Caritas In Veritate

President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI last week at the Vatican.  During the meeting, the Pope provided the president with a copy of his new encyclical letter, Caritas In Veritate.  Most of the press coverage has focused on the pro-life elements of the treatise and the obvious disagreements between the Church and President Obama over issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.  But it should be noted that the Pope’s encyclical dedicates as much (if not more) time to the issues of globalization and the current economic crisis, and in this respect the Pope and the President are like two peas in a pod.  Both demonstrate the same profound ignorance of basic economics, and both prescribe bigger, more powerful government as the cure for what ails us. 

Caritas In Veritate (Charity in Truth) is Pope Benedict’s 2009 sequel to Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, written in 1967.  Ayn Rand shredded the 1967 original in her essay, “Requiem for Man.”  (This post won’t be nearly as insightful as Rand’s review of Populorum Progressio, but it’s interesting to note that after more than forty years the Church still doesn’t understand the ethical superiority of the free market relative to the political sphere’s command-and-control model).  

The text of Caritas In Veritate is long and rambling, and in many cases self-contradictory.  Often it’s a one-step-forward-two-steps-back affair.  At times the Pope makes some good points about some social ill or other, but then he offers statist solutions that would only aggravate the problem he seeks to remedy.  And throughout the encyclical he overlooks the coercion upon which all state action is based – a troubling oversight from someone who supposedly spends every waking hour wrestling with issues of ethics and morality. 

As the title suggests, the theme of the Pope’s letter is charity.  In the letter, he claims that modern society lacks an overarching sense of charity that would encourage people to think of more than just themselves.  This sense of charity should infuse not only individuals, but also their economic and political institutions.  Pope Benedict sets out his premise in the introduction to the encyclical, which states (in part), 

“Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace…. 

… Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones). 

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility.” 

And here is where the letter starts to get off track (the introduction).  The Pope is trying to shoehorn the virtue of charity into the sphere of government and politics.  One of the necessary components of charity (and of morality itself) is that it be freely chosen.  One of the necessary components of government action, on the other hand, is coercion.  These two elements – charity and government – are therefore mutually exclusive.  The moral element the Pope wishes to inculcate in society is sacrificed the moment the state is used as the means to that end.  One of the most basic elements of morality is free will.  Once the individual’s ability to choose is removed, as it must be whenever the state is involved, that person’s ability to act as a moral agent is also eliminated.  Once charity is forced upon someone, it can no longer be described as charity.  Even if the state uses the taxes it collects for otherwise noble purposes, such as feeding the poor or clothing the naked, it ceases to be charity and becomes instead wealth redistribution.  Redistribution of wealth is not the same as charity.  The moral dimension that would quality an act as charitable if undertaken voluntarily is destroyed by the use of force. 

At times Caritas In Veritate does pay lip service to the notion of freedom as an essential characteristic of charity.  For example, in the following quote the Pope makes reference to individual rights, saying: 

“Charity is love received and given…Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is ‘his’, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting.  I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice.  If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them.  Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it.  Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI’s words, ‘the minimum measure’ of it, an integral part of the love ‘in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.” 

So far, so good, but again the Pope immediately places this notion of charity that respects individual rights and justice in a political context: 

“Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of ‘all of us’, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or ‘city’. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have.” 

Again, the Pope’s encyclical glosses over the means to the end.  The political path of charity is indeed less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly outside the institutional mediation of the polis.  From an ethical perspective, the use of force that underlies the political process is far less desirable than voluntary free-market interactions.  From a practical perspective, the state’s insulation from market-driven feedback mechanisms ensures that it will be far less effective in reducing poverty than voluntary, grassroots organizations. 

The encyclical continues with an analysis of the current global financial meltdown that reads as if it had been written by the reporters at NPR: 

“Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State’s public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodeled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today’s world.” 

“Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, party because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.” 

“The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life.  It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination.” 

“Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.” 

“…It must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.” 

You get the point.  Read Caritas In Veritate in its entirety if you’re interested in more, or if you’re concerned that these quotes are taken out of context.  I think they give a reasonable encapsulation of the Pope’s viewpoint on economic affairs.  But don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to give the reader the impression that the Pope is just sitting on the sidelines carping about the economy without offering any solutions.  Far from it.  He goes on to provide some practical policy advice as well: 

“In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.” 

That’s right.  The Pope believes that society’s lack of charity can be solved by giving the UN more coercive power.  Even though the world’s largest governments have routinely failed to deliver their citizens from poverty or to instill a sense of charity in the polis, an even larger government will succeed.  This new, larger, more powerful government will, of course, avoid all of the moral failings that have plagued all other governments since time immemorial (somehow).  The same UN responsible for Oil for Food and peacekeeping missions in the Congo will, in some unspecified manner, straighten up and fly right, thus becoming a paragon of virtue. 

