Ronald Reagan had a guaranteed applause line in many of his speeches. He would say, “Government is not the solution; government is the problem,” and people would applaud, “Yea, Ronnie, way to go!” I imagine this little scenario that I play in my head now and then. There’s a flood that hits a place in, let’s say, the south. A guy is perched on the roof of his house, water all around, when up comes a rowboat, being rowed by a Federal Emergency Management Agency worker. The FEMA worker comes up to the guy on the roof of his house and says, “Hey, buddy, you’re in a bad way.” The guy says, “Yeah, come give me a hand.” The FEMA worker says, “Just a minute, I want to ask you a question first. Ronald Reagan used to say, ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’ What’d you think of that?”
“Oh, that’s great! Ronnie was right! Right on, Ronnie, I love that! ‘Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.’” Then the FEMA worker rows away, saying, “OK, good luck to you, buddy! Take it easy. See ya!” Now I don’t really want that to happen, but it just reminds me that, when it comes to government help, some of us are schizophrenic. Many people don’t want the government to be very large at all, but when they’re in need, they want the government to help. I think I’ve figured out the way people feel. If I’m in need and the government helps me, well, the government’s just the right size. But if you’re in need and the government helps you, the government’s too big!
I found out in researching this sermon that the government is the largest employer in the country. It employs 2.3 percent of the work force. That makes sense when you think about it – when you think of all the military people and postal workers and teachers and everybody – that the government would be the largest employer. Some people have a problem with that though. They have a problem with the government employing people.
At the recent Republican Presidential Candidates’ Debate, sponsored by CNN and the Tea Party, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked a question of Ron Paul, a Libertarian, about a hypothetical 30-year-old guy. Now, as you probably know, when you’re thirty years old you think you’ve got the world by the tail. You’re going to live forever. You’re going to be healthy forever. You’re going to have your job forever. So Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about this 30 year old, who, because he felt so healthy, decided not to buy health insurance. But then the guy gets catastrophically ill. He has to go in the hospital for six months. Wolf Blitzer asked, “What should happen with that guy? Who should pay for it?”
Ron Paul said, “Well, that’s what freedom’s all about.” The crowd went wild, “Yea!” Then Wolf Blitzer asked the question heard ‘round the world, “Should the guy be allowed to die?” And a couple members of the audience, presumably Tea Party members, yelled out, “Yeah!” I don’t know about you, if you watched that, I watched it and kind of cringed. I imagine some people gasped. Some people probably said, “Who are these people?” Tea Party members, as I understand it, are mostly made up of Republicans and many of them are Libertarians.
Libertarianism has been around for hundreds of years. It used to be called “anarchy.” But then people said, “Well, it’s about liberty,” so they became Libertarians. Libertarians believe in a limited government and unlimited personal freedom. They don’t want the government telling them what to do. They want to be able to do whatever they want to do, and while Libertarianism as I understand it runs a spectrum of different beliefs, most of the Libertarians think that the government should only pay for the military to protect us and then we’re kind of all on our own. We can hire our own security guards, I guess, and take care of ourselves and pay for our own health care, do everything on our own.
There are many famous people who are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. Drew Carey, the host of The Price is Right, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. Penn Jillette, the speaking half of the magical duo, Penn and Teller, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings. John Larroquette, the Night Court actor and an actor in many other things, is said to be a Libertarian or have Libertarian leanings.
Believe it or not, I am a Libertarian, at least when it comes to some issues. I’m a Libertarian when it comes to same sex marriage. I don’t think the government should tell two adults in love, even if they’re the same sex, that they can’t get married. That should be up to the two people involved.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to drugs. I don’t think the government should be in the drug enforcement business. Haven’t we learned anything from Prohibition? Prohibition is a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. I saw him interviewed a few weeks ago by John Stewart on The Daily Show. He said that before Prohibition alcohol wasn’t that big of a deal to people. They drank some, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Once Prohibition hit, then people said, “I’m not going to let the government tell me I can’t drink! I think I’ll put a still in my back yard.” Then after Prohibition people kept on drinking. I don’t think the government should tell people they can’t grow a marijuana plant in their backyard. I certainly don’t think that some college kid should be shot by mistake by drug enforcement officers because he’s suspected of selling a little marijuana to college students as happened two years or so ago in West Michigan. Now I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of a big druggie. Or even a little druggie. I am almost embarrassed to admit I’ve never tried marijuana. I had the opportunity in high school and college, but I didn’t do it, I think, because I believed the propaganda films they showed us when we were kids that said it killed brain cells. I was smart enough to know that I didn’t have any brain cells to spare. Now if you think that my position is radical, then you must think that the late conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. was a radical, because he believed in drug decriminalization.
I’m also a Libertarian when it comes to capital punishment. I don’t think the government should have the right to kill someone, to execute criminals. I wish Timothy McVeigh had lived out his days in a prison cell, surrounded by pictures of all his victims in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, so that every morning he would wake up and see pictures of his victims, including many children, because I’m in the redemption business, the transformation business. I would’ve hoped that one day Timothy McVeigh would wake up and go, “My goodness, what have I done?” But instead the government killed him. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think the government should be in the execution business.
I’m a Libertarian when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. I don’t think the government should tell a woman what she can do with her body. I think there’s nobody better to decide what’s best for her health than the woman herself in consultation with her doctor. Certainly she’s better able to decide that than some bureaucrat or politician in Lansing, or some bureaucrat or politician in Washington, or members of the U.S. Supreme Court. If the government can tell a woman that she can’t have an abortion, then the government can tell a woman that she has to have an abortion, as they reportedly do in China. So I’m a Libertarian when it comes to that as well.
