Garrison State Hegemony in U.S. Politics

Preface

Growing up in Ohio during my first decade of life under an emotionally and physically abusive father until my parent’s divorce was a significant factor in the later formation of my political views. My violent childhood was contextualized by a decade of relatively sparse school beatings as corporal punishment; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malik El Shabazz (formerly Malcom X), and Martin Luther King Jr.; the growing Vietnam War and looming conscription; and, at age 12, the joint FBI/Ohio National Guard massacre of unarmed Kent State University students. Together these hardships taught me not to trust anyone in authority and drove my later interest in politics and participant observation.

When I joined the US Air Force in early 1980, my distrust of authority deepened a year later when President Jimmy Carter’s term ended and my new Commander-in-Chief, President Ronald Reagan, was shot and critically wounded by the adolescent friend of our Vice President’s son Neil Bush. After a full year of living in a total institution as an enlisted airman on Alaska’s Shemya Island with a remit to maintain surveillance on the Soviet Union, my appreciation grew for a macrolevel perspective of the wider sociocultural aspects of America’s “garrison state” political economy (Lasswell, 1941). As Giddens put it, “The impact of war in the twentieth century upon generalised [sic] patterns of change has been so profound that it is little short of absurd to seek to interpret such patterns without ←ix | x→systematic reference to it” (1985: 294). Grinder and Hagel III explained, “the military has emerged in the post–World War II period as a key intermediary between the state apparatus and the ‘private’ sector” (1977: 71).

I agree with Cicourel (1964), Jorgensen (1989), and Gill (2005) that there is no such thing as a bias-free researcher and with Belmonte that “a stance of pure objectivity (eliminating the self) is as destructive” to participant observation “as is a stance of pure subjectivity (eliminating the other)” (2005: x). Therefore, the challenge remained of how to put my idiosyncratic bias for individual agency to work for greater objectivity and otherwise keep subjectivity to a minimum. The issue of the researcher’s own bias affecting the course of fieldwork was addressed by adopting an approach employed successfully over the years by increasing numbers of participant observers, which involves temporarily “going native” in order to see things the way insiders do then returning to the original scientific mindset ←x | xi→to critically reflect upon their beliefs and ethos (see Jules-Rosette, 1975; Smith, 2011). The native perspective in this ethnohistory is largely a salvage one of the diminished purist or noncoercionist segment of the LP. Even so, I sought to situate my experiences and the experiences of newer members and segments in the wider cultural, social, and political contexts that constrain and influence social constructions of party. Holding simultaneous insider and outsider perspectives has strengthened my ability to absorb various perspectives of LP social dynamics.

Acknowledgments

Before this study began as a doctoral project in 2009, several academics had contributed to my approach to explore Libertarian electioneering as an ethnographic case study. From my undergraduate days at the University of Oklahoma and later Walsh University, historian William W. Savage, Jr. and sociologist John W. McKeon (1947–2012) encouraged me to take academic study seriously. Through graduate studies at what is now Bangor University in Wales, sociologist Stephen Hester (1947–2014) impressed the significance of ethnography and ethnomethodology upon me. In England, historian Wray Vamplew at De Montfort University did the same for cultural, economic, and historical appraisals.

At England’s University of Birmingham, social anthropologist Alexander Thomas T. Smith guided my launch into fieldwork. With the unexpected closure of Birmingham’s School of Sociology and my subsequent transfer to the University of Huddersfield, political theorist Peter S. Woodcock stepped forward to lead with steadfast supervision. I am also grateful to the University of Huddersfield for the tireless support by historian Brendan Evans and political sociologist James McAuley.

My greatest gratitude and love go to my wife and my parents for their tremendous support during this demanding project.

List of Abbreviations

CHAPTER ONE

Culture and Libertarian Politics

Painted on TV as “the worst Drug Warrior in Congress” over his opposition to medical marijuana, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst under Director George Bush lost his job in Congress on August 20, 2002 (Libertarian Party, 2002a). For weeks the primary race between Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia’s 7th District and Congressman John Linder was too close to call. Yet Barr fell quickly behind after Libertarian challenger Carole Ann Rand sponsored a two-week series of nearly 4,000 disparaging TV commercials. On voting day, Barr managed only a third of the primary votes to Linder’s two-thirds.

Having identified Barr as a threat to liberty, Rand employed sport metaphor to cheer Barr’s exit from Congress—“Barr’s defeat is a victory for every American…Like Babe Ruth pointing to a spot in the bleachers and hitting a home run, we pointed at our target and helped knock him out of Congress” (Libertarian Party, 2002a). Invoking violent American gun culture metaphor, Libertarian Party (LP) Political Director Ron Crickenberger echoed Rand’s sentiment—“[The Libertarian Party’s] ‘Incumbent Killer Strategy’…fired a warning shot for every drug warrior in Congress to hear. And any member of Congress…could be next on our list” (Libertarian Party, 2002a).

The LP’s media attack brought Barr’s Congressional participation to an abrupt end. Once regarded as indomitable but now cast beyond the halls of Congress, ←3 | 4→Barr retreated into the deep structural spaces of power and privilege that constitute the US garrison state. Not content with burying himself in the banal practices of a law profession, Barr employed a counterintelligence strategy not outside his training at CIA to triumph over the Libertarian Party by joining them.

In the Ohio setting, the post-Barr LP became increasingly corporative and bureaucratic in structure. The accompanying cultural and ideological shift towards the authoritarian right paradoxically marked a period of continuous organizational growth. Exploration of this social phenomenon begs ethnographic attention to Libertarians’ reliance upon wider cultural logics in their social constructions of party and in their discursive attempts to sell candidates to voters. First, I will share my conceptual approach and methodology to explore the LP phenomenon. Next, I share ethnographic data from 24 months of participant observation, including rising authoritarian tendencies. Moving forward, the historical, cultural, and economic contexts of the American political party system are surveyed as components of an ideologically prescribed cultural model of social control of which the LP is part. I suggest that if we are to understand the social animation of the LP, it is useful to consider Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony in relation to covert power in electoral politics (1971). With an expectation for members to conform to multidimensional cultural logics, an empire-dependent warfare state is ultimately served.←4 | 5→