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Cultural Libertarian Manifesto
Post #1755 • July 10, 2015, 9:53 PM • 2 Comments
Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos:
Breitbart hoped to turn what he called the “Hollywood underground” into a network of resistance against cultural elites. A popular conservative academic who tweets as Will Antonin recently had a similar idea. “Find members of the scattered underground [in arts & entertainment]… Link them.”
The network that Breitbart and Antonin hoped for now appears to be forming on its own. But it is not a conservative network. Indeed, it’s debatable whether the old labels of liberal and conservative, or left and right, are adequate to explain what’s going on.
Perhaps the most accurate distinction is libertarian versus authoritarian: those who want to control culture versus those who want to liberate it. The entertainment police versus the entertainment rebels. The rebels are producers and consumers. The police are a narrow band of loud but isolated media blowhards.
Even “libertarian” may not be an adequate term. This isn’t the economic libertarianism of Hayek or Rothbard, nor the political theorising of Nozick. This is, if anything, cultural libertarianism. And it has yet to be fully defined. There is not yet an intellectual figurehead or classic text for fans to cleave to.
Gotta start somewhere.
Cultural Libertarian Manifesto
Up with sharing culture, looking fabulous, and having fun. Down with whiners and shamers.
Sometimes good people make bad art. Sometimes bad people make great art.
Your squeals of impotent outrage nourish us.
Punch up, punch down. The direction doesn't matter. The impact does. The harder the better.
Your telling us not to say something, or not to say it in a particular way, obliges us to say it, in that way.
Nothing is sacred. No one is off limits. No groups of people are illegitimate targets.
Art has no obligation to carry a message, much less a proper one. Art that carries a message may be bad art anyway. Art designed around a message probably is.
Art's sole responsibility is to be good as art. Entertainment's sole responsibility is to entertain.
Artists and crusaders are entirely different kinds of people.
Hate speech is free speech. Hate speech is a right. If you don't understand that then you're a threat to culture.
Culture doesn't belong to identity groups. It belongs to whomever loves it. It belongs most to those who can work it.
Up with artistic sensitivity. Down with political sensitivity.
The idea of creating art to change people makes no more sense than the idea of creating people to change art.
Your feelings of offense are the least important thing in the entire universe.
There are terrible evils in the world and art that somebody has a problem with isn't one of them.
Your belief that some kinds of speech are violence marks you as a child.
Many people who say they want justice act as if they merely want control.
Censors are the pedophiles of art. They can't help the way they are, but that doesn't mean we have to tolerate them.
It's not my job to cover your world in rubber. It's your job to put on a pair of shoes.
Kindly unclutch those pearls.
[Suggest your own via comments.]
2.
July 24, 2015, 12:37 PM
Your political correctness is a suffocating smog blocking truth.
1.
Walter Darby Bannard
July 21, 2015, 12:44 PM
How about,
After all, what really matters is individual freedom. That's the as they say. It's pretty simple, really.
The only people who should not be left alone are the ones who in some way deprive others of their liberty. They should be tossed in jail where they can't do it any more.