Inspiration From Ireland: What American Gay Rights Advocates Should Take From Last Weekend's Historic Vote

History was made last weekend when Ireland became the 20th country to allow gays and lesbians to wed. Not simply because of this particular fact, but also because it was the first vote anywhere in the world in which same-sex marriage was legalized on a national level via direct vote, in this case an overwhelming vote of 62% in favor. This is especially noteworthy considering that not only was homosexuality in Ireland barely decriminalized in 1993, but some 70% of Irish citizens identify as Roman Catholics at present. This means that a significant majority of the people who voted last weekend were adherents of a faith whose leadership oppose LGBT rights in general and gay marriage in particular. In spite of this, a motion to add language that clarifies, "Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex" to the Irish Constitution managed to pass with widespread support from these same adherents. What explains this predominantly-religious nation's liberal attitude, as reflected in this vote, towards same-sex marriage?

Part of it, of course, is the nuanced relationship between religion and homosexuality. Although many religions have historically opposed same-sex activity and actively persecuted homosexuals, growing numbers of believers throughout the West are abandoning such hostility and embracing the cause of LGBT rights. This is because, contrary to the claims of religious fundamentalists and hardline atheists, religion is fluid and prone to change just as much as political ideologies and philosophies. Only the historically illiterate would believe that the form of Christianity, of which Catholicism is a subset, practiced by Westerners today is the exact same as that practiced by Westerners 2000 years ago. Fundamentals might remain in place, but interpretation and implementation of said fundamentals change over time. Such a change is currently taking place within the Catholic laity, and not only in Ireland. As Frank Bruni of The New York Times observes, of the 20 nations that have legalized gay marriage, 10 of them have mainly Catholic populations. Furthermore, according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute, "about 60% of Americans who called themselves Catholic said they approved of same-sex marriage," indicating Catholics in the United States are more likely to support gay marriage than not. One might point out that the Bible, specifically the Book of Leviticus, mandates that homosexuals be put to death, or that the Catholic Church as an institution still remains hostile to gay marriage and other rights for homosexuals. But the fact is, if the Catholic laity rejects both biblical and papal injunctions against homosexuality and gay rights, then that faith will become a tolerant one in practice, regardless of whether it is homophobic or anti-gay in theory. It is these socially liberal tendencies gaining traction among Catholics that we recently saw at work in Ireland.

But what explains this change in attitudes towards gay rights amongst Catholics, specifically Irish ones?   If The Rainbow Project's Gavin Boyd, is to be believed, it is the way supporters of gay marriage discussed the issue with those who opposed it. Rather than insulating themselves from rural, often-elderly folk who were likely to oppose same-sex marriage, gay rights activists went out of their way to discuss and debate it in good faith with them. "...what really swung this in the end were those conversations that people were having in small townlands and villages in really rural Ireland," Boyd explained in an interview with Democracy Now!. He also added that, "This was really about talking to families, talking to parents, talking to grandchildren, and explaining to them why it is important for their children, for their grandchildren to be able to grow up in a society that respected them as equal citizens." What's interesting about this statement is that it assumes good faith on the part of anti-gay people. Boyd suggests that not only do such people have a better nature, but it is also possible to appeal to it. He and many others did this by making SSM opponents wrestle with the question of whether they were able to countenance limiting the rights of family members who might be gay. Rather than insult them from afar and simply tar them as unrepentant Neanderthals, pro-SSM Irishmen made anti-SSM ones really consider the consequences of their stance and whether they could live with them. Considering the landslide vote for marriage equality (a term I hate to use, but that's a post for another day), it was a very effective strategy.

Which brings me to what we in the States could learn from Boyd and other Irish gay rights advocates. As I mentioned before, Irish activists for the most part dialogued with same-sex marriage opponents instead of degrading them. In the U.S., many same-sex marriage supporters do the reverse. Whereas Boyd happily reported that, "...this wasn't a victory for the metropolitan elite, this was a victory right the way across Ireland, not just in big cities, but in tiny villages as well," American liberals will without a second thought write off conservative, usually blue-collar people with anti-gay opinions as backward-minded bigots with no hope of redemption, seemingly wallowing in the righteous indignation they feel at such opinions. There is often an undercurrent of elitism in liberal criticisms of LGBT rights opponents that does nothing to win converts to the cause of equality and everything to harden those who are already opposed and perhaps stroke the ego of true believers. This itself is symptomatic of a larger malaise in the American left: the elevation of the personal over the political. Costly wars and civil liberties are thrown to the wayside (save when they can be used as cudgels against Republicans and other assorted right-wingers) and issues like gay marriage are pushed to the forefront not because the rights of gays lie in the balance but because it allows progressives to draw lines in the sand, to feel they are good because conservatives are bad. I by no means seek to defend homophobia: rather, I seek to defend humanity, and even if one side is ineffably correct and the other side is entirely wrong, there is humanity on both sides. This is what Ireland taught us last weekend, and this is what America should take from that victory for liberty.

Flashback Friday: The Time I Interviewed P.J. O'Rourke

It's been a while since I've done a flashback friday, so I decided to revisit one of my finest achievements at UCLARadio: interviewing the legendary P.J. O'Rourke. A writer whose wit is as sharp as his insight, he has earned a place in my heart as one of my top writing inspirations (as I gushed at him towards the end of our talk), in both political and personal spheres. We covered quite a lot of ground in the interview: I opened up by asking about him about The Baby Boom, the subject of the book tour he was on at the time, and we went on to discuss his time at National Lampoon and Rolling Stone, his friendships with John Belushi and Hunter S. Thompson, topical political subjects like environmentalism and foreign policy, and other books of his like Parliament of Whores, All The Trouble In The World, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism, and Driving Like Crazy. It was an honor to speak with him, one made even greater when he said he really enjoyed speaking with me. Please check it out, and let me know what you think!

His Crime, And Ours: Against The Death Penalty For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A streetside memorial to the victims of the Boston bombing.

HonorSociety.org just published my newest article on their blog roll. You can read the full text below, or access the original article here. This time, I wrote about the recent sentencing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death. Naturally, I took issue with the sentencing, as guilty as Tsarnaev may be. Towards the end, I contrast the way people responded to the three deaths Tsarnaev was responsible with the some 150 deaths caused by Chris Kyle in Iraq. If I were still writing the piece, I might have noted the similarities not only in this regard but also in the way both Tsarnaev and Kyle perceived themselves. Kyle thought he was waging a life-and-death struggle that would determine whether America was saved from hordes of marauding jihadists by taking part in an invasion of a country that never attacked the U.S., while Tsarnaev imagined himself and his brother to be the ones who would avenge the death of hundreds of  thousands of Muslims killed in America's wars by blowing athletes and bystanders at a sports event to smithereens. As countless others have said, in the War on Terror, messianic delusions abound on both sides, and in very few places is this as apparent as in the cases of the American Sniper and the Boston Bomber.

                                    His Crime, And Ours: Against The Death Penalty For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Two years since improvised explosive devices killed three and wounded hundreds more at the Boston Marathon, the U.S. District Court for the District Of Massachusetts has sentenced 21-year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving perpetrator of the bombing, to death by lethal injection. Considering the way thousands across the nation intently followed on Twitter and television the massive manhunt launched by various law enforcement agencies after the bombs first went off, it was only natural that just as many would take to the Internet or media to announce their take on the verdict. Conservative Internet personality and once-in-a-blue-moon funny guy Steven Crowder took to Twitter to declare "If you don't think Tsarnaev deserves death, you're a pansy and beyond all hope," while Greg Gutfeld, host of Red Eye on Fox News and a generally-more funny guy, said "eat it, fans of #tsarnaev" and left it at that. However, it wasn't just conservatives howling for the bomber's blood. Recently-confirmed Attorney General Loretta Lynch stated that "the ultimate penalty is a fitting punishment for this horrific crime," a somewhat shocking statement from someone demonized/praised by Republicans/liberals as ultra-progressive, although perhaps no more shocking than the fact that her predecessor, the allegedly-equally-ultra-progressive Eric Holder, pushed for the death penalty in the first place. Leave it to death to create that sense of bipartisanship that we as a country so desperately need. Maybe John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi could put aside their differences and watch the execution together, live blogging it all the while for their loyal constituents. What a major achievement that would be for the American political system. All that being said, regardless of how popular across the political spectrum killing convicted criminals is, is it as "fitting" a punishment as Attorney General Lynch would have us believe? I would argue not.

