A Clockwork Orange: How We Might Win The Battle For Liberty

Written by James Smith
Inspired by Stefan Molyneux

The battle for liberty has been raging for hundreds of years now. Many have come and gone in the fight, advancing the cause, only for state power to increase and the destruction of our civil liberties to continue. They have done well, but we need to do better. We are at a fork in the road: the state expands at an unprecedented level, the economy crumbles around us, and our civil and economic freedoms are being stripped from us before our eyes. Blatantly Orwellian bills such as SOPA, an internet censorship bill in the name of tackling piracy, and NDAA, a bill that allows for government assassination of US citizens, have forced the general population to consider the state in a new light. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Our biggest priority right now must be changing the hearts and minds of our kin, to a new mindset of liberty, prosperity and peace. Before any kind of real change can occur, the consciousness of the population needs to shift. We need to be more tolerant, more rational and more accepting of the nature of humanity, the Earth and the Universe.

In order to do this we need to analyse exactly why things are this way, and so many people are still to wake up from the trance of statism and violence. Many approaches have been tried, but I have become increasingly convinced that the reason so many people choose to be asleep, is not that they don’t care, though that does represent a large percentage, but it is that they believe they are just and right .

This is key to understanding the mindset of the uninitiated, and helping them understand the need for strong moral principles with no exceptions, in order to preserve liberty and peace on Earth. So here is my new methodology for debating with those who argue against freedom.

Anybody that has been fighting for political sanity for any length of time knows that debating with statists with the argument from logic just does not work. Despite clear evidence provided to show how the war on drugs is a failure, the war on terrorism is a failure, and the welfare state is a failure, amongst other things, statists will defend their position ‘til the cows come home. This is because they see their position as right, not rational or logical, but moral.

Those advocating the war on drugs do so to put themselves on the moral high-ground. They are quite obviously against drug usage so they are obviously for the war on drugs. They see any other method in tackling drug usage as ‘soft’ or make the ‘argument’ that that attitude is a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ kind of attitude. They literally will not accept empirical evidence suggesting that prohibition has not, and will not ever cut drug usage or drug related crime.

Those advocating the war on terrorism do so because they feel that that is the moral position. How could anybody not want to get justice for the terrible crime of 9/11? Anybody with any different position is siding with the terrorists! Pointing out that bombing, invading and killing millions of people in the middle-east only invigorates terrorists will not do. We’ve been doing that for about 10 years, let’s try and do something different.

Those advocating the welfare state do so because that is the moral economic choice. Why wouldn’t you want the rich to give up a little bit of their money for the needy? Surely you’re just siding with the big banks if you disagree! No amount of Mises and Hayek quoting will dissuade the welfarists from their position, because it’s just not ‘right’ to ignore the poor. What can we do in the face of stubborn demagoguery?

The answer to all of these is that maybe we should play ball with them, and argue from morality.

As a student of film, I make no apologies in using Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange as a case study on why the argument from morality is important. More specifically, I look at Kubrick’s adaptation from the novel by Anthony Burgess.

Malcolm McDowell plays Alex DeLarge, a deranged teenager who, with his ‘droogs’, go on nightly rampages through the city, raping and pillaging more for fun rather than gain. The government finally catch up with him, incarcerate him, and subject him to a new rehabilitation technique called ‘Ludovico’. Strapped to a chair and his eyes held open by pins, he is forced to watch horrific footage of beatings, rapes and murders to the sound of classical music. At first Alex enjoys the visceral thrill of the films, but meanwhile, he is being fed a chemical that makes him unbearably nauseous. After weeks of this treatment, whenever the desire for lust or violence comes about, Alex is rendered incapable of pulling through with it, due to the sickness. He is supposedly cured of sin, and the government sing the technique’s praises. However, Alex’s sickness comes about whenever he hears classical music too. It is knowledge seized upon by a vengeful victim of Alex’s violence, who after bringing Alex into his home, punishes him by blaring Beethoven into his room, leading him to jump out of the window.

Alex survives, his afflictions are reversed, and the technique is soundly criticized by the press. The headlines read “government is murderer”.

The film is almost unchanged as an adaptation for 99% of the running time, save for the final scene. There is a chapter in Burgess’ novel, in which Alex encounters one of his former ‘droogs’ with his wife. After seeing the progression his comrade has made, Alex decides to ‘grow-up’.

Kubrick ditched this set-up, choosing to end the film in one of Alex’s sexually charged dreams. This decision has been controversial for decades. What does this mean? Is Kubrick so cynical as to believe that humans can not be rehabilitated? Not at all. The point was that turning Alex into a ‘Clockwork Orange’ was wrong, not because he might eventually turn good by himself, but that it was inherently wrong. In other words, the general principle of allowing for free will applied to everyone, even the morally abhorrent people.

The film is a brilliant satire of extreme statists and demagogues, and provides a compelling argument that moral principles can only be so when they apply to everyone and all situations. If we make exceptions, then we have set a precedent that the moral principle in question is not so based on specific circumstances. This is ripe for manipulation and corruption. If it is okay to kill in certain circumstances, then argument can be brought about in times of war, and even genocide.

