Boog Highberger: The Progressive Luddite

I'm going to do something a bit impolite in this post: I going to share some articles that Boog Highberger, candidate for the 46th House District, wrote as a young man. Yes, I know that the media went after Mitt Romney and his alleged bullying of a fellow high school student. And I also realize that the media thought Virginia gubernatorial candidate McDonnell's 20-year-old graduate thesis was somehow relevant. However, Romney and McDonnell are Republicans, so their distance pasts are fair game. That rule does not apply to Democrats, so I must apologize in advance to those who are offended by the sharing of Highberger's youthful rants.

In an article that originally appeared in "The Gentle Anarchist," a magazine published in Lawrence during the mid-1980s, Highberger decried technology and declared that the "Luddites were right." The Luddites "were 19th-century English textile artisans who protested against newly developed labour-saving machinery from 1811 to 1817." The Luddites were known for "machne breaking."

"Technology that is complex beyond the understanding of the people dependent on it is a threat to freedom," Highberger wrote. "Such technology disenfranchises people by taking away from them the power to make the decisions that affect their lives and placing it in the hands of 'experts'. Autonomy and self-management demand a technology that is subservient to its users. If you depend on something, you need to know how to fix it."

In another article from "The Gentle Anarchist" entitled "Money," Highberger proposed that everyone should have a photo ID to spend money. That's an odd requirement given the Democrats' almost universal opposition to voter ID. " Each person wishing to spend money other than coins, which would remain in circulation, would be required to have a bank account," he wrote. "The bank or federal government would issue to each depositor a U.S. payment card similar to plastic credit cards. In addition to the necessary codings, each card would contain the photograph and fingerprint of the depositor...Every business establishment, including taxicabs, would be equipped with a terminal in which the payment card could be inserted...(and) make a visual display of the charge so that the customer could see the exact amount being deducted from his bank account. . . In the event the customer did not have the amount in his account the terminal would so indicate..."

I have to wonder if such a terminal would be technology that "disenfranchises people by taking away from them the power to make the decisions that affect their lives and placing it in the hands of 'experts'." Well, does anyone really expect a liberal to be consistent?

In 2005, when Highberger was mayor of Lawrence, he proclaimed International Dadaism Month at the city's weekly commission meeting. Dadaism was "an early 20th century art movement that embraced chance, randomness and nonsense."

Highberger has embraced nonsense for most of his life. That's his prerogative. However, the voters of the 46th District should reject the chance to send his nonsense to Topeka in November.