A Response to Jane Mayer

typical libertariansI read all of Jane Mayer's New Yorker epic takedown of the American libertarian movement.  "Covert Operations: the Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War Against Obama" is about the Brothers Koch a.k.a. "The Kochtopus", two - or four, depending on which brothers one considers part of the Koch inner-circle - shady oil billionaires behind the curtain of the libertarian movement from the Cato Institute to the Tea Party.  It's creepy to think there's one devious, eight-armed creature pulling all those levers of influence, like "The Company" from Prison Break.  But Mayer's propagandistic assessment is underhanded, full of political bias, and based on fallacious logic.  And before you suspect me also of being on the Koch's payroll (I live below the poverty line.), I go on the record as saying that I think we should use as little fossil fuels as possible, that big business is obstructionist and has unduly influenced policy-making in Washington, and that oil is the devil.

I guess my first point in response to Mayer is that billionaires who are interested in politics will fund, support, and create institutions they like.  So what?  Does that somehow undermine the libertarian project of minimal government interference in the economy and robust civil liberties?  Mayer does contend that George Soros, the billionaire behind the Democratic Party, goes out of his way to broadcast his political opinions and lavish donations, while the Brothers Koch apparently try to hide theirs.  But if, as Mayer says, the Brothers Koch have a reputation for lavish donations to "right wing" causes, and if, as Mayer says, the Koch's empire has been nicknamed "The Kochtopus" due to its reputation for pervasiveness, and if all those prominent, mainstream conservative commentators like Ed Crane and Bruce Bartlett who Mayer quotes promiscuously throughout her piece are well aware of the Kochs's political activities, are they then so secret at all?  How can a person have a reputation for lavish giving and be concealing that lavish giving at the same time?  How can, as Mayer suggests, the Kochs go about funding as many prominent institutions as possible, which are then named after them, and somehow simultaneously be trying to fly under the radar?  Perhaps Mayer would be more satisfied were  the brothers to keep a blog or make regular appearances on The Daily Show.       

My second huge problem with the article is that Mayer describes the Brothers Koch's activities as a conflict of interest, (and there may be one.  The issue is worth further investigation, and I always support transparency.  Yea for the Internets.).  But Mayer implies that because the Kochs fund political organizations whose policy conclusions would likely benefit them financially, they must be using lies and deceit to force those policy conclusions.  But would it not also be a conflict of interest for me as an aspiring medical student to suggest a policy making it less expensive for Americans to become doctors?  Such a policy would certainly benefit me financially, but that doesn't mean I can't honestly believe it's in the best interest of everybody.  According to Mayer's logic, anybody who advocates lower taxes must have a conflict of interest because they would directly benefit financially from that policy.  This is clearly a faulty premise.

My third major problem with the article is that Mayer presents herself as neutral yet is unabashedly partisan: she refers to conservative lobbyists like Grover Norquist and Frank Luntz (whom I hate, by the way, in the same way as I hate James Carville and Paul Begala) as "operatives" throughout her article, but I guess this is superior to the older pejorative term favored by liberal hacks: "Gang of Five".  Mayer's article is one part conspiracy theorist fear-mongering and one part guilt-by-association (She drags the Koch name through puddles of Beck, Limbaugh, and even Abramoff.).  In this way, "Covert Operations" reminded me of Farenheit 9-11 in that it danced around an accusation without ever directly making one: in Michael Moore's case, the intended message is that Bush was somehow involved in the planning of 9-11, and in the case of Mayer, the message is that the Koch Brothers run a well-oiled and centrally-controlled secret propaganda empire which seeks to destroy the Democratic Party through lies and deceit.  And it's a testiment to the skill of Jane Mayer as a writer that she accomplished this all without ever making a direct accusation and without citing a single primary source.  "Covert Operations" is nothing more than the latest battle in the Culture War. 

Here is an example of Jane Mayer playing the Michael Moore card: 

During the 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some nine hundred thousand dollars to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans. During the Bush years, Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies enjoyed remarkable prosperity.

But didn't Goldman Sachs donate even more money to the Obama Campaign?  And hasn't Goldman Sachs enjoyed tremendous prosperity under the Obama Administration?  Why aren't all the New Yorker investigative journalists suggesting malfeasance here?  I find it inconsistent that the loose six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connections President Obama has to former domestic terrorists, radical religious leaders, and corporate interests are played down as irrelevent, while similar connections conservatives have are used as matter-of-fact evidence here that the "Kochtopus" is engaged in...what?  "Malfeasance"?  "Fiddling"?  "Venality"?  "Indecency"?  Is there anything more here than "I think the enemy is up to something..."?