Nothing is as effective in debating as pointing out hypocrisy. Most people will offer a general statement or principle, and then, If you have ever seen this done effectively, you’ll often them back-tracking ‘What I really meant was’. This is because most peoples opinions are hardly thought through at all. They are usually an amalgamation of half-baked, hardly analysed, half-opinions that have been passed down from the previous generations, peers and mainstream media propaganda. Once they have been rigorously analysed they hardly hold up for very long.

Once this has been done, half of the mission has succeeded! The statist is now forced to confront their lack of rationality and moral hypocrisy. This is step one.

Unfortunately, many are emotionally invested in their belief systems, and are not likely to give them up without a fight. Some may get angry, and resort to ad-hominem, which is simply an admission of defeat. You’re not going to get much further in that case so you may as well leave it for another time; the battle won but the war adjourned.

Otherwise, in order to avoid the almost inevitable devolution into ‘well, let’s agree to disagree’ nonsense, both parties need to agree on an objective barometer for their moral choices, which can best be found in objective definitions both of you can observe. How about using the English Dictionary?

The manipulation of language has been one of the biggest factors in the loss of liberty over the last century, and one of the biggest propaganda tools. Many moral disasters have come about because we have not properly recognised when war is war and when stealing is stealing. One can not begin to have an argument from morality if we have different words for the same thing, or more importantly, we are using the wrong words for the same thing.

All statists are for the initiation of force.

“We are not at war with Libya, we are using military action”

What exactly is military action? If one cannot define it we can not have a proper intellectual debate about it. If we both decide that the ‘actions’ in Libya were either ‘war’ or ‘force’, which they most certainly are, we can then act on our moral principles and come to a logical conclusion. If you are against the initiation of force, then you must be against what the US was doing in Libya.

Similarly, if you are against Osama Bin Laden’s alleged use of force against the 3000 people who died on 9/11, you must be against the use of force used against the million Iraqi and Afghanistan civilians who have died in the resulting ‘war against terrorism’. Are you only against force when it is used against Americans? If so, flying planes into Iraqi buildings is perfectly okay and justified, along with the bombs.

Those who are for the prohibition of drugs are for the initiation of force. The fact that prohibition causes force in the drug market is irrelevant because we are dealing with moral principles. The very act of prohibition is the use of force. Threatening someone who uses drugs with prison is the initiation of force. Anybody who is truly a ‘pacifist’, i.e. someone who is against the initiation of force, is not in favour of drug prohibition. Call them out on that. If you are for the right of a woman to choose, if you are for the right to eat and drink whatever one wants, you are a hypocrite if you say that one cannot smoke cannabis or take a shot of heroin.

Frederic Bastiat, in The Law, called out ‘tax’ for its rightful name: ‘legalized plunder’. Holding someone up at gunpoint and demanding money for yourself, or for another, is ‘plunder’. If you have the right to throw that person in prison for not giving you that money, that is ‘legalized plunder’. Before we can argue about how much ‘tax’ people should be paying, we need to come to an agreement that it is ‘theft’. If the definition of ‘theft’ is the transfer of wealth by force, then ‘tax’ certainly fits that bill, it just happens to be legal.

Those who argue that it is voluntary are lying, as you do not have the legal right to stop paying taxes, despite any misgivings you might have about what the taxes are being used for. Why can you not choose not to pay taxes, and choose not to use the public services? If you can not, one can not honestly claim taxes to be ‘voluntary’. Those who argue that it is a ‘duty’ are also being disingenuous, because one would never suggest that you have a ‘duty’ to the highwayman simply for the fact that he is sticking you up.

So anybody in favour of ‘taxing’ is indeed in favour of ‘theft’, but only by one particular institution: the state. You can not honestly say that you are against theft if you support the government doing it, because if you are making a general moral principle, it needs to account for every human being. The government is simply an interchangeable group of human beings, who happen to wear different kinds of suits. So, an intellectually honest statist would say: “I am in favour of this group of people stealing from the rest, and not in favour of any other theft”.

Once we are dealing with real-life definitions, it doesn’t take long for the statist’s arguments to fall apart by their hypocrisy. They may hold the opinion that ‘tax’ is right, but can not honestly hold the moral high-ground or argue that they are against ‘theft’ as a moral principle. And if they are convinced that they are not moral, they are ten times as likely to find a more moral principle to stand by: ‘I am against theft’ (including taxes).

The key truth to remember above everything is: the state is a institution based on the initiation of force. A very good place to start is: are you or are you not in favour of forcing people to do what you want?

Using these steps, arguing from morality and exposing hypocrisy by using actual definitions, you have the power to actually change minds and actions. Ask the war-mongerer if he is genuinely against murder. Ask the pro drug-war guy if he really advocates freedom of choice. Ask the welfare supporter if he is really against slavery. They might hold their opinions for a while, but after confronting the clear implications of their opinions head-on, and as long as we stop pussy-footing around with ‘agreeing to disagreeing’, things will change.