A libertarian site needs another article on “homo sapiens good,” “homo politicus bad” like a fish needs a bicycle. Yet, here we are again, with obvious points of morality for individuals twisted beyond recognition as they grind through the mind of homo politicus: Officer Sicknick, the Capitol Hill policeman brained to death by a fire extinguisher, is no more thankful he was murdered by a Trumpkin than any of the people who lost their lives to the CHOP experiment in Portland. Another belabor of the obvious: nobody is more critical of bent police incentives than I am, but police reform, like all lasting and effective political reform, must come through non-violence. Very rational, very ethical, non-violence. And Officer Sicknick was upholding the same basic peace as any peace office would do, all over the world, the centuries over, liberal or totalitarian. Rest him, peace and healing to his family.
Much of what makes me so libertarian is I have spoken with a lot of people who have been similarly brained (and cared for many beyond talking), and never once have I heard “thank god it was for Trump,” or “thank god it was for international socialism” (rarely, it’s “thank god it was for Ma”). It’s just brained people hoping they won’t die, or be made invalid. Even children know not to say anything remotely political to any of the grieving family. If you wouldn’t hold forth on the calculus of whataboutism to any of the poor family’s faces, you shouldn’t do it on social media. Also, because two wrongs don’t make a right, the dead stay dead, and nothing is ever redeemed by loss. These are cliches by reason of being so very perfectly true.
Yet there has been a great deal of debate on social media over the significance of the jackal spectacle that happened on 1/6 (I have no trouble calling it an insurrection), and much of it is in pointing fingers of hypocrisy at each other. Whataboutism over the Black Lives Matter riots that unfolded all COVID-summer and the parsing of degrees of evil in the CHOP/CHAZ events in Portland. Team Blue wants new laws over the storming of the Capitol, Team Red bleats of whataboutism in the storming of the Kavanaugh hearings (nobody sought to hang any Republicans – just one mile-wide distinction). Both sides trot out examples of incendiary free speech by their opposition tribes.
This all misses the point, which is the foundational point of libertarian ethics: there is no number of individuals who can sanctify with righteousness that which is wrong for one of them to do alone. The only thing we libertarian should say about political violence, is that the greater number of individuals consumed by it, the worse it is.
The model to understand these things are as arms races that bring harm to individuals, not as equivalents. All wars make for arms races. In all wars the enemy is the truest teacher. Steps in the war are always mutually educational, but what does it matter to the Homo Sapiens policeman that the mob at hand learned by aping Antifa’s gas mask wearing, body-armored summer tactics? Tactics which makes de-escalation all but impossible, BTW (which Team Blue will need to be reminded of soon enough, I have no doubt).
There can be no doubt that Trumpkins have taken a big step in the arms race. The President’s actions need context: for weeks he made baseless accusations that the election was a fraud. For weeks he refused to present any extraordinary evidence of his extraordinary claim. For his accusations to have substance, his own party would have had to engage in widespread fraud, for which there would surely be evidence. His own FBI, many of whom (if not the majority) are also Republicans, have dutifully investigated the claims, and we have discovered no substantial evidence of wrongdoing. Trump ginned up a mob to press his false claims, he tried to extort his vice president to forego his duty to the rule of law (that crime alone is impeachable). His mob prevented the vote certification, which is the true application of the Constitution, and then took to raking the halls of Congress for leaders to hang. Meanwhile, Trump was uncharacteristically absent from the Twitter account he used hundreds of times of a day. He was aloof to desperate pleas for additional resources to be called out to save Congress for hours, dangling the overmatched “Blue Lives Matter” homo sapiens peace officers before the caprice of the insurrection. Context matters: it’s one thing to call for the hauling down of The Tower (I’ve done that more than a few times), but if a mob is actually hauling down a tower, the call takes on a radically different meaning.
Incidentally, Congress is not just the temple for our liberal Republic, it is the temple for liberal governance the whole world over: the last time the temple was threatened, that leader speculated that “Government of The People, by the People, and for the People, should not perish from the earth,” and he was not exaggerating. I had a Taiwanese intern tearfully remind me of that cherry-on-top of our disgrace.
The arms race needs stopping because if truth is the first causality of war, the second has to be principle. The principle
lost in the Trump insurrection is our nation’s most basic: each American’s life is precious and irreplaceable. When a homo sapien is lost, it’s like burning down a library.
It seems likely that this turn of the wheel will be countered in some way by Team Blue, and it would be unlikely any additional steps in the evolution will serve our cause of liberty.
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