calling and childish insults are your only course of action.

Thank you for your opinion of the "Left". Now I get it. Gee what was I thinking? Now that our resident self-described Tea Party member has categorized me as one of those, "Folks with a clear idea of where they think we should arrive...as a society, but with incredibly stupid ideas of how to get there!", I feel utterly grateful that I am not evil. I have to applaud your gift for arrogance and being a condescending... Well pick your own adjective.

You have this other worldly idea that liberals as you call them sit around thinking about and to some degree conspiring to take wealth away from those who have the vast majority of the wealth. I know plenty of liberals that would most likely fall into your opinion of liberals but I have never met one that has even mentioned anything like hating the wealthy, coveting their wealth, or anyone that envied the wealthy at all. What they do talk about is the incredible shrinking middle class, falling wages, pathetic job options, lack of upward mobility, deteriorating education system, and all the other aspects of being middle class that used to be a given if you worked hard and did what you were supposed to do. The very real situation faced by huge numbers of struggling Americans today is simply dismissed by your ilk as people just wanting handouts. You tend to paint everyone struggling as part of the problem not as someone swept up in economic events well beyond their control and doing the best that they can. The knee jerk reaction of a self-interested conservative is to justify their own greed by blaming those most affected by the hard realities facing huge swathes of society. If only they would work harder, they too would succeed because no matter the challenges, hard work solves everything. It doesn't, it's a good start but there are undeniable social inequities that work to make sure that they are swimming against a strong current and easy solutions like drugs, crime, and welfare dependence take a toll on a small proportion of the struggling populace that you and your ilk use to define or stereotype the entire group.

That is the type of liberal I am. I do not recognize your self-serving definition of what it means to be liberal but I do understand completely what motivates you to think that way. $$$$$$$

 

You throw your dirty underwear against the wall, then accept as fact anything that's so absurd that the Right doesn't respond. Afterall, (in your minds) a non-response is the same as a confession. The only place your "facts" exist are in the space between your ears...

YES...now you're "getting" it!!!

It's called the CONSTITUTION! We're not trying to create it; we're simply trying to preserve it.

 

The point is...I don't read your cut/paste posts (just being honest). I'm tired. You post some liberal shill article and expect others to do the research (for you) to disprove the ridiculous claims. If we don't, your post (in your mind) becomes "fact" and you quote it "ad nauseum".

Tell me which parts of the article YOU believe supports one or more of YOUR core beliefs, and I will be happy to consider it. As in the past, you may be surprised that I either adopt your argument or agree with it already. I'm just asking you to put some effort into your work.

"There you go again..."

The whole concept of the "progressive" income tax is not only to tax the rich more (which is accomplished with a flat tax rate) but to index tax rates to further increase taxation of the wealthy to effect income redistribution. However, as you say, you've never met a Liberal that supports a "progressive" tax code.

No...there you go again...

"Progressives" (in both parties) believe that the way to stop war is to bring economic equality to the WORLD. This can be done with free trade agreements that elevate third-world countries at the expense of workers in this country. Yet, our tax system is still designed for a 1913 isolationist USA. We embed a 23% income tax in the price of our products overseas and permit foreign countries to sell their goods in the US...INCOME TAX FREE!! How stupid is that? Doesn't China or Korea, etc use our roads and bridges as they sell in the US? Why don't they pay their "fair share"?

ANSWER: We have a totally screwed up tax code. You fix that, you begin to fix the job picture in the US.

Wow, Joe...you're a real piece of work! Like all Liberal-Progressives, you wheel out the 1% of hard working folks that need our help...then extrapolate that example to the rest of the deadbeats in the country. The fact is...some folks just don't want to get ahead or prepare for their family's future. You're right, I have no compassion for folks that don't try...within the bounds of their capabilities.

The reason drugs and crime are so popular is because they are "Pure Capitalism". No taxes, no regulation, ...just reward for a hard days work. Granted, we need some taxes and regulation, but why can't we make honest employment as attractive and rewarding as drugs and crime? Answer: ...because Progressives will lose control of these people. Afterall, with Progressives, it's not about "helping" people...it's about "controlling" them.

 

And that is why you fail, completely.

I don't expect you to understand how or why, but maybe this will get through:

Shangri-La doesn't exist, it can't exist, because there is always an opposing force working towards their own personal Shangri-La. Each groups efforts...very very few of which are truly evil (see: "Dick Cheney")...counter the others.

Now, if you are a brutal society, you can get pretty damn close to your own personal idea of Shangri-La, by imprisoning, tortutring, punishing and/or killing everyone that disagrees with you. The Taliban are like that, and when they are in power, their lives are pretty much what they want it to be. Anytime the slightest fault is found in someone, they beat the hell out of them, cut off a finger, or a nose, or an ear, or just kill the person and viola: they get closer to "Shangri-La"

So you see, your little constitution-worshiping isn't going to succeed, no matter how many times you post about it, because you're simply not brutal enough to stop everyone else in the country from disagreeing with you.

 

That's the beauty of our Republican form of government...it uses the wisdom of a founding document (US Constitution) to protect minorities from the majority. That's why (contrary to Progressives' attempts to rewrite history) the Republican party is the Protector of Minorities and the Defender of the Constitution.

 

See...there's another example...Liberal-Progressives focus in on people that successfully thwart their evil agendas...then attach all the labels that pertain to themselves. "The best defense is a rigorous offense."

Please...(other than an unfortunate hunting accident) name just ONE (1) example of anything evil about Dick Cheney. The man is a great American servant!

 

Uh huh, protect the constitution, and not the people.

Some "saviors"

 

If the constitution was perfect, we wouldn't be arguing.

It's flawed, just as it's creators were flawed. Worshiping it, putting it on a pedestal and claiming it's the be-all of wisdom, is insanity.

Don't get me wrong, the constitution was a nice beginning, and it has value, it just isn't worthy of being worshiped.

The reasons are many, but one is that worshipers tend to become extremists about their beliefs, a "my way, or the highway" attitude that ignores the rights of others to disagree with those beliefs, which will inevitably lead to War, in one form or another.

(shrugs)

Screw it. War works for me. Let's do this thing!