The Future is Local: Braver Angels

The tiniest possible step for mankind

Last month, Braver Angels came through Riverside. For those unaware, this is a group set on reducing the political friction between the “sides” of US discourse by getting people together to work through a series of thought exercises and objective discussion. Curious to see how they thought they might accomplish that, I signed up to participate. I learned (and re-learned) a few things that have broader implications for the fight for liberty and libertarian principles, particularly this: neither of the mainstream sides recognizes that government itself is the cause of most of the problems they’re yelling at each other about. But there are some other important lessons I’d like to share with you from my experience at this meeting. These are things we need to be aware of as we try to promote liberty among our neighbors.

In signing up to participate in the Braver Angels meeting, I first had to choose to either participate or observe. Since observers were forbidden from interacting with the participant panel, and since I’m temperamentally predisposed to speak up, I chose to participate. I mention this because it means this was a group already influenced by self-selection bias. Anyone who would be called on to say anything at the meeting had already volunteered to say something. This will matter as my story proceeds.

After choosing “participant”, I had to choose a side. Lean Red or Lean Blue were the only choices available. I appreciated that they were looking to avoid direct party or ideological labels, though I was disappointed that there was no Gold option. In fact, if you insisted on signing up as an “independent” you could only observe, not participate. Blue was all filled up and this event seemed to be struggling with filling up the red side, so I signed up to be part of that team for this meeting. Maybe if they come back through town I’ll be blue, just to see. This is an important thing for each of us as libertarians to remember. Libertarian thought can be approached from many directions.

See those purple boxes inside the gold outline? Those are things Libertarians can talk about with anybody. We can sit with “either team” and find common ground. What do we do with that common ground? We gently pull them into the sweet sweet liberty position.

The fact is, almost everyone values their individual freedom. But the hardest thing about freedom is wrapping your head around the idea that someone is going to use their freedom to do something you think is stupid (or objectionable, or even self-destructive). Getting people to accept that truth is hard. Sadly, almost no one at the Braver Angels meeting was ready to hear that. Even sadder, a few people were so far from that realization they couldn’t even understand it.

After some red-team/blue-team activities, we were seated red-blue-red-blue all the way around a horseshoe formation to listen to a spokesperson from each side summarise what each team had discussed. Each team had spent some time considering the way they perceived themselves as stereotyped, what the truth might have been behind the stereotype, and how their side’s behavior might actually contribute to the stereotype. Each team seemed to make a little progress. Team Red determined that there is a strange and off-putting emergence of “militant-looking nationalism” emerging on the red side. Team Blue seemed prepared to concede that “the pronoun thing has gone too far”.

Then, there in our every-other seating arrangement, we were invited to share our impressions of those summaries with the “other team’s guy” seated next to us. So Jim (not his real name), an old Team Blue gent from Palm Springs, turned to me and said “It just boggles my mind that you guys don’t believe in science.”

I tried not to laugh.

After 20 minutes of exercises built to try and open the participants’ minds to objective consideration, Jim led with the thing he had clearly come here to say no matter what: the climate emergency was proven science and anybody who didn’t think so was just appallingly, willfully stupid. I almost laughed out loud at the deployment of such a classically absurd soundbite masquerading as a well-reasoned argument. Jim had self-selected into participation in a forum clearly and energetically advertised as a place where people were going to be asked to consider their ideas objectively instead of going to ideological war. And yet, here he was, banging his drum about how silly “you guys” were with no hesitation.

However, as a Libertarian, I did what we as libertarians must always do when confronted with a ludicrous partisan talking point: explain that the problem you think is a problem is in fact a symptom of the larger problem of government power. So we talked about life choices, and freedom, and the freedom to disagree, the freedom to live your life your way, and how important it was to not use government to force your neighbor to pretend to agree with you. After all, I explained, you can’t force your neighbor to agree with you; it’s impossible. The best you can do is force them to pretend to agree with you, and that’s a pretty awful way to treat your neighbor, isn’t it?

And then came one of the most amazingly sad moments of my libertarian activism. I watched, in real time, as Jim’s thinking ground to a halt. He had *never in his life* encountered the idea that using government force against his neighbor was what he was in fact suggesting. That all his “proven science” talking points were operating in service to tyranny. He couldn’t conceive of that. I watched the light go out of his eyes as his brain crashed trying to compute the concept.

I don’t hold this against Jim, nor should you. I feel sad for him. What I realized is that the Braver Angels format is asking strident partisans to take the babiest of baby steps toward objectivity and understanding. At least half the room couldn't do it. Unfortunately, we live in a time when strident partisanship is all some folks know how to do. All they’ve ever done.

The best thing libertarians can do is shine the light on the actual causes of the problems facing our communities, not just complain about the symptoms. We have to be out there having those conversations, helping our neighbors find their way out of the darkness. We’re holding the torch they can rally to. That won’t be easy, but the best things never are.

It’s going to take more than one conversation for Jim to learn that government restrictions on freedom are never for the greater good. Freedom is the greater good. Like Jim, your neighbors and friends living in your town need to hear about freedom. Those conversations won’t be easy. They will often be maddeningly frustrating. But those conversations must be had. You must speak in defense of liberty, anywhere you find yourself.

The future is local. Talk to the people around you. Meet them where they are, and build patiently from there toward freedom. It won’t be easy, but the best things never are.