New York Times columnist Ross Douthat could use a refresher on Freudo-Marxist psychiatrists.

Douthat chides libertarians — or at least “the kind of libertarian who identifies forever with his 13-year-old self” — for taking a laissez-faire attitude to “a novel, obviously addictive technology that might well be associated with depression and self-harm” (“Instagram Is Adult Entertainment,” September 30). Douthat refers to social media websites, but he should take a closer look at “the people who panicked over the moral effects of comic books” before dismissing a parallel.

Seduction of the Innocent author Fredric Wertham was sure that the shift of comics from the funny pages to funnybooks was causing psychological harm to young readers, a diagnosis drawn not from old-fashioned prudery but the Frankfurt School’s suspicion of commercial culture. Wertham cited the Progressive Era’s forays against reckless robber barons in his efforts to clean up crime comics. Ironically, such regulation allowed cartelized industries to get away with lower safety standards (and higher profits) than possible under the pressure of market competition.

By the 1960s, Mad magazine was spreading as a primer for rebellious adolescents after the Comics Code Authority forced its publisher to discontinue horror comics like Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. Meanwhile, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm introduced American audiences to a British import that became an icon of the youth counterculture. While the Beatles were proving that rock and roll would outlast Elvis Presley leaving for the Army, Fromm highlighted how “the idea of education without force” was being put into practice at the alternative school Summerhill.

Fromm insisted to those who saw an excess of permissiveness in pedagogy that, just as in the realm of politics, “it is not that authority has disappeared, nor even that it has lost in strength, but that it has been transformed from the overt authority of force to the anonymous authority of persuasion and suggestion.” Freedom did not fail when it was genuine.

Douthat’s inistence that the state save social life from social media likewise ignores Fromm’s insight, drawn from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that social organization can only be a social benefit if its “associations are free and spontaneous, and not state imposed.” What Fromm called Proudhon’s “drastic condemnation of the principle of authority and hierarchy” as “the prime cause of all disorders and ills of society” should serve as a warning to those who see it as the cure.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Libertarianism – No Infantile Disorder” by Joel Schlosberg, The Glasgow, Montana Courier, October 6, 2021
2. “Libertarianism: No Infantile Disorder” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, October 6, 2021

On August 25, two days after the US Food and Drug Administration fully approved  the Pfizer-Biontech COVID-19 vaccine, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered “full vaccination of all members of the Armed Forces.”

Cue outrage and objection. Some officers have resigned their commissions; some enlisted personnel seem willing to risk court-martial and dishonorable discharge rather than get vaccinated. Some claim the mandate violates their rights or lacks a legal basis.

In the quarter century since my honorable discharge from the US Marine Corps, I’ve occasionally been asked by friends to have “the talk” with their teenagers who are considering military careers.

In my view, “the talk” shouldn’t be about whether joining the armed forces is a good idea. That’s a personal decision. “The talk” should be an unvarnished description of what to expect.

Here’s a short version of “the talk,” for those considering enlisting and those who have, in the age of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate:

For the entirety of your military career, you will spend most of your waking hours (and you will be roused from sleep many, many times) doing what you’re told to do. Period.

You’ll go where you’re told to go. You’ll wear what you’re told to wear. You’ll eat what you’re given, when it’s given to you, and you’ll have your hair cut as directed.

You’ll be ordered to do unpleasant things, and do them, possibly including killing other people, being killed yourself, or watching your friends die.

Yes, there’s a contract — a contract more for the government’s protection than yours,  which can be unilaterally changed at the government’s convenience.  Here’s section 9b of that contract:

“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.” [Emphasis in original]

If they do things now as they did in 1984, you’ll be taken through that contract line by line, twice, initialing each section to attest that you understand what it means so you can’t claim otherwise later, before you’re allowed to sign it, take the oath of enlistment, and ship out for boot camp.

The government’s end of the contract involves providing you with three hots, a cot, a paycheck, healthcare, college benefits, etc.

Your end of the contract says that when you’re ordered by your platoon commander to assault an enemy position, or by the Secretary of Defense to get vaccinated, you’ll assault that position or get that injection.

If you can’t stomach that, don’t sign the contract. If you do sign the contract, don’t whine about it or renege on it later when it requires you to do something you don’t want to do.

Thus endeth “the talk.”

Do I like vaccine mandates? No.

Do I believe vaccine mandates are constitutional or morally acceptable where private citizens, un-obligated by contract, are concerned? No.

But as for members of the armed forces: Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

When debating immigration policy with people who have deluded themselves into believing that it’s any of their business where other people choose to live or work, I run into a lot of bad arguments. Of all those arguments, probably the silliest is “but they don’t speak English.”

The simplest, and most appropriate response to that argument comes from comedian Doug Stanhope: “Then don’t talk to ’em.” Problem solved. But I can’t get a whole column out of that response, so let’s take apart the fake “issue” in a little more detail.

Often, the argument starts off with fake tones of sympathy. Those poor immigrants — how will they ever get jobs and “assimilate” if they don’t know “the national language?” Send them back for their own good!

Oddly, the same people almost always immediately turn to the claim that “MY grandparents came here from [insert country], and you know what they did? They learned English!”

Clue: Your grandparents weren’t special exceptions. Most immigrants who don’t already know English will learn it, especially if their career ambitions require them to.

The next turn is generally something along the lines of “English is the ‘national language,’ and no nation can survive without a common language.”

English is a fairly dominant language in the US at this time, although Spanish seems to be gaining. But the US has never had a “national language.” It’s always hosted a mix.

The Declaration of Independence was initially published in the five most common American languages as of 1776: English, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish.

English really started gaining dominance in the 20th century, after the US government drafted millions of men into the armed forces for World War Two and insisted they be able to take orders in English (in the previous largest US military mobilization, for the Civil War, the Union army formed segregated regiments of e.g. German speakers).

But there are still entire urban neighborhoods where one might walk several blocks and hear nothing but Mandarin or Yiddish or Russian or Hindi. And in large swaths of the country, Spanish competes with English for dominance.

A single common language in a country is the exception — and in countries with populations of more than 200 million there are no such exceptions — not the rule.

India, for example, boasts 23 “official” languages, 122 “major” languages, and, according to its 2001 census, 1,599 other languages.

While forceful government policy has made Mandarin the dominant “first language” in China, more than 300 other languages survive.

Typical among western European countries is Belgium, with three “official” and several regional languages, in addition to nearly 40% of the population speaking English.

There are no good arguments for immigration authoritarianism, but the  “they don’t speak English” dodge is easily the least convincing.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY