40 Years of the Reagan Revolution’s Libertarian Experiment Have Brought Us Crisis & Chaos
Here’s the one question that always stops libertarians dead in their tracks when they come on or call into my radio/TV program to proclaim the wonders of their political ideology:
“Please name one country, anywhere in the world, any time in the last 7000 years, where libertarianism has succeeded and produced general peace and prosperity?”
There literally is none. Nowhere. Not a single one. It has never happened. Ever.
If it had, that country would be on the tip of every Libertarian’s tongue, the way Democratic Socialists talk about Scandinavia where the full-on Social Democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.
There are, of course, examples of governments that intentionally or unintentionally operate broadly along libertarian lines. Back in the 1980s when I was setting up international relief projects with the Salem organization based out of West Germany, I worked in several such countries.
They were places where the government’s only real function is to run the army, police and the courts, just like libertarians say America should be run. No social safety net, no Social Security, no national healthcare, no or few state-funded public schools, no publicly funded infrastructure of any consequence.
In 2008, talkshow host Joe Madison (“The Black Eagle” on SiriusXM daily) and I saw how this worked in South Sudan on the border of Darfur as the northern Sudan government was burning people out of their homes and the group we were with was flooded by tens of thousands of refugees.
It was similar to what I saw in 1980 in Uganda when I was working there at the end of the Tanzanian war to expel Idi Amin.
In parts of Colombia later that decade, after a bomb went off just a block from where we were working, I heard stories of middle-class men in the next neighborhood over who’d an organized urban “hunt club,” complete with logos and patches, using high-powered rifles to pursue what they described as “feral children.”
Kidnapping was also a major industry in Colombia then: a friend in Bogota was kidnapped and repeatedly raped while her husband, forced to listen to her screams on the phone, frantically tried to raise enough money to pay her ransom. I later met with them both and heard the story firsthand.
In those countries that, because of corruption, civil war, or oligarchic ideology are run along Ayn Rand/Rand Paul libertarian lines, the roads, utilities and housing are fine in small, wealthy neighborhoods that can provide for themselves, but the rest of the country is potholed and dark and people often have to walk miles to get firewood, food, and fresh water every day.
There are few or no taxes for the very rich in such countries, and no resources at all for the very poor except those provided by international relief agencies like the one I worked with.
We generally referred to those countries as “failed states.” Rand Paul would probably describe them as “Libertarian paradises,” as his father advocated when, during a presidential primary debate, he said people shouldn’t be let into hospital emergency rooms unless they can pay.
“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul said.
No country has ever succeeded when its government has suffered the fate that multimillionaire K Street Lobbyist Grover Norquist wished on America when he famously told NPR, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
That’s what Texas did when they split their grid away from the rest of America to avoid regulation of their power industry. The lie of libertarian policies was on vivid display when Texans died from hypothermia while Ted Cruz fled to Cancun.
And then Texas families who survived the bitter cold got $3,000 to $17,000 power bills after the freeze left, because of magical deregulated “free markets” for power in that state.
Forty years of the Reagan Revolution’s libertarian experiment have brought us the predictable result:
After all, when it’s not the job of government to care for its citizens, and the morbidly rich are getting even richer off our privatized, underfunded infrastructure it’s time for GOP elected officials to party!
Here’s the one question that always stops libertarians dead in their tracks when they come on or call into my radio/TV program to proclaim the wonders of their political ideology:
“Please name one country, anywhere in the world, any time in the last 7000 years, where libertarianism has succeeded and produced general peace and prosperity?”
There literally is none. Nowhere. Not a single one. It has never happened. Ever.
If it had, that country would be on the tip of every Libertarian’s tongue, the way Democratic Socialists talk about Scandinavia where the full-on Social Democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.
There are, of course, examples of governments that intentionally or unintentionally operate broadly along libertarian lines. Back in the 1980s when I was setting up international relief projects with the Salem organization based out of West Germany, I worked in several such countries.
They were places where the government’s only real function is to run the army, police and the courts, just like libertarians say America should be run. No social safety net, no Social Security, no national healthcare, no or few state-funded public schools, no publicly funded infrastructure of any consequence.
In 2008, talkshow host Joe Madison (“The Black Eagle” on SiriusXM daily) and I saw how this worked in South Sudan on the border of Darfur as the northern Sudan government was burning people out of their homes and the group we were with was flooded by tens of thousands of refugees.
It was similar to what I saw in 1980 in Uganda when I was working there at the end of the Tanzanian war to expel Idi Amin.
In parts of Colombia later that decade, after a bomb went off just a block from where we were working, I heard stories of middle-class men in the next neighborhood over who’d an organized urban “hunt club,” complete with logos and patches, using high-powered rifles to pursue what they described as “feral children.”
Kidnapping was also a major industry in Colombia then: a friend in Bogota was kidnapped and repeatedly raped while her husband, forced to listen to her screams on the phone, frantically tried to raise enough money to pay her ransom. I later met with them both and heard the story firsthand.
In those countries that, because of corruption, civil war, or oligarchic ideology are run along Ayn Rand/Rand Paul libertarian lines, the roads, utilities and housing are fine in small, wealthy neighborhoods that can provide for themselves, but the rest of the country is potholed and dark and people often have to walk miles to get firewood, food, and fresh water every day.
There are few or no taxes for the very rich in such countries, and no resources at all for the very poor except those provided by international relief agencies like the one I worked with.
We generally referred to those countries as “failed states.” Rand Paul would probably describe them as “Libertarian paradises,” as his father advocated when, during a presidential primary debate, he said people shouldn’t be let into hospital emergency rooms unless they can pay.
“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul said.
No country has ever succeeded when its government has suffered the fate that multimillionaire K Street Lobbyist Grover Norquist wished on America when he famously told NPR, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
That’s what Texas did when they split their grid away from the rest of America to avoid regulation of their power industry. The lie of libertarian policies was on vivid display when Texans died from hypothermia while Ted Cruz fled to Cancun.
And then Texas families who survived the bitter cold got $3,000 to $17,000 power bills after the freeze left, because of magical deregulated “free markets” for power in that state.
Forty years of the Reagan Revolution’s libertarian experiment have brought us the predictable result:
- historically low tax rates on corporations and billionaires
- an impoverished middle-class
- devastated labor unions
- the highest rate of child poverty and maternal death in the developed world
- millions without access to healthcare
- one in seven children going to bed hungry
- our schools, roads, bridges and rail systems in shambles
After all, when it’s not the job of government to care for its citizens, and the morbidly rich are getting even richer off our privatized, underfunded infrastructure it’s time for GOP elected officials to party!
