Is counter-culture the new Punk Rock?

     In the 90s when I was a teenager, one thing was perfectly clear. The norms of society were worth rebelling against. Not everything adults told us teenagers needed to be listened to. We were going to live our own lives the way we wanted to. My main aspiration was to grow up to be a gutter punk. It sounded cool and edgy. Later on in life I realized that it just meant being homeless and dirty. I joined the Army at 18 because I had no idea what I was going to do in life. I spent my teenage years listening to NOFX excoriate the government with songs like “Perfect Government” which highlights the absurdity of fighting each other when the government is the one pitting us against each other. That message stuck with me. The problem was I didn’t understand the truer meaning of this song. I figured punk rock was just about angst and feeling hopeless at the future. I didn’t know I felt that way because there was no frontier.

     The frontier means new and exciting discovery. A way to make something your own and build. Now if you want to build even the smallest business, the money required becomes an immense roadblock. I got older and listened to Peter Schiff talk about the Federal Reserve and why the purchasing power of the dollar has continuously gone down. I learned about 1913 and Jekyll Island. Then I realized all those ideas I left behind from my youth were in fact coming back to haunt us as a nation. Inflation has been accelerated by printing presses put in over drive. Ever wonder why we need so many taxes if we are just going to keep printing money? If they lower taxes, more money circulates, and inflation  increases.

     Now I think about why we are in endless wars, or why the government can’t stop “helping” the economy. This way of thinking is the new counter culture. It is the new punk rock. I’m not talking pink haired androgynous militants LARPing at revolution. I’m talking suit wearing intellectuals. I’m talking Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. I cannot think of two more modern punk rock attitudes. The only possible exceptions would be Elon Musk and Eric Weinstein(Bret’s brother). While politically they are not necessarily Liberty minded in terms of wanting freedom from government, they are challenging the new cultural norms, just like Mohawk having leather jacket wearing antagonists of my childhood. Ironically many of those who raged against the government as I was listening to them shout at me from the speakers in my room in South Texas, or blaring some Black Flag at Padre Island while I drank whatever cheap beer we could get a hold of, have turned into progressives who think government is the answer now. They have grown up and decided that suddenly more government trying to fix more problems is suddenly better.

     The Libertarian Party(LP) is not immune. My Twitter is still near unusable thanks to the very enthusiastic progressive base that has “infiltrated” the LP. Jo Jorgensen the LP candidate for President of the United States recently tweeted out this:

     While the first tweet seems to show support for the organization Black Lives Matter, the second tweet clarified it was about police brutality. Before the clarification I certainly made my feelings clear. Not because I think I am some influential mogul, if you look at my follower count it’s obvious I am not, but because Marxism can’t exist in a free society. Anyone who has read my feed knows how I feel about citizens who voluntarily visit violence on their fellow citizens with impunity while hiding behind a cheap metal badge. Supporting a Marxist organization is something entirely different. While the organization itself seeks to fight the tyranny of our current government, they want to replace it with a new and even worse tyranny. I’ll take the devil I know thank you very much. Now opposition to BLM the organization is also the new counter culture since people won’t even go read their website. They blindly follow.

     So I think it is safe to say right leaning Libertarians and average Republicans (not the Steve Kings of the party) are the new counter to the authoritarian norms of the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. Punk rock is more than a haircut and a playlist. It is raging against the norms of the society that would tell you how you have to live, how you have to make your money, and what you can do with it when they are done taking their “share”. Johnny Ramone understood this all too well even in the early 2000s. While the Republican party is no longer the party of small government and freedom, they are certainly the lesser of two evils. I hate that that’s the decision we have to make as Americans and individuals. I am still voting for Jo Jorgensen. She is the best hope to get back what makes us American; Liberty.