July 2007

Is Two the Ultimate Number?

By Robert Stephens

Search for more articles by or about this columnist

In the late 60s, a rock group named Three Dog Night put out a song with the first line "one is the loneliest number." While the song keyed on the typical adolescent themes of unrequited love, searching for love, loneliness, and so forth, those lyrics may be pertinent to the position we libertarians find ourselves in today.

Here in southwest Missouri there is a program locally produced on the PBS station and hosted by the League of Women Voters entitled "Making Democracy Work." A couple of months ago, I was invited to be interviewed on libertarianism in general and the Libertarian Party in particular.

The first part of the interview consisted of fairly soft questions regarding the basic beliefs of libertarians with my answers focused on limited government at all levels and personal freedom coupled with personal responsibility. Then, with the moderator guiding the discussion, we got onto the subject of how the Libertarian Party and other so-called "third parties" fare in the mainstream media.

Time is THE major constraint for the mainstream news programs. Whereas the interview on the PBS station took 9½ minutes, that's about the same amount of time our local network affiliates are allotted to cover local, county, regional, and state news and still throw in a "human interest" story or two. It's pretty obvious that the producers will look for any excuse to shorten the time required to cover any one issue or story.

This is why the mainstream media try to frame the question in terms of opposites. It's so much easier to produce a 42-second segment on taxes if the issue is framed in simple terms of win--lose, left--right, or good--bad. Everything presented in the media seems to have a binary frame around it: terrorism versus Homeland Security, liberals versus conservatives, the Religious Right versus the secular progressives, Federer versus Nadal, the Yankees versus the Red Sox.

Just look at the last two national elections. According to the media, you either live in a red state or a blue state: there was simply no other choice. No variations, no shades of intensity, simply red or blue.

During the interview, I suggested that the voting population in our county, in Missouri, and even in the entire United States probably should be portrayed--not as red or blue--but as a color wheel. There are people who are completely, 100% progressive liberals; there are absolute conservatives. But, by and large, it's been my experience that most voters are somewhere in between the political polar opposites.

Some people may be adamant about gun control (a progressive liberal position), but also be strongly opposed to the expansion of any level of government--a classical conservative stance. Some voters may be strongly against abortion for religious reasons, but may not have strong opinions on the legalization of drugs. And people will be all over the color wheel on the issue of immigration.

Yet the media will continue to frame every discussion in terms of either-or, conservative or liberal, right or wrong. And this makes it very difficult for our Libertarian Party to gain the traction required to truly get into the political discussion in the mainstream media. And that's probably why I was invited to a 9½ -minute interview program instead of a 1:30 sound-byte opportunity.

This is the obstacle we will have to overcome to truly get our message and our positions out to a larger segment of the voting population. The next two lines of that Three Dog Night song that I referred to earlier sound almost prophetic:

"One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

Two can be as bad as one

It's the loneliest number since the number one"

Only two sides to every question can truly be as bad as one. As libertarians, we have to find a way to enlarge the discussion to include our alternatives. As members of the Libertarian Party, we have to find ways to reframe the questions coming from the media.