Ron Swanson, Libertarian For President

Lately I’ve been catching up on “Parks & Recreation”, and I’m up to Season 4 on Netflix.   I’d like to be able to claim that Ron Swanson’s politics – Libertarian – attracted me to the show, but I only learned that later after watching a few seasons.  What got me into the show was a Facebook post on Andy & April interactions.   I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Ron Swanson’s ideology, which matches mine.

“Parks & Recreation” is a NBC sitcom on its 7^th and final season.  It features a fictional “parks & recreation” department in Pawnee, Indiana, with a cast of dysfunctional people.

Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler).  The #2 of the department, and because of Ron’s reluctance to do anything, its de facto head.  She means well but can never seem to get much done – much to Ron’s satisfaction.

Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman).  Ostensibly the head of the department, but as a Libertarian, Ron believes government – including his own agency – should do as little as possible.  So he lets Leslie do all the work, confident that her idealistic incompetence will never amount to much.

Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari).   An Indian? Or is he Pakistani?  Anyhow, he deliberately changed his name to a WASPY one so no one would judge him by his ethnic name.  He always has some idiotic scheme brewing.  He’s not as brilliant as he thinks he is – he suffers from a surplus of arrogance and a deficit of substance.  Because his ambition and schemes compromise his effectiveness – meaning nothing will get done, so no harm done – Ron values him immensely.

Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir) & Donna Meagle (Retta).   Jerry winds up as the butt of jokes – the Milton of the show – while Donna mainly brags about her Mercedes SUV.

Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt).   Originally Ann’s unemployed – except for his band, Mouse Rat, which changes its name continuously – and generally clueless but likeable boyfriend.  Now he’s April’s clueless but likeable boyfriend.  I’ve yet to ascertain any actual musical talent or artistic ability on his part, but he never lets that stop him.

April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza).  Perpetually rolling her eyes and even more cynical than Ron.  Kind of a goth chick in attitude if not dress.  I’m not really crazy about her, except that she is attractive.

Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones).  She started out as Andy’s GF, but remains an ER technician (nurse).  Generally smart, pretty, and sympathetic.  She’s Leslie’s best friend and acts a source of good advice which is never taken.

Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe).  Right out of “Office Space”, Indianapolis sent an efficiency expert to Pawnee to see how the state of Indiana could save money.  Traeger is that man.  However, he’s generally too wrapped up in his own New Age BS to be effective, so like everyone else, does his job best by doing it poorly.

Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott).  Chris’ #2 guy, the numbers guy who knows how a spreadsheet works and can actually grasp the details his boss can’t fathom.  It turns out that when he was 18, he got elected mayor of a small town but totally botched it up, a shame he still can’t live down.  He winds up as Leslie’s love interest.

I can’t tell if the writers are Libertarian or not.  On one level, Ron is portrayed as a caricature of a Libertarian.  He believes government should do as little as possible, so he and his department should do as little as possible.  How does he justify his own paycheck?  Probably he feels that in his absence, his replacement would be a go-getting busybody who would do more harm than good in a quest to do whatever government feels compelled to do (e.g. Leslie running the department herself).  Liberals seem to feel that conservatives look down on them as at best naïve idiots and at worst depraved morons, so they pass the buck on to libertarians by looking down on THEM as at best naïve idiots and at worst depraved morons.

Jane Fonda was famous for claiming that if we all truly understood communism, we’d be communists.  Did she mean we’d all prefer a stateless society wherein goods and services are distributed from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, somewhat like anarchy?  Or as a totalitarian dictatorship like North Korea?  I think if you really put it to everyone in those terms, they would still say “no thanks” to either flavor.  Except maybe Bernie Sanders fans.

With regard to libertarianism, I honestly believe the majority of people would embrace the ideology if fully aware of its nature.  However, Libertarians aren’t stupid.  We know the actual LPA has almost no power.  We’ve never elected a President.  No one in Congress is Libertarian, aside from Republicans like Rand Paul and Justin Amash, who are essentially Libertarians pretending to be Republican.  I’m not aware if any Libertarians have won any governorships or state legislature positions.  If Hillary and Trump win their respective parties’ nominations, two candidates with a deficit of true supporters and mostly “I don’t want the OTHER side to win” voters, we’ll have a general election this November in which both major parties have chosen extremely unpopular candidates counting that voters consider them marginally LESS repulsive than the other side’s.   Maybe it won’t be enough to put Gary Johnson (or MacAfee or Austin Peterson) in the White House, but it could be enough to give them sufficient votes that the general public will finally be aware of the Libertarian Party’s existence.   Rand Paul 2020!

