Uncivil Liberties Quotes

“The libertarian equation of the market as the vehicle for expressing individual freedom sacrifices all individuality that does not serve corporate profit. Neither shareholders nor management are truly free. Prices have become commands. What does not make a profit does not get done.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“In capitalism, organizations respond to prices, real and anticipated, and to nothing else. In the process, the concept of moral responsibility traditionally entailed in the concept of ownership has disappeared.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Not all libertarians are so slavishly devoted to Rand’s ideas. But to my knowledge, all have internalized some version of this failure to understand the very individuality they praise.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“After his encounter with Rand and her closest students, Murray Rothbard, another major figure in the history of libertarian thought, identified the biggest problem at the core of Rand’s idea of individualism. Rothbard concluded that Rand’s philosophy did not lead to valuing the individual. Quite the contrary. As he put it, “she actually denies all individuality whatsoever.” Rand’s exaltation of reason as man’s highest and most definitive characteristic meant that she regarded emotion as subject to reason. Men were only “bundles of premises” and their virtue or vice depended on whether they had the right premises. To be rational, people’s choices had to rest on rational premises, of which there was only one set, those Rand taught.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Many of those now calling themselves “conservatives” owe more to Ayn Rand than to traditional conservative thinkers. Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan admit to having been significantly influenced by Rand. Glenn Beck and other so-called Christian conservatives sound more like Ayn Rand when it comes to the poor and unfortunate than anything written in the Gospels.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“The sociopathic, social Darwinist bent that the modern Tea Party-dominated Republican Party has taken is frightening and potentially fatal to a free society, even to the survival of the species. The dysfunctional, sold-out centrist core of the Democratic Party is totally inadequate to the historical moment, not to mention even to the basic political task of fending off the aggressive Republican media attack machine.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“It is incoherent and ahistorical to believe we can defend and enhance the common good without collective action and the instrument of government.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“We are still recovering from the latest crisis consequent to a thirty-year spree of unregulated capitalism of the kind touted in libertarian economic doctrine. One would think the recent global economic collapse would have finally buried the quaint notion that markets are self-regulating. Even the high priest of free market fundamentalist economic orthodoxy, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, a devoted Ayn Rand libertarian, recanted publicly on this point. He testified before Congress in 2008, as the ashes were still falling from the ceiling in the aftermath of the bonfire incinerating the wealth of an entire generation: “Our model could not comprehend this outcome…” This religion should be dead. Only plutocratic money keeps it alive.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“This was the world created by raw, unchecked capitalism, Blake’s “satanic mills” of social Darwinist exploitation of the masses.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“The animating principle of the Thrive doctrine is the conviction that the fundamental principle on which modern civilization was founded, a democratically elected government working on behalf of the common good, funded by taxes, is a form of vile tyranny contrary to the peculiar moral axioms promoted by Thrive.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Thrive supports a radical transformation that would bring about a world in which public schools, universities, the social safety net, and even basic public infrastructures like roads and utilities have all been privatized. Instead of police, we would have private security forces. As Foster Gamble, creator of Thrive, states, “Private security works way better than the state” (especially if they are hired to specifically protect just you and your entourage). The civil court systems, which have provided the foundation for justice for the Anglo-American civilization since the Magna Carta, would be abolished in favor of private courts, in which competing legal claims would be adjusted against our personal legal insurance. The outcomes might be less desirable if you can’t afford your private legal insurance bill.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“A civilization that values and practices empathy, that values and respects others and the environment, that values love before an abstract notion of liberty, will survive and survive well.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Jeremy Rifkin notes, “The ability to recognize oneself in the other and other in oneself is a deeply democratizing experience. Empathy is the soul of democracy … The more empathic the culture, the more democratic its values and governing institutions.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“An example of the laissez faire adage “let the market decide” can be seen in the way employees at Walmart are treated. Among other things, the anti-union behemoth pays low wages to its employees in the U.S. and supports near slave conditions in Bangladesh garment factories.43 Recently, Walmart had to pay more than $4.8 million in back pay and damages to workers for overtime pay they did not receive. There have been at least three previous settlements with the Department of Labor due to unpaid overtime wages.