Political activism can do horrible things to a cause. Many think only bad causes get corrupt, but it's almost inevitable that it happens to all of them. Activists compete for media attention. They dedicate their lives to one cause. How can this not lead them to exaggerate their claims, hush down nuances, and pretend that their cause is more important than all the others?

Show me an activist who is always honest and keeps everything in the right perspective. I'll show you Santa Claus, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy. We need activists, they've done useful things. We also need politicians and journalists, but that doesn't mean we pretend they can be trusted, or that these professions generally reward honesty and intelligence.

We hear often enough about the problems of activism on the "left". I don't even have to list any examples, you're already making a list in your mind as you read this. Instead I'm going to talk about something closer to home: The way political activism on the right can turn people into victims, and make freedom a gift from the state.

If you ask a right-winger to explain their worldview, they'll say that people are naturally free, that we should take responsibility for our own lives, and that the state should take care not to turn people into victims and clients.

A message of responsibility and the natural worth of the individual. So why is it that when right-wing activists (thinkers, pundits, bloggers, whatever) open their mouths, it is usually to complain about how horribly they're being treated? "Feel sorry for me, the state takes all my money!" "Those horrible bureaucrats always stand in our way!" "The leftists will ruin everything!" "The media is against us!" "Look how the government wastes our money!" "If only there weren't so many regulations .." "Goddamn nanny-statists telling us how to live .. makes me so angry!" Whine, whine, whine.

I'm not against the beliefs behind these statements. Ask me, should taxes be high or low? I believe they should be low. Should regulations be few and clear or many and complex? Few and clear. Should the state be allowed to force or pressure us to improve ourselves? It should not. Should we have near-total free speech? We should. Is it the job of the state to solve all our problems? No, only problems of a certain kind and size. I'm not a libertarian, (ideologies are for followers), but I'll vote for a relevant relation.

All these ideas are worth promoting. But do we have to be so whiny and angry about it? Do we have to behave like martyrs and victims? Our political message should have a personal component: Our freedom comes from within, and cannot be taken away. We do not like what the state does, but it does not deserve our anger or hatred. So it takes your money and misspends it, what are you going to do? Hold your breath until they give it back? Stomp your feet? Scream in rage? You want the state to stop treating people like victims, so why do you behave like one? We're not clients, we're citizens - and that should be reflected in our behavior.

Political activism is necessary, I suppose, but to be effective it must appeal to the pity and righteous anger of the masses, and it has to be rephrased as a plan for government action. "Give us this freedom, please! Oh, we're so miserable without it!" Somebody has to do this, but our problem is that everybody does it, and enjoys it too. And then the personal component of our message is ignored. Everybody wants to expand our legal freedoms, but nobody talks about how to be free. Everybody says that the state should give us more responsibility for our lives, but nobody talks about how to live like a responsible person. Everybody says the state should stop treating us like victims and clients, but nobody talks about how to stop behaving like victims and clients.

And maybe that's not a job for political activists. But does everyone have to be an activist? Must everyone on the right spend all their time complaining about the freedoms we don't have, and not one of us concern ourselves with what to do with the freedoms we do have?

It's a sign of the damage caused by activism that this question will seem meaningless. If we have a freedom, what more is there to do? This battle is over, let's move to the next one! But all we have is a legal freedom, all we have is a document that says "there's no punishment for doing X". This helps us how? Freedom is not a gift from above, it's not a pile of documents, it is an attitude. There's no use being free in the eyes of the state if that freedom does not also exist within you. I'll give an example.

I grew up on stories about communist persecution of Christians. Many were probably exaggerated or legendary, but one image has stayed with me: A pastor was sent to a Chinese labor camp, and in order to break him they gave him the worst job they could think of, cleaning up the camp's cesspool. Every day for years he stood deep in excrement with a shovel. But every day, while doing this, he sang psalms. The camp authorities saw his work as punishment, he saw the solitude as an opportunity to be with God. They would punish him, but what can you do to a man like that? What is there left to threaten with? This was truly a free man. (A variation on this theme can be found in V for Vendetta.)

Now compare the man who can be free in a labor camp with Finn Graff, the satirical cartoonist for Dagbladet who refuses to draw Muhammed, because he is afraid of being killed by Muslim extremists. Islamist terrorists have killed barely a thousand or so Europeans over the last years, and Finn Graff reacts by volunteering to censor himself. Graff has nearly all the "freedom" anyone can dream of, but is he a free man? How many in our society are free like the pastor, and how many like Graff? We talk about more freedom, but what good will that do them?

We advance, but we do nothing to secure our new possessions. A perfectly free society could arrive tomorrow, and it wouldn't make us much freer, nor would those freedoms be here to stay. Not having learned to think like free people, we'll give it all away at the earliest opportunity. "I'll kill you if you say that!" "Okay, I won't say that." "We need more power over you to make you safe." "Okay, make me safe." "We've changed our minds, we don't need the right to read your e-mail after all." "Cool, thanks!"

Here's how it should be: "I'll kill you if you say that!" "I'll still say it." "We need more power over you to make you safe." "You have no right, and I won't obey." "We've changed our minds, we don't need the right to read your e-mail after all." "You never had it in the first place."

Never mind the laws, if people think like free people, the laws will follow. Then our freedoms will have a permanent basis. People who think of themselves as free won't ever allow the state to say otherwise. People who accept responsibility for their own lives will not expect to be treated as victims or clients. The philosophy of freedom comes first, then the politics.

So why do we talk only about political freedom? Why do we embrace the degrading rhetorics of political activism? Why do we expect people who break into tears over the least violation of their rights to have anything whatsoever to tell us about freedom?

In the words of Havelock Vetinari: People do not want freedom. What people want is stability.
(Or was it Sam Vimes? Anyway, a Discworld quote)

But still, quite a lot of our thinking (philosophy?) is dedicated to aiming at freedom of mind as a goal. And slowly, we are progressing... sometimes we will fall back, and oh, how we fall. But I am confident that we will rise again. Because the urge for the feeling of freedom is strong among many humans. And it won't be quenched.

KEE

I certainly haven't seen any rightwinger who have
directly stated "feel sorry for me", so i guess this is how you decide to interpret it.

I wonder how do you label something as whining and
something else as not whining?

"We do not like what the state does, but it does not deserve our anger or hatred."

Is it the psychological wellfare of rightwingers you are conserned about?

You know, if people are angry or use hateful rethorics this doesn't have to mean that they are unhappy or have little self-control.

"So it takes your money and misspends it, what are you going to do? Hold your breath until they give it back? Stomp your feet? Scream in rage?"

Oh i don't know....
Here's an idea, how about whining about it in hateful and angry letters
to newspapers and on the internet?
It's the least i can do.

"Everybody wants to expand our legal freedoms, but nobody talks about how to be free. Everybody says that the state should give us more responsibility for our lives, but nobody talks about how to live like a responsible person."

Why should anyone talk about how to be free or how to be responsible? Why is it relevant in this discussion?
If someone wants to use their freedom to drink beer all day, watch tv and become fat then that's their buisness.

What people do with whatever freedom they have is much less important to me than the issue of what freedoms i should have but is denied by the state.

"There's no use being free in the eyes of the state if that freedom does not also exist within you."

You're babbling about psychology.
If you feel "imprisoned" and unfree it's your own personal problem, and it could most certainly be much worse if you also had a state there to harass you.

"This was truly a free man."

Truly a free man, knee deep in excrements, hehe.
This little story, and the conclusion, should be picked up by the chinese communist party.They could encourage the prisoners to sing hymns so that they could be "free" in their minds, then maybe they wouldn't "whine" som much
about wanting to actually be free.

