by Virgil Vaduva

One of the most difficult things about being a libertarian is that I often find myself defending liberty in some difficult situations. Just like a defense attorney may find himself defending a client charged with murder, and who appears by all accounts to be guilty, he still gives his best defense to his client; defending people and ideas that we do not like and their rights to speak and be spoken is unfortunately a critical element of liberty. This is not easy to do as we are all subject to various paradigms and affected by them in ways that we may not even realize.

The world of ideas is very much the same. Ideas are the foundation upon which humanity builds its future or tears it down. They can be the seeds for things to come or the vehicle to effecting change in the world. Virtually everything in existence today was once an idea, and for millennia ideas have shaped the world into the place we call home today.

There is little else that I despise more than Communism and the ideas upon which that ideology was founded. I spent half of my life in a Communist country, growing up in indoctrination schools, taught that free markets were only benefiting the rich and that State control is key to good and peaceful living.  I experienced physical abuse, hunger and mental abuse at the hands of Communists and their ideas.  Now, decades letter, I understand those ideas to be false, and even though more than 100 million humans have died as a result of Communism, I still do not find it necessary to punch a Communist or a Socialist who may be peacefully passing out flyers on the street promoting his ideas. Yes, ironically, as a libertarian I find myself defending the speech of Communists, which I despise, and the speech of Fascists which I find abhorrent.

The trend of virtue-signaling we have been seeing lately popularized by the American media often encourages strangers to punch and physically assault alleged fascists or Nazis (supposed “nationalist socialists,” which is not an exactly American term) in order to stop them from promoting their ideas. “Their ideas are dangerous,” they say. The argument encouraging blatant physical assault against people advocating ideas involves the justification that fascist ideas could potentially come to fruition and give birth to violent actions.  Yes, I hope you caught the irony here: we must use pre-emptive threats, violence or even murder in order to stop ideas that could potentially give birth to more violence.

This in essence is the philosophy we find at the core of the United States foreign policy which has now been embraced at an individual level by average Americans, even Libertarians who claim to support free speech.  For decades, the U.S. government has been pre-emptively going to war with nations that had the potential of becoming enemies of the U.S. and espoused ideas considered anti-American.

Just a few hours ago, Richard Spencer, an alleged white supremacist and a fascist was kicked out of a conference called International Students for Liberty Conference (ISLC); this was apparently the result of a confrontation between Spencer and Jeffrey Tucker.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I know almost nothing about Spencer. I have never read anything written by him and other than knowing about him getting assaulted on the street recently.

Spencer was apparently invited to speak at ISLC by the Hans Hermann Hoppe Caucus and a group of conference attendees.  There is even video of Spencer peacefully speaking to what appears to be a large group of students. The audio is very difficult to make out, so it is unclear if Spencer is advocating for the extermination of all ethnic minorities or if he is discussing his love for Donald Trump, however it is clear that there is nothing extraordinary happening outside of the fact that ideas are being discussed in a peaceful fashion.

Some pieces of the conversation can be made out from poor audio available, such as Richard Spencer advocating for the use of the State to protect citizens from immigrants and his condemnation of multi culturalism and what accounts to cultural Marxism. It’s unclear why exactly these ideas are controversial considering that Spencer is openly a supporter of Donald Trump.

What we see later however, is Jeffrey Tucker entering the room and disrupting the event, forcing an employee of the venue to come and warn the participants about keeping things orderly to avoid being removed from the premises. Tucker and Spencer quickly engaged each other in a shouting match across the room full of attendees.

Tucker states: “Libertarianism is about human dignity, liberty for all, and not about fascism!”

Of course, what libertarian would disagree with this?  I am not a fascist and I don’t want libertarian ideology to be about fascism either.  Tucker was immediately triggered by the idea that a supposed fascist was espousing ideas that he disagreed with.  The spectacle unfolding on the video is incredible: a meltdown of epic proportions which ultimately leads to a total denial of the most fundamental libertarian principles, the freedom of speech and the freedom of association.

