The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (34 page)

Since addicts like Cartman can’t afford to sustain their addictions, they seek quick means to enrich themselves, which also tend to be illegal. These include theft, blackmail, and prostitution. Libertarians argue that by legalizing illicit substances, supply will increase and, as a result, crime will decrease. After all, how often is criminal activity associated with tobacco addiction? Imagine, on the other hand, what would happen if you could only get tobacco at 85 bucks a pack!

Black markets also often lead to violence. When there’s a dispute in a free market, the parties involved seek legal remedies, and disputes between legitimate companies rarely turn violent because all parties can have their case heard under the law. This isn’t true for businesses that operate in the black market. Any disagreements over product quality or fulfillment of contract are resolved through
extra
-legal (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) means. In “Medicinal Fried Chicken,” when Cartman is making a drug deal, he samples some supposed KFC gravy and remarks, “This is cut with Boston Market gravy!” Immediately, he pulls a pistol and threatens to execute the dishonest dealer. What’s particularly interesting is, at that very moment, Officer Barbrady catches them in the act. He asks, “What’s going on back there?” and Cartman replies, “Nothin’, it’s cool.” Cartman has been the victim of fraud. If he were dealing in legal goods, he could’ve informed Barbrady and taken the guy to court. Instead, he had to settle the dispute himself—with a pistol.

Toward the end of the episode, Cartman fails to fulfill an obligation to Colonel Sanders. Again, this can’t be resolved via legal means, and (in keeping with the
Scarface
parody) the Colonel sends a death squad to Cartman’s headquarters. Cartman escapes, but there are massive casualties. Countless people die, including innocent bystanders. These deaths may have been avoidable had KFC not been forced into a black market. Significant violence has been associated with 1920s prohibition, America’s and Mexico’s war on drugs, and South Park’s war on KFC.
¹⁴

Before moving on, let’s take stock of the consequentialist reasons for respecting individual sovereignty in lieu of paternalistic policies. If our goal is to prevent one from employing individual sovereignty to self-harm, it’s futile paternalistically to coerce that individual. If our society possesses greater civil liberties than a prison, individuals will always be able to find their drug of choice. Even if we could stop a particular drug, people would just find another drug to replace it. In addition, the very act of making some substances illicit fosters the creation of black markets, and these markets inflate prices, thus creating a motive for crime. Also, since they deal in banned substances, individuals cannot resolve their disputes through legal, and subsequently peaceful, means. All of these considerations don’t imply, of course, that libertarians are in favor of employing individual sovereignty to commit acts of self-harm. However, since there is no such thing as an
omnicompetent
¹⁵
paternalistic state, the paternalistic “cure” is potentially worse than the disease.

Another way to argue in favor of libertarianism is based on the idea that each individual is a rational agent and, because of this, their decisions should be respected. The strongest arguments here come from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), whose moral theory is referred to as
deontology
. As
deon
is Greek for “duty,” this means that others are duty-bound to respect the agency of the individual, even when she does things that might harm herself. On this view, paternalism (even if it were to result in beneficial consequences) is expressly forbidden. You simply can’t control an individual, even for his own good, as that control is a direct affront to his status as a rational agent. If someone wants to alter the behavior of a self-harming individual legitimately, all they can do is provide that agent with information and attempt to reason with him. Robert Nozick (1938–2002), author of the ­libertarian book
Anarchy, State and Utopia
, says, “Individuals are inviolable … My nonpaternalistic position holds that someone may choose (or permit another) to do to himself
anything
, unless he has acquired an obligation to some third party not to do or allow it.”
¹⁶

We must be clear when discussing what it means to “respect an individual’s agency.” We must respect people because they are
autarchic
, but not necessarily because of their
autonomy
.
¹⁷
For an agent to have autarchy, he must fulfill the minimal requirements of rationality. An autarchic person has to be free of inner compulsions (like kleptomania), at a sufficient level of maturity (an adult), and capable of ordered thoughts (sane). Autarchy is the normal state of humanity. Any individual who lacks it is viewed as less than fully human. We don’t hold non-autarchic people fully responsible for their actions, nor should we allow them to be fully free from paternalistic influence. Autonomy, on the other hand, is a much stronger concept. It means to live according to a moral law that you prescribe to yourself, like freeing yourself from the pull of base desires. Autonomy is an excellence of character that not every human reaches. When a libertarian, then, respects the agency of an individual, this
doesn’t
imply that the agent is autonomous. It only implies that they are autarchic—that is, minimally rational.
¹⁸

When others interfere with a person’s personal sovereignty and decision making—even if they only intend to help—this is always an unjustified trespass against the individual’s agency. As Machan writes, “In a libertarian system no vice squad is sent to break up prostitution, but prostitutes may be implored to stop their degrading professional practices. Once we send in the vice squad we actually deny the prostitutes their humanity, as if they could not make up their own minds.”
¹⁹
Prostitution may harm prostitutes, yet to force people to change (via coercive interference) undermines their moral status as agents. The only legitimate way to change someone’s behavior is by information, reason, and argumentation.

This sentiment is clearly expressed in the
South Park
episode “Butt Out.” After watching an anti-smoking musical they think is moronic, Kyle, Stan, and Cartman rebel by smoking behind the school. When they get caught, they accidently burn the school down. Ironically, their parents are more distraught about the fact they’re smokers than that they destroyed the school. Of course, the parents blame their smoking on the influence of tobacco companies. Their parents’ strategy, then, is to garner the “help of the greatest anti-smoking celebrity that ever lived”—Rob Reiner.

Reiner seeks to employ the power of the state, proclaiming: “I pushed a law for higher taxes on cigarettes, I lobbied to get images of cigarettes removed from movies and art, I forced smokers out of bars and parks.” Reiner claims to use these methods to keep individuals from self-harm via tobacco. As a true paternalist, Reiner laments, “Apparently, people still don’t understand how bad smoking is for them. Don’t they know how dangerous it is to their health?”
²⁰

Kyle and Stan provide cogent libertarian responses. First, Kyle says, “You just hate smoking, so you use all your money and power to
force
others to think like you. And that’s called fascism, you tubby asshole!” Second, Stan attaches blame to the appropriate parties, asserting that it was their fault they smoked, not the tobacco company’s fault: “We should all take personal responsibility instead of ­letting fat fascists like him tell us what to do!” Both Kyle and Stan affirm their moral status as agents capable of choice. When you respect agency, there are two sides to this coin. On one side, you allow the individual to exercise that agency (by not coercively interfering). On the other side, the individual must take personal responsibility for all actions that flow from his agency.

Compare all of this to the arguments of the show’s protagonist, Kevin Harris, vice president of “Big Tobacco.” After giving the boys a tour of the cigarette factory, Harris states: “And so for centuries, tobacco production flourished. Nobody was even aware of any dangers back then, until, in 1965, when Congress passed an act forcing all tobacco companies to put the Surgeon General’s warning on their packages. So now, everyone knows the dangers of smoking. And some people still choose to do it, and we believe that’s what being an American is all about.” When pressed about the dangers of smoking, Harris provides information to others, allowing them to make an informed choice. Kyle claims about all this, “That sounds perfectly reasonable.” Agents, because of their moral status, ought to be able to choose for themselves. When people (like Reiner) violate this status, both Kyle and Stan see them as fascists. However, when faced with the autarchy-respecting methods of Harris, they see this as “perfectly reasonable.”

The deontological line of reasoning doesn’t invoke consequences. Perhaps taking away a person’s choice might lead to better consequences. It’s possible that some libertarians may acknowledge this fact (disregarding the arguments of the last section), all the while decrying such coercion as an unforgivable lapse of libertarian principles. As Hospers notes: “Once it is clear that our goals for a person do not coincide with his goals for himself, and once we have used reason and possibly persuasion to convince him (never force), and he still sticks to his own, then as libertarians we must conclude, ‘It’s his life, and I don’t own it … From my point of view, and perhaps even in some cosmic perspective, my ideals for him are better than his own. But his have the unique distinguishing feature that they are
his
; and as such, I have no right to interfere forcibly with them.’ Here, as libertarians, we can stand pat.”
²¹

Since an individual owns himself, he gets the final say as to how to run his life. The observance of libertarian principles requires the respect of an individual’s agency. To coerce an agent, even if it’s demonstratively for his own benefit, runs afoul of the libertarian ­conception of self-ownership—a conception that some of the more reflective inhabitants of South Park, like Kyle and Stan (and perhaps Matt Stone and Trey Parker), seem to endorse.

1
. John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty
(London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1859), 10.

2
. Nick Gillespie and Jesse Walker, “
South Park
Libertarians: Trey Parker and Matt Stone on Liberals, Conservatives, Censorship, and Religion,”
Reason
, 38:7 (2006). Retrieved from
http://reason.com/archives/2006/12/05/south-park-libertarians/singlepage
, accessed Feb. 23, 2013.

3
. Murray Rothbard,
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
(New York: Collier Books, 1978), 47. There are two broad versions of ­libertarianism—right libertarianism and left libertarianism—and both share the value and endorsement of self-ownership. The core difference between these versions centers on the appropriation of property in the natural world. See Peter Vallentyne’s entry, “Libertarianism” in the
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
. Retrieved from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/
, accessed Feb. 23, 2013.

4
. John Locke,
Two Treatises of Government: In the Former, The False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, And His Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay concerning The True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government
(London: Aronsham Churchill, 1690).

5
. Friedrich Hayek,
The Constitution of Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 13.

6
. Tibor Machan, “The Case for Libertarianism: Sovereign Individuals,” in
Libertarianism: For and Against
, ed. Craig Duncan and Tibor Machan (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 3.

7
. See, for example, Sun Xiaoxia Guo Chunzhen, “Application of Legal Paternalism in China,”
Social Science in China
, 1 (2006): 1–27.

8
. John Hospers, “Libertarianism and Legal Paternalism,”
The Journal of Libertarian Studies
, 4:3 (1980): 256.

9
. Gillespie and Walker, “
South Park
Libertarians.”

10
. Rothbard,
For a New Liberty
, 112.

11
. See chapter 16, by Kevin S. Decker, “Sitting Downtown at Kentucky Fried Chicken: One Toke Over the Line,” 200.

12
. Ibid., 203.

13
. Rothbard,
For a New Liberty
, 111.

14
. For more on this, see Doug Husak and Peter de Marneffe,
The Legalization of Drugs: For and Against
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

15
. This is a reference to what Decker refers to as the
myth of the omnicompetent individual
. I am skeptical that any libertarian “assumes (against considerable evidence) that the individual is the
best judge of their own self-interest
…” (“Sitting Downtown at Kentucky Fried Chicken,” 206). One ought to be skeptical of anything that claims to be omnicompetent. Libertarians can acknowledge that both individuals and the state (or society) are imperfect regarding the determination of self-interest. The important consideration is to
which
imperfect entity we should defer—the individual or the state. Libertarians are concerned that if we defer to the state, we invite tyranny. We have seen many examples of tyrannical regimes that employ “autonomy promoting” paternalism as they haul individuals to the gulag to be killed or forcefully re-educated. Decker seems to recognize this concern when he writes, “Libertarians don’t trust government, and perhaps rightly so, but they also fail to realize that
we are the government
” (206, emphasis in original). Democracy might help, but it is not sufficient to ameliorate libertarian concerns. There still exists the potential for majority tyranny. In fact, the tyranny of the majority was the core concern at the center of Mill’s
On Liberty
.