Whadya Gonna Do About Beantown, Mr. Barnicle?
I refer to Mike Barnicle’s now-famous gotcha question of the clueless alleged libertarian candidate Gary Johnson on Morning Joe the other day: “what are you going to do about Aleppo [Syria]” To cut to the chase, I could just as well ask Mr. Barnicle what he’s going to do about Mr Barnicle. I just finished Albert Jay Nock’s brilliant book, Our Enemy the State. This is a book you probably never heard of but should have read in high school. Nock, a radical antistatist, wrote:
“The only thing [a person] can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit. . . . ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individualist method which Jesus apparently regarded as the only one whereby the kingdom of Heaven can be established as a going concern; that is, the method of each one doing his very best to improve one.” change in Syria and have helped arm the rebels there. This policy encouraged the rebels’ efforts to overthrow the Assad regime. Anyone who has studied the bloody history of Syria knows that the Alawite supporters of Assad will not give up power without a fight. Hence, the very predictable and bloody civil war.
The obvious import of Barnicle’s question is that the Unites States should now do something to stop the civil war it helped create. This is classic progressive “thinking”: government action will fix the problems caused by the previous state blunders.
The truth is, progressives like Barnicle and Hillary don’t have a clue what to do about Aleppo. They can’t even fix what’s wrong with America, with Boston, with Buffalo or with Chicago. Progressives should stop trying to improve the world with their unique formula of invincible ignorance and the brute force of the state. Instead, consider Nock’s sublime advice and try to present the world with just one improved unit, you!
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
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