For some reason I’m skeptical that a bunch of corrupt, unelected, and unaccountable UN bureaucrats will use their guns, money, and power to make everyone in the world more charitable.  I rather suspect that they would only use them for their own personal gain.  So instead of imposing further UN-sponsored misery on the world, perhaps we should take a different approach.  Although he seems to be completely unaware of it, Pope Benedict XVI himself alludes to this alternate approach in Caritas In Veritate:

“In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI taught that progress, in its origin and essence, is first and foremost a vocation: ‘in the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfil himself, for every life is a vocation’…A vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. The ‘types of messianism which give promises but create illusions’ always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal. This false security becomes a weakness, because it involves reducing man to subservience, to a mere means for development, while the humility of those who accept a vocation is transformed into true autonomy, because it sets them free. Paul VI was in no doubt that obstacles and forms of conditioning hold up development, but he was also certain that ‘each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure.’ This freedom concerns the type of development we are considering, but it also affects situations of underdevelopment which are not due to chance or historical necessity, but are attributable to human responsibility. This is why ‘the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance’. This too is a vocation, a call addressed by free subjects to other free subjects in favour of an assumption of shared responsibility. Paul VI had a keen sense of the importance of economic structures and institutions, but he had an equally clear sense of their nature as instruments of human freedom. Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner.”

In this passage, the Pope inadvertently provides a very good explanation as to why state involvement is antithetical to real charity, progress, and human development.  State control denies the individual the freedom needed to pursue his or her vocation.  Government maintains the illusion that it is the source of prosperity, which in turn creates a false sense of security that ultimately reduces man to subservience.  In contrast, true charity can only exist within a sphere of freedom.  And it is only through greater freedom that individuals can make the moral choices necessary to deliver real human progress.

Go in peace.

Independence Day

Another round of Tea Party rallies was held all across the country on Saturday. I haven’t seen so many angry conservatives gather in one place since the Dixie Chicks came to town. Then again, conservatives (and the rest of us, for that matter) have a lot to be angry about lately. So it’s probably fitting that they came together on Independence Day, the day we celebrated an event that took place 233 years ago, when the original thirteen colonies announced their intention to secede from an oppressive government that had been trampling the natural liberties of its citizens for far too long. In the Declaration of Independence they cited the “long train of abuses” that had set them upon their fateful course – a course that would change human history.

The outcome was never certain. The odds were against the American colonists. After all, they were taking on the largest, most powerful government in the world at the time. Nevertheless, they persevered and they won their liberties – liberties that were theirs by virtue of their humanity, and not by virtue of any government grant. With that in mind, they set about to form a better government – one explicitly designed to protect individuals’ natural rights. Although they didn’t apply that protection equally, they did at least set the foundation for what would become the freest, most prosperous society mankind had ever known.

Today, however, that prosperity is in jeopardy because we have lost sight of a few things that the founders understood very well. They understood that government exists for one purpose only – to protect individual liberty. It cannot, in justice, do more than that because government can only help some people by harming others. The founders created a government with strictly limited powers because they knew that once government moves beyond its proper role of protecting liberty, it immediately becomes destructive to its own purpose. George Washington understood this simple truth, and he was correct when he said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

The founders also understood that any legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed. An inescapable corollary to this concept is that the governed may withdraw their consent should their government ever become oppressive or tyrannical.

Somewhere along the way we forgot these foundational principles. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, then we have indeed been derelict in our duty, and we now suffer the consequences of our own complacency. But the Tea Part protests show that some Americans are beginning to shake off that complacency.

Many, if not most, of the protestors at the Tea Party rallies are merely unhappy with the current administration, and mistakenly believe that everything would be just fine if only they could get more Republicans elected to office. Some of us, however, understand the larger issues at stake and have committed ourselves to the principle of individual liberty that was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence back in 1776.

Sadly, many Americans no longer agree with that founding principle, as evidenced by some talking heads in the media who have dismissed the Tea Party rallies and the demonstrators. Apparently they don’t think that tens of thousands of Americans taking to streets holding signs and shouting protest chants is very newsworthy. Barely able to suppress their contempt, they remind us that the original Boston Tea Party was all about taxation without representation. And since we have representation now, the argument goes, we should all just shut up and allow the federal government to run roughshod over our rights. I disagree.

In fact, I have to wonder if we are really represented at all these days. The nation’s opposition to the Bush/Paulson $800 billion TARP I plan was well publicized. And even though public opinion ran almost 99 to 1 against the bailout, our so-called “representatives” in Washington passed it anyway. In the face of such blatant disregard for the expressed will of the people, can we really claim that we are being represented? I have my doubts.

TARP I was bad enough, but the Obama administration will not be outdone in the bad ideas department. This year Congress passed a $3.5 trillion budget, and a corresponding $2 trillion deficit. The national debt is now well above $11 trillion, and we face over $100 trillion in additional unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare over the next several years. And the tab grows larger every day.

Something is obviously very wrong with this picture. Our elected representatives have not only lost sight of their duty to uphold the Constitution and to protect our liberties, but evidently they have also lost all touch with reality to boot. Most normal people understand that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. In Washington, though, when the politicians find themselves in a hole, they immediately borrow more money to buy a bigger shovel.

So on Independence Day, thousands of Americans gathered in cities throughout the land to demand that the bureaucrats in Washington stop squandering the fruits of their labor with its irresponsible and wasteful spending. They made it known that they reject confiscatory taxation, the deliberate destruction of the dollar, and the bankrupt ideology that claims government can live our lives and run our businesses better than we can. Because of this stance, statists accuse them of being mere shills for so-called “corporate interests.” I disagree. I didn’t see a lot of CEOs and investment bankers. Instead, I saw mothers and fathers who are rightly concerned that the country they grew up in is in danger of losing the attachment to individual liberty that made it great in the first place. I saw parents who are concerned that their children will be less free than they were. And I saw Americans give notice that the federal government has overstepped its bounds and risks losing the consent of the governed upon which its moral legitimacy is supposedly based.