Mitchell Steffen, the founder of the Hans Hermann Hoppe Caucus and a Dominican, an ethnicity he is proud of, invited Spencer to the conference in order to have a peaceful dialogue.  Steffen said,

“It was really unfortunate how it turned out. I think the Hoppe Caucus did a good job of pushing the envelope and exposing hypocrisy though. Spencer’s ideas should be challenged with better libertarian ideas. He should not be bullied.”

Jeffrey Tucker’s emotional meltdown and virtue-signaling was a perfect fit for the young crowd of college students. At one point Tucker was surrounded by what someone called “a leftist mob:”

“A mob of leftists, who were even joined by Jeffrey Tucker at one point, were warned repeatedly about their noise-level, but refused to calm down. Eventually, hotel security dispersed the entire mob and assisted Spencer in evacuating unscathed.”

There is very little that is noble here about Jeffrey Tucker’s actions. Yes, I’ve seen countless posts on Facebook and tweets about how heroic Tucker was when behaving this way, but I fail to see the heroism in shutting down ideas and debate, especially about current events and political trends. Furthermore, resorting to “you are a fascist” calls is the easiest and laziest way to deal with an argument.

What is even worse about the entire meltdown is that race and ethnicity seem to have been at the core of Tucker’s initial statement, which is particularly ironic considering that Jeffrey Tucker was linked by The Economist years ago to a series of racist letters published by Ron Paul.  The racist letters were not written by Ron Paul himself, but by some of his staff and friends, including allegedly Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker and potentially Murray Rothbard.

The Economist even called out Tucker for the racist ghost writing, who refused to answer the question asked and pointed to the Mises website for content that he authored.

The suggestion that at some point in time Jeffrey Tucker espoused racist ideas to me doesn’t matter at all as I have never personally heard him say anything racist, but considering his close connections with the issue at hand, one would think that Tucker of all people would favor the open exchange of ideas, as long as they remain peaceful.  Someone being invited on private property to discuss his ideas and then being removed by police and State agents as a result of Tucker’s actions should be condemned by libertarians, not praised, or else there is little difference between the cultural Marxists roaming college campuses everywhere using mob mentality to shut down speech.

Mob-driven Libertarianism aimed at shutting down discourse is not virtuous, regardless of what ideas it attempts to shut down.  We need to know who the fascists among us are, so we can engage them, avoid them, ostracize them or maybe even attempt to change their minds. The same goes for communists, racists and bigots. Ideas alone do not assault people, they do not murder anyone and cannot be killed.

Jeffrey Tucker did nothing heroic here.  He violated private property rights and the right of association. He shut down a peaceful debate by inciting a mob against the people involved. He should not be praised. If anything, he should be condemned for participating in what was virtually a cultural Marxist cleansing. If we are to claim liberty for all, that includes the liberty of others to speak ideas we may find abhorrent and uncomfortable.

In the famous words from V for Vendetta, “Ideas are bulletproof.”  Only better ideas can defeat flawed ideas, not violence and meltdowns in a public forum.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak.  He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

College graduates tend to be collectivist minions, and the more advanced the degree, the more deeply ingrained their statism.

Collectivism is the idea that the individual should come second to society. It’s the idea that what’s allegedly good for society trumps the needs, and the rights of the individual. It is inherently anti-liberty.

Higher education is a modern-day death camp for rational thought and individualism. Here’s how it works:

The state orders parents – under the threat of fines, imprisonment, kidnapping of offspring, or a combination of the three – to send their kids to government schools from shortly after birth until their late teens. Rare exceptions are made for private- and homeschooling. After high school, graduates who desire relatively higher average income over their lifetime pursue higher education.

But why? The narrative goes like this. Besides the skills that college students (allegedly) acquire over the course of their program, the degree itself serves two business functions for employers: as a signaling and a sifting device.

A college degree is a “signal” to employers that the graduate has acquired valuable skills. It also serves as a “sifting device;” in other words, it allows employers to quickly identify which applicants are more skilled by checking (or sifting through) to see who has a college degree and who doesn’t. At least, this is how it’s supposed to work.

