Boston Legal’s Alan Shore on Americans

In a recent post, Akiva claimed that people (in general) get the government they deserve. The US is an imperial-warfare state and a growing surveillance-police state, not to mention a nanny-welfare state. Boston Legal’s left-liberal attorney Alan Shore echoes Akiva’s sentiments in a closing argument in defense of, oddly enough, a tax protester (video below). He points out many of the evils of the US governments and their infringements on our liberties and concludes that Americans must be okay with it all.

Maybe it’s because we have the best ‘bread and circuses‘ money can buy and plenty of fiat money with which to buy it. Or maybe it’s because the court intellectuals all sing variations on the same discordant statist song. Or maybe it’s because we all learn the same myths and dogmas and untruths in state indoctrination camps called public schools, if we learn anything at all. Or maybe it’s because most of us lack the moral courage to inconvenience ourselves by standing up for what is right. I think it is some combination of these and other causes. In any event, most Americans seem to be a-okay with the evils of statism — at least so long as their man is in power.

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Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.

About Geoffrey Allan Plauché (74 Posts)

Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Liberal political philosopher, an adjunct instructor for Buena Vista University, the founder and executive editor of Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature, and the webmaster of The Libertarian Standard. His work has appeared in Libertarian Papers, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and Transformers and Philosophy. He lives in Edgewood, KY with his wife and two children.

Tagged as: Abu Ghraib, Adlai Stevenson, Alan Shore, Americans, anti-terrorism, Bagram, Boston Legal, bread and circuses, civil liberties, climate of fear, courage, court intellectuals, dogma, extraordinary renditions, freedom, freedom of speech, Guantanamo, illegal search and seizure, Imperialism, indoctrination camps, Iraq, James Spader, liberty, Lies, myth, nanny state, nationalism, patriotism, Police Statism, public schools, rights, sunshine patriots, Surveillance State, torture, unAmerican, untruths, US Constitution, Voltaire, War, War on Terror, warfare state, warrantless wiretaps, weapons of mass destruction, welfare state, WMD