Anyhow.  Leslie’s misadventures and general incompetence seem to justify Ron’s attitude.  And if Ron’s attitude IS justified…then perhaps Libertarians aren’t as clueless and naïve as liberals tend to portray them.  So “Parks & Recreation” becomes a Libertarian show, almost by default.   I’ll take that.  :D

The Crimson Unicorn

The outflowing of support for Bernie Sanders on Facebook seems to mirror the similar swell for support among equally deluded fans of Donald Trump.  Here my focus is on the Cult of the Crimson Unicorn, i.e. US socialists circa 2015.

By crimson I mean “red, socialist, communist” and by unicorn I mean something that is fictional and has no basis in reality:  an unattainable ideal held by people too clueless to understand that.

Semantics.  First, let’s get some semantics out of the way.   When the Colonel Sanders crowd barks and brays for socialism, they mean the flavor served in Denmark and Sweden, not the one from North Korea.   Generally we refer to Denmark as “socialist” and China as “communist”.   In doctrinaire terms, Denmark is actually capitalist and China is socialist, and no country has attained the anarchic state which Marxists call “communism”.  I agree the Denmark is actually capitalist – albeit with a heavy dose of socialism – but just so everyone understands what we’re talking about, it’s probably best to continue referring to countries like North Korea as communist anyway.

One element the Sanders crowd never addresses, but which their opponents love to bring up – as I do – is taxes.   I did a blog a few years ago about this, http://formula57l.blogspot.com/2012/08/who-wants-to-run-america_2532.html.   I still think It’s relevant today.

Leaving aside a totalitarian dictatorship I don’t think anyone wants, the question is why we can’t have something like Denmark.   Yes, most things are paid for, including health care and education.   But it comes at a price which few in the US would be willing to pay:  horrendous taxes.  Income taxes are much higher, sales taxes are higher (25% vs 5% in the US), and the tax on cars is 180% (almost triple).  In Sweden the top bracket approaches 100%.  Not everything is as bad as they say it is (http://www.snopes.com/denmark-socialism-brutal-meme/) but it’s still far higher than any of the Crimson Unicorn crowd will ever admit.  I would suggest the theater majors clamoring for Bernie Sanders take a closer look at the cost of their plans.

Libertarians.   I’m a Libertarian.  What that means is that I read Ayn Rand in college, adopted capitalism as an ideal, and initially took the Republicans’ support for that doctrine at face value.  Until I read books like The Suicidal Corporation, by Paul Weaver, and saw how Newt Gingrich and his cronies cynically floated the Contract With America in 1994 as a means of co-opting what they perceived to be libertarian values, with no sincere expectation of supporting that agenda.  Republicans have too much in common with big business and – with few exceptions – no interest in supporting libertarian ideals.  

The Tea Party movement is often described as Libertarian, but I see too much evidence that much of that is simply opposition to Obama because he's black masquerading as libertarians.   Where were these people when Clinton was in office?  Or Carter?

I’d distinguish libertarianism from socialism in the following manner.  Ideologically they’re opposites.  In practical terms the best we can hope for from “socialism” is a Sweden-Denmark deal with everything paid for by the government and insanely high taxes.  The best we can hope for from libertarianism is lower taxes, less wars, and more freedom.  As for the political possibilities….

Jane Fonda once said that if we all truly understood what communism was about, we’d embrace it.  I’ll switch that on its head and say that if Americans were given the truth about what the Danish flavor of socialism meant – super high taxes – we’d reject it immediately and never think about it again.  That’s the ugly truth about Bernie Sanders’ platform:  wishful thinking and assuming that everyone else is drinking the same Kool-Aid.  And I don’t consider Denmark to be a real ideal anyway, although they can claim they’ve “made it happen”, which is more than the Marxists can claim about “true communism”.

As for libertarianism, I sincerely believe that it’s practical as a reality in terms of being a workable model that would actually work in real life.   That is not the problem.  The problem is that there are too few Libertarians and too much entrenched interests in Congress and in America – both major parties – to make enacting this agenda a reality.  The Tea Party came closest, and Rand Paul is this flavor’s biggest candidate, but unless Donald Trump or Ben Carson “have a fatal heart attack and die” between now and the GOP convention in summer 2016, I’m not holding my breath for Rand Paul to win the nomination.