Why Aren’t Our Views Mainstream?
Over at Against the State, Brewrunner describes a situation that, at least in form if not content, both libertarians and anarchists shouldn’t find so unfamiliar.
“I recently forwarded a link containing clips of Ron Paul from the first Republican debate to a friend of mine. He in turn forwarded the same email on to his step father with a bit of his own words in the body. He stated that the ideas that Ron Paul put forth were simple, logical, and made about as much sense as anything that he had heard coming out of a politician’s mouth.
My friends step father responded to the email with one point. The response simply stated that if Ron Paul’s ideas made so much sense, then why do the majority of our fellow Americans not agree?”
Let’s temporarily leave aside, for purposes of discussion, ones differences with Ron Paul and use him as an imprecise proxy for pro-freedom viewpoints generally.
Libertarian ideas are simple, logical, and make more sense than anything else that typically comes out of a politicians mouth. Of course, libertarian ideas are not in the mainstream but it would be wrong to imply that since they are not in the mainstream, they can not be simple, logical and sensible. The makeup of what constitutes “mainstream” ideas is not solely determined by simplicity, logic or sensibility — but also by in-depth exposure and peer affirmation.
While the holders of mainstream opinions may themselves be otherwise logical and sensible people, they form their opinions based on the information they receive. The information that they receive, in turn, has for decades been largely determined by state-allied corporate mass media gatekeepers. Form a synthesis of Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” and Gabriel Kolko’s “The Triumph of Conservatism” and you’ll have a very sophisticated media analysis framework that explains a lot about the popularity of statism. The good news is that the internet is quickly (on a socio-political time scale) allowing more and more circumvention of the mass media — and we see a corresponding rise in the popularity of libertarian and anarchist ideas as more and more people get exposed to them. To answer the step-father imprecisely: “Why do the majority of our fellow Americans not agree? With time, they will.”
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