People like Mayer criticize the movie Zeitgeist for being batshit insane conspiracy theorist mumbo jumbo, constantly get on Ron and Rand Paul for their loose associations with 9-11 conspiracy theorists or hundred-dollar donations from known racists, and think The Fellowship is running the country, but the same people shit-a-brick anytime someone suggests that academia or the media has a liberal bias. 

I think here again as usual, both sides are to blame, none of the connections Mayer mentions are a big deal, Obama's associations aren't a big deal either, and it's not a big deal if there are more liberal reporters or professors than conservative ones.  We don't have to have ideological quotas and litmus tests for areas of our society that have nothing to do with politics (Oh, I'm sorry Professor Einstein, we have too many liberals and need to hire a conservative to fill our spot in the Physics Department.).

But we should stop having news stories that seek to discredit opposing philosophical views by associating them with things and people we may find unpleasant.  Not that the Kochs are as bad as Mayer says they are, but if I find out tomorrow that Hitler is secretly alive and financing the gay rights movement, I'm not going to stop supporting gay rights.   Matthew 7:16 says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits" (which reminds me that Jesus hung around with some shady characters too).

Comments

[Joseph Cox]

I think that most libertarians are pissed off because they read an article about how their genuine political opinions were nothing more than the top down results of a couple of kind of crazy billionaires. Jane Meyer is a really solid journalist, but I do think she oversold her point. On the other hand, the fact that the 9th and 22th richest people in the country have spent hundreds of millions of dollars- at least- over 30 years to fund practically every libertarian organization in the country is definitely news.

I like libertarians and libertarianism enough that I wish they had a larger slice of the political pie- if only to generate more substantive debate about exactly what the government's role in society is- but I was genuinely dismayed to learn that so many organizations I respect were funded by secretive oil billionaires. Does that take anything away from libertarian positions and politicians? I hope not, but it does make me a lot more suspicious about why libertarians have opposed global warming legislation that seems like it uses a market mechanism and addresses and obvious market failure. It also might explain why movement libertarians have traditionally seemed to privilege economic liberty over civil liberties.

Also, the fact is that almost nothing that Koch brothers fund is named after them. Their company and its PAC aside, everything else is named in the fine and long tradition of naming PACs and think tanks vague and positive sounding monikers like "Center for American Progress," "American's for Prosperity" and the "American Enterprise Institute." At least when they funded the founding of Cato they gave it a badass name.

I think libertarians justifiably feel defensive about the article, but this is what happens when you get to start playing with the big boys, people come after you. If anything I hope this is a sign that Gary Johnson is gonna make some noise in 2012.

[Christopher Carr]

Actually, I welcome the mainstream press, and especially someone as talented as Jane Mayer, actually acknowledging the existence of libertarianism. I would be pleased if the future political debates in this country took the form of this article. For so long, we were the nerd standing against the wall sort of bopping back and forth to Dave Matthews, but we asked the prom queen to dance and were rejected, now the jocks have started to see us as a threat and tease us, and it feels good to know we serve a purpose, even if that purpose is "punching bag". I mean...the New Yorker!

[Steve Erwin Lives]

Have you heard about the vast libertarian conspiracy? We want to take over the government and then...leave you alone.

[Sasan M]

@Joseph Cox
She has no point and the funding was available even on Wikipedia and it is well known that Koch fund these institutions and have been doing so since the 80s. Additionally all the libertarian institution in question have papers and example of corporate welfare and favour a system that would actually hurt people like Koch. It is apparent he funds these organizations for political reasons because reading what Cato had wrote, there is no way he could benefit from it. It is also amazing how she leaves out the funding for Barack Obama by Big Pharma etc... She also displays an obsene amount of economic illiteracy in the paper and actually misrepresents what libertarians want. In short a lot of meat with no meaning and nothing that couldn't have been found on Wikipedia. Not secretive.

[Joseph Cox]

Sasan,

The fact that something could be found on Wikipedia does not discount it as news. Combing the internet for items of interest is a well wore tactic of journalism at this point. Furthermore, you are incorrect to characterize the entire article as something you could find on Wikipedia. Ms Meyer obviously spent a long time interviewing people and discovering the organizational structure and relationships between the Kochs and libertarian organization. I don't think she says much of anything about what libertarians want or how economics works, just that the Koch brothers have financial interests in many of the policy outcomes they support. I stated before that I respect many of the organizations mentioned in the article, so I am happy to hear that they wrote articles that don't support the thesis of the Koch-topus.

As for Obama and his donations from Big Pharma, why would that be included in the article? Do you think that it is unfair to write about politics without mentioning every potentially unflattering item of interest about the President? She mentioned that George Soros was the democratic equivalent of the Koch brothers. I suppose she could have elaborated, but it didn't seem particularly necessary. Thanks for commenting.