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The Tyranny of Negative Freedom

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Necroculture

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Abstract

Negative freedom was the ideological rallying call of the bourgeoisie’s historically progressive period, when it overthrew the economic and political power of the landed aristocracy and gave birth to modern liberalism. Liberal philosophers asserted the moral primacy and autonomy of the individual and advocated the market and representative democracy as forms of association that allowed freedom from externally imposed authority. Only those relations of obligation and authority entered into voluntarily by the individual could have legitimacy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The distinction between negative and positive freedom is most often associated with Isaiah Berlin’s lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty,” delivered in 1958. But Fromm made the distinction in his 1941 book Escape from Freedom. See Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in idem, Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 118–172; Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1969). Tim Gray writes that the distinction between these two concepts of liberty “has been implicit, if not always explicit, in political thought since the Ancient Greeks”: Gray, Freedom (Houndsmill, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1991), 7.

  2. 2.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 269.

  3. 3.

    Ed Pilkington, “Barack Obama Denounced by Rightwing Marchers in Washington,” The Guardian, September 13, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/13/barack-obama-denounced-washington-march; Joel Kovacs, “Obama Slammed: Chains We Can Believe In,” WND April 15, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/2009/04/95135/; Ewen McAskill, “Obama Faces Re-election Hurdle as Health Reforms go Before Supreme Court,” The Guardian, November 14, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/14/obama-supreme-court-healthcare-bill

  4. 4.

    “Rep. Protesters Yelled Racial Slurs,” CBS News March 20, 2010,

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/20/politics/main6318517.shtml

  5. 5.

    Rick Santorum’s Super Tuesday speech (full transcript, video), March 6, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/rick-santorums-super-tuesday-speech-full-transcript-video/2012/03/06/gIQAdPhrvR_blog.html. Accessed March 8, 2012. For a socialist critique of Obamacare, see Kate Randall, “Obamacare Lies Exposed,” World Socialist Web Site, November 12, 2013, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/12/pers-n12.html

  6. 6.

    “Conservative Anti-Government Protesters Appropriate Historic US Flag,” Guardian.co.uk, Deadline USA Blog, September 14, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/sep/14/print

  7. 7.

    Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto (New York: William Morrow, 2010), 67.

  8. 8.

    Quoted in Armey and Kibbe, Give Us Liberty, 71. The exchange is recounted also in http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/227383/presidents-say-darndest-things-c/jay-nordlinger

  9. 9.

    Rick Santelli, quoted in Armey and Kibbe, Give Us Liberty, 19–20.

  10. 10.

    See Michael Perelman, Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 1.

  11. 11.

    Christopher Caudwell, The Concept of Freedom (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1965), 123–124.

  12. 12.

    Philip Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), 11.

  13. 13.

    Jon Wiener, “‘Hell Is Other People’: Ted Turner’s Two Million Acres,” in Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New York: The New Press, 2007), 199–206, quoting 204–205.

  14. 14.

    “Why the Rich Fear Violence in the Streets,” The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/07/06/why-the-rich-fear-violence-in-the-streets/

  15. 15.

    Denis Duclos, The Werewolf Complex: America’s Fascination with Violence, trans. Amanda Pingree (Oxford: Berg Books, 1998), esp. 119, 141.

  16. 16.

    Bill Durodié, “Fear and Terror in a Post-Political Age,” Government and Opposition 42(3) (2007): 427–450, esp. 436–439. See also Kathleen Tierney, “Disaster Beliefs and Institutional Interests: Recycling Disaster Myths in the Aftermath of 9-11,” in Lee Clarke ed., Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 11) (Emerald Publishing, 2003), 33–51. Henry Giroux, Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 50–54; Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (Penguin, 2010), esp. 236–237.

  17. 17.

    Paul Harris, “US ‘Preppers’ Are Ready to Fend for Themselves Come What May,” The Guardian Weekly, February 19, 2010, 3. See also Richard G. Mitchell Jr., Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002).

  18. 18.

    http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/. Accessed February 16, 2012.

  19. 19.

    Philip Lamy, Milennium Rage: Survivalists, White Supremacists and Doomsday Prophecy (New York: Plenum Press, 1996), 89.

  20. 20.

    Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear (Cambridge: Polity Press), 2.

  21. 21.

    Harris, “US ‘Preppers’.”

  22. 22.

    Jessica Bennett, “Rise of the Preppers: America’s New Survivalists,” Newsweek, December 27, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/rise-preppers-americas-new-survivalists-75537

  23. 23.

    Bennett, “Rise of the Preppers.”

  24. 24.

    “Survival in Popular Culture: Falling Skies Review,” June 22, 2012, Urban Survivalist Blog, http://urbansurvivalistblog.com/survival-in-popular-culture-falling-skies-review/. Accessed February 11, 2014.

  25. 25.

    Slavoj Zizek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2011), 64.

  26. 26.

    “Prepper Weapons and Survival Strategies Pictures – Doomsday Preppers – National Geographic Channel,” http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/prepper-weapons-survival-strategies-pictures/. Accessed February 16, 2012.

  27. 27.

    Quoted in Clancy Sigal, “America’s Endless Romance with Guns,” The Guardian, February 20, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/20/gun-crime-arizona-shooting

  28. 28.

    For example, a limited edition Smith and Wesson Model 629-6 .44 Magnum, http://www.armslist.com/posts/2057969/asheville-north-carolina-handguns-for-sale–smith-and-wesson-629-6–don-t-tread-on-me–engraved (accessed January 1, 2015); 1911 Colt .45ACP, http://www.armslist.com/posts/99537/ohio-handguns-for-sale–1st-edt–colt-1911–don-t-tread-on-me- (accessed November 8, 2015).

  29. 29.

    Joshua Horwitz and Casey Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 23.

  30. 30.

    Wayne LaPierre, Guns, Freedom and Terrorism (Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2003), 29 (for Heston quote), and 196. See also Scott Melzer, Gun Crusaders: The NRA’s Culture War (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 29.

  31. 31.

    Horwitz and Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, 1–2.

  32. 32.

    LaPierre quoted in Horwitz and Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, 40.

  33. 33.

    C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962, 264–265.

  34. 34.

    Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 171.

  35. 35.

    Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 10.

  36. 36.

    Ron Paul, Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues that Affect Our Freedom (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011), 145.

  37. 37.

    See also Firmin DeBrabander, Do Guns Make Us Free? Democracy and the Armed Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).

  38. 38.

    “Texas School District to Let Teachers Carry Guns,” Reuters, August 16, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/16/us-texas-guns-idUSN1538661720080816

  39. 39.

    See also David Ingram and Patricia Zengerle, “NRA Offensive Exposes Deep Divisions on Guns,” Reuters, December 21, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/22/us-usa-guns-nra-idUSBRE8BK0S520121222;

    Alina Selyukh, “Longtime Gun Lobby Ally to Lead Plan for Armed Guards at Schools,” Reuters, December 21, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/21/us-usa-guns-nra-hutchinson-idUSBRE8BK18P20121221; Ian Urbina, “Locked, Loaded, and Ready to Caffeinate,” The New York Times, March 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/us/08guns.html; Richard C. Paddock, “Facing Gun Issue, Starbucks Throws Up Its Hands,” Aol News, Mach 3, 2010, http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/facing-gun-issue-starbucks-throws-up-its-hands/19381679?sms_ss=email; Rob Walker, “Crossfire,” The New York Times, March 26, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/magazine/28FOB-consumed-t.html?_r=0

  40. 40.

    Wayne LaPierre and James Jay Baker, Shooting Straight: Telling the Truth about Guns in America (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2002), 63. See also Jennifer Carlson, Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  41. 41.

    Horwitz and Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, 219.

  42. 42.

    Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish, “Triggering the Debate: Faulty Associations between Violence and Mental Illness Underlie US Gun Control Efforts,” Risk and Regulation 25 (Spring 2013), 8–9, on 8; “Gun Crime Statistics by US State: Latest Data,” The Guardian, December 17, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state; “Assault or Homicide,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm. Accessed 5, 2015; Ray Sanchez, “Death and Guns in the USA: The Story in Six Graphs,” CNN, October 3, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/03/us/gun-deaths-united-states

  43. 43.

    Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies are Almost Always Better (London: Allen Lane, 2009, 132, 137. See also Jeffrey Rieman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 31–33.

  44. 44.

    Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level, 133–137. See also Rob Reiner, Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime and Control (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), esp. 75.

  45. 45.

    Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion (Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2005), 10, 18; Douglas Kellner, Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), esp. 90–95; Kevin Martinez and David Walsh, “Shooting Rampage in Santa Barbara, California, Leaves 7 Dead,” World Socialist Web Site, May 26, 2014, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/26/sanb-m26.html; James Brewer, “A New Wave of School Shootings and Other Violent Acts,” June 20, 2013, World Socialist Web Site, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/20/shoo-j20.html; David North, “The Columbine High-School Massacre: American Pastoral… American Beserk,” World Socialist Web Site, April 27, 1999, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/04/colo-a27.html; Kate Randall, “School shooting in Connecticut leaves 27 dead, including 20 children,” World Socialist Web Site, December 15, 2012, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/15/conn-d15.html

  46. 46.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 166. Emphasis in original.

  47. 47.

    See “The Killing of Trayvon Martin and Racial Politics in America,” World Socialist Web Site, April 5, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/04/pers-a05.html; Patrick Martin, “Obama, Race and Class,” World Socialist Web Site, July 22, 2013, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/22/pers-j22.html

  48. 48.

    “Tape Showed Zimmerman’s Anger over Black Man’s Beating,” CNN Justice, May 24, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/24/justice/florida-teen-shooting/; Ashley Hayes, “Witnesses Tell FBI that George Zimmerman is No Racist,” CNN Justice, July 13, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/justice/florida-teen-shooting/index.html

  49. 49.

    Quoted in Hayes, “Witnesses Tell FBI.”

  50. 50.

    “Who is George Zimmerman?,” CBS Miami, March 26, 2012, http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/03/26/who-is-george-zimmerman/; Mattew Lysiak and Helen Kennedy, “George Zimmerman Lost Job as Party Security Guard for Being Too Aggressive, Ex-co-worker Says,” New York Daily News, March 29, 2012, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/george-zimmerman-lost-job-party-security-guard-aggressive-ex-co-worker-article-1.1053223#ixzz36A9ZEZIN; Jeff Weiner, “Trayvon Martin: New Photo, Details of George Zimmerman’s Employment,” Orlando Sentinel, March 23, 2012, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-23/news/os-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-job-20120323_1_robert-zimmerman-source-new-details

  51. 51.

    Lane DeGregory, “Trayvon Martin’s Killing Shatters Safety within Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford,” Tampa Bay Times, March 24, 2012, http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/trayvon-martins-killing-shatters-safety-within-retreat-at-twin-lakes-in/1221799

  52. 52.

    See also Carlson, Citizen-Protectors, 161.

  53. 53.

    Amy Green, “Zimmerman’s Twin Lakes Community was On Edge Before Trayvon Shooting,” The Daily Beast, March 28, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/zimmerman-s-twin-lakes-community-was-on-edge-before-trayvon-shooting.html

  54. 54.

    Robert Reiner, Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime and Control (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 13–16; Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum, Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, Exclusion and the New Culture of Narcissism (Willan, 2008); Edward Leyton, Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2001), 350.

  55. 55.

    Wilkinson and Pickett, The Spirit Level, 153; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 108, 112; Henry Giroux, “Racial Injustice and Disposable Youth in an Age of Zero Tolerance,” Qualitative Studies in Education 16 (4) (2003): 553–565.

  56. 56.

    Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 52; Perelman, Invisible Handcuffs, 257–258. Cf. Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Houndmills, Basingstoke: MacMillan Education, 1988).

  57. 57.

    Hannah Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster and R. Jamil Jonna, “The Penal State in an Age of Crisis,” Monthly Review 61 (2) (June 2009), 1–17, on 3.

  58. 58.

    Rieman, The Rich Get Richer, 12–18.

  59. 59.

    LaPierre, Guns, Freedom and Terrorism, 204.

  60. 60.

    Jill LePore, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

  61. 61.

    LaPierre, Guns, Freedom and Terrorism, 210–211.

  62. 62.

    G. A. Cohen, “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” in idem, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 67–91, quoting 67–68.

  63. 63.

    Cohen, “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” 68. Emphasis in original.

  64. 64.

    Cohen, “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” 68–69.

  65. 65.

    Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch05.htm

  66. 66.

    G. A. Cohen, “Illusions about Private Property and Freedom,” in John Mepham and David-Hillel Ruben eds., Issues in Marxist Philosophy, Vol. IV. Hassocks: Sussex, 1981; Cohen, “Robert Nozick and Wilt Chamberlain,” in Cohen, Self-Ownership, 19–37, esp. 34–36.

  67. 67.

    Cohen, “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” 90.

  68. 68.

    Lamy, Millennium Rage, 72.

  69. 69.

    Quoted in Horwitz and Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, 21.

  70. 70.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_give_you_my_gun_when_you_take_it_from_my_cold,_dead_hands. Accessed on September 20, 2015.

  71. 71.

    Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be? (London: Continuum [1976] 1997), 59.

  72. 72.

    Fromm, To Have or To Be?, 59.

  73. 73.

    Fromm, To Have or To Be?, 63. Emphasis in original.

  74. 74.

    Fromm, To Have or To Be?, 63–64. Emphasis in original.

  75. 75.

    Fromm, To Have or To Be?, 89.

  76. 76.

    Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. New York: Collier Books, 1978, 114.

  77. 77.

    “Uncle Ted Triggers the Vote,” Youtube, uploaded August 16, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6YWqnq5T3A&feature=related. Accessed February 21, 2012.

  78. 78.

    Michael Roberts, “Ted’s World,” Denver Westword, July 27, 1994, http://www.westword.com/1994-07-27/music/ted-s-world/. Accessed February 21, 2012. See also Matt Gertz, “NRA Spokesman Ted Nugent’s Top 10 Inflammatory Comments,” MediaMatters for America, February 15, 2012, http://mediamatters.org/mobile/blog/201202150010

  79. 79.

    Nugent, quoted in Horwitz and Anderson, Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, 42–43. See also Elizabeth Goodman, “Ted Nugent Threatens to Kill Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton During Vicious Onstage Rant,” Rolling Stone, August 24, 2007, http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ted-nugent-threatens-to-kill-barack-obama-and-hillary-clinton-during-vicious-onstage-rant-20070824.

  80. 80.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 150.

  81. 81.

    R. D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (London: Tavistock Publications, [1960] 1969), 40–64; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 36–55; Susie Scott and Charles Thorpe, “The Sociological Imagination of R. D. Laing,” Sociological Theory 24 (4) (2006): 331–352; Charles Thorpe and Brynna Jacobson, “Life Politics, Nature and the State: Giddens’ Sociological Theory and The Politics of Climate Change,” The British Journal of Sociology 64 (1) (March 2013): 99–122.

  82. 82.

    Søren Kierkegaard quoted in Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 47.

  83. 83.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 132. See also Roger A. Salerno, Landscapes of Abandonment: Capitalism, Modernity, and Estrangement (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), 68.

  84. 84.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 61–63.

  85. 85.

    http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Guns-Freedom-Money-Change/dp/B0084SCL66; http://patriotdepot.com/ill-keep-my-guns-and-freedom-bumper-sticker/. God and Religion can also be inserted into the slogan, e.g. http://www.zazzle.com/you_can_keep_your_change_car_bumper_sticker-128745869261518938. See also the country song by Hank Williams Jr. “Keep the Change,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iRReHtq_dk. Accessed November 8, 2015.

  86. 86.

    Christopher Caudwell, “H.G. Wells,” in idem, Studies in a Dying Culture (New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1938), 73–95, quoting 77–78.

  87. 87.

    Hilary Levey Friedman, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

  88. 88.

    Barbara Ehreneich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), esp. 15.

  89. 89.

    Horwitz, America’s Right, 169. Horwitz also notes that many Tea Party supporters “are or were small business owners”: ibid., 170.

  90. 90.

    Paul Street, “Tea Party Republicans are Petit-Bourgeois Militarists,” ZSpace, December 27, 2011, http://www.zcommunications.org/tea-party-republicans-are-petit-bourgeois-militarists-by-paul-street. Accessed February 24, 2012. See also Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2011), 47–48, 50; Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio, “What ‘Populist Uprising?’: Facts and Reflections on Race, Class, and the Tea Party ‘Movement,’ Part 1,” ZNet, April 23, 2010, http://www.zcommunications.org/what-populist-uprising-pt-1-by-paul-street. Accessed February 24, 2012.

  91. 91.

    Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23.

  92. 92.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 23.

  93. 93.

    Ron Paul, End the Fed (New York: Hachette Book Company, 2009), 212.

  94. 94.

    David M. Halbfinger, “Ron Paul’s Flinty Worldview Was Forged Early,” The New York Times, February 6, 2012, pp. A1, A15, quoting A1.

  95. 95.

    Halbfinger, “Ron Paul’s Flinty Worldview,” A15.

  96. 96.

    Paul, End the Fed.

  97. 97.

    Paul, Liberty Defined, 302.

  98. 98.

    Horwitz, America’s Right, 172.

  99. 99.

    Horwitz, America’s Right, 171.

  100. 100.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 66.

  101. 101.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 24, 66.

  102. 102.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 69, 71.

  103. 103.

    Joseph Farah, The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for American Rebirth (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2010), 83–84.

  104. 104.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 80.

  105. 105.

    Paul, Tea Party Goes to Washington, 12.

  106. 106.

    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington (New York: Center Street, 2011), 11.

  107. 107.

    Charly Gullett, Tea Party Handbook: A Tactical Playbook for Tea Party Patriots (Prescott, AZ: Warfield Press, 2009), 12.

  108. 108.

    Armey and Kibbe, Give Us Liberty, 3. See also Neil Gross, “The Indoctrination Myth,” New York Times, March 3, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/college-doesnt-make-you liberal.html?_r=3&scp=1&sq=The%20Indoctrination%20Myth%22&st=cse. Accessed March 15, 2012.

  109. 109.

    Armey and Kibbe, Give Us Liberty, 20.

  110. 110.

    Paul, Tea Party Goes to Washington, 7.

  111. 111.

    Paul, Tea Party Goes to Washington, 11, 13, 68, 81; see also 74.

  112. 112.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 79–80. See also Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 102.

  113. 113.

    Farah, The Tea Party Manifesto, 20.

  114. 114.

    Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), esp. 190–217.

  115. 115.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 78–79.

  116. 116.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 77.

  117. 117.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 34–40; Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 66.

  118. 118.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 63–68.

  119. 119.

    Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 15. Emphasis in original.

  120. 120.

    Ron Paul, quoted in “Ron Paul’s Golden Rule,” RT, January 18, 2012, http://rt.com/usa/news/golden-rule-paul-war-099/. Accessed March 11, 2012.

  121. 121.

    Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” 124; George Monbiot, “This bastardised libertarianism makes ‘freedom’ an instrument of oppression,” The Guardian, December 19, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/19/bastardised-libertarianism-makes-freedom-oppression. Accessed March 11, 2012.

  122. 122.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 69.

  123. 123.

    Mark Lilla, “The Tea Party Jacobins,” The New York Review of Books, May 27, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/tea-party-jacobins/. Accessed March 15, 2012. See also in Kate Zernike, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America (NY: Times Books, 2010), 61

  124. 124.

    Caudwell, “H.G. Wells,” 78–79. Emphasis in original.

  125. 125.

    Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party, 28.

  126. 126.

    Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 204.

  127. 127.

    Richard G. Wilkinson, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (New York: The New Press, 2005).

  128. 128.

    Jim Rutenberg, “How Billionaire Oligarchs are Becoming their Own Political Parties,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/how-billionaire-oligarchs-are-becoming-their-own-political-parties.html; Patrick Martin, “US Midterm Elections Dominated by Corporate Cash,” World Socialist Web Site, October 21, 2014, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/21/elec-o21.html

  129. 129.

    George Orwell, “Review of The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek, The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus,” in As I Please, 1943–1946 (Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, 2000), 117–119, on 118.

  130. 130.

    Paul, Liberty Defined, 29.

  131. 131.

    Paul, Liberty Defined, xii.

  132. 132.

    Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 69.

  133. 133.

    Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party, 204.

  134. 134.

    Farah, Tea Party Manifesto, 40.

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    Paul, Revolution, 67.

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    Paul, Liberty Defined, xii.

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    Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party, 48.

  138. 138.

    Armey, quoted in Zernike, Boiling Mad, 67.

  139. 139.

    See Paul, Revolution, 49.

  140. 140.

    O’Donnell (from a Newsweek article) quoted in Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 116.

  141. 141.

    Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party, 51; Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 68; Horwitz, America’s Right, 176; LePore, The Whites of Their Eye, 16. See also Vincent Crapanzano, Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench (New York: New Press, 2001).

  142. 142.

    Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes, 8, 15.

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    Daniel Lazare, The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1996), esp. 29–30, 79, 88, 157.

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    Mickey Edwards, quoted in Zernike, Boiling Mad, 59.

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    Jeffrey Dorfman, “Middle Class Jobs are Disappearing and the Fed is the Culprit,” Forbes, June 7, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/06/07/middle-class-jobs-are-disappearing-and-the-fed-is-the-culprit/

  146. 146.

    Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party, 75.

  147. 147.

    Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 14.

  148. 148.

    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 10.

  149. 149.

    “America’s Debt Ceiling: No Normal Party,” The Economist, July 5, 2011, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/07/americas-debt-ceiling-0 (accessed March 15, 2012); “United States Debt Ceiling Crisis,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt-ceiling_crisis. Accessed March 15, 2012.

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    Alex Altman, “Eric Cantor, the GOP’s Hard-Line Lieutenant, Sways Debt Talks,” Time, July 11, 2011, http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/11/eric-cantor-the-gops-hard-line-lieutenant-sways-debt-talks/

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    Quoted in Bruce E. Levine, Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011), 35.

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    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 10.

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    Rand Paul expresses support for Bunning’s position, in The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 71–72.

  154. 154.

    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 3.

  155. 155.

    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 27.

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    Paul, Liberty Defined, 171.

  157. 157.

    Halbfinger, “Ron Paul’s Flinty Worldview,” A15.

  158. 158.

    Quoting Paul, Liberty Defined, 201.

  159. 159.

    Paul, Liberty Defined, 176. See also Horwitz, America’s Right, 182.

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    Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 14; see also 66–67.

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    Street, “Tea Party Republicans are Petit-Bourgeois Militarists.”

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    Skocpol and Williamson, Tea Party, 57. Emphasis in original.

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    Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 13; Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 1–2; Pierre Bourdieu, “The Invisible Hand of the Powerful,” in idem, Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market 2, trans. Loic Wacquant (London: Verso, 2003), 26–37, on 34–35.

  164. 164.

    Rand Paul, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, 132.

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    Gullet, Tea Party Handbook, 35, 50.

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    Anne Bowker, letter to Donald Warren (University of Michigan sociologist), quoted in Zernike, Boiling Mad, 50.

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    Villa, Public Freedom, 10.

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    Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness, 13.

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    Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness, 8.

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    Farah, Tea Party Manifesto, 113.

  171. 171.

    On authoritarianism and racism in the Tea Party, see Street and DiMaggio, Crashing the Tea Party, 77–99, 103.

  172. 172.

    Armey and Kibbe, Give Us Liberty, 61. On markets and freedom, see also Horwitz, America’s Right, 38.

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    Paul, Liberty Defined, xvii.

  174. 174.

    David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1978).

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    Paul, Liberty Defined, 29.

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    Paul, Liberty Defined, 144–145.

  177. 177.

    The complete last sentence is: “It means making place for new technologies, new scientific theories, new forms of art, and new identities and new relationships”: Tom G. Palmer, “The Morality of Capitalism,” in idem ed., The Morality of Capitalism: What Your Professors Won’t Tell You (Ottowa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 2011), 1–12, on 11. Emphases added.

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    Mark Follman, “Yes, Mass Shootings are Occurring More Often,” Mother Jones, October 21, 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/mass-shootings-rising-harvard

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    Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness, 48.

  180. 180.

    See Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001).

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    Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness, 52. See also Simon Clarke and Paul Hoggett, “Empire of Fear: the American Political Psyche and the Culture of Paranoia,” Psychodynamic Practice 10 (1) (2004): 89–106.

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    Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014).

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    It is indicative of this contradiction that Ron Paul’s largest donor is involved in the business of expanding state surveillance: “Ron Paul Wants to Abolish the CIA: His Largest Donor Builds Toys for it,” The Nation, February 23, 2012, http://www.thenation.com/article/166421/ron-paul-wants-abolish-cia-his-largest-donor-builds-toys-it; Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone, “Palantir: The War on Terror’s Secret Weapon,” Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine, November 22, 2011, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/palantir-the-vanguard-of-cyberterror-security-11222011.html; Brad Johnson, “ChamberLeaks: Military Contractors Palantir and Berico Under Scrutiny,” ThinkProgress, March 19, 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/03/19/144160/chamberleaks-berico-palantir/?mobile=nc

  184. 184.

    Caudwell, The Concept of Freedom, 70.

  185. 185.

    See also James O’Connor, Accumulation Crisis (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 231–232.

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    Robert Scheer with Sara Beladi, They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies are Destroying Democracy (New York: Nation Books, 2015); Robert Booth, “Facebook Reveals News-Feed Experiment to Control Emotions,” The Guardian, June 29, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds

  189. 189.

    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 269.

  190. 190.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 226.

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    Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 269.

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    Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 248–249.

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    Charles Thorpe

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Thorpe, C. (2016). The Tyranny of Negative Freedom. In: Necroculture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58303-1_5

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