Should a Libertarian Accept Government Lockdown Assistance?

In a recent column in The Spectator entitled I have herd immunity, author Lionel Shriver wrote about herself:

I am a type. I don’t like groups. I maintain few memberships. I question and resist authority, especially enforcement of rules for the rules’ sake. I’m leery of orthodoxy. I hold back from shared cultural enthusiasms.

The same is true of me. I believe in the sovereignty of the individual - that every human being has the rights to life and liberty and to pursue their own fulfilment to the fullest extent that is consistent with everyone else enjoying the same rights. I believe the legitimate role of the state is solely the protection of these limited rights.

The Covid-19 lockdown has provided a dilemma for people like me who don't believe in government welfare assistance. My business is suffering - my revenue this month will be significantly down - and it qualifies for the New Zealand Government's Covid-19 wage subsidy. I have never received a government welfare payment and never envisioned doing so, and therefore I was very reluctant to apply for the Covid-19 business assistance. There are two considerations I took into account in making the decision on whether to accept the Government's handout. 

The first is philosophical, and to address that I looked to Ayn Rand for guidance. Rand was categorically opposed to government welfare assistance on the basis that it was immoral to forcibly take the product of one individual's work and give it to another. She believed that the needs of one person, no matter how pressing, do not create a moral claim on the product of the life of another. Rand's critics claim that she was hypocritical because she accepted US Social Security later in life. Onkar Ghate at the Ayn Rand Institute confirms this but points to the fact that she saw no conflict between opposing state redistribution programmes in principle and accepting what she saw as restitution for the theft of one's wealth in the first place. She likened it to accepting compensation from the proceeds seized from a robber who had stolen from you.

The other consideration I took into account was that the Government ordered this lockdown and (as I have said in earlier posts) if it is necessary that is only because of the Government's earlier inactions. So in effect, I regard the wage subsidy as fair compensation for the negligent damage the Government did to my business.

One other factor that finally convinced me to accept the Government's financial assistance is that my company and its shareholder-employees have large tax bills due at this time, for which the Government isn't offering any grace (other than some vague suggestions they may waive "use of money interest" and penalties). Our cash flow has been significantly impacted by the lockdown order, affecting our ability to meet the tax demands, so in the end we had no qualms about taking the assistance and applying it to the Government's legalised theft.

It does stick in my craw that even the most self-reliant of us have all become dependent on the state. I can't help thinking that this is seen by those in power as a useful by-product of their Covid-19 response. The metaphysical basis of almost all political belief today is social, cultural and economic collectivism. We are all just part of one big, global village, and, as in any village, every person should be concerned with everyone else's business. Self-reliance is seen as selfishness and is not to be tolerated, and if you think you know what is best for your own life, you simply don't know what is good for you.

I am not an anarchist. I believe that governments are necessary to solve human problems such as defeating an invading enemy and stopping highly infectious diseases. But governments have a long history of turning reasonable and necessary collective actions into enduring tyrannies. I fear that accepting the government's largesse may make me complicit in doing exactly that.

Later on today we will learn the New Zealand Government's decision on whether we will be allowed some relief from the universal house arrest we have endured over the last four weeks. Perhaps a positive decision will provide some comfort.

The Mandibles - a realistic view of the future

I am currently reading The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver. The author is best known for her book about a Columbine-style killer, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and for getting into trouble for her politically incorrect speech last year to a Brisbane writer's festival about 'cultural appropriation' (which I discussed here). I think she is one of the best writers on the planet today and her latest work has only confirmed my view.

The Mandibles is set in the future - between 2029 and 2047 - and tells the story of four generations of the eponymous family. You could describe it as a dystopian novel but unlike most other novels of that genre, the dire future it describes is only too realistic and inevitable given the current economic policies of Western governments. The United States has lost its position as the issuer of the world's reserve currency - the huge deficits, borrowing and currency production (i.e. 'quantitative easing') of successive governments have finally come home to roost and the U.S. defaults on its debts. A consortium of international governments - including a Russia still led by Vladimir Putin - replaces the Dollar as the currency of international exchange with a new commodity-backed unit called the 'bancor'.

The story doesn't focus on the 'macro' however, it describes the aftermath of these events through the eyes of a well-off American family whose lives are transformed when they lose everything they own. A populist Hispanic president, who seems cast in the image of Barack Obama, invokes emergency economic powers along the lines of those used by Franklin Roosevelt to seize privately owned gold - even wedding rings (which were exempted by Roosevelt) - and sends the Army to conduct door-to-door searches to collect it. The American future it portrays is the lives of Venezuelans todays - empty supermarket shelves, shortages of basic medicines, sky-high inflation and an increasingly oppressive government response to civil unrest.