This man had courage, and the intellectual skills to keep himself in a good mood in an extreme situation, Finn Graff obviously have less courage.I'm certain the chinese man dreamed about having more freedom, and i'm certain Finn
Graff doesn't want to be in a prison camp standing knee deep in excrements.

"How many in our society are free like the pastor, and how many like Graff? We talk about more freedom, but what good will that do them?"

Again, why should i care?? Why do you care? If you personally want the freedom to smoke weed, does it matter that there exists people who are prisoners of their own mentality?
I want more freedom FOR ME, and logically this have to extend to others, what Finn Graff does with his freedom doesn't mean a damn thing to me.

"A perfectly free society could arrive tomorrow, and it wouldn't make us much freer"

Well it actually would, no matter what we think about it.You don't distinguish between being free and being courageous, they are two different things, even if being courageous can make you "feel" more free.

"I'll kill you if you say that!" "Okay, I won't say that." "We need more power over you to make you safe." "Okay, make me safe."

Or:

"Stop whining about the god damn taxes!!" "Okay, i'll stop"
"Stop being so hateful about the biased media" "Okay, i'll be a nice boy".

------

"Here's how it should be: "I'll kill you if you say that!" "I'll still say it." "We need more power over you to make you safe." "You have no right, and I won't obey." "We've changed our minds, we don't need the right to read your e-mail after all." "You never had it in the first place.""

Well i see many rightwingers say exactly these things, how should the wording change for it to qualify as "whining"?

"if people think like free people, the laws will follow."

Well you are certainly jumping over a few steps here.

If people think like free people, agitate to make other people think like free people, use political activism to challenge the state, use sufficient harsh languange and physical action to have an actual impact, get to become such a force that they actually have the power to change laws, then the laws will follow.

It seems to me like you want the right-wingers to give up the traditional rightwing causes and become some sort of self-help coaches.

I really don't understand why you feel the need to label the right wing as "whiners".
This word is almost excluively used by the left to attack the right when they have perfectly rational arguments about taxes, crime, immigration, islam etc...
("Syting" på norsk, "nå må dere jævla frp'ere slutte å syte!!")

nor: Why should anyone talk about how to be free or how to be responsible? Why is it relevant in this discussion? If someone wants to use their freedom to drink beer all day, watch tv and become fat then that's their buisness.

Yes. How people use their freedom is their business. But it is important that they learn to think like free people, and not like slaves who have been granted a privilege. How else can these freedoms take root? Your approach is like that of a 1916 trench war, you push and you push but even when you win you're not really making any gains. One government lowers taxes, the next raises them. One removes regulations, the next adds to them. And unlike in a war, nobody is losing any troops.

That's why we must teach people to think like free people. Which they already do, to some extent, but not in a way that will give those political activists you admire any real victory, or even be much of a defense against future tyrants. And you don't learn freedom from whiny activists, you learn entitlement, and sobbing, and begging.

This little story, and the conclusion, should be picked up by the chinese communist party.

Tyranny depends on fear. If you cannot be broken, and cannot be threatened, you cannot be ruled. One free man in a labor camp can do nothing, except to persist. But imagine a million people you cannot threaten, or a hundred million.

This word is almost excluively used by the left to attack the right when they have perfectly rational arguments about taxes, crime, immigration, islam etc...

And often rightly so. You're not a victim, so don't act like one. The same applies to the left, of course, but that's their problem, not ours. I have no doubt the left can make use of much of what I'm saying here, but I don't know how to untangle the freedoms they like from the freedoms they don't, so I won't even try.

I'll second that - but also add Benjamin Franklin's "He Who Would Sacrifice Freedom For Safety Deserves Neither".