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Freedom, libertarians never tire of telling us, generates inequality. But, they never tell us how inequality can destroy freedom.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“What would life be like if there were no environmental protection agency? If DDT and asbestos had not been banned? If unleaded gasoline had not been mandated and smog still blanketed most American cities? If standards for clean water were not in place? Might we have a cholera epidemic or other water borne diseases? These critical concerns are ignored by libertarians who think the market will determine our safety. We have seen how that worked before regulations were in place. The market almost always puts profit first, not safety.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Katha Pollitt wrote in The Nation, “Ron Paul has opposed almost every piece of progressive legislation that was passed in the last 200 years! He opposed Federal Deposit Insurance and continues to oppose Roe v. Wade. He would abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, governmental regulations on health and safety (OSHA), and the Federal Aviation Authority.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“They claim that their vision of a truly free world … had never been tried before on the planet. Their opponents said that indeed their system had been tried, over and over again throughout history, and in fact was itself the history of every civilization in the world during its most chaotic and feudal time.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“An unengaged, uninformed public turns its back on democracy, which creates a vacuum in the polis that is often filled by corporate lobbyists, power seekers, and others who do not have the public interest in mind.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Investing in the commons, in the people, and in the future of our nation requires a commitment to the society in which one lives. Of course, this requires an educated and mature citizenry, not one stuck in a rebellious phase of development that focuses doggedly on individual rights with little or no regard for the individual’s responsibility to civil society.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Paul Krugman warns of the cumulative consequences of defunding education: Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual—a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis—its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington—deals a severe blow to education across the board.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“It has become clear in recent years that citizens must take it upon themselves to become civically literate.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“When individuals focus entirely on their own development and aspirations, unconnected from community, there will be a corresponding disconnect from political culture. Apathy and naiveté will bolster an ahistorical political sensibility. Their choices in the political arena will be seen as unique. Their candidate will be the most pure and like no other candidate before him or her unless it is to hark back to a nearly mythical American president who is long dead. They tend to embrace an ideology that will solve all problems while simultaneously denying issues that are too complex.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“we have forgotten the other dimension of who we are. We are both individuals and members of society, and this complex relationship comes together in civil society, that network of rich voluntary relationships. Civil society cannot be understood only in terms of individuals; it also requires considering our relationships with one another and our individual capacity to enter into them due to supportive institutions, which includes government.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“when growth, potency, happiness, pressure to be in a good mood, to “have a nice day,” to be “high” are hopelessly intertwined with consumer goodies, not having them means a drop into shame, depression, and victimization. In the real world of limited resources, growth is a Ponzi scheme in which our great-grandchildren subsidize our innocent and narcissistic fantasies.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“The belief that the imperative of growth trumps life itself underlies all corporate and most government policies. Conservatives attack big government, but praise its responsibility to support the private sector through subsidies, infrastructure, and military intervention—all forms of externalizing costs. The result is an economy, writes Hillman, that is “… the God we nourish with actual human blood.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Capitalism, argued J.M. Keynes, is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for everyone’s benefit. When the freedom to grow trumps responsibility to the polis, however, “productivity” becomes a euphemism for “increased unemployment.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“we have, and certainly not for the first time in our history, groups of relatively well-off people who actually perceive themselves to be the victims of people who have far less than they do. And not just the relatively well-off.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“One of the primary objectives of the corporate media and our other mythic instructors is to distract Americans from identifying both the true spiritual and economic sources of their pain, and the actual opportunities for addressing them. Therefore, the victim who cannot be a hero will search for villains or scapegoats.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism

“Radicals find the source of the paradox of freedom and equality in unexamined definitions of just who is a member of the community, the polis. When only a small percentage of the population is admitted to that rarified atmosphere and all Others are excluded, then both the contradiction in the rhetoric and the sense of denial and innocence are heightened.”
― Georgia Kelly, Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism