Labels

Seeing your heroes falter

Penn Jillette, my libertarian hero, has fallen. Well, a few rungs, at least.

My hero, who lived long enough for me to watch him turn into a villain. (I don't need to explain the facetious Batman reference, do I?) // photo by Gage Skidmore


This is one of those posts I wish I never had to write.

Penn Jillette is a hero of mine. I think my present-tense usage still applies. Back in college, he was the first person I heard say the word "libertarian". He's also changed my mind on a number of topics like capital punishment, atheistic views on religious proselytization, and ways to think about ethics. He has helped me form my epistemological beliefs about the world, eventually turning me into an atheist, a libertarian, and introducing me to Skepticism.

If it weren't for him, I may never have become a libertarian. Well, maybe I would have discovered Ron Paul in 2008, but not discovering Penn would definitely have stunted my growth. Hell, I would be a completely different person today, for the worse, if it weren't for Penn.

I owe him a great deal.

Penn has always been a fantastic storyteller. His voice and cadence are rather captivating. He always comes from a place of love, compassion, and optimism, a frame of mind I was probably severely lacking at the time I discovered him.

His key points on libertarianism have always been rather simple and to the point. Watching his videos is certainly more accessible than reading Rothbard's dry 900-page sludge, Man, Economy and State. His coming to libertarianism story is the best one I know.


He frequently talks about his gun theory of government. He thinks using the government is roughly the same as using a gun himself. He would use a gun to stop a murder. He would use a gun to stop a rape. But would he use a gun to build a library? Maybe not.

He also tells stories such as when he would admire works of art like Piss Christ, which he loves. But it breaks his heart that his religious parents were forced to pay for its commission through their tax dollars funneling through the National Endowment of the Arts.

Often, he will throw in these quick intellectual exercises, such as not even knowing exactly how to run his own life, there is no possible way he could know what's best for someone else. Perhaps that applies to other people as well, for example, people in Washington DC. He always asks first whether a problem can be solved with more freedom instead of less. He often points out that the answer to bad speech is always more speech.

The past few years have been rough for him. Not his personal life which seems to be going swimmingly, but his thoughts on politics.

In 2016, he watched as the United States elected Donald Trump as president. As someone on Celebrity Apprentice, he knew Trump rather well. He was quoted as saying, "No matter how bad you think Trump is, he is worse." He jokingly mentioned after the election, that there were two truths that have been shattered: One. Hillary Clinton is always the worst choice for president. Two. The president will always be smarter than me.

Since so many libertarians have the facts wrong on this, I'm going to take a break here to correct the record. I see it repeated over and over on libertarian subreddits and the like that Penn Jillette voted for Hillary Clinton and that's when he had fallen. While it is true he voted for Clinton, it was not a vote that endorsed Clinton. He never liked Clinton and to my knowledge, he still doesn't like Clinton. He was very clear throughout that entire presidential campaign cycle that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, was his guy. His thesis was fairly simple: Clinton was bad but Trump was worse than Clinton; Clinton needed electoral votes; Johnson needed high vote counts; Nevada was a swing state. Therefore, he engaged in vote trading. He promised a dozen or so people from other states that he would vote for Hillary Clinton if those people would change their votes from Clinton to Johnson, effectively turning Penn's one sacrificed vote for Johnson into several. Was that the best tactical move? I don't know. I don't really see anything inherently wrong with the tactic.

When Trump was eventually elected, it seems like he caught some Trump Derangement Syndrome, but as he actually knew Trump personally, I don't really have much of a leg to stand on in an argument on that. I did share his fear that Trump would get the United States into a major war just due to his temperament, but for Trump's tenure, he showed surprising restraint. I'm grading on a curve, mind you. He was terrible on war, just not nearly as bad as his two predecessors. When Iran shot down a US drone, he declined to use military action to avenge the drone, as some of his advisors wanted. But then, he assassinated Iranian general Soleimani. Then again still, he brokered the peace deal with the Taliban. Even so, he mentioned in an interview with MaryAnn Williamson in 2020 that he was afraid Trump would lead us to nuclear war. I just wasn't seeing that he was necessarily worse than the establishment on war anymore at that point, based on his track record. 

When COVID-19 started, he began to slip away from libertarians. In an episode of Penn's Sunday School titled "Are We Still Libertarians?" Penn talked about how someone from a big libertarian organization asked him to participate in a movement to reopen Las Vegas. Penn replied with a forceful no in true Jillettian fashion. 

His view was that a reopening would lead to more deaths and suffering. This fundamentally flipped a switch in his head. He began to think if liberty isn't done in compassion and love for other people, then maybe he had held liberty in too high regard. 

However, in my opinion, he didn't see to catch the opposite end of things. People's livelihoods were ruined over these shutdowns. Restrictions skyrocketed youth suicides. Deaths of despair in general skyrocketed, with drug overdoses spiking. So where is the compassion for these people? The point of liberty, as Penn seems to have sadly forgotten, is that liberty is the only function by which you allow people to do their own risk analysis and proceed as they see fit, not to mention that when you force people to do something, the more resistive they tend to get. Penn himself said that he doesn't know how to run other peoples' lives. That's still the case, then and now. Once again, it's liberty that truly shows compassion and love for everyone. If someone feels that they are high risk, then yes, please stay away from crowds and take appropriate steps. If someone else feels that quarantining would destroy their lives, then please do something else. Taking one group of the above and allowing no nuance is the ignorant and egomaniacal way of going at this. 

I wasn't, of course, in Penn's conversation with the unnamed libertarian, but I highly doubt that the libertarian wanted to force people to reopen Las Vegas even if they didn't want to. That would be exceedingly unlibertarian. Recall how many private businesses started work from home procedures well before government lockdowns ever started. I suspect the event was intended to get the government to stop dictating to people what their risk analysis must be (people must be 100% risk-averse to the 'Rona, no matter the cost), despite not knowing a single thing about each individual. Doesn't he remember saying that he has no idea how to run other people's lives? Doesn't he understand that people have their own risk-reward tolerances? Doesn't he understand that destroying people's livelihoods at gunpoint, his own argument, is wrong?

Penn is such a thoughtful individual. How in the hell did he miss all of that?

On top of this, he talked about how he doesn't think private insurance could handle COVID-19 testing. Aside from the fact that the private insurance system is far more fascistic than free market, did he think the government rolled out testing so well? The CDC delayed testing for weeks to months, screwing up their own attempts at testing kits, as they suppressed private attempts to roll out testing kits. Did he miss the articles the Cato Institute, an organization he was (and presumably still is) a Fellow of, released on the CDC failures? Then he talked about hospital shortages, but didn't find it prudent to bring up certificate of need laws that artificially limit new hospital construction? I understand that between his Vegas show, his television show, and his weekly podcast, and his family, there isn't a whole lot of time left for much else. But these aren't really complex or esoteric libertarian arguments, here.

Then in July of 2021, he aired a segment titled "Turns Out I Like Obama". Oh, boy. This could mean a lot of different things. So I listened to it. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I really did. For all he did for me, he at least deserves a fair shake at it. Penn talked about the racist overtones of the whole birth certificate thing conservatives pulled in 2008. Okay, he didn't have to repeat the word "racist" so many times to the point of gratuitousness, but yes, that was a rather stupid thing conservatives were focusing on. Then he said Obama did a good job in Libya. What....??? Did he not realize the war in Libya was orchestrated by Hillary Clinton when she was Obama's Secretary of State? Did he not realize that Libya was a complete unmitigated disaster, where Africans are now sold as slaves in an open market? Very odd for someone who called Hillary Clinton a war-monger. Okay, he did mention that conservatives were pushing for Obama to do something there and when he did it, conservatives were hypocrites about it. Maybe he was just focusing on that hypocrisy, but he has said before, which I disagreed with, that he doesn't mind hypocrisy since one who has committed hypocrisy has now doubled his chances of Penn agreeing with him. But I can even give him the benefit of the doubt there that he was focusing on the hypocrisy.

Then he said that he wishes Obama was president again. Oh, come on. Really?? Is this a test? Is he playing god and testing my faith in him? Is he going to ask me to barbecue my son next?

Obama. The president who withdrew the troops from Iraq. And instead of sending them home, sent them to Afghanistan. Yeah, that same fruitful war that just ended. Then unilaterally started a war in Libya and Syria. And unilaterally bombed Somalia. Then bombed Iraq again. Then funded the genocide in Yemen, murdering untold numbers of children. This is the president that murdered Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen, with a drone strike without due process. This is the president that has utilized the espionage act to prosecute journalists and whistleblowers more than all previous presidents combined. This is the president that pushed for ever more wiretapping of all American citizens in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. This is the president that gave us an expansive medical system overhaul, called the "Affordable Care Act", following which medical costs continued to skyrocket, with even Democrats today admitting its failure without actually saying it, by pushing for Medicare for All as their headliner issue. This is the president that had pushed ever more stimulus money, driving us all deeper into debt.

Penn, this is really what you long for? That list was just the tip of the iceberg.

And now this.
I can't even begin to describe how sad this makes me.

You are going to Tweet your support for Gavin Newsom to remain in office in California? This is the governor that has destroyed businesses in the state. This is the governor that has helped create forests of fuels that burn so hot, people in Utah can't breathe. This is the governor that oversaw the continued explosion of homelessness. This is the governor that has continues the policies to make the poverty rate the highest in the country when adjusting for cost of living. This is the governor that signed a law telling people they can't work for a company in the manner they choose. This is the governor that tells people to not dine at restaurants and wear face masks at all times while eating at the French Laundry without masks with his high-dollar donors and lobbyists. This is the governor that shuts down public schools while sending his own kids to private school.

If you want to talk about lack of love and compassion, Gavin Newsom is your poster boy.

I honestly have not followed Penn's politics closely for a while now. I fell off his podcast when he started talking about weight loss, veganism, and the latest entertainment stories more than politics, atheism, and sketpicism. I feel like I surpassed his understanding of politics a while back, though he was a great gateway drug to it. I get it. He's way busier than I am and has less time to read political literature as much. And I don't think he has completely abandoned liberty but is realigning himself on certain, albeit major, points. At least, I hope he hasn't. This is my own interpretation of the events. I, of course, do not claim to have ESP. But Penn has called himself an eternal Pollyanna, to a fault. He always sees the good in people and that given the choice, people will generally do the right thing. I think what he has seen with COVID has shaken this belief to his core. He has appeared to use that as a basis for libertarianism in the past, but this is, in my view, misguided. Sure, if people are generally good, you don't need the heavy hand of government. But when people generally don't do the right thing is when libertarianism is even more important. If people are generally bad and dumb, who does Penn think will rise to power? Likely not virtuous and smart people. So what will happen to the few virtuous and smart people? Be ruled over the bad and dumb people. This is a recipe for disaster, not success. Think about some of the worst events in history. The Holocaust. The Cultural Revolution. American slavery. Jim Crow. The Japanese Internment. The Chinese Exclusion Act. These were all done with the general support of large segments of the population. All of those except for the Cultural Revolution occurred by democratic means (yes, including the Holocaust; Hitler was voted into power and many voluntarily showed up to scream their heads off for the anti-Jewish rallies). It is libertarianism with individual rights that would have saved those lives. It is the strong hand of government, with the consent of the people, that these events occurred.

Penn, you have said that your friend Tim Jenison convinced you to libertarianism by essentially saying "Fuck you, you're wrong."

I do this with love in my heart: Fuck you, you're wrong.

I will always adore you, Penn, like a child that loves his caring father. But I am so goddamned disappointed in you.
Labels:

Popular Posts