This week, my father and I met in Las Vegas, Nevada, for a three-day conference held by Liberty Magazine, on the subject of liberty in America (oh yeah, and we dabbled in some drinking and gambling as well, cause hey, man, it’s Vegas). Liberty Magazine is just about the only magazine or publication that I’ve ever received in which from cover to cover, I’m never intellectually disappointed or bored. In so far as I can tell, the magazine has only one goal, which is to provide an honest and open forum for the discussion of freedom and liberty in America, and in the world. As many of you may already know, I’m a practicing libertarian, which means that I care more about my right to personal property, and personal liberty than anything else in the world. This means that I don’t believe it’s okay to mandate others to give anything they own to anyone else.
This philosophy often sounds cold, heartless, and cruel to many people, and many of you may think that by calling myself a libertarian, I’m thereby identifying myself with some eccentric fringe group. Well, to call the libertarian party a fringe group is only apt if you think of such American icons as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson as men from a fringe group. These three men were the founding fathers of the great-enlightened liberty revolution of the late 1700’s, and their scope and focus has enabled Americans to live in one of the freest societies on earth, to this very day. Most libertarians are offended by what has happened to the status of economic and personal freedom in America since the socialist movements of the 1930’s and the foreign diplomacy movements of the 1960’s, and it is the libertarian goal to remind Americans that our country was founded to allow people to freely keep most of their income.
But I’ve written enough about politics in the last year, and so for once, I don’t really feel like sharing any of my ideas on current politics. Perhaps this is because I just spent three days sharing my ideas on politics, and I’m a bit burnt out. More likely, however, is the feeling that I’m on the verge of giving up on persuading my peers when it comes to politics, because everywhere I look in America today, I see more and more dishonesty, public shaming, lying, deceit, unaccountability, and spineless finger pointing than ever before. That last sentence sure sounded angry, but believe it or not, it was written by a genuinely happy author, one who currently sits on a jet plane, full of zest for life. After some deep, sober contemplation, I’ve discovered that for once in my life, I feel content and at peace with myself. I feel good about myself, and the main reason for this, is that I’ve slowly achieved a goal for myself that began at the tender age of twelve. This goal has been to become an honest person. I believe that for the first time ever in my life, I am completely honest with myself, and honest with others, all of the time, and this has enabled me to create an open and honest environment in which to live in.
But I feel like in America, we’ve recently constructed a society built on self-deception, shame, and embarrassment. We shame any celebrity who does something we’ve either thought about doing, or already done, because they got caught doing it, and it makes us feel better about ourselves to publicly shame someone else. We care not if the person is guilty of the crime or not, we just take pleasure in talking about their so-called sins in our magazines, newspapers, and on TV. But even worse than the guilt and the shame is how we treat ourselves by creating social taboos. Our taboos have extended so far as to cause many people to pretend that they don’t have feelings and desires that they actually have.
Towards the end of the conference, we were fortunate enough to be entertained by the stand-up comic, Tim Slagle. At one point during his bit, Slagle asked how many members of the seventy-five-member audience smoked pot. Based on the crowds’ responses during an earlier lecture on the legalization of marijuana, I felt it was more than obvious that a large majority of the group had indeed smoked pot; yet only 5% of the group had no problem openly admitting that they had smoked the drug in their past. Slagle then pointed out that the audiences’ gut reaction to hide their affinity for marijuana was a result of the public shame that our government’s programs have made each of us feel about using a drug like marijuana. I further reasoned that had he asked the same question about alcohol use, which any scientist will readily admit is as much of a drug as marijuana, most of the people would have raised their wine glasses, and cheered for the legal intoxicant that has no social taboo in America.
But there are far deeper issues on the subject of honesty than marijuana use. I don’t think many people are very honest anymore, when it comes to revealing their true feelings, and intentions, both to themselves, and to others. I think that most people take a cue from television and politics, and care more about how other people view their own actions, and what other people think about them, than they do about being honest. I think the media makes most people afraid to think and act differently than the status quo, and even worse, I think that this herd-like mentality is killing the very foundation of America; our ingenuity, creativity, and entrepreneurship. I think most Americans are insecure about being different from their peers, and this insecurity is weakening our quality of life.
I think the recent rise in prescription drug use, designed to ‘cure’ or abet depression is a surefire symptom of our unwillingness to be honest about how we feel about our lives. Most people won’t share their real feelings with anyone, except for certified therapists who charge them money in exchange for contractual secrecy. Why are people afraid to admit that their feelings are hurt, that their jobs are unfulfilling, or that they’ve made a mistake? Is it because we believe that admitting temporary disillusionment or dissatisfaction with our lives is a sign of weakness, or personal failure?
I’ve noticed that most people won’t even talk about religion or spirituality anymore, and if the subject does come up, it’s often mired with sarcastic jokes and nervous body language. I think that this is because most people fear letting on to others just how secretly spiritual they actually are. To be spiritual is to believe in the sacredness of something, and if something is sacred to you, then you can be hurt when another person doesn’t share your view, but the whole point of America was to create a haven in which anyone can openly worship anything they choose, so long as it doesn’t actually infringe on someone else’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own happiness.
To feel shame for any feeling you have, regardless of how others speak about that feeling publicly, is to give in to oppression, oppression of the worst kind – oppression of who you really are. Even if your sacred form of spirituality were to be something as seemingly comical as masturbation, you should be free, here in America, to proclaim your love for masturbation, and care not what anyone else thinks of you. You should never be ashamed of anything you do that does not infringe on someone else’s ability to be free to do what they feel like doing – that’s the point of being an American. Just because People Magazine says that the most beautiful people in the world have no body fat, does not mean that you are not beautiful if you have body fat. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and you don’t need to share the media’s vision of anything!
There is no shame in being gay, yet our newscasters, teachers, politicians, and peers often speak as though it is a shameful ‘life choice.’ Our president considers gay people to be in a different class from straight people, and wants to amend our constitution to make this distinction in terms of the right to marry. Florida ex-Senator Mark Foley shouldn’t be ashamed of being gay, and no one should care in the slightest that he is. What he should be ashamed of is hiding his feelings from himself and the world, and most of all, he should be ashamed of voting for legislation that has impeded the rights’ of every single one of his gay American peers to marry, in order to appease his Republican peers.
Bob Dole, as dull and moronic as he may have seemed to so many of us when he ran for president in 1996, has become quite the honest man, since he quit politics. I give him credit for admitting that he’s old, cannot achieve an erection anymore, and selling his name to Viagra to help make other people in his same situation feel better about purchasing a drug that can help extend their sex lives. Just because impotence jokes are funny, does not mean that someone should feel ashamed about admitting that they are impotent, and doing something about it. (But impotence jokes are very funny!)
When I was in high school, I was obese. I was in denial about my appearance and my weight problem for nearly four years, because to admit it to myself would have meant having to admit I had a problem, and once you truly admit that you have a problem, you have to deal with the problem, or deal with the guilt of ignoring the problem. Honesty in such cases is the only cure that works, and lasts. Drugs can help you forget your pain temporarily, but honesty will begin the actual healing process. Fortunately enough for me, a great, close friend of my father, who happens to be a doctor, basically called me out on my problem, and suggested several ways to help myself lose weight. Within one and a half years of his five-minute counseling, I had lost 100 pounds, and have never put that weight back on. But I cannot stress enough that it wasn’t until I was honest with myself, and honest about dieting in front of my peers, that I was capable of making that change.
Shame is a real, genuine emotion. Shame is an emotion that one should feel when they have wronged themselves, or others. For example, if you lie, cheat, steal, swindle, or manipulate another human for personal gain, then in my book, you should certainly feel shame for your actions. But if you like to be whipped by your lover, prefer to have sex with consenting members of the same sex, choose to kill your own brain cells with recreational drugs, or don’t believe in the status quo, then you don’t have anything to worry about, and you should always be honest about your opinions – when asked.
And if you believe in a religion that makes you feel guilty about your own, true, honest self, then perhaps it is time that you honestly review that religion, and why you believe in it. Because with all of my intelligence and intuition, I seriously doubt in the veracity of any sort of benevolent creator that would program its creation to desire things that it should not desire – that’s torturous and cruel, and if that is the case, then sign me up for some anti-depressants, quick, because that would be too depressing to deal with!
Even though I don’t often cry, I’m often amazed at how powerful and often relieving of an emotion it is to cry, and yet in this masculine-driven society, I’m told that it’s wrong for men to cry. I think it’s irritating when people cry over stupid things, but to say it’s wrong is like saying that sneezing is wrong – they’re both bodily functions that are sometimes beyond our control. I’m sick of holding my tongue about subjects that may offend or hurt other people’s feelings. No one needs to be protected from the truth, for protecting someone from the truth means that you are deceiving them, and I believe that no matter what, everyone is entitled to the truth, so that they may best decide what action to take with their own life – and this for me, is the ultimate definition of liberty.
America would not exist if many brave men had not been willing to stand up against the status quo and agree that the status quo was oppressive, unjust, and marring their personal liberty. The King of England told men like Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson that the crown knew what was good for them, and that they should silently obey, pay their dues, and follow orders, lest they be locked up. And had these four men, plus many others, not had the honesty and courage it took to stand up against the crown, we would all be living in “New England” to this day – paying taxes to London, being policed by closed circuit televisions as well as policemen with guns with rubber bullets, and worst of all, we’d be eating dry, tasteless scones with whatever teeth we were lucky enough to have left. So the next time you feel ashamed for your own actions, be sure to question the action in itself, and if it’s not hurting anyone else, then go ahead and proceed with the action – guilt free, because that’s the whole point of living in a free society. The point of liberty isn’t to feel guilty about your right to be an individual, or about other’s needs and desires. The point of liberty is to honestly embrace your right to freely express yourself and to be the person that you want to be, so that you can be truly happy. Honestly, did you hear about how Brad Pitt left Jennifer Anniston for Angelina Jolie? For shame!