But you must admit that it's fun to stomp your feet screaming at socialists sometimes. Very liberating, actually :-))

Enjoy this, everyone - just for laughs OK because there's a wealth of information dealing with the same subject which is nowhere near funny.

http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/

People you call 'dhimmis' and cowards have been stating blatant truths since well before 9/11, which some of you tough-minded defenders of the faith are just beginning, very timidly, to admit - perhaps the invasion was rather impulsive - perhaps the reduction of civil liberties contingent to 'terror' is rather drastic - perhaps the governments involved were less than truthful about ... well, just about everything to do with the "WoT" - perhaps our world situation today is immeasurably worse than it was a few years ago (and this is not a plea for entropy) - perhaps, despite the awful 'global menace of Islamic integrist violence', far greater damage has been, and continues to be done, in the name of 'freedom' and 'Democracy' - perhaps you could have thought a little more clearly in the first place.

Imperialist, commercially-motivated mayhem used to hide behind the mask of 'God' - today, the mask has a different name, but the murderous impulse is the same.

Job: People you call 'dhimmis' and cowards have been stating blatant truths since well before 9/11

And as we already know what the hundred comment long "discussion" that will follow this will look like, and that it won't introduce any new insights into the issue whatsoever, we may as well skip to the point where everyone's tired and gives up. So: EOD.

That was a singularly stupid remark - but answer this question. Where did the information that caused you to change your mind about your position, as documented here - The Iraq war revisited, Sunday December 11, 2005 by Bjørn Stærk - come from, if not from sources you originally deemed 'stupid'?

And isn't this question - 'Does this kind of intervention actually work?' - one that should be, and could so easily have been if the interveners were honest men, answered before the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings?

So: EOD? GFY.

Job: That was a singularly stupid remark

Not if you've seen this kind of debate a hundred times before. One person arrives, throws in an "the other side are dangerous idiots!!", and then it goes downhill from there. Also you're off-topic, (see the rules, below). So really: EOD. I mean it. Take your crusade somewhere else. (Like the thread you're referring to ..)

[** Iraq war stuff deleted ** ]

And what does EOD mean?

[ This. - BS ]

Your political activism post was picked as one of our two featured posts in today's Best of Blogs segment at Candide's Notebooks (click on the link with this message). Good writing. We'll be back.

## People who accept responsibility for their own lives will not expect to be treated as victims or clients##

But then again, the existence of "personal responsibility" is rather questionable. I think we have debated this earlier, but putting personal responsibility in the front seats demands more that "responsibility as incentives", it demands responsiblity like a mythological fact that makes individuals deserve what happens to th em, something that is rather questinable.

When it comes to making people victims, I would claim that someone who is over 25 years of age and works in low wage employment in the US is to a much larger degree a victim than someone going on welfare in Norway. You could even claim that they are more of a client, because the client concept originally was coined to describe poorer romans that were dependent on the whims of the upper class. Low wage earners are just as dependent and much more dependant on the whims of the elite than people on welfare in socialdemocratic countries. Actually, the labour market for lowskilled people in countries like Japan is very close to what could be described as a kind of tyranny.

PeeWee: it demands responsiblity like a mythological fact that makes individuals deserve what happens to th em, something that is rather questinable.

What I'm talking about is not something that objectively exists or does not exist, but an attitude. Others can make you poor, but feeling sorry for yourself is a choice. Others can harm you, but they can't force you to see yourself as a victim. To take responsibility is not to believe that everything happens for a reason, that everything is deserved, but to accept the choices that really are open to you, and accept your part of the blame/praise for the consequences that follow.

This is not about ideology, you can believe that a free market is inefficient and creates more suffering than an alternative, and still take responsibility for your own actions. My point was rather that this attitude is naturally compatible with liberalism, especially the part of it that is morally motivated. And the opposite attitude certainly undermines liberalism, that's why I believe the right should avoid it.

You could even claim that they are more of a client, because the client concept originally was coined to describe poorer romans that were dependent on the whims of the upper class.

Low wage work is in no way similar to the Roman client system. Being a client carried obligations and social implications that went way beyond that of showing up for work every day for lousy pay. Think of The Godfather instead, especially the opening scene.