Thus, students are motivated to go to college to make their lives better (by increasing their productivity, and signalling to employers that they are worth sifting out, and hiring). However, college is also a time when most young people develop their worldview and their way of thinking.

This is the state’s prime area of interest.

Think of it this way: what if you were in charge of an organization that acquired its income by stealing the property of others? What are your costs and how would you maximize your profit? Since taking people’s property from them is likely to provoke resistance, this resistance is your cost. In order to maximize your profit, you want your victims to be highly productive, since the more wealth they generate, the more you can take in the future.

It’s clear that governments want individuals to go to college, to become more productive, and to make more money in order to maximize profit. Higher income and greater wealth mean more tax revenue. The more interesting question is how governments minimize cost (reduce resistance).

The time when individuals are shaping how they view the world is the perfect time to convince them that the state is necessary, and that future tax payments to the state will serve the common good. In short, free will, independent thinking, and rationalism are enemies of the state. Having ideally stamped out the primal, individualist spirit during childhood and teenage years through public schooling, the state must ensure that rational, critical thinking is firmly rejected in the next, formative stage of education: college.

The state can accomplish this by nationalizing (acquiring direct government control) college, or by offering students unique incentives to enroll and manipulating what they’re taught.

Outright nationalization tends to provoke resistance. Instead, the state adopts more subversive tactics in order to infect higher education. It does so by providing student loans at below market rates, and on better-than-market terms (e.g. with deferment, and then with monthly payment schemes capped at a low percentage of income). Suddenly, students can engage in “the college life” of partying, drug and sexual experimentation, and other leisurely activities at effectively zero cost, at least in the short term.

Not a bad deal, especially when a prospective student has the enthusiastic support of family, friends, and community.

Once enrolled, the state subjects its future victims to the work of its age-old accomplices: the intellectuals. Murray Rothbard describes the relationship between the intellectuals and the state in The Ethics of Liberty:

The alliance is based on a quid pro quo: on the one hand, the intellectuals spread among the masses the idea that the State and its rulers are wise, good, sometimes divine, and at the very least inevitable and better than any conceivable alternatives. In return for this panoply of ideology, the State incorporates the intellectuals as part of the ruling elite, granting them power, status, prestige, and material security. (p. 67)

What is the effect on course content of the implementation of this subversive strategy?

Socialism (the idea that government should own all factors of production) is glorified in history classes. Rationalism (the idea that humans can discern – not to mention individualism – is demonized in philosophy classes. Free market economics is replaced with training in mathematical modelling that lends itself to central planning. Free will is stamped out with a behaviorist, Social Darwinist, mechanistic worldview in Biology and other physical science classes.

Political science courses are training grounds for future direct beneficiaries of state property extraction; for many students in these classes, they already believe – hook, line, and sinker – that the state is just. Many are even motivated to expand it. Sociology, literature, and other arts classes are dominated by professors who not only support the state, but are plainly hostile and malicious towards the concept of a free society.

One may be getting the idea that college kids are cannon fodder for collectivism.

Should students avoid higher education at all costs? Not necessarily. The life of an entrepreneur is hard, and it’s not for everybody. Credentialism (the phenomenon that the same jobs today require a degree that in the past did not) and the increased societal expectation that high school graduates attend college makes for a difficult job market. Simply put, to get a high paying job, a college degree is usually required. Thus, individuals may still prefer to pursue a college degree, despite the often boring, unrelatable, uninteresting nature of the state-infected college environment.

However, people should know what they’re getting into. The theory explained above is a powerful tool for analyzing higher education in the United States. If individuals conclude that a college degree is worth pursuing, they should be aware of the nature of the relationship between school and state. In this way, readers may embrace rationalism, avoid contracting collectivist thinking, and pursue their own prosperity, despite the unfortunate condition of so-called american higher education.

Ryan Griggs is a libertarian essayist and contributor to TruthVoice