There is no Big Brother in this story, no Fahrenheit 451-style burning of books (although books are largely obsolete in the digital culture) and no genetic-engineering of humans à la Brave New World. It is just American society today, projected twelve years into the future. That it is so realistic makes it all the more frightening. I hope at least a few of the members of the dysfunctional US Congress, which is once again debating raising the debt ceiling, reads it and considers the implications of their current spend-and-hope policies.

Mulligatawny Soup, Fiction Writing, and Cultural Appropriation

Recently I was explaining to my children the origins of Mulligatawny Soup and it got me thinking about the latest cause célèbre of the political left-wing, 'cultural appropriation'. The delicious chicken curry soup originated in India and its name is an Anglicization of the Tamil words for 'spicy water'. It was popular with the British who served in India during the Raj and was one of many such dishes they appropriated when they returned home. You only need to visit British cities, particularly in Northern England or Scotland, to see the huge influence of Indian culture - and especially cuisine - on British life. The same applies to Indonesian culture in The Netherlands, North African culture in France and so on.

My musings on Mulligatawny coincided with reports of a speech by American writer, Lionel Shriver, who is best known for her book, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin'. Shriver was asked to address the Brisbane Writers Festival on the topic of 'fiction and identity politics'. The audience undoubtedly thought she would stick to the typical left-wing script about how important it is for authors to make careful deference to identity politics in their fiction, but they were to be disappointed. She signalled the tenor of her speech early on by stating that 'ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all.'

Shriver was, of course, referring to political correctness, but more specifically she was discussing the tendency of the left-wing to take offence any time anyone (or, at least anyone of European descent) adopts any symbol of another culture. She talked about the U.S. college that censured its students for wearing sombreros to a tequila party and the student union in the U.K. that banned its Mexican restaurant from giving out little sombreros (it seems Mexicans are particularly sensitive to appropriation of their headwear). Then she went on to discuss how writers and other artists are finding themselves subject to accusations of cultural appropriation for the mere act of creating a work that imagines the experience of someone of another culture. Shriver points out that it is the very act of appropriating other people's experiences that defines what is fiction (and if it were otherwise, it would be called autobiography).

Shriver said that 'the kind of fiction we are “allowed” to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we’d indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with'. She is right - much contemporary fiction has become anodyne drivel - and I think she is bang on with the cause. Many contemporary writers seem much more concerned with convincing us of their bien pensant credentials than with telling a good story.

Some of my favourite writers are those of the early 20th Century, such as Somerset Maugham and Evelyn Waugh, who wrote mostly about their experiences of cultures other than their own. Their appeal is due to the fact that not only were they perspicacious observers of human nature but they conveyed their foreign characters with unapologetic and unadorned authenticity. Waugh's portrayal of an African dictator in Black Mischief is surely one of the greatest (and most comedic) characterisations in modern literature and it is sad that no popular writer today would write such a character for fear of invoking a secular version of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

Shriver's speech, which was reproduced in full in the Guardian (you can read it here), drew a response from a woman in the audience named Yassmin Abdel-Magied who (surprise, surprise) took offence at what Shriver said and equated her views with those of Australian nationalist politician Pauline Hanson. The Guardian gave Abdel-Magied equal space to air her objections and it is worth reading her article (here), if only to appreciate the perverted logic of those who, in the name of redressing imagined historical wrongs, seek to deny fiction writers the very freedom to create.

Taking the objection to cultural appropriation to its logical conclusion, no one would be allowed to learn a language that wasn't of their own ethnic background, which would be a problem for the large numbers of European New Zealanders who, presumably for reasons of cultural virtue, have taken up learning Maori. My ancestry would make my study of Irish Gaelic okay, but I'd probably be in trouble for my Spanish and French.

This is where the left-wing are going. It is they who are doing the appropriating and, not content with appropriating our incomes, our property, our institutions and our language, they now want to appropriate our minds. Like Winston Smith's tormentor in 1984, they are not going to be satisfied with us paying lip service to their cultural hegemony, they insist we must actually believe it. But, of course, that has been their aim all along.

I only hope that more creators of our popular culture are as brave as Lionel Shriver and take a stand against the real threat of appropriation of our free thoughts.