What Crusaders for Liberty Are Up Against

If you were setting out to organize a crusade to “restore the American Republic” or some such, you would need to know what sort of people you are trying to enlist in your movement. I have drawn up two short lists to assist you.

Fourteen things in which many Americans have an interest:  shirking on the job; getting high; getting drunk; overeating; bad movies with lots of CGI and explosions; football and many other sports; God-awful “music”; gossip about celebrities and their weight, wardrobes, and divorces; gossip about rich people and European aristocrats; fighting with their spouses; trouble with their kids; paying the bills; getting on disability, welfare of some sort, or collecting social security payments; ways to avoid paying for their own medical care.

Fourteen things in which few Americans have an interest: liberty; growth of the state; abuse of state power; out-of-control police; sending millions of young blacks to prison, many for victimless crimes; impending financial breakdown of the welfare state; U.S. imperialism, except to root for it; aggressive U.S. wars, except to root for them; excessive government debt; excessive personal debt; living beyond their means; vulgarity that pervades popular culture; people’s general shamelessness on TV and elsewhere in public; saddling future generations with bills for current government outlays.

(The foregoing observations were prompted by Karen Kwiatkowski’s article describing her recent campaign for a Republican congressional nomination.)

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute, author or editor of over fourteen Independent books, and Editor at Large of Independent’s quarterly journal The Independent Review.
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