When Jonathan Toews dropped an atomic libertarian truth bomb
Whether Jonathan Toews is libertarian or not, it doesn’t matter. But in an interview with TSN’s Elliotte Friedman, he dropped a truth bomb.
Jonathan Toews knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d suit up against his former team, the Chicago Blackhawks. Spending his career twilight years with the Winnipeg Jets following a two-year layoff, Toews looked like he barely missed a beat, recording five points and two goals in his first 10 games with Winnipeg.
When Toews recently sat down to discuss his two-year layoff with Friedman, he made one massive comparison between Eastern and Western medicine. Or better yet, one massive contrast between the two. To paraphrase, Toews stated “Western medicine comes from the outside, and Eastern medicine starts on the inside.”
That, as crazy as it sounds, considering the East’s predominantly collectivist political landscape, carries a message of personal responsibility.
Jonathan Toews delivered a message for the ages
When you listen to what he had to say closely, you’ll find that pro-libertarian message when describing his experience with Eastern medicine. “I definitely, really started to take responsibility for everything that was happening in my life and truly having an understanding and when you allow yourself to have some of that space in your life, then you can kind of see what comes to the surface too. And, I think, ultimately it’s just taking responsibility for what’s happening in your life and it kind of flips things around for you.”
Personal responsibility. That’s what I got from this quip. In today’s society, a lot of people forget to look inward and take that responsibility, instead focusing on everything that’s going on outside of and around them.
But most have been conditioned to believe that the circumstances in their lives are a direct result of external forces. They forget that they hold the power to change their lives for the better.
It’s not the collective, but the individual. And the individual holds more power than they know what to do with it if they remember where to look.
The individual is the real building block
Every libertarian and rational-minded person knows that society begins with the individual, not the collective. Ironically enough, Eastern political culture gets this backward, and one only needs to look at the developed world vs. the developing or undeveloped world to drive that point home.
It’s also a philosophy that’s fading in the West, and the only way to take it back is to realize and understand that everything must pass through the individual. You don’t need to be a libertarian to know this, and I’m 1,000 percent sure Toews would disagree with several of my Rothbardian principles, but whatever.
Still, it’s individuals who innovate and bring forth new ways to make life easier for the masses. Meanwhile, the collective uses coercion, violence, and fear-mongering to create outrage, and outright negativity that results in the “do something” mentality.
Unfortunately, “do something” always leads to curtailments in civil liberties as restrictive and draconian measures get enacted. But there are ways to kick this to the curb, such as inserting alternative methods in fiction.
My young adult fantasy, The Arcane Prophecy, does just that. This Harry Potter meets Chaos Theory novel touches on what a society run on individualism as opposed to collectivism can look like.
Sure, it’s a compelling read, but strong libertarian themes drive the book home. If you’d like an intro, check out its first three chapters now and meet a girl named Yote Diamondback, who’s about to enter the Rothbardian society of Aurora Village, where everyone takes personal responsibility for their actions.