There are many other Americans, of course, who enthusiastically support the government’s economic policies. They tell us that we should wait and give President Obama’s plan a chance to work. I disagree. When someone lets go of a rock, we all know what happens next. It falls to the ground. There’s no need to wait and give the rock a chance to float up, no matter how much we might hope that this time it really will work. We know it won’t work because it can’t work. Nevertheless, President Obama, Ben Bernanke, Secretary Geithner, and most members of Congress tell us that if we just sit back and let them drown us all in debt and dollar bills, and if we just sit back and let them nationalize a few more industries, that everything will work out fine. We just need to give it a chance to work. Those who attended the Tea Party rallies on Saturday disagree.

Two years ago, Treasury Secretary Paulson said there was no fundamental problem in the economy. Then last year, he said that $800 billion would be enough to patch up the problems he hadn’t noticed before. Now the Obama administration tells us that that if they just spend a few trillion more here and there, the same people who didn’t know there was a problem to begin with will be able to fix the problem by doing more of the same things that caused the problem. And in the process the government may just have to take over the banks, the automobile manufacturers, the credit card providers, the mortgage companies, the healthcare industry, and any other sector of the economy they can get their hands on.

Many in this country believe that the government must take these steps in order to cure what they see as massive market failure. In this they are very, very mistaken. In looking to increase the government’s involvement in the economy, they are prescribing the wrong cure because they have misdiagnosed the disease. They do not see that the current crisis is the inevitable result of at least a century of bureaucratic micro-management in the economy – and you can bet that no one in Washington is going to call attention to that fact. The President, his cabinet, and Congress want us to focus on the car going off the road, but they don’t want to admit that they were the ones who switched all the traffic signs around in the first place.

When market actors engage in fraud or theft, they must be stopped. But for far too long now, the government has been involved in far more than simply deterring violations of property rights. Through a variety of means, it has attempted to coerce the market into behaving in ways that benefit the political class, using brute force to override the voluntary choices made by individuals acting in their own best interests. And yet despite the bailouts, the nationalizations, the mountains of regulations, the punitive tax code, and countless other interventions, those in government still refer to the US economy as a “free market.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In a free market and in a free country, the government does not dictate which actors will succeed and which will fail, the consumer does. In a capitalist society, the government neither punishes winners nor subsidizes losers. In our society, of course, the government does all of this and more.

We have yet to feel the real impact of these federal bailouts, nationalizations, sweetheart loans, excessive spending, and skyrocketing debt. The long run effects of these policies will not only be detrimental to the economy, but to our personal liberties as well. This would be reason enough to rise up and oppose the lunacy coming from Washington these days. But we should also oppose federal meddling in the economy from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Think about it for a moment. The federal government has the power to take as much of our money in taxes as it wants. It also has the power to print as much money as it feels it needs at any given time. And yet even with this awesome power, Washington still manages to lose $2 trillion a year. That’s an impressive display of incompetence. And these same people now claim that they have the business savvy we need to nurse the private sector back to health? Well thanks, but no thanks.

We’ve seen this movie before in countries all over the world, and we know how it ends. It’s nothing that we want here. Not in this country. In this country, some of us still value freedom. We still value individual initiative and individual liberty. And we understand that the free market is the manifestation of that initiative and of that liberty. These are core American values, and they cannot be managed by central planners in DC. They must be protected from the central planners in DC.

Our government is on a very dangerous and destructive course. If we do not have the freedom to make our own choices about how we spend and invest our money, if we do not have the freedom to manage our own health care or run our own businesses, if we do not have the freedom to succeed or fail based on our own individual skills and initiative, then we are not free. That is why thousands of people gathered together on Independence Day. Not merely to protest out-of-control government spending and a crushing tax burden, but to demand their very liberty.

There may be time yet to stop this madness. The American economy can rebound, and it can become stronger than ever. But if we are to recover and regain the economic dynamism that was once the hallmark of the United States, it will only be due to the individuals who go to work every day in a free market. It will not be due to those in government, who merely sponge off our efforts and seek to inhibit our prosperity.

 

My hope is that the Tea Party protestors will move beyond mere partisan rhetoric and will help rekindle the spririt of liberty that once animated the American republic. It’s time to tell all politicians, Republican or Democrat, from the local city council to the White House, that they may not saddle our friends, our neighbors, and our children with a crushing debt or a devalued dollar. Now is the time to make our voices heard. Because if we don’t stop this government’s reckless spending and headlong rush into socialism, we will not recognize the country we leave to our children. Hopefully a few more Americans have now renewed their commitment to the founding principle of this country, and will demand the natural liberties that were promised us on the first Independence Day.

The Fed’s Good News

Today’s AP headline made me laugh:  “Fed says recession easing, inflation not a threat.”  The press release masquerading as a news story continued, saying “…the recession is easing, but the economy likely will remain weak and keep a lid on inflation.” 

Ah, yes.  The weakness of the economy is going to keep a lid on inflation.  The corollary to this claim would be that a healthy economy is de facto inflationary, or that inflation is merely a naturally occurring economic phenomenon.  Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and prices gotta rise.  

It’s in the Fed’s best interest to present the case in this light, of course.  Why bother taking the blame for something as nasty as inflation when instead you can convince the masses that inflation is just one of those unfortunate aspects of life on this earth, as uncontrollable as the tides? 

And the Fed’s spin doctors have clearly earned their fiat money – people have swallowed their story hook, line, and crawdad.  Today, the term “inflation” is synonymous with price increases in the minds of most people, and most people believe that prices just naturally increase from year to year.  There was a time when this wasn’t the case.  People used to understand that inflation is actually the increase in the money supply, and that when money and credit is expanded by government, the prices for most goods and services tend to rise as a consequence of that expansion. 

The problem with the classical understanding of inflation, though, is that it doesn’t allow the government to get away with nearly as much mischief as it might like.  So the Fed (and the feds) simply redefined the term.  Instead of inflation referring to the government-induced increase in the money supply, it now refers to the subsequent increase in prices, which blurs the line between cause and effect quite nicely.  This in turn lets the Fed and the rest of the political class off the hook, and gives them the leeway they need to do all sorts of fun government-y stuff, like waging elective wars and promising people something for nothing.  Do you really think people would support idiotic schemes like invasions of foreign lands or government-provided health insurance if they had to pay for it through direct taxation?  Of course not.  But inflation allows the government to do all of this and more, because it can now impose the costs of this stupidity indirectly. 

Nevertheless, there are a few souls out there who still know what’s what.  No doubt they read today’s AP headline and marveled at the Fed’s ability to claim that inflation is under control when the Fed itself publishes graphs like this one:

  

The astute observer (and even the merely semi-conscious observer) can see that the money supply has doubled in the past eleven months.  This increase in the money supply is the inflation that Bernanke claims is under control.  Just because the prices of everything under the sun have not yet gone through the roof does not mean for one second that there is no inflation.  Some of these newly created dollars are being held by foreign central banks (last one holding dollars loses!), some are being held by US banks in the form of higher reserves, and some of the new money has yet to work its way through the system.  But it’s just a matter of time before those dollars start circulating with a vengeance.  That will not only result in dramatically higher prices, but could also drive yet another asset bubble.  

No matter how or when the effects of this monetary insanity manifest themselves, the above graph shows that, far from being some minor risk that’s well under control, inflation has already happened.  If this is what passes for good news from the Fed, I shudder to think of what life will be like once they finally have to deliver the bad news.

Trust Me, I’m a Doctor

I knew an Obama administration would be bad, but I never thought it would be so bad, so soon.  The scope of Obama’s disastrous policies is beyond anything I could have predicted, and his relentless assault on whatever remnants of the American free market still exist is absolutely breathtaking.  Beginning where the Bush administration left off, President Obama and his accomplices in Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury have managed to place large swaths of the automotive and financial industries under state control in the space of just five short months.  And they’re not done yet. 

President Obama gave a speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin yesterday to pitch the next item on the nationalization agenda, health insurance.  Evidently the President believes that now would be the perfect time to create another wildly expensive government entitlement program to complement the $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities from Social Security and Medicare. 

Obama addressed some of the petty bourgeois concerns voiced by a few reactionary and counter-revolutionary factions, saying, “If you’ve got a private plan that works for you, that’s great.  But we want some competition.  If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it’ll keep them honest… When you hear people saying socialized medicine, understand, I don’t know anybody in Washington who is proposing that.” 

Now I know that many Americans just can’t wait for a visit to their doctor to feel like a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles (only with needles and tongue depressors).  And I understand how powerful an illusion “free” health care can be.  Why pay for your own health care when you can just force your neighbors to chip in instead?  So it’s no surprise that government health insurance is a popular policy for many voters (at least until they see what it’s like in practice).  But my question is this – how can anyone, no matter how deeply they might love and worship Obama, suspend their disbelief so far as to buy any of his claims? 

Both of the points Obama made in the Green Bay speech – that privately provided health insurance will continue unaffected and that this proposal is not socialized medicine – are outright lies, and even his most sycophantic supporters should be able to recognize that.  They may still support socialized medicine as a policy, but it should be plain to all that this proposal is specifically designed to eviscerate private health insurance providers so that the health insurance industry can be socialized in its entirety. 

Lest there be any doubt, let’s imagine some enterprising individual were to open a convenience store.  He saves up some money, gets a loan from the bank, and goes into business for himself.  Times are tough, of course, and he’s got to watch the bottom line like a hawk.  If the profit margin on the sales he makes to his customers isn’t enough to cover his costs, then obviously he’ll have to shut down eventually.  

Now let’s imagine that the government opens its own convenience store right across the street.  The government store is not subject to the same kinds of market disciplines as our private entrepreneur. The government store doesn’t have to worry that the profit generated by the customers who shop there is enough to cover its costs – it gets to allocate its operating costs over the entire taxpayer base, regardless of whether those taxpayers shop at the convenience store or not.  This is not an insignificant competitive advantage.  It enables the government store to price its goods far below their market value, so why would customers continue to shop at the private store across the street?  And since it’s a government-run store, it will be able to run Amtrak-level deficits over a functionally infinite time horizon. 

It doesn’t take an advanced degree to realize that our young entrepreneur cannot possibly compete in this environment.  Indeed, one is hard-pressed to see how this situation can even be termed “competition” at all.  And yet this is the model President Obama is proposing for the health insurance industry.  

The outcome is not in doubt.  Private insurers will be run out of business, leaving the government insurance scheme as the only game in town.  Demand for health care will rise, as consumers’ link between the provision of the service is further divorced from payment for the service.  As the government becomes the monopsony customer for health care, it will seek to control its spiraling costs and the resulting deficits by rationing service, increasing taxes, and paying health care providers less-than-market prices.  This will ensure that fewer people will wish to enter the medical field, thus exacerbating the shortages.  This is already happening.  As reported in the New York Times, more and more doctors are refusing to accept Medicare patients because of the bureaucratic hassles and the below-market reimbursement rates.  A report by the Lewin Group indicates that Medicare doesn’t even cover the health providers’ costs.  There is no reason to believe that making a failed government program even bigger than it already is will deliver better results. 

Granted, none of this will sway those who still believe that government can wave its magic wand and simply force goods and services to be cheaper and more available than they currently are.  And one must admit that the popular frustration over the current health care system is very real, giving the politicians something to tap into.  Many people feel they’re paying too much for the insurance they do have.  (Of course, doctors’ rates are higher than they probably should be.  This is due in part to the fact that the American Medical Association is a government-protected union that keeps the number of physicians artificially low).  Other people don’t like the services provided by their HMOs.  (Then again, HMOs were a government creation – thank you, Ted Kennedy).  And some people are frustrated by the fact that if you lose your job, you often lose your health insurance because it was part of your benefit package at work.  (But even this is the result of wage and price controls imposed by the government after World War II).  

So it seems that much of the frustration with our current health care system is due not to the free market, but rather to the lack of one.  One intervention begets another, and another, and another, until finally we wind up with a completely unworkable system that everyone hates.  And yet many people still look to the government to fix the problem by doing more of the same things that caused the problem in the first place.  It seems like a strange prescription to me, but then again, I’m not a doctor like President Obama.

The Wit and Wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes

In announcing his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, President Obama made the following comment, “For as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience; experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers. It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.” 

The reference to Justice Holmes was telling, I think.  Holmes is the model jurist for many Progressives, due to the fact that he was utterly incapable of identifying any limits whatsoever on the power of the state over its citizens.  His legacy was, by and large, overtly hostile to individual liberty.  Based on some of Sotomayor’s comments and her record as an appeals court judge, I suspect she will continue in the Holmesian statist tradition.  And I’m positive that President Obama expects no less.  But since the President seems to hold the wit and wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes in such high esteem, perhaps it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at a few of the quotes from the Supreme Court’s most frequently cited Justice.  

No doubt you’ve heard the phrase, “Shouting fire in a crowded theater.” It’s one of Holmes’s most memorable lines.  It comes from the Schenck v. United States case, for which Holmes wrote the unanimous decision.  Here’s a slightly fuller excerpt from that decision: 

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”   

The “shouting fire” line has clearly survived the test of time, ranking right up there with, “Four score and seven years ago,” and “May the force be with you.”  It has been used by statists from all across the political spectrum as some sort of talisman to ward off debate and quash unpopular speech.  Upon closer analysis, however, we find that this little gem is not all it’s cracked up to be – particularly when we consider what Holmes and the rest of the Supreme Court actually decided in the Schenck case.  

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward.  During World War I, Charles Schenck was arrested for distributing flyers protesting the draft, and the Supreme Court upheld Schenck’s conviction.  Holmes’s “fire in a crowded theater” line was meant to support his finding that Charles Schenck’s right to free speech did not extend to criticizing government policy. Holmes was dead wrong in this case, yet his quip is still held up as though it had been brought down from the mountain on stone tablets. 

Another one of Justice Holmes’s famous quotes comes from the Buck v. Bell case, in which this paragon of jurisprudence discovered the state’s right to force sterilization on those individuals the government deemed “defective” in some way.  Delivering the majority’s downright ghoulish opinion, Holmes wrote, 

“The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck ‘is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,’ and thereupon makes the order. In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.  Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Creepy much?  And as if any further proof were needed to solidify Holmes’s statist bona fides, there’s always the following:

“I like to pay taxes.  With them I buy civilization.”

An interesting take on the subject, don’t you think?  Say what you want about taxes, they are by their very nature coercive, and few people actually like to pay them.  But that’s not what I find troubling about this particular quote.  The problem here is that Holmes has the link between taxes and civilization completely backward.  Taxes are not the price we pay for civilization.  At best, they are the price we pay for our lack of civility.  After all, a civilized society should not be characterized by the degree to which it cloaks and institutionalizes coercion.  A civilized society should be characterized by the degree to which it eschews coercion altogether and seeks peaceful, voluntary solutions instead.

Of course, that’s just my (dissenting) opinion.

The Happiness Machine

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Philosopher’s Zone.  I have no idea why I do this, as they rarely talk about anything interesting.  I’ve wasted untold hours listening to topics such as “Hypatia of Alexandria” or “The Unhappy Family of Ludwig Wittgenstein.”  On those rare occasions they manage to touch on something I’m interested in, like “The Ethics of Economic Rationalism” or “Philosophers Advising Government,” they usually make a hash of the whole thing. 

I shouldn’t be surprised by this.  After all, the Austrialian Broadcasting Corporation is just NPR Down Under.  The host of The Philosopher’s Zone, Alan Saunders, is certainly a talented interviewer and is obviously very well schooled in philosophy, but he never strays too far from the standard big-government welfare statism that one would expect from a taxpayer-funded media outlet.  He does, however, bring a certain air of sophistication to the tired center-left policies he and the majority of his guests obviously support.  

From time to time, though, I do hear things on the show that I haven’t heard before.  For example, the May 30^th episode was entitled “The Happiness Machine,” featuring Caroline West.  Ms. West is Senior Lecturer in the University of Sydney’s Philosophy Department, and her main point was that the term “happiness” has several meanings and that we need to be very specific if we expect to make any progress.  In short, it seemed like one of those topics, good for little more than background iPod noise while I mowed the lawn.  But then Ms. West made a few claims that made me stop and pay attention. 

The first claim was evidently empirical.  According to Ms. West, multiple studies have shown that people without children report greater happiness throughout their lives than parents do.  As a father of two I find this extremely hard to believe, but then again I’ve got the greatest kids in the world.  (I know, all parents think their kids are the best, but in my case it’s actually true – they won the J.D. Power and Associates award for initial quality).  Be that as it may, I’m not really trying to refute Ms. West’s point here.  I suspect that these studies come with a lot of qualifying statements, but I have no doubt she’s got the data to back up the claim.  

The second point Ms. West made involved the effect that money has on self-reported happiness.  Although her core claim also had some sort of empirical data behind it, she continued far beyond what any data points could possibly prove.  From the show’s transcript: 

“Multiple studies find that over a certain surprisingly low threshold, about USD $40,000 or equivalent, every extra dollar you earn makes very little, if any, difference to your happiness. But there’s an interesting difference in the finding. One cluster of studies shows a steep increase in happiness from zero dollars to around about $27,000 a year, and a still increasing, but less steeply increasing rise between $27,000 and $40,000 a year, and a complete leveling off in happiness levels after $40,000 a year, until you get to $125-million a year, and you’re on the Forbes Rich List where there’s another sharp jump. So people on the Forbes Rich List, they don’t just look happy, they probably genuinely are. 

OK so that’s one finding, which has a leveling off, almost complete leveling off in increases in happiness earning over $40,000 a year. There’s a flat line. I mean the surprising finding is, it makes absolutely no difference to your happiness, whether you earn $40,000, $70,000, $150,000 or $3-million a year. I mean when you think of all the things that people give up in order to earn more money … 

But another cluster of studies, quite a number of them, show something different. There’s a slight but nonetheless overall significant increase in happiness after $40,000. A less steep but still very steady increase in happiness all the way up until $125-million and then you’re very happy. 

…[T]here are some really interesting and difficult questions for policymakers around these sorts of issues, because some people think that the findings about income and wealth, in particular the fact that after $40,000 happiness sort of levels off, notwithstanding quite significant increases in income. I think this is a sort of strong argument for aggressive redistribution of income from people who earn over $40,000, to people who earn between zero and $27,000, because if it’s true as the studies suggest, that every dollar over $40,000 that you earn makes very little difference to your happiness, but every dollar that someone gets if they’re between zero and $27,000 makes an enormous difference to their happiness, and you want to do what makes most people happy, then there seems to be an argument for redistribution, taking from those who have more than $40,000 and giving to those who have between zero and $27,000.” 

Although I wasn’t terribly interested in the topic overall, I found this bit to be absolutely fascinating.  I mean, I’ve heard all sorts of rationalizations for income redistribution before – everything from “it’s the social contract” to “public goods” to “it’s not really stealing if most voters say it’s okay” – but I had never heard anyone defend theft on the basis of how happy it makes the thief!  Kudos to Ms. West for blazing new frontiers in statist thinking.  

As I listened to this “strong argument for aggressive redistribution of income,” I wondered how this would all play out in practice.  If we assume for a second that the government has a) the ability to calculate Person X’s happiness relative to Person Y’s happiness, and b) a mandate to maximize or equalize said happiness, then I suppose the first step would be to change the income tax structure.  Perhaps the IRS could give an exemption on any income below $27,000 a year and then impose a 90% rate on any income over $40,000.  Since happiness (according to the studies cited by Ms. West) stays rock steady for any income between $40,000 and $125 million, it would probably make sense to impose a 100% rate over that level just to ensure that we don’t suffer from any widening happiness gaps in our society. 

I wonder what else could be justified by a federal happiness initiative.  I suppose the administration would name a Happiness Czar to the cabinet.  Perhaps this person would impose a one- or no-child policy à la Communist China, complete with forced abortions.  After all, the research clearly shows that fewer children mean happier couples, right?  And I suppose some redistribution of existing children may also be needed to ensure maximal happiness, although I’m not sure how the math would work.  They’d probably have to get the Census Bureau involved somehow. 

