The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (33 page)

3
. J.S. Mill,
On Liberty
(London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1859), 12.

4
. Ibid.; italics added.

5
. William J. Bennett, “A Response to Milton Friedman,”
The Wall Street Journal
, September 19, 1989, A30.

6
. Milton Friedman, “An Open Letter to Bill Bennett,”
The Wall Street Journal
, September 7, 1989, A14.

7
. Bennett, “A Response to Milton Friedman,” A30.

8
. National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, “Marijuana Should Be Legalized for Medical Purposes,” in
Drug Legalization
, ed. Karen F. Balkin (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2005), 170.

9
. Institute of Medicine, “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base” (Washington, DC: National Academy Press), 3.16.

10
. David Nutt, Leslie A. King, William Saulsbury, and Colin Blakemore, “Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse,”
The Lancet
, 269 (2007): 1051.

11
. Gregory M. Gassett, “Marijuana Should Not Be Legalized for Medical Purposes,” in
Drug Legalization
, 186.

12
. Nora D. Volkow, “Treating Addiction as a Disease: The Promise of Medication-Assisted Recovery,” National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse. Retrieved from
http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/testimony-to-congress/
(see June 2010), accessed Feb. 22, 2013.

13
. The myth derives from John Dewey,
The Public and Its Problems
(New York: Henry Holt, 1927).

14
. G.H. Mead,
Mind, Self and Society
, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 186.

15
. Ibid.

16
. Ibid., 196.

17
. Ibid., 199.

18
. C.C. Finlay, “The Omnicompetent Man in Speculative Fiction.” Retrieved from
http://www.ccfinlay.com/omnicompetent-man.html
, accessed Feb. 22, 2013.

19
. Sunstein, “Problems with Rules,” 974.

20
. Michael Ignatieff,
The Needs of Strangers
(New York: Viking Penguin), 137.

Shane D. Courtland

Central to the political view called libertarianism is the idea that ­people should be able to do what they want to do in a society, as long as the rights of others aren’t violated in the process. So, if you’re an adult and want to go to Hooters and check out the action, no one—be it a fellow citizen or the government itself—should stop you from going. As John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) states in
On Liberty
, “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
¹
On the other hand, the owners of Raisins (an obvious
South Park
­reference to Hooters) probably should be thrown in jail because they’re exploiting pre-teen girls by sexualizing them. Libertarians ­tolerate lots of actions, but they won’t put up with straightforward exploitation, sexual predation, murder, theft, rape, or any other action that harms someone.

When interviewers for
Reason
asked Stone and Parker if they could be described as libertarians, they both agreed. In fact, Stone replied, “I think it is an apt description for me personally, and that has probably seeped into the show.”
²
In many episodes Stone and Parker advocate Mill’s idea of personal sovereignty over oneself and they criticize
paternalism
, or government infringement upon individual sovereignty. They also do this while mocking the behaviors that are wrongfully prohibited. In true libertarian fashion, it’s not as though they disagree when Mr. Mackey asserts to third graders, “Drugs are bad, m’kay.” Instead, they would cleverly add, “… but government interference in such matters for rational adults is unhelpful and unjustified, m’kay.” In this chapter, we’ll examine some of Stone and Parker’s “seepage,” looking at episodes that provide excellent cases of the core ideas of libertarianism.

As Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) writes, “The central core of the libertarian creed, then, is to establish the absolute right to private property of every man: first, in his own body.”
³
Besides Mill, we see the emphasis of this right to exclusive self-ownership and sovereignty in the writings of John Locke (1632–1704), specifically in his
Two Treatises of Government
.
⁴

Self-ownership has always been at the center of libertarianism, and all libertarians hold that each individual has a private sphere that should be immune from outside interference. As long as the individual doesn’t violate the rights of others—through physical or psychological harm—he is to be left to his own devices. Anyone who happens to disagree with his choices can try to persuade him, but it’s unacceptable to coerce him. Since the individual owns himself, his will is sovereign over matters that only regard him. This idea is echoed in Friedrich Hayek’s (1899–1992) notion that “freedom thus presupposes that the individual has some assured private sphere, that there is some set of circumstances in his environment with which others cannot interfere.”
⁵
Or, as contemporary libertarian Tibor Machan states, “The bottom line of libertarianism is that individual members of human communities are sovereign, self-ruling, or self-governing agents whose sovereignty any just system of laws must accommodate.”
⁶

Opposed to this core libertarian value is
paternalism
, which allows government authorities (or some private citizens) to interfere with a person’s private life in order to protect or advance that individual’s interests. Those doing the interfering are acting like a parent or guardian (
pater
is Latin for “father”), while the individual, whose sovereignty gets compromised, is viewed as a child in need of guidance. With paternalism, then, interference by others in the affairs of an individual is okay even if that individual never violates the rights of others. Modern-day China is a clear example of a paternalistic society, given its censorship of certain Internet sites and other policies.
⁷

It shouldn’t be a surprise that libertarians are hostile to paternalistic policies. John Hospers (1918–2011), for example, writes that libertarians are “vigorously anti-paternalistic, believing as they do that people should absorb the consequences of their own actions, and that in any case the State has no right to legislate what people should do as long as their actions harm no one else.”
⁸
Since the creators of
South Park
are self-identified libertarians, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that anti-paternalistic themes are seeded throughout various episodes. When interviewers for
Reason
asked Matt Stone to define
libertarian
, he stressed his overriding motivation for resisting those who sought “control over his life.”
⁹
Of course, just as there are many libertarians, there are many different libertarian arguments for why paternalism is inappropriate. In South Park it’s no different, and we can witness various instances of these arguments. Let’s examine two types here: consequentialist and deontological.

One reason for rejecting paternalism is that it causes unintended bad consequences. In the episode “Major Boobage,” South Park is beset with a “serious” drug problem. It comes to the attention of the adults that their children might be “huffing” cat urine. When a male cat marks his territory, he sprays a concentrated blast of urine. If you were to inhale such a blast (a.k.a., “cheesing”), that would, according to Mr. Mackey, “get you really high, m’kay? Re-really, reeeally high.” Since the adults are terrified that their children will become cheesing-crazy-people (a clever reference to
Reefer Madness
), they take action. Kyle’s dad, Gerald, spearheads a law to address this epidemic. At a public gathering, Gerald announces, “I have written up a bill that would make having a cat illegal in the city of South Park … With my super lawyer powers, we can rid our town of cats, so that our kids never get high again!” With Gerald’s solution, the state coercively takes cats from their owners in order to prevent individuals from harming themselves.

One of the problems associated with paternalism is its outright futility. If an individual has an overriding desire to self-harm, it’s not clear that any law will prevent him from doing so. Take, for example, drugs in prison. Here’s a place where liberty is
overtly
compromised—prisoners are perpetually locked-up and forcibly denied civil liberties, albeit for good reasons. Even in this environment, it’s hard to prevent addicts from finding their drug of choice. In our normal (non-prison) environment, where we possess various liberties, it would be even more futile to attempt to prohibit such drugs.

This futility also holds in the town of South Park. Kenny is seriously addicted to cheesing and his friends are concerned that he might be at it again. Stan is skeptical and claims, “Yeah, and where is he gonna find cats anyway? They’ve been outlawed.” Kyle responds, “Pot’s illegal too, but people still manage to find it … I’ll bet Kenny’s at home cheesing right now.” Sure enough, Kenny found Cartman’s horde of cats. In fact, eventually even Gerald recognizes this problem. He laments, “Cats aren’t the problem. We made cats illegal and then I cheesed for the first time in ten years.” The point is that it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to prevent people who, like Kenny and Gerald, are seriously motivated to seek pleasures that also harm them from accomplishing that end. Employing the coercive power of the state won’t be effective at preventing addicts from getting drugs.

Here’s another problem. Notice that when Gerald is employing the power of the state, his goal isn’t merely to stop cheesing—he wants to prevent individuals from
ever
getting high, period. This is impossible, as Gerald comes to realize. At the end of the episode he states, “Kids are always gonna find a new way to get high. Like sniffing glue or licking toads, or fermenting feces or huffing paint.” The episode ends with Kenny getting high smelling flowers!

When states (or others) seek to prevent individuals from harming themselves via illicit substances, they’re placed into a problematic dilemma. As Rothbard notes:

Once again: Every man has the right to choose. Propagandize against cigarettes as much as you want, but leave the individual free to run his own life. Otherwise, we may as well outlaw all sorts of possible carcinogenic agents—including tight shoes, improperly fitting false teeth, excessive exposure to the sun, as well as excessive intake of ice cream, eggs, and butter which might lead to heart disease. And, if such prohibitions
prove unenforceable
, again the logic is to place people in cages so that they will receive the proper amount of sun, the correct diet, properly fitting shoes, and so on.
¹⁰

A paternalistic government policy might ban
some
of the substances that could be used to self-harm. However—and here’s the dilemma—on one hand, if they only ban some (like cats or marijuana), they’ll fail to achieve their end. Someone will just switch to another harmful substance. On the other hand, the government might ban
all
unhealthy substances. This, however, would probably be impossible to enforce.

If they
could
enforce such a policy, this would lead to life in a cage more compromising to liberty than any known prison! A list of actions and substances that would need to be prohibited would be very long. Take, for example, Kevin Decker’s chapter in this book. Decker argues that it is acceptable for the state to paternalistically ban (or coercively regulate) any item that might undermine autonomy. This includes
any
item that can be construed as “addictive.” According to Decker, this is “not just narcotics and other outlawed drugs, but also tobacco, alcohol, and perhaps even caffeine and sugar …”
¹¹
In addition, Decker implies that such paternalistic policies could legitimately be extended to “not only the addictive substances in drugs and fast food … but also education, advertising and the media, gender stereotypes, economic class, homophobia, political correctness and institutionalized ­racism.”
¹²
Hopefully individuals are not claustrophobic—because the state’s ability to act paternalistically could make our cages small indeed.

Another consequence of paternalism can be seen in “Medicinal Fried Chicken.” Due to the unhealthy nature of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and the fact that it’s marketed primarily to the poor, the state of Colorado closes all KFCs and renders its products illegal. Cartman, a hardcore KFC “addict,” is forced to seek alternate means to satiate his fried chicken fix. This pushes Cartman into a newly formed black market. In an overt “Scarface” parody, Cartman becomes a KFC dealer with direct ties to Colonel Sanders. Eventually, the Colonel feels betrayed by Cartman and violently destroys Cartman’s organization. Although Cartman survives, many meet a bloody end.

A common libertarian criticism of paternalism is that the interference with an individual’s sovereignty creates more harm than ­non-interference would. Despite the fact that a state might make a particular substance illegal, the demand for it doesn’t disappear. Organizations like drug cartels and prostitution rings form to satisfy the ongoing demand. Since these organizations’ products are illicit, crime and violence flow from these markets operating outside the law. Since black markets limit supply, forcing the operation to remain underground, the price of illicit goods is higher, primarily because demand remains the same. Cartman discovers this the hard way. After eating “the Colonel’s popcorn chicken and honey-mustard sauce,” he is informed that his snack costs 85 dollars. Cartman, of course, lacks the money to pay. His addiction, coupled with such high cost, pushes Cartman to join the KFC cartel. As Rothbard notes, this connection between high costs and crime is common with black markets: “Crimes are committed by addicts driven to theft by the high price of drugs caused by the outlawry itself! If narcotics were legal, the supply would greatly increase, the high costs of black markets and police payoffs would disappear, and the price would be low enough to eliminate most addict-caused crime.”
¹³