awake
05-07-2010, 03:39 PM
This made me smile today...I tend to do less of it than I should.
"The modern libertarian has forgotten that the liberal of the 17th
and 18th centuries faced odds much more overwhelming than faces the liberal of
today; for in that era before the Industrial Revolution, the victory of liberalism
was far from inevitable. And yet the liberalism of that day was not-content to
remain a gloomy little sect; instead, it unified theory and action. Liberalism grew
and developed as an ideology and, leading and guiding the masses, made the
Revolution which changed the fate of the world; by its monumental
breakthrough, this Revolution of the 18th century transformed history from a
chronicle of stagnation and despotism to an ongoing movement advancing
toward a veritable secular Utopia of liberty and rationality and abundance. The
Old Order is dead or moribund; and the reactionary attempts to run a modern
society and economy by various throwbacks to the Old Order are doomed to total
failure. The liberals of the past have left to modern libertarians a glorious
heritage, not only of ideology but of victories against far more devastating odds.
The liberals of the past have also left a heritage of the proper strategy and tactics
for libertarians to follow: not only by leading rather than remaining aloof from
the masses; but also by not falling prey to short-run optimism. For short-run
optimism, being unrealistic, leads straightway to disillusion and then to long-run
pessimism; just as, on the other side of the coin, long-run pessimism leads to
exclusive and self-defeating concentration on immediate and short-run issues.
Short-run optimism stems, for one thing, from a naive and simplistic view of
strategy: that liberty will win merely by educating more intellectuals, who in turn
will educate opinion-moulders, who in turn will convince the masses, after which
the State will somehow fold its tent and silently steal away. Matters are not that
easy; for libertarians face not only a problem of education but also a problem of
power; and it is a law of history that a ruling caste has never voluntarily given up
its power.
But the problem of power is, certainly in the United States, far in the future.
For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to cast off his needless
and debilitating pessimism, to set his sights on long-run victory and to set about
the road to its attainment. To do this, he must, perhaps first of all, drastically
realign his mistaken view of the ideological spectrum; he must discover who his
friends and natural allies are, and above all perhaps, who his enemies are. Armed
with this knowledge, let him proceed in the spirit of radical long-run optimism
that one of the great figures in the history of libertarian thought, Randolph
Bourne, correctly identified as the spirit of youth. Let Bourne's stirring words
serve also as the guidepost for the spirit of liberty:
youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of
tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is
old and established-Why? What is this thing good for?
And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its
own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs, and ideas,
and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to
overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its
visions teem
Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing
attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome
activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its
insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay.
It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the
world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a
conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not
exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering, just the same. Youth
is the drastic antiseptic... It drags skeletons from closets and insists
that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and
distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail...
Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present,
pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward
the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope
which is the lever of progress--one might say, the only lever of
progress...
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit shall never
be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine
precipitate--a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It
must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas,
and a keen insight into experience. To keep one's reactions warm
and true is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and
perpetual youth is salvation."
- M. Rothbard - Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty
"The modern libertarian has forgotten that the liberal of the 17th
and 18th centuries faced odds much more overwhelming than faces the liberal of
today; for in that era before the Industrial Revolution, the victory of liberalism
was far from inevitable. And yet the liberalism of that day was not-content to
remain a gloomy little sect; instead, it unified theory and action. Liberalism grew
and developed as an ideology and, leading and guiding the masses, made the
Revolution which changed the fate of the world; by its monumental
breakthrough, this Revolution of the 18th century transformed history from a
chronicle of stagnation and despotism to an ongoing movement advancing
toward a veritable secular Utopia of liberty and rationality and abundance. The
Old Order is dead or moribund; and the reactionary attempts to run a modern
society and economy by various throwbacks to the Old Order are doomed to total
failure. The liberals of the past have left to modern libertarians a glorious
heritage, not only of ideology but of victories against far more devastating odds.
The liberals of the past have also left a heritage of the proper strategy and tactics
for libertarians to follow: not only by leading rather than remaining aloof from
the masses; but also by not falling prey to short-run optimism. For short-run
optimism, being unrealistic, leads straightway to disillusion and then to long-run
pessimism; just as, on the other side of the coin, long-run pessimism leads to
exclusive and self-defeating concentration on immediate and short-run issues.
Short-run optimism stems, for one thing, from a naive and simplistic view of
strategy: that liberty will win merely by educating more intellectuals, who in turn
will educate opinion-moulders, who in turn will convince the masses, after which
the State will somehow fold its tent and silently steal away. Matters are not that
easy; for libertarians face not only a problem of education but also a problem of
power; and it is a law of history that a ruling caste has never voluntarily given up
its power.
But the problem of power is, certainly in the United States, far in the future.
For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to cast off his needless
and debilitating pessimism, to set his sights on long-run victory and to set about
the road to its attainment. To do this, he must, perhaps first of all, drastically
realign his mistaken view of the ideological spectrum; he must discover who his
friends and natural allies are, and above all perhaps, who his enemies are. Armed
with this knowledge, let him proceed in the spirit of radical long-run optimism
that one of the great figures in the history of libertarian thought, Randolph
Bourne, correctly identified as the spirit of youth. Let Bourne's stirring words
serve also as the guidepost for the spirit of liberty:
youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of
tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is
old and established-Why? What is this thing good for?
And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its
own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs, and ideas,
and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to
overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its
visions teem
Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing
attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome
activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its
insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay.
It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the
world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a
conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not
exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering, just the same. Youth
is the drastic antiseptic... It drags skeletons from closets and insists
that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and
distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail...
Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present,
pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward
the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope
which is the lever of progress--one might say, the only lever of
progress...
The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit shall never
be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine
precipitate--a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It
must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas,
and a keen insight into experience. To keep one's reactions warm
and true is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and
perpetual youth is salvation."
- M. Rothbard - Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty