Nothing In Common...

Radio personality and comic Ron Bennington once related a story about how he'd occasionally encounter or hear of someone who'd share, "I was prescribed Vicodin ten years ago after a surgery. I used a couple, but still have most of that bottle sitting in my medicine cabinet."

That has been my experience with prescription pain killers every time I’ve had reason to get them. I’ve never actually finished a bottle.

Ron, a recovering alcoholic and addict, and explained, "I have absolutely nothing in common with those people."

In other words, his personality is such that, in the days preceding his sobriety, he'd have finished the bottle, and even the day he made that observation, he confessed he could not understand the mindset. He related similar stories about alcohol, as in the notion of having one or two drinks and calling it a night is utterly alien to him. This is the mind of the addict.

That recollection resurfaces time and again as I read stories about people who overtly reject the principles of liberty that I embrace and that this nation was founded on, in favor of ideas and systems that they know haven’t worked and are bad for them and their society. And when I read social media platitudes about how we need to find common ground, to find a way to get along with each other, to compromise on this or that issue, and so forth.

What commonality is there with people who have no problem taking others people's money, to spend however they please? Who think it OK to take other people's stuff? Who think it better to forcibly silence others rather than debate them or allow their views to be heard? Who think it's a good and proper job of government to control others' consensual behaviors? Who embrace the idea of forcing speech, behavior, and even thought?

Seemingly every day, I boggle at people who continue to put their faith in government, despite the endless examples of how awful government is at everything it does and how awful the people who are in power are. It is my quest in this blog and in my other libertarian activities to plant seeds of doubt, Johnny Appleseed style, in the efficacy of government wherever I can, and hope that some of those seeds germinate. I don't expect to make full-blown libertarians out of those who aren't already most of the way there (despite the inevitable joke that libertarians' favorite pastime is denouncing each other's impurity), but I have had enough success in shifting an occasional viewpoint to continue.

That's a different matter from finding common ground with authoritarians, Marxists, and people who won't accord me a whit of the liberty I accord them.

It's like those who would arrest and fine or jail me for saying something they deem "offensive." In the UK, a few years, ago, someone called a police horse "gay." He got arrested and fined, and the charges were only dropped after what Rowan Atkinson called "the oxygen of publicity" shamed the prosecutors. The mere presence of laws by which someone could be prosecuted for speech are guaranteed to cause self-censorship, no matter how frequently or infrequently they are enforced. The exceptions to First Amendment protection are well-known and well-defined: slander, libel, perjury, intimidation, incitement. All these do quantifiable harm to others, therefore they violate others' rights, therefore there is a legitimacy in granting the state power to prosecute them. But, offensiveness? A subjective measure that elevates a listener's rights above a speaker's. What common ground does a free speech defender have with those who'd restrict mine because someone they deem "above" him in the grievance hierarchy claims offense?

It's like compromising on gun rights. Despite a plethora of regulations and infringements enacted across the past century or more, gun control advocates continue to demand more "common sense" gun laws. We all know their end game is prohibition of civilian ownership, so why would we facilitate that end game by ceding even more of our rights?

It's like the multiculturalist attitude (read this to see what it has done to Sweden) that bends the knee to the illiberal and downright medieval beliefs and behaviors found in Islamism (the subset of the Muslim faith that leans into political activity in pursuit of a very non-Western and intolerant culture). How can a feminist or gay person find common ground with Islamism, with Sharia law, or with the nations that treat women as second class citizens and imprison or execute gays? The end goal of Islamism is a takeover of government in order to impose religious rule on those who want nothing to do with it. Why should I compromise with such people?

There are people with whom I can find common ground, or with whom I can disagree while coexisting in the same society. But, there are people who would deny me, via force if need be, the rights and liberties I hold dear and that are fundamental to a free society. What does one do in interactions with such folks? How does one find a way to coexist with them?

I get along and can coexist with most conservatives, no matter our differences.

I get along and can coexist with most liberals, no matter our differences.

I vehemently argue with but easily (and routinely) break bread with libertarians.

Why? Because, deep down, there is values overlap. Each of those three subsets esteems at least some aspects of individual liberty.

I struggle, however, to find peaceful coexistence with leftists. Their core philosophy involves forcing, taking, and forcibly taking. Their idea of liberty extends only to a favored few, and it dehumanizes everyone who isn’t lucky enough to fall into one of their “good” categories. In many ways, it mirrors radical Islam in both goal and function, which might explain, if we are cynical enough, why the Left casts such favor upon Hamas.

I have absolutely nothing in common with those people.