The Memory Hole

Much as I've benefited from www.TheMemoryHole.org, this is not about that great and useful website.

Nor is it about George Orwell's original concept, from which the MemoryHole.org website takes its name: the Establishment's official policy of destroying all evidence that casts doubt on the Establishment version of history.

"When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building."

This is about private individuals who try to remove themselves from the records -- those who try to destroy the evidence that they were ever involved in such a dangerous, embarrassing, shameful, despicable thing as the advocacy of freedom.

I've known two people who have asked to have their articles removed from libertarian websites. I'm told there are more. My sense is that they are young -- people who embraced the stage that Jung called ... well, speaking of memory holes, I'm blanking on the name ... the stage of late adolescence/early adulthood when one can experiment with different roles and a less-than-usual fear of reputation and condemnation. Anyway, I know that in my youth, I took on certain poses that I would never have attempted if I thought they'd "go on the permanent record" so to speak. So I guess it must be that way with anarchists who are half my age. I suppose I have a certain freedom that younger people don't, since I'm not worried about job interviews, the (newly internet-savvy) dating scene, etc.

I try to understand, but it disturbs me to see people hiding the evidence of who they are or who they've been.

I remember in college when the Trotskyites came around to sell their papers, I subscribed. "How collegiate!" said a friend of mine about the idea of reading what the commies had to say. A year later, I'd cancelled my subscription, and when they returned for another round of recruiting, I told a "freshwoman" not to bother subscribing, that I could summarize what she'd read in their rag.

She said, "Oh, I'm curious, but I'd never subscribe. I might want a job with the government some day and this sort of thing could ruin a background check."

I was speechless.

So here's a farewell letter from a former wunderkindt of the market anarchist world -- someone who once called BlackCrayon.com his favorite anarchist website.

Don't bother trying to Google his writing. It's all been removed from the official records.

Perhaps my last thoughts on the matter. It's not particularly good, but I wasn't meaning to producing a scholarly or well-written work. Call it a love-letter to libertarianism if you'd like, I was just bored and I felt that I had to tie a few loose ends together.

The Resigned Libertarian

It was with a heavy heart that I resigned from the libertarian movement, a movement that did more to shape my attitudes and opinions than anything else, save for the wisdom my father had given me over the years. It wasn't a lack of interest or a philosophical upheaval that drove me away from libertarianism though, it was an exhaustion. It was frustration at the players within the movement and despair of the utter futility and irrelevancy of the entire thing. It would be best if libertarians never mentioned any purported gains in the pursuit of the ideal liberty, because it is just embarrassing at best.

I'm not going to name names and I'm not going to play Grand Inquisitor of the movement, I'm just recognizing that libertarianism has become more or less, a cold fish. Let's be honest with ourselves here. The Libertarian Party is about as effective as the Socialist Party of the United States, and while we can quibble and argue over what would be the best way to win people over and convince them to vote Libertarian, the statistics just don't signal any good times. The Libertarian Party will, more or less, languish in obscurity before being dismantled, splintered, or assimilated into another party, the fate of nearly every third party in the United States.

"Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames."

It was among the small-l libertarians though that my enthusiasm was completely exhausted. As each day passed, I saw less and less intellectual output among my libertarian brethren and more and more hair-splitting and petty feuds. Who cares what so-and-so said? The tendency among libertarians was the desire to cut-down the "lesser" libertarians or the supposed "pseudo"-libertarians. I realized though that when everyone is involved in cutting down, there really isn't much building, and so it is a cruel irony that a movement so dedicated to the free market and the idea that competition could yield better ideas became so obsessed with the thought patterns of other libertarians that libertarianism simply devoured itself. The intellectual stagnation is enormous thanks to those who are more interested in being a cult personality and those who are so self-involved in their own philosophy that a few minor disagreements in the methodology of libertarianism have happily isolated themselves into the fringe, just as they attack those stuck in the fringe as well.

My father told me that making progress all too often means having to work with those who have spurned us and those who we revile, and the more I think about it, the more I think that he's right. Amassing a list of sins that someone you would normally agree with most of the time is not the best way to conduct yourself if you want to get anywhere. If you want to sit by yourself in the corner, cackling and giggling at your own private joke, be my guest, but don't pretend you're doing anything helpful, because you're not.

I was chided in the past for essentially espousing a "come on libertarians, let's all get along, it'll be swell" message in my writings, but the reason why I urged libertarians to knock off the childish behavior was because it was childish behavior. Hurling insults like children on a playground and doing nothing to foster friendly intellectual debate is intellectual suicide. The fact of the matter is, the libertarian movement is nothing but individuals moving in the same direction to a goal that is somewhat mutual. Yes, there are fundamental differences in various degrees of libertarianism, but libertarianism doesn't need a catharsis, it just really needs a lot of help and a lot of cooperation. I don't expect to be listened to, judging by how well this same message went over last time, but at least saying it is better than doing nothing. The only real catharsis that libertarianism needs is to be rid of bad writers and bad education about libertarianism, because it is producing a lot of libertarians with a lot unsound principles. The idea of allies to libertarians also needs to be rethought, because the tendency to appeal to possible allies in the Republicans and Democrats, in the conservative and leftist movement, have largely backfired on us and resulted in sympathetic rhetoric but contrary actions. Sympathetic rhetoric from someone who has the power to help your cause is about as useful as a punch to the head, which is what it often feels like when I see the constant missteps that libertarians have made in picking and choosing allies.

I don't mean to sound patronizing and pessimistic, but I am and so it's going to come out that way. Why an eighteen year old should be writing this to a bunch of grown men is beyond me, maybe in the end I really am the fool. I just don't see much hope for liberty anymore. I don't see it in the Left and I don't see it in the close-to-nonexistent Old Right. I don't see it in the libertarians who have done those who oppose libertarianism a favor by finishing off the job of dismantling the movement and keeping it largely ineffectual. I don't see it in the halls of Washington and I don't see a large grass-roots movement forming that will make any large impact. Every day that I read the news, I just get depressed. More government regulation, more restrictions on personal freedom, more guilty-till-proven-innocent, more coercion and more despair.

I once thought that libertarianism had all the answers for me, and in some ways, it did. That's all it had though. It had the answers, but it doesn't have the means, the effort or even the enthusiasm. What it did succeed in was pushing me away, which made me understand why more of the people my age aren't libertarians. In the end, Mencken was right. "No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt -- a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve."