Hollywood Libertarians

"Hollywood liberals" is a term conservatives like to throw around when they want to describe the source of some new idea or fad or Washington policy. “This uproar is nothing but the work of Hollywood liberals,” “The only people telling you this is okay is just a bunch of Hollywood liberals,” “The Democrats are too busy trying to please some Hollywood liberals” and so on.

They make it sound like there’s a subculture in the Democratic party whose values and ideologies are fundamentally different from the rest of it, so much that it needs a special name. But really there’s nothing ideologically distinctive about this group. A Hollywood liberal is just a left-winger that’s rich, good-looking, has legions of fans and lives (more or less) in Hollywood. Sounds like someone’s just jealous.

But it’s true that a lot of celebrities are Democrats, especially the ones in Hollywood. And I’ve discovered that some of their core beliefs “rub off” on the scant few libertarian counterparts they interact with. While a Hollywood liberal is just some rhetoric bullshit, a Hollywood libertarian really means something.

I’ve discovered this while watching Real Time with Bill Maher (a self-described libertarian) on the night he had Jason Alexander (another libertarian) on the show. At the end, Bill brought up greed and how bad it is that all companies care about is “hitting the numbers.” Jason built on that and argued that it was because we are too short sighted and we don’t plan enough. We think too much in the short term. Later he suggested the government should set energy goals in reducing our dependency of oil.

Bill then moved the conversation to why companies have to grow: “It seems like this is the only country in the world where just doing well is not enough. No corporation can just do as well as they did last quarter. We always have to have growth.” Growth, of course, is a good thing. That’s why people want it. But Bill’s rather suspicious of corporations.

In general, a Hollywood libertarian shares these values with their liberal counterparts:
-The government is the best tool to protect the environment.
-People are too greedy and that’s inherently bad; government should pull it back via taxes (specifically progressive taxes and the estate tax).
-National health care is a good idea, even though it’s a disaster in Canada.
-Schooling is the government’s business and public schools need more funding.
-As a nation we should be concerned about outsourcing and foreign competition.
-Corporations are poisoning us (via pesticides and other chemicals).

This is a working list and is mostly generated from Bill Maher (there are few Hollywood libertarians and Bill’s the only one I know that talks about politics for a living). I really do admire Bill Maher—he has a lot of good thoughts and was my early introduction to libertarianism. But he’s also pretty damn Hollywood.