## Low wage work is in no way similar to the Roman client system. Being a client carried obligations and social implications that went way beyond that of showing up for work every day for lousy pay. Think of The Godfather instead, especially the opening scene##

Yes, that actually implies that a low wage job is much more like a client system than some kinds of welfare system, because the obligations that a low wage worker have to the elite are much bigger than the obligations a norwegian welfare client have to the elite.

## Others can make you poor, but feeling sorry for yourself is a choice. Others can harm you, but they can't force you to see yourself as a victim. ##

But retaining a positive attitude may not help at all. It is a documented fact that americans have more positive attitudes than europeans. This does not hovewer cause more norwegians to fail than americans. The ratio of americans that fail are still much bigger than the ratio of norwegians that fail. Positive attitudes in this regard only makes the poor poorer, because people with positive attitudes are less likely to support programs that makes the poor and even large segments of the working class better off.

PeeWee: Yes, that actually implies that a low wage job is much more like a client system than some kinds of welfare system

It is not. It is a terrible historical analogy, based on a remote semantic relationship. If you don't believe me, look it up. What you mean is that low wage work is awful. Then just say that.

But retaining a positive attitude may not help at all.

"Positive attitude" is something different. If you're able to see opportunities in every problem, then you have a positive attitude, but those opportunities aren't always there. If you're poor, you may not have the option to get richer. But you can still choose to not think of yourself as a victim. You can remind yourself that you still have choices. Does this "help"? Not always in a materialistic sense. But I would think that it is better for someone to have a realistic sense of what their choices are, than to go around and be bitter because they think they have none.

Positive attitudes in this regard only makes the poor poorer, because people with positive attitudes are less likely to support programs that makes the poor and even large segments of the working class better off.

You're still talking about ideology. That is a separate issue. I'm talking about personal attitude. Politics can improve your situation, but whether it does or doesn't, feeling sorry for yourself is a terrible way to go through life. Even in a perfect society, things won't always go your way, or maybe not even often. We need to learn to deal with that.

##It is not. It is a terrible historical analogy, based on a remote semantic relationship. If you don't believe me, look it up. What you mean is that low wage work is awful. Then just say that.##

But I used it exactly because the right uses the same analogy about welfare. I would rather claim that welfare prevents the kind of client patron relationships you had in Rome. You see much of the same in poor countries, many who riots against the cartoons are in fact clients of more well off people in a welfare less country. In Palestine Hamas used charities to recruit members and you even have something that may resemble it in ghettoes between people and criminal gangs. My point was not that low wage work is a client relationship, but that welfare is not a client relationship in the traditional sense of the word. Welfare rather breaks up such relationships and makes the underclass less controlable by different elites.

## If you're able to see opportunities in every problem, then you have a positive attitude, but those opportunities aren't always there. If you're poor, you may not have the option to get richer. ##

Okay, I did partly misundertand there. Hovewer, positive attitudes may increase the possibility of poor people getting taken advantage off. You take every shitty job and takes "extra services" because the boss manages to convince you that it opens extra possibilities that in reality are not there.

PeeWee: My point was not that low wage work is a client relationship, but that welfare is not a client relationship in the traditional sense of the word.

I don't think anyone is claming that welfare is a client system in the Roman sense of the word. "Client" has an ancient meaning and a modern, and the ancient meaning is no longer in use, in fact most people don't even know that it exists.

Hovewer, positive attitudes may increase the possibility of poor people getting taken advantage off. You take every shitty job and takes "extra services" because the boss manages to convince you that it opens extra possibilities that in reality are not there.

I'm not talking about a positive attitude, but a realistic awareness of choices, a sense of responsibility and freedom that exists independently of the shitty treatment you get from society. This would make people happier, of course, and hence they may be less receptive to ideologies that feed on dissatisfaction. Are you then saying that people should be unhappy in order to promote your ideology? Of course not. We should instead teach people to keep political views separate from their personal attitude, to believe that there is a better way to organize society and not see yourself as a choiceless victim, both at the same time.

Trackback URL: http://bearstrong.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1719