libertarian masculinity

No, that's not a song lyric, so don't bother googling it [editor's note: this post also turned surprisingly serious as I wrote it, so skip if you're only looking for tales of my exploits]

I was looking at my facebook.com profile, and it allows you to click on things in your own profile to find other people who have claimed the same interest. Under 'political views', one is allowed eight choices: very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, libertarian, and other. I consider myself libertarian. Here's the definition, from dictionary.com:

lib·er·tar·i·an (lĭb'ər-târ'ē-ən) pronunciation
n.

1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
2. One who believes in free will.

Of course, I don't vote for libertarians because they'll never get elected (ah, the irony), so instead I'm forced to choose between Republicans (whose religious overtones I find increasingly abhorrent--interference of religion in government directly contradicts the 'individual freedoms' and 'minimal government involvement' that formed the original laissez-faire tenets of the party) and the Democrats (whose weak, ineffectual leadership both derives from and continues to fuel a mistaken belief that increased government programs and bureaucracy-driven 'aid' to those in need will solve the world's problems). Neither party really does anything right: case in point, FEMA was completely incapable of coordinating a cohesive response to Katrina, and the Administration bears a lot of blame for that, but it was a Democrat (Carter) who created the agency in the first place, and in most cases the bureaucracy functions much as it always has regardless of which cronyist figurehead leads it.

So anyway, that's really not the point at all. The point is that I am a libertarian in spirit and personal conviction, even if most of the candidates who run under the libertarian banner are unelectable clowns. And, given that Stanford has a high number of people on facebook.com (for those of you not in the know, it's a social-networking site much like friendster, but only for colleges and high schools), I would have expected to find quite a few libertarians when I clicked the 'libertarian' link.

The results? Only 194 libertarians among all Stanford students and alumni who registeredsterd for facebook. By comparison, 'very liberal', 'liberal', 'moderate', and 'conservative' all turned up the max of more than 500; I couldn't find anyone amongst my friends who consider themselves 'very conservative' or 'apathetic', so I couldn't click on those groups. Then, as I was looking down the list of people, I noticed that it seemed to be a complete sausage-fest--the libertarians at Stanford are overwhelmingly male. Since I'm procrastinating from doing my laundry, I did a manual count. Only thirty-seven of the 194 libertarians at Stanford are women, including myself. That works out to about 19%.

So, does this explain my typical lack of success with men? I'm not the traditional 'hug a kitten and cry about the homeless' liberal girl with a heart of gold; nor am I the equally traditional cross-wearing, evangelical conservative on a mission to save humanity whilst engaging in letter-writing campaigns against licentious television programs and popping out new little Christians every couple of years. Instead, I believe very firmly in live-and-let-live. I'm perfectly willing to listen to your problems, but don't expect me to share mine. I don't care what religion you practice, what your sexuality is, what drugs you take, or what you do behind closed doors as long as you're not abusing your kids, shooting up your office, or expecting others to pay for all the teeth you lost because you did too much meth. I'm hugely supportive of educational subsidies, improving schools, giving children every chance of success, whether it is in academics, sports, music, art, or vocational trade, rehabilitating criminals, and offering drug rehab programs and work-skills training to down-and-outers who want to change their lives, but there comes a point where any healthy, sane adult has to either take care of themselves or face evolution at its most merciless.

The Republicans and Democrats both, over the course of the last century, have drifted more and more away from a utilitarian approach to government [not that the government has ever been truly utilitarian, unless perhaps you were white], and rather than providing the greatest good to the greatest multitude, both tend to focus extravagant resources on pet projects, whether it is farm subsidies or anti-abortion school programs or midnight basketball or the war in Iraq or whatever. I personally think that this stems in large part from women's suffrage; the tide began to turn with Prohibition in the twenties (wildly unpopular pet project if there ever was one), and rose to epic levels after the further emancipation of women during World War II and the entrance of most women into the workforce during and after the war. This is *not* to say that women are any more likely than men to be wishy-washy and soft. Instead, think about this from a politician's viewpoint: if you know that half of your voting populace is female, and you think you know that they will be turned off by anything that smacks of good-old-boy laissez-faire economics, you will naturally move more and more of your energies into dubious social programs. And most women, armed with the belief that many men prefer soft, accessible, deferential wives, will willingly support this focus on social programs and 'the home', rather than on foreign affairs and economics and other 'difficult' problems that they must pretend to be dumber than their husbands about. So, whether the woman cries, 'oh, the children! let's clothe them' or 'oh, the children! let's convert them', the end message is the same: focus on social programs and a top-down, hysteria-driven, reactionary approach to current events, rather than a long-term, steady, rational plan for the continued growth of our nation, our people, and the world at large.

So, I'm not afraid to say that I'm a libertarian. The one downside is that most of those girls were a little ugly. But, it's probably the hatchet-faced girls (like the hatchet-wielding Carrie Nation) who have the least to lose by failing to conform to traditional notions of femininity. I was able to take solace in the fact that the Greens aren't a bonafide party, according to facebook. Take that, hippies!

As for the rest of my life, it's grand--I just got back from the city, where I spent the night at Adit's after taking him to my company's Christmas party. It was a blast--I'll post pictures later if they turned out okay. When we woke up this morning, Adit, Terry, Claudius and I had brunch near Adit's apartment before coming home, so it was a nice and leisurely start to my day. Now it's time to accomplish something!