Now, let's put aside the obscenely-high rate at which people who are sentenced to death are exonerated (in all too many cases, posthumously) and the well-documented fact that capital punishment has no discernible, much less negative, effect on crime rates. Tsarnaev is indisputably guilty of all thirty charges, including the murders of 8-year old Martin Richard and two others and usage of a weapon of mass destruction. Even his attorney, Judy Clarke, did not dispute these facts, which is why Tsarnaev's defense focused on why he was driven to such acts, not whether he committed them or not. "I'm not asking you to excuse him. There are no excuses. I'm not asking you for sympathy," she told the jury, and with good reason. There are no excuses for Tsarnaev's crimes, and he deserves no sympathy either. But by condemning him to death via lethal injection, are we as a society also not committing a crime that would turn a murderer into a victim, and thus, ironically, someone who deserves sympathy? In other words, is it possible, contrary to what Peter Falk says in an episode of The Twilight Zone, to murder a murderer?

As it turns out, many share or are otherwise amenable with this sentiment, with a significant number of them surprisingly being in Boston. According to Yahoo News, "a WBUR poll of Boston residents found that 62 percent of them favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev," a surprising number considering that Boston residents were the primary victims of Tsarnaev's and his brother's acts. No less surprising is the opposition of none other than the late Richard Martin's parents to the death penalty for him. If anyone could be said to deserve the satisfaction of knowing Tsarnaev met an untimely demise, it would be them. Yet they, direct relatives of a child murdered in cold blood by him, have no stomach for it. With this in mind, one can only speculate what sort of person would. 

Of course, it is not fair to cast aspersions on those who support capital punishment. Rather, we should return to the question of whether executing Tsarnaev is an equitable punishment or at least an effective deterrent to similar crimes. In this writer's humble opinion, it is neither. Pumping Tsarnaev full of deadly chemicals, well perhaps cathartic for some, won't bring any of his victims, the people most directly impacted by his actions, back. Nor is it clear that honoring those who had their lives taken by taking the life of the one who took said lives in the first place can be said to be honorable at all. As the saying goes, an eye for an eye makes the world blind. A cliche, yes, but a very insightful one at that. Then there is the matter of whether terrorists in general and Islamic extremists in particular, many of whom believe that Paradise awaits them after they die or otherwise are willing to die for the cause they are fighting for, will be deterred from committing their misdeeds by the threat of state-sanctioned killing. In fact, many might see it as a chance to become a martyr as well as a short-cut to a celestial reward, leading many to jump at this perceived opportunity. If any one doubts this, one only has to look at the thousands of fighters pouring into Syria and Iraq, encouraged by ISIS and other terrorist groups to join them in the chance that they will earn martyrdom at the hands of Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad and the combined airpower of the U.S. and it's allies.

Then there is the question of how people regarded Tsarnaev's acts compared to how they regarded similar acts committed by others. Having killed three and wounded over 200 others, Tsarnaev was rightfully subjected to opprobrium by Americans. Yet just a few months before his sentence was pronounced, many of these same Americans were in thrall to the wartime-turned-celluloid exploits of Chris Kyle, a U.S. Navy sniper who killed over 150 people while on duty in Iraq and, per his own admission, never batted an eye. When writing about whether he was concerned about the possibility that at the very least one of the people he shot didn't deserve to die, Kyle proclaimed, "Every person I killed I strongly believe that they were bad. When I do go face God there is going to be lots of things I will have to account for but killing any of those people is not one of them." The late Chris Kyle wasn't concerned with whether the people he killed were actually threats to the United States or himself; he was staunchly convinced of the threat posed by every single one of them, and reveled in their destruction right up until that fateful trip to the shooting range. In contradistinction, Tsarnaev, widely portrayed and perceived as an amoral extremist indifferent to the mayhem and bloodshed he wreaked, confessed to regretting his acts, at least if Catholic nun and final witness Sister Helen Prejean is to be believed. "He said it emphatically. He said, 'No one deserves to suffer like they did'," she relayed to the court. How strange that a man who killed over a hundred people without regard for their innocence is venerated as a hero in word and film while a man who killed three and subsequently recognized the wrong he did, revealing his potential for redemption, is condemned to a fatal fate. 

