They Do Not Move.

I should be polishing an essay right now, or maybe boozing under the D.C. police radar with fellow libertarians at screen on the green. Just because it’s state-sponsored doesn’t mean we won’t go; we’re paying for it anyway, so might as well (and if we can break some bad laws or commit victimless crimes while we’re at it, all the better).

But I’m here at home, scrolling through Lee Siegel posts and reports about Israel and wondering how quickly my neocon sympathies will dissipate, because that is what young nerds in D.C. do after work. It’s also more or less what we do at work, though at the office I wear slacks and can wander through the hallways and in an and out of offices bugging my coworkers saying things like, “So, what do you think the difference is between Randians and libertarians?” or “Did you see The Descent?” Both questions will inevitably end up in some sort of discussion of ideology, and all involved will conclude that the state can’t solve anything, and who needs another cup of coffee? I always need more coffee. Because I am an addict (a victimless crime if there ever was one).

Monday mornings at the office everyone always says how was your weekend and we share tidbits on what movies we saw, concerts we attended, books we read, parties we went to or skipped, drinks we tried, members of the opposite sex we chatted up, editorials we read in the Post, ideas for books and essays we had that maybe someday we should pitch to such and such and do you know anyone at--? No, but you should talk to _______, who does. Did you see that there’s chocolate cake in the break room? Better eat it quick before the nanny state bans sugar and all other forms of pleasure. Oh, that's funny (and maybe true?).

More to the point, Dougherty says that Joe Francis' unhinged lewd behavior makes his brain play the word libertarian on repeat—it’s not my favorite track, it just got stuck, he protests—and so maybe, sure, this is what anarchic freedom gets you in a secular, pluralistic, sexually “free” society like we have today. But I don’t need to remind Dougherty that Francis’ crudeness isn’t a result of a dominant libertarianism in government, because that’s not something we’ve had. Maybe this is just my ideology talking (now I fear the wrath of Larison!), but it seems to me that lifestyle libertarianism is apt to be more dominant in a society with a powerful state; the more power you give to a monopolistic secular authority like the government, the more secular your society will become. Francis may represents libertarianism’s ugliest tendencies, but his cultural eminence has only risen under a powerful, secular state (what theocracy?). Like I said, all conversations eventually devolve into talk of ideology. In my college playwriting class, we would’ve talked about this in terms of a character’s “core beliefs,” as he or she attempts to “resolve tensions” within their belief system. I haven’t even posted this yet and Larison has already typed 2,300 words in response.

Of course I’m not naïve enough to believe that a libertarian society would be one that good Catholic boys like Dougherty and Douthat necessarily consider “virtuous.” But it would be one in which events of consequence would actually have consequences, and in which events that genuinely were of no consequence—or of little enough consequence that they were worth the cost and/or risk—would flourish. It’s called a market, kids. It’s called ideology, which means it’s always someone else’s fault. I’m getting another cup of coffee.