This is hyperbolic, of course, and nothing in the podcast would indicate that Ms. West would go so far as all that (although I suspect she may be sympathetic to the taxation argument). But my point is this – far from being a “strong argument,” believing that some people can quantify subjective values for others and then determine the relative merits of those values is a very dangerous concept, particularly where government is concerned.  This is probably one of the reasons why I have always found the natural rights approach so appealing.  It helps draw bright lines around interpersonal interactions and places limits on what even the majority of people within a society may legitimately do.  This seems far more prudent than giving the government intellectual cover to decide something as fundamental and yet as nebulous as the happiness of hundreds of millions of complete strangers.  And it’s not much of a leap from rationalizing government policy on the basis of “maximizing happiness” to rationalizing it on the basis of “the greater good.”  The history of 20^th century should be enough to demonstrate that governments may have very different ideas about what these terms mean than your average run-of-the-mill lefty philosophy professor.

Opportunities for Improvement

About seven or eight years ago I was browsing through the politics section of my local Borders bookstore and came across a book on libertarianism. I had heard of libertarianism before, and I was definitely interested in learning more about it. So I pulled the book off the shelf and opened it to a random page. The chapter I turned to was titled, “Stop the Drug War.” I read the title, closed the book, and put it back on the shelf. I didn’t think about libertarianism again for at least another four years. Now, of course, I wish I had just opened the book to page one like a normal person. It would have saved me a lot of time, and I would be a lot farther along in my studies than I am now.

At the time, though, I just wasn’t interested in considering the arguments against the drug war. And like most people, I wrongly equated opposition to the drug war with support of drug usage. Once I finally returned to libertarian political theory, I came to understand the distinction being made and have since accepted the logic of the arguments against prohibition.

Thinking back on that day at Borders made me consider some of the things that we libertarians (myself included) do that may often be counter-productive. So in the spirit of a little healthy self-reflection, I’d like to suggest a few libertarian “opportunities for improvement.” I realize that in so doing it will be impossible for me not to over-generalize, so take this post with a grain of salt. I don’t mean to imply that all libertarians do all of these things all of the time, or even that these tendencies are always and forever wrong. Nevertheless, there’s room for improvement in any endeavor, and libertarianism is no exception.

The episode at the bookstore illustrates one such opportunity for improvement. When speaking with non-libertarians, we sometimes make the mistake of leading with the conclusion. When I first opened that book, I was presented with the conclusion to the argument against the drug war, and I missed all the points leading up to that conclusion. That was not the author’s fault, of course. When you’re writing a book, you have to assume that the reader has sense enough to start at the beginning. I’m sure he made a very powerful case for his position, but I skipped all that and was confronted with a conclusion I wasn’t prepared for.

And let’s face it – our conclusions can seem pretty “out there” to someone hearing them for the very first time. After all, it’s not as if the libertarian philosophy is spoon-fed to people daily on CNN, Fox News, or Oprah. We speak of things that simply aren’t part of the modern political lexicon – things like individual rights, private property, and the non-aggression principle. All of our positions flow logically from these foundational elements, but we should keep in mind how alien such concepts now sound to most Americans and remember to work from the ground up whenever possible.

Let’s take a hypothetical example involving Bob, a hypothetical libertarian. Bob is meeting Fred, a non-libertarian, for the first time and says, “Hi, I’m Bob. I’m a libertarian. We have to legalize drugs!” Bob is not helping. That’s not to say that Bob is wrong, it’s just that his approach is more likely to cause Fred to put up mental barriers that prevent him from giving Bob’s position serious consideration. I think a more productive approach is to lay the groundwork of individual rights and build gradually to the conclusion rather than trying to jump there straightaway. It’s always better to “show your math” whenever possible.

A second area for improvement involves what I refer to as “the libertarian pissing contest.” This refers to the tendency that we libertarians have of trying to purge the ranks of anyone deemed philosophically impure. This phenomenon usually manifests itself in the never-ending minarchy/anarchy debate, but it also pops up in some internecine rivalries among the various elements of the freedom movement. This is not entirely a bad thing, of course. There’s definitely value in having challenging debates in which we can hone our arguments and push the conceptual envelope. But it can also be overdone, and may sometimes lead to alienating people who might otherwise be very good allies in the effort to expand liberty.

Whereas these first two points – starting with the conclusion and trying to “out-libertarian” each other – relate mainly to small-l libertarianism, the last points I’d like to make are more relevant to the big-L libertarianism of the Libertarian Party. And here I would like to make two observations. The first is that I’ve noticed a tendency to equate the term “radical” with “shocking.” This is most often seen in discussions relating to the LP platform. The hardcore libertarians want the position statements to be more “radical” in order to differentiate the LP from the two major parties, and also to maintain as much philosophical purity as possible. To the degree that they use the word “radical” in its original Latin sense, meaning “get to the root of,” then I tend to agree with them. God knows the LP doesn’t need any more watering down. But at times I get the feeling that the intent is simply to shock people into paying attention. If that’s the case, then I think it’s a counter-productive strategy. Again, I prefer a more foundational approach that builds upon the core concepts of individual liberty. That’s just my opinion, of course, and I realize that different people respond to different communication styles.

The second suggestion I would like to make with regard to the LP relates to the candidates, and it is simply this: clean it up. We libertarians obviously celebrate individualism, and our membership reflects that. But when we enter the political arena, the goal is to communicate libertarian ideas in a way that resonates with voters who may be hearing them for the first time. If we want them to take our ideas seriously, then they have to take us seriously as well. Like it or not, our personal appearance affects how we are perceived by others. With that in mind, it’s probably more effective to show up to the candidates’ debate wearing a suit and tie rather than looking like you just got back from the Sturgis rally.