Let me be clear: Tsarnaev's guilt is beyond doubt. The offenses he committed are of the gravest nature and punishment is due. Perhaps that means life in prison, as some have suggested, perhaps it means something else, but it should not be death. As former Attorney General and peace activist Ramsey Clark once mused, there is a Latin saying that translates as, "I'm a man - nothing human is alien to me." Tsarnaev, far from being an implacable demon, is a human just like us. A wicked one, yes, but a human nevertheless. As we much as we be tempted to send him to the gas chamber, we must stop and ponder why we're so tempted to do so. Maybe then, we will recognize the impulse in all of us that made it possible for him to plant those bombs on that tragic day. 

Concert Review: They Might Be Giants @ Anaheim House Of Blues 5/02

Going into the Anaheim House of Blues, I had no idea what to expect from They Might Be Giants. I had just eaten the most delicious burger I'd had in a while, but it did nothing to mollify my apprehensions about the concert. Yes, I was already familiar with TMBG, having listened to such old favorites as "Everything Right Is Wrong Again", "Purple Toupee", "Whistling In The Dark", "The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)", and even that damn Malcolm In The Middle song ad nauseam, but these songs were just that: old. 20 years and 13 albums later, what should I have expected? Not helping matters was the crowd, which I (rightly) assumed would avail itself of the illicit beverages generously provided by the bar staff. I am a fan of neither crowds nor alcohol, so I naturally found myself worried that what George Carlin (un)affectionately referred to as the "House of Lame White Motherfuckers" might erupt into some disturbance or another. As it turned out, of course, these apprehensions of mine could not be more overwrought. They Might Be Giants were great and the show was, contrary to what Retired Animatronic Abraham Lincoln said via telephone to John Linnell mid-performance, not at all "like Gitmo".

No, any place with close proximity to Disneyland, great burgers (well, non-intravenously-fed ones anyway) and TMBG is about as far as you can get from Gitmo. It's not even close to being as much a "House of Lame White Motherfuckers" as George Carlin made it out to be. If anything, it was a "House of Tall White Motherfuckers" that night, as I discovered when I struggled to look over the heads of chiseled white dudes blocking my view, although the crowd was hardly made up solely of those. Indeed, the audience was a fairly diverse bunch, with lanky hipsters, older folks, presumably veteran TMBG fans, and brown-skinned 20-somethings like myself all turning out that night for the musical stylings of John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the singing, songwriting and creative core of They Might Be Giants, more than ably backed by Dan Miller on guitar, Danny Weinkauf on bass, and Marty Beller on drums. It was a pretty hip crowd, at least as far as I could ascertain. I guess you have to be to some degree to like They Might Be Giants, who at their most elementary level are the alternative of alternative rock. As far as I'm concerned, they have even transcended that overdone, over-saturated genre and become pioneers and patron saints of dork-rock (the only other contenders being Devo and Weird Al Yankovic). Marrying absurd, even childish lyrics to impossibly catchy melodies since 1982, TMBG are an unstoppable, alt-alt-rock powerhouse, dishing out short-but-sweet tune after short-but-sweet tune and leaving listeners begging for more, as one could easily see that night.

The band got off to an energetic start, playing fast-paced, up-beat numbers like the more recent "The Mesopotamians". A slightly melancholy tale about a rock band struggling and failing to gain recognition, the song features a simple-but-brilliant chorus that has John Linnell belt out names we haven't heard since junior high social studies like Sargon, Hammurabi and Gilgamesh over Dan Miller's vibrant guitar riffs and Marty Beller's snare drum and cymbals. Whether the song is autobiographical in any shape or form or just another nonsensical story like the ones so frequently cooked up by the Johns was, it seemed, not remotely of interest to the audience, who enthusiastically rocked along to Beller's beat. This was especially impressive, as it seemed many, including myself, were not familiar with "The Mesopotamians". If anything, it assuaged any misguided fears (like the ones I held) that TMBG had lost either their touch or that quintessential quirkiness that only they could make palatable to young adults across multiple generations.

