the Redneck Libertarian: Strong Views, Loose Allegiances, and Moral Work of Staying Human

Book OverviewThe Redneck Libertarian is a moral-political memoir about one man's refusal to be reduced by the categories the world keeps offering him.Formed by South Africa, apartheid, military service, business, leadership rooms, debt, ageing, and the companionship of an old dog, Dr. Kieth Deats writes from the uneasy ground between strong conviction and ideological refusal.This is not a book asking the reader to join a tribe.It is a book about becoming harder to capture by one.At its centre is a simple discipline: Stay close to consequence. Refuse capture. Return to care.The "redneck" in this book is not a caricature of ignorance or cruelty. He is the part of the author that lives close to consequence: who asks who pays, who carries the load, who cleans up when the theory fails, and whether polished language has lost contact with ordinary life.The "libertarian" is not fantasy individualism. He is the part that refuses capture: by state, market, tribe, party, church, corporation, ideology, fashionable moral language, or any system that turns a human being into a category.Oscar, the old dog on the cover, keeps the argument answerable to care. His presence reminds the reader that no politics, economics, religion, leadership theory, or moral argument is worth much if it loses contact with the living creature in front of us.Across thirteen chapters, the book moves from childhood and rugby fields to apartheid and tribe; from military service and business to money and leadership rooms; from gender and religion to geopolitical disorder. It asks the same questions at every scale: Who pays? Who carries consequence? Who is being made small? Where has care become control? Where has freedom become abandonment? Where has humiliation become permission? Where is the human being disappearing?This is a book with strong views, but loose allegiances.It argues that adulthood is not found in choosing one side and calling it truth. It is found in holding opposing truths without lying: freedom and care, tribe and conscience, masculinity and tenderness, faith and humility, money and morality, justice and mercy.The Redneck Libertarian is distinctive because it does not try to win an argument for a tribe.It tries to recover the human being from the argument.

Pagina's: 103, Paperback, Independently published