Ask a Libertarian: "Why is it that I agree w/ your politics, but find the lot of you to be smarmy prigs?" #2

Welcome to Ask a Libertarian with Reason's Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. They are the authors of the new book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America.

Go to http://declaration2011.com to purchase, read reviews, find event dates, and more.

On June 15, 2011 Gillespie and Welch used short, rapid-fire videos to answer dozens of reader questions submitted via email, Twitter, Facebook, and Reason.com. In this episode, they answer the question:

"Why is it that I agree w/ your politics, but find the lot of you to be smarmy prigs?"

For the complete series, go to http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/10/ask-a-libertarian and Reason.tv's YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/reasontv

Produced by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, Josh Swain, with help from Katie Hooks, Kyle Blaine and Jack Gillespie.

Comments

[Name Nomad]

As a smarmy libertine, I take great exception to this question!

[Joe M]

Guess I'll have to watch all these videos tonight at home.

[rts]

It isn't smarminess, it's the quiet contentment of knowing you're right.

See also: atheism.

[SugarFree]

Maybe being fractionally enslaved has a detrimental effect on our attitude.

[Brett L]

Not being British/Britophile, we aren't bred to it.

[SugarFree]

That's why the answer to the whine "Why aren't we more like Europe?" should always be "Because we fought two wars in order not to be."

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

Damn right! If we hadn't won those wars, we'd be speaking English here today!

[Dagny T.]

Glad I wasn't the only one who could smell the Brit a mile away. I say! The lot of you are churlish cads. Pip pip, cheerio old chum.

[SugarFree]

That's why you fled, isn't it? The lingering stench of Anglophilia.

[Dagny T.]

The further I get from the Commonwealth, the less self-loathing I feel. If I could force myself to call my mother mom instead of mum, the transformation would be complete.

[Brett L]

So you've stopped with the 'hoose', eh?

[rts]

Everyone is fractionally enslaved. It's *knowing* that we're fractionally enslaved that affects our attitude.

[SugarFree]

Whatever, you godless heathen.

[Triumph]

TEAM RED and TEAM BLUE partisans **aren't** smarmy prigs? Take a bow, David Brooks and Paul Krugman.

[alan]

Last week Brooksie had a column on the moral turpitude of modern politicians compared to the statesmen of olde. From a guy who calls himself a Hamiltonian that is just bizarre.

[Joe R.]

I find this question to be ironic, considering that liberals and conservatives tend to think they know what's best for you, and vote to force you to do it. Who's smarmy, again?

[P Brooks]

Nothing says, "Smarmy prig" like LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!!

"Durst thou repudiate your just and lawful rulers, you swinish ingrate?"

[Lord Humungus]

that's my motto. Leave. Me. Alone.

[Smarmy Libertarian]

Because we're right and we know it, but we can't do much politically about it, so we may as well enjoy being right.

[alan]

Without the massive bribery committed with other people's money do you really think Demwits and Rethugs would get anywhere with the electorate? Come on. Give me a Goddamn, motherfucking break. If your political philosophy begins with the principle of not bribing people with other people's money then electoral success only occurs at the point when the cost of that bribery committed by the criminals who have been electorally successful finally spills over to have a negative effect on the quality of life of those receiving the bribes. That is why there has been some recent success because that point has been reached. We only win when principle becomes practical due to the systemic failure caused by the excesses of the malfeasant parties, politicians and Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class Public Services Leech. Frankly, I'm fine with that.

[Fist of Etiquette]

This question could have been submitted by any number of your various contributors' blog readers/commenters.

[Sudden]

Epi came to mind almost immediately. And smarmy is the highest compliment I can dole out.

[R C Dean]

When I think "smarmy prig", I think (in descending order) (1) Nanny State Progressives (2) SoCon theocrats. Do-what-thou-wilt libertarians don't make the list.

[Sudden]

You forgot NeoCons telling darker peoples how to live. But the central thesis is accurate.

Although we sometimes are a bit smarmy, but I think that is likely a feature of any disenfranchised uber-minority in the American political context.

[Knutsack]

I don't think NeoCons are the only ones telling darker peoples how to live.

[JW]

Maybe libertarians wouldn't be smarmy if we didn't get sick of being so right all the fucking time, after listening to platoons of fucktwaddle statists who keep telling us how nuts we are.

I'll bet even Cassandra copped an attitude after a while.

[Smarmy Prig]

What, you gotta prollem widdat?

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

I find the modern progressive liberal to the most smarmiest, priggiest of the lot. The modern progressive is smugly secure in the knowledge that he is smarter than everyone else, and anyone who does not agree with his vision of what society should be is simply an inbred, uneducated troglodyte. And it is his mission to pull that person into the light and show him what is right and pure and good, and impose upon him this vision for a better society, whether he wants it or not, because, after all, it is for his own good. And if he doesn't want it or doesn't like it, well that's just too fucking bad, because, after all, it is the progressive vision, and therefore it is inherently superior and correct above all others.

[Aresen]

"inbred, uneducated troglodyte"

I'm considering making that my username.

[Doctor Whom]

Dear statists: Why is it that your politics are based purely on appeals to your own emotions and I find the lot of you to be smarmy prigs?

[wylie]

Didn't BSR just cover this question, you inbred, uneducated troglodyte.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Some prigs are more equal than others.

[alan]

Of course, when the mainstream types call us 'smarmy', what they really mean is 'uppity.'

[Otter]

!!!

[GILMORE]

My first response to the question was something like, "Aw, wittle baby wants a cookie? Here's a whole box of the Tell Someone Who Gives A Shit brand. Maybe you should stop reading REASON and subscribe to JUVENILE PATHIC EMOTIONALY NEEDY DEMANDING GROUP APPROVAL-Monthly"

...then I was like, 'whoa, dude... *you really are* kind of a dick'

I think the issue is, most people who are libertarianish by natural instinct (as opposed to eventually coming to it by process of gradual Dumb-Idea-Elimination and/or heavy drug use) are simply not Team Joiners, and tend to be more iconoclastic and not-exactly-concerned with what other people think about them. There's that old saying (*which I never liked), "you can be right, or you can be happy"; and the implication of the 'happy' there (my interpretation) is that 'happy' requires compromising with others... or just 'going along to get along'...etc. Which I don't think people who are already "Independents" are particularly inclined to do.

I, like others, can't WTFV @ work, and will find out the *real* answer is later tonight i suppose...

[Somalian Road Corporation]

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." --Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 1848

Usually I find the "smarmy prig"-type accusations come from those who are offended that their sacred wealth redistribution cows are being gored--see that other Bastiat quote I roll out all the time about socialists being incapable of perceiving the difference between society and government.

Or the Gawker media demographic ranting about the lack of decorum from those damned right-wingers and their dangerous rhetoric between reading articles with such charmingly civil titles like "Tea Party Morons Won't Let Go of the Gold Standard".