This celebration of silliness continued with the next song, introduced by John L. as the "most honest song they had ever done." "Like that Roberta Flack song," John Flansburgh added, referring to "Killing Me Softly", to which John L. retorted "That she didn't write," prompting laughter from the audience. He remained center-stage behind his keyboard as the rest of the band broke into the piece, a lively little (in the literal sense of the word) number. John F. pranced around the stage, squawking all the while into a microphone before John L. joined in with the lyrical portion of the song. The song, "Anaheim (House of Blues)" was a whimsical ode to the venue, praising it as a fun alternative to, among other things, booze, pornography and Death Wish 3. One might think this would be a stretch in the minds of the drunk, the randy, or cheesy 80's movie fans in the audience, but judging by how positively they received the song, many of them really did feel that shelling out the big bucks to see TMBG at the Anaheim House of Blues was worth putting aside alcoholic drinks, skin flicks, and Charles Bronson for one night.

I was completely baffled by the next song, however. It's not that I disliked or didn't recognize it. I enjoyed John F.'s alternatively soothing-and-shrill singing and Dan's strong guitar melody, and I dimly recalled the notes and structure of the song. It's just that I didn't recognize it as a TMBG song. Could this be *gasp* a cover??? Not helping was the fact that when they introduced the song, the audience, animated as ever, drowned them out, leaving me, way in the back of the room, with no chance of hearing what the song was called and who did originally performed it. It was only afterwards that I did some research and discovered that the piece was called "Bills, Bills, Bills" and originally by, of all people, Destiny's Child. Where TMBG got the idea to cover this particular song is beyond me, but I am pleased they did, as John L.'s voice unexpectedly fit the resentful-but-haughty tone of the lyrics and the rest of the band cleverly reinterpreted it as a driven rocker punctuated by John F.'s high-pitched "soooooooo"'s. Don't be surprised if I come away from this review stocking up on Destiny's Child CDs along with some more TMBG ones.

They Might Be Giants in action, or at least what I could see of them.

It wasn't until later in the act that the band played any songs I, along with what seemed like a good chunk of the audience, genuinely recognized. The first of these was "Number Three", from their very first, eponymous album. For this, John F. busted out an acoustic guitar to play the song's folksy-sounding notes and took over lead vocals from John L., who would chime in during the chorus as the sped-up saxophone from the original recording was piped in via speaker. The rest of the band similarly took a backseat in this stripped-down number, with the exception of Marty who provided a steady beat on the bass drum for the song's duration. The next song the crowd immediately recognized, the much, rightfully-ballyhooed "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", wasn't played until the very end of the show's first half. It was an excellent way to end a setlist though, as the infectious vocal harmonies John F. and John L. generated whilst they strummed the guitar and banged the ivories respectively created the hypnotically off-beat sound TMBG are famous for. Topping the performance off was the crescendo near the song's end, as the entire band drew out their individual parts to the most intense possible conclusion, driving the audience wild and concluding the first half of the performance on an impeccably high note.

Following an old novelty-song and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest theme-filled intermission, the band wasted no time kicking it back into high gear with "You're on Fire". Another of their newer songs, I was very familiar with "You're on Fire", as it was my go-to track at UCLA Radio whenever the extension cords weren't working and I had to play something on the CD player in the station. Since we were in possession of a promotional copy of Nanobots, the album on which it was released, I had the opportunity to listen to it many times, so I couldn't help but feeling a sense of nostalgia as John F. and Dan complemented each others' guitars and John L. not-so-ominously intoned that the subject of the song's hair was on fire. It was yet another classic combination of lyrics describing a comically-heightened reality and a unique, up-beat sound like the ones they made so often during their early years. Considering that the last song they played was one of, if not the standard for, such songs, it was very fitting that they opened the second half of the show with one of their latest and most engaging songs. It served as another reminder that They Might Be Giants still had it.

Indeed, they had it so much so that they were confident enough to close the show with one of their numerous children's songs, "Robot Parade". For this piece, TMBG went full-Kraftwerk, with John F.'s vocals being processed through a vocoder and John L. playing a slick electric piano setting on his keyboard. In retrospect, I must confess, I found this section of the concert a little wanting, as the original recording was played at a much lower tempo and only consisted of the vocals and electric piano, giving it a mellow, slightly menacing, sound. With the addition of bass, drums, and guitar, the piece becomes fundamentally changed, taking on a more dynamic character that I take was meant to be more suitable for live performances. This is understandable, if a little unfortunate in my humble opinion. However, they did add a fun new spin to the song's ending. As the normal run of the song came to an end, John F., still stuck in robot-speak, asked the crowd to join him in creating the world's first "human theremin". Instructing us to raise our voices in the way a theremin raises it's pitch, he sought to literally end the show on a high note. We tried, starting out low before many tapered out, causing John F. to stop, dress us down, and urge us to try again, maintaining that Borg cadence all the while. So once again, we began at the lowest possible note before slowly raising our voice. I lasted only a couple seconds before my voice gave out, but the rest of the crowd did a fair job in reaching that elusively high note. Following this, the band wrapped up, bowed to the audience, and walked off-stage.