Ayn Rand is considered the godmother of Libertarians. Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant. Presumably, she was a legal immigrant. She came to this country in the early 1900s and went to Hollywood where she was a Hollywood screenwriter. She was a writer of novels and a philosopher. She wrote Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, in which she detailed her philosophy. She said that people should be able to decide for themselves what they do and not depend on a nanny state, not depend on the government to help them out. People should be rugged individualists. Libertarians like Ron Paul liked her so much that he named his son Rand, Rand Paul, who is now a U.S. Senator. Ayn Rand’s philosophy is said to be rational egoism as opposed to ethical altruism: Everybody taking care of themselves and not worrying about anybody else, which I think I’d call rational selfishness as opposed to ethical selflessness.
Now I think many Libertarians would consider themselves Christians, although Ayn Rand was an atheist. It seems to me that many Tea Party members are Libertarians or have Libertarian leanings. For the life of me, I can’t reconcile Libertarianism and Christianity. It seems to me they are diametrically opposed to one another. Now I suppose somebody could be a Libertarian and be a traditional Christian and say, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” but that’s it. But I don’t know how you could be a Libertarian and a follower of Jesus, somebody who believes that you should house the homeless and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and help your neighbor. If you’re a Libertarian, your neighbors should take care of themselves. Perhaps the Christian ideas about ethical altruism are best described by James, the brother of Jesus. James said, If someone comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t say to them, “Well, peace be with you. Have a good day. Be on your way.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry, you can’t use the wonderful line that Garrison Keillor uses at the end of the Writer’s Almanac, “Be well, do good work and keep in touch.” You can’t do that. If somebody comes up to you naked and hungry you can’t give them a religious tract and say, “This will clothe your soul and this will feed your spirit.” You actually have to help them if you can. You have to clothe them if they’re naked and feed them if they’re hungry, according to James, who said, “Faith without works is dead.”
Elizabeth Warren speaks to this somewhat. She’s a law professor at Harvard; she’s a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. She said in a campaign gathering a month or two ago that nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. If you built a factory and make a lot of money, good for you. But you send your goods to market on roads that all of us paid for. You hired workers that all of us paid to educate. You are protected by police and fire departments that the rest of us paid for. Elizabeth Warren says that nobody does this on their own. If you made a lot of money, fine, keep a big hunk of it. But also, as part of the social contract that we all should live by, you need to pay part of that forward for the kids coming up in the next generation. In other words, we all need to pay our fair share of taxes. The factory owners, they need to pay their fair share. Libertarians have a hard time hearing that, or at least they have a hard time accepting it.
Also at that Tea Party/CNN sponsored debate, a young man stood up and asked a question. I think it was kind of a smart-alecky question. He was maybe 30 years old. He said, “How much of the money that I make should the government allow me to keep?” Cute. But that was the wrong question. He should have asked, “How much of the money that I make should I gladly pay in taxes to live in – what I have to believe he believes is – the greatest country on the face of the earth? How much should he make and gladly pay in taxes for the privilege of living in a free-market capitalist democratic country that allowed him to make that money? How much should he gladly pay in taxes from what he makes to live in freedom and liberty? Those are the questions he should have asked.
I get a little sick and tired of people who complain about paying taxes. Not that I don’t do that around April 15 myself. I really shouldn’t, though. But whether you pay 10 or 15 or 25 or 36 or 39 percent in taxes, that’s just money. There are thousands of people – our military men and women – who have laid down their lives for this country, who paid the supreme sacrifice, who paid the ultimate tax. They paid 100 percent and they don’t get a refund after April 15. They died for this country. How dare millionaires and billionaires, complain about having to pay 3 percent more in taxes? They should be ashamed of themselves. If a millionaire has to pay 3 percent more in taxes, that’s $30,000 compared to a soldier on the battlefield who laid down their life for this country and who paid the ultimate tax.
It seems to me that today’s Libertarians were born a couple hundred years too late. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago they could have blazed their own trail. They could have created their own path. Instead, Libertarians today have to travel highways that we pay for. If they could have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have killed their own food, and maybe many of them still do. But they could have killed their own meat and known that it was fresh. Instead, I imagine many Libertarians go to the grocery store and they buy meat inspected by the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. government. If they would have been born a couple hundred years ago, they could have been their own weather forecasters. They could have looked out on the horizon and said to themselves, “Red at night, sailor’s delight” or “Red in morning, sailors take warning.” Instead, they’ve got the National Weather Bureau telling them what the weather is. They’ve got the government putting up sirens in towns warning of an oncoming tornado. They’ve got government workers evacuating places in Florida because a hurricane is coming. Libertarians were just born a couple hundred years too late.
Whenever I think of Libertarians, I think of one of my favorite songs ever, by Bill Withers, Lean on Me. Bill Withers sings, “Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” Now there may be some Libertarians who believe in helping their neighbor, doing for others, maybe they don’t want the government to help their neighbor, but they do. But, as I understand Libertarianism – and I understand Libertarianism about as well as I understand Christianity – as I understand Libertarianism it’s not about helping your neighbor. It’s about taking care of yourself and your neighbor taking care of him or herself and then the world will run perfectly. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. One of the Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain, who is a Libertarian or at least has Libertarian leanings, says, “If you’re not rich, it’s nobody’s fault but your own.” That’s Libertarianism in a nutshell, I think. And I think that what we need to be about is selflessness, not selfishness.
Oh, one more thing, I almost forgot. Ayn Rand, who wrote all those books about Libertarianism and taking care of yourself and not relying on the government, she died in 1982. As far as I could tell, after she retired, she collected Social Security and she was on Medicare.
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