As you might have guessed, they weren't getting off so easily. The crowd, intoxicated both figuratively and literally, demanded an encore. "Birdhouse In Your Soul" seemed to be the choice of many, and with good reason, although I think I would have preferred "Shoehorn With Teeth" or "O Do Not Forsake Me". Sure enough, the band came back out, much to the audience's joy. That joy seemed to evaporate though, when they began transitioning between the many constituent portions of "Fingertips", an oldie made at a time when "shuffle" was a novel concept and thus an attempt to exploit the myriad possibilities it offered. This sense of novelty and experimentation was apparently lost on the audience, who from what I gathered assumed it was a medley and struggled valiantly to keep up with the various transitions. One tall, impressively-mustachioed young man wearing Woody Allen glasses a couple rows ahead of me did his best to sing along and groove to each part, earnestly trying to get his female companion, short and still, into it. As far as I could tell, he didn't have any luck. After this epic act of trollery, the band got up and left the stage again, and before you could say "Please pass the milk please", the crowd resumed begging for "Birdhouse". This went on for a while, with it really seeming like a possibility that the audience would leave the House of Blues pissed that they didn't get to hear "Birdhouse". But at the last possible second, TMBG returned a second time, and yes, they played "Birdhouse". It was a spectacular send-off, thanks in no small-part to John L.'s mellifluous organ melody, John F.'s forceful guitar solo, and Marty's purposeful drumming. After the last few notes finally rang out, I stuck around and, like many, managed to not only get one of the many TMBG stickers passed out by John F. and Marty, but also get it signed by Marty as well. He was a real trooper, signing stickers and taking pictures with fans well after the show ended. Upon leaving, I found myself not apprehensive, but certain. Certain that not only was They Might Be Giants as fresh as they were 25 years ago, but they were absolutely worth seeing live, perhaps even a second time if one got the chance.

My sticker, generously signed by Marty Beller. Now to get the Johns!

Book Review: F.A. Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom"

My third article for HonorSociety.org has been published, and boy am I proud of it! I reviewed Friedrich Hayek's "The Road To Serfdom", making this my first book review ever. In retrospect, I wish I had touched more heavily upon the similarities between the Western socialist left and the fascist right Hayek observes and analyzes, which it seems I neglected in favor of highlighting the commonalities between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but overall I am happy with how this piece turned out. Let's hope that my next such review is as good as this one (or for that matter, that you think it's as good as I do!) The original article can be accessed here, and the text is reproduced below.

                                                                          Book Review: F.A. Hayek's The Road To Serfdom

For a topical work published some 70 years ago, Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom still manages to inform American political discourse. This could be either due to the book's ability to articulate and defend it's central thesis, or it may be due to noteworthy/notorious figures like former Fox News darling Glenn Beck who eagerly latched onto it and promoted said book and said thesis, usually butchering Hayek's analysis of socialism, totalitarianism, and central planning into something more closely resembling National Review Online writer Jonah Goldberg's essentially ad hominem characterization of modern day progressives, budding college Democrats, and organic food-eating hipsters as advocates of something he dubs "liberal fascism". Ironically, that phrase would likely have made Hayek clasp his forehead in exasperation, considering the lengths to which he tries to not only make known the original meaning and tenets of liberalism, but to make the case for them as well. This meaning and these tenets, it cannot be stressed enough, are not what either Beck and Goldberg or the aforementioned young Democrats and Whole Foods hipsters probably imagine them to be. 

Liberalism, as envisioned by Hayek, is a system in which the government interferes in both the social and economic spheres of life only when absolutely necessary (such as enforcing minimum living standards and in times of war). This definition, however, has practically been inverted, as he notes in the foreword to the 1956 paperback edition. "In current American usage, it [liberalism] often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control," (pg. 45), he laments, as he would continue to do so if he were here to see the lasting perception of liberalism as pro-government intervention. Strangely, this particular insight of Hayek's has not been the recipient of exposure, much less praise, by his supposed ideological bedfellows (i.e. Beck, Goldberg, et al.), even though on the face of it this statement would help make their point. This is because they either, like the muddleheaded liberty lovers Hayek woefully mentions, do not understand liberalism, or do not understand it's enemies, whom are the architects of the titular Road To Serfdom and thus the main subject of the book's analysis. 

That subject is socialism, another widely-thrown around yet largely-misunderstood word. Today, when it is par for the course to hear right-wing shock jocks rail against “liberal socialists” when they aren’t ranting about “liberal fascism”, this might come as a blinding revelation to readers on both sides of the political spectrum. But for Hayek, it was a given. As the Allies made common cause with Soviet communism against German and Italian fascism, he couldn’t help but noticing the elements common to both the West’s totalitarian enemies and it’s temporary totalitarian ally. The rhetoric and justifications were different, as misguided liberals (used in the current, incorrect sense of the word) and outright apologists for either system are eager to point out, but in Hayek’s opinion (as well as this writer’s), the similarities between the leader-driven nationalism of Hitler’s Germany and the left-wing paternalism of Stalin’s Russia, to say nothing of those between the gulag and concentration camps, the NKVD and the Gestapo, or any number of illiberal aspects of the two, far outweighed any differences in ideology or political theory between the two regimes. It is for this reason that Hayek dedicates this book “To the socialists of all parties,” a statement that might make modern readers scratch their heads until they realize that socialism can arguably be a phenomenon of the right just as much as the left.

This is not, of course, to imply that every socialist is a bloodthirsty megalomaniac bent on subduing humanity. On the contrary, Hayek observes that many of his contemporaries sympathetic to socialism earnestly believed that there would be room for liberty and individuality in the centrally-planned, economically-egalitarian society they hoped to build. What these self-proclaimed “liberal socialists” failed to take into account, he contends, is that enforced equality and unencumbered liberty are directly at odds with each other, writing “The economic freedom which is the perquisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promise us and which be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of the choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right,” (pg. 133). In short, a free-market economy is conducive to individual liberty and freedom, while a command economy, with it’s directives and goals, inevitably comes into conflict with those who do not agree with, say, a particular allocation of resources. Perhaps if this was the full extent of the inconveniences of socialism, it wouldn’t be as unfavorably viewed as it is by many, and Hayek wouldn’t have felt the need to write this book in the first place. The thing is though, this isn’t the full extent of it’s inconveniences. In fact, it is the first stop on the long, winding road to serfdom, and it gets worse from here on out.

As the demands of the state grow, so do the chances of it’s citizens expressing opposition to them. At first, only the wealthy or other marginal (whether in the numerical or social sense) groups are going to be the only ones directly affected by it’s edicts, but when these edicts fail to create the utopia spoken of by supporters of central planning, the average citizen is liable to find their liberties curtailed as the sacrifices required of them by the government increase. This might take the form of banning of speech that opposes or otherwise criticizes government initiatives like an inefficient public works program or government initiative, incorrectly blaming low enthusiasm on the part of citizens for it’s failures instead of structural defects within the program or initiative in question. As time goes on, this might metastasize into banning speech critical of the leader or ruling party’s policies in general. It may even rise to the curtailing of speech critical of the leader or ruling party period and woe betide anyone who ignores these restrictions. Scenarios similar to this one unfolded in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia, and it is this gradual, often-unintended sequence of events that Hayek seeks to warn readers of. The high-minded intentions of the system’s original proponents fade into irrelevance as some, upon seeing the costs of their revolutionary project, abandon and disavow it while the ones who still believe in their vision double down and pursue it all the more zealously, without regard to the amount of blood shed and treasure wasted. To these remaining few, no cost is too high, and anyone who stands in their way and is subsequently killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed is collateral damage. This is because, as Hayek asserts, “From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential and unavoidable consequence of this basic premise, and the collectivist can admit this and at the same time claim that his system is superior to one in which the ‘selfish’ interests of the individual are allowed to obstruct the full realization of the ends the community pursues,” (pg. 168). The inhuman horror of Auschwitz, the mindless terror of the Great Purge, this is where one finds themselves after reaching the end of the road to serfdom.

Unfortunately, as was the case when the book first came out, many will dismiss Hayek’s warnings as overstated, expressing the unfathomably naive and equally ahistorical sentiment that “It can’t happen here”. They may very well attribute the killing and destruction of the 20th Century totalitarian regimes to alleged innate traits of the peoples who were subject to them. The Germans, for example, were commonly said during and after the war and in some quarters still are said to be a militaristic people almost biologically inclined to genocidal anti-Semitism. Such absurd explanations for the excesses of National Socialism ignore that anti-Semitism existed in countries like Britain and France long before the Germans even organized themselves into a nation-state. Indeed, Hayek reminds readers that, “There are many features which were then regarded as ‘typically German’ and which are now equally familiar in England, for instance, and many symptoms that point to a further development in the same direction. We have already mentioned the most significant - the increasing similarity between the economic views of the Right and Left and their common opposition to the liberalism that used to be the common basis of most English politics,” (pg. 193). Hayek’s point is that the primary factor in it being Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust rather than Englishmen was not the blood and genes they possessed, but the ideas and values they held. Ideas and values that, Hayek warily observes, had their basis in seemingly-unrelated ideologies gaining currency among well-meaning people at the time in Britain and by extension, the United States. Some might even make the case that it has happened here, as anyone who has seen black and white pictures of helpless Lakota Indians gunned down by the U.S. Calvary at Wounded Knee and innocent Japanese-Americans driven away in trucks and confined behind barbed wire fences, colored photos of American soldiers rounding up Vietnamese women at My Lai before massacring them and National Guardsmen firing upon student protestors at Kent State, or live footage of the FBI ramming a tank into the doomed Branch Davidian compound at Waco and a South Carolina policeman shooting an unarmed Walter Scott as he fled in terror, in the back and in cold blood, might tell you. Incidents like these and the larger forces they represent should serve as a reminder that we too are susceptible to the authoritarian, even murderous impulses that Hayek described, and all the more reason for us to remain vigilant and resist them.

“The Road To Serfdom”, it must be said, falls short in some areas, although none that irreparably harm the work. An Austrian academic (an economist no less), Hayek’s manner of writing can be dry at times, possibly requiring readers to reread certain passages after having attempted to read them once only to zone out after being overwhelmed by the staleness of the often-theoretical text. Readers may also find themselves confused by references to figures and organizations active at the time of Hayek’s writing but now lost to mainstream historical memory. Regarding the views Hayek espouses in the book, he at least on one occasion finds himself guilty of doing what he accuses his ideological adversaries of. While mockingly claiming that advocates of central planning don’t know exactly what it is they are planning, just that they are planning and thus feel they are accomplishing something, Hayek, when defending his views from charges of being simply “laissez-faire” (pg. 118), says that he supports government action in certain areas, such as “security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all; and, second, the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person enjoys compared with others; or, as we may put it briefly, the security of a minimum income and the security of the particular income a person is thought to deserve,” (pg. 148). He does not explain what he considers to be an acceptable “minimum of sustenance”, nor does he identify a suitable minimum income, committing the same fallacy he accuses socialists of. However, these shortcomings do not damage the book as a whole. The prose may be clinical, but the ideas and sentiments it conveys are intellectually stimulating and at times outright exciting, and the definitive edition of the book put out by The University of Chicago Press and edited by Bruce Caldwell helpfully adds footnotes that identify now-obscure references. Hayek’s defense of his own ideas may need some fine-tuning (as he surely did over the course of his long career), but as the book is primarily a blistering polemic against the ideas of others, it does not undermine his main point.

If you are interested in politics or history, you will more than likely enjoy Hayek’s landmark work. Those who it is aimed against (that is, progressives and authoritarian right-wingers) may find themselves frustrated or even enraged by Hayek’s contentions. There is also the chance that they might find themselves exposed to an interesting perspective they weren’t privy to before. Some might even come away from reading it as die-hard libertarians, as many who identify as such will attest to. However you receive it, The Road To Serfdom will be the source of much food for thought or at the very least an engaging, new topic to argue about at the dinner table.