As I mentioned at the outset, these are merely anecdotal observations that certainly don’t apply to everyone. To the degree that they do apply, though, they are largely controllable. There are some elements of the freedom philosophy that have broad appeal, and some elements that have a very narrow appeal. That’s probably an uncontrollable constraint that we will simply have to accept. What we can do, however, is work on the controllable elements in order to more effectively communicate our ideas.

The Progressive Monster

Though it didn’t get much press at the time, the Obama administration suffered a setback in February when a federal appeals court ruled that top secret documents could be admitted into evidence in the Al-Haramain v. Bush case. The Obama team had sought to prevent the admission of the documents, arguing the Bush/Cheney position that only the executive branch can determine who may or may not receive classified information, and that its decision is not subject to judicial review. The federal appeals court disagreed, and the plaintiffs’ counsel will be able to enter the classified documents into evidence.

Garnering slightly more attention was President Obama’s decision to “modify” his campaign pledge to remove all US forces from Iraq within sixteen months of his inauguration. Instead of a full withdrawal, President Obama now intends to reduce American forces by two-thirds within eighteen months. And instead of bringing the troops home, as many of Obama’s supporters no doubt misunderstood from his campaign rhetoric, the President merely intends to relocate them to Kabul so that he can escalate the conflict in Afghanistan.

On the economic front, President Obama has spent the past few months building upon the foundation laid by the Bush/Paulson brain trust. Despite howls of protest from hundreds of thousands of Tea Party participants, the Obama team seems determined to find out just how many zeroes it can add to the federal debt in its relentless push to transform the once-dynamic American economy into a moribund bureaucrat’s paradise.

So despite candidate Obama’s campaign-trail protestations against the Bush administration’s general disregard for civil liberties, its elective wars, and its reckless economic policies, it seems that President Obama rather enjoys the executive power the Bush administration worked so hard to expand. The more things “change,” the more they stay the same.

This isn’t surprising. After all, no one in government wants to diminish the power of any of the branches he hopes to control one day, least of all a Progressive like Barack Obama. The expansion of government power, particularly Executive power, has always been a key aspect of the Progressive movement. Ever since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Progressives have viewed government as the principal tool with which to mold society into a more regimented, and therefore more appealing, form.

Domestically, Progressives have implemented government programs ranging from the New Deal to the Great Society and beyond. Each of these programs have expanded the Federal government’s ability to implement various wealth redistribution schemes designed to override the outcomes that result from voluntary, free-market exchange.

Internationally, Progressives have relied on the coercive power of the American military to spread their agenda across the far reaches of the globe. Teddy Roosevelt was very much an imperialist, with a particular focus on the Philippines and Latin America. Woodrow Wilson took the US into World War I, ostensibly to make the world safe for democracy. America’s entry into the First World War helped set the stage for FDR to involve the US in the sequel a little more than twenty years later.

The common thread running through the Progressive agenda over the years has always been the idea that people can be forced to become better than the Progressives deem them to be. As Dr. Horrible says in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, “The world’s a mess, and I just need to rule it.” That’s basically the Progressive philosophy in a nutshell.

And the Progressive movement has been very successful at inserting itself into virtually all modern political thought. So successful, in fact, that key elements of the Progressive agenda can be found in the platforms of both of the major political parties. This may come as a surprise for those who use the term “Progressive” as a synonym for “Democrat,” but it is clear that the modern Republican Party has also adopted and internalized much of the Progressive worldview, though they may be loath to admit it. Despite the acrimony often exhibited by the two camps, both Republicans and Democrats clearly agree that all aspects of life require government control. The only points of contention revolve around which areas should be controlled most urgently, and the rate at which that control should be increased.

A brief historical comparison might help illustrate the pervasiveness of the Progressive ideology. Although many on the left like to compare Bush to Hitler, I think a more valid comparison is between the supposedly arch-conservative George W. Bush and Progressive paragon Woodrow Wilson. Both presidents greatly expanded the power of the federal government, with a particular emphasis on enlarging the scope of the Executive. Both presidents invoked religious language to justify involving the United States in foreign wars, purportedly to make the world “safe for democracy.” And both presidents engaged in wide-scale domestic surveillance and gross violations of civil liberties. These are all elements (or at least consequences) of the original Progressive agenda, and now we‘re all reaping what the Progressives have sown. The powers of the modern President are so far removed from what the Founders had envisioned that the office scarcely merits the term “President” anymore. “Dictator Pro-Temp” might be a better choice, since the President wields far more power today than Caesar ever dreamed of. This is precisely what the Progressive movement sought to achieve from the outset.

This “achievement” does not come without a price, however. Today, when the same government that they worked so hard to expand goes off to drop bombs on other countries, Progressives from the left express shock and outrage (unless the bomb-dropping is done for “humanitarian” reasons by a President with a “D” after his name). When the same government that Progressives worked so tirelessly to enlarge begins to spend unimaginably large sums of money in a panicked attempt to stave off the inevitable effects of all its previous ill-considered interventions in the economy, Progressives from the right take to the streets (unless the spending spree is initiated by a President with an “R” after his name).

Exhibiting all the hubris of Dr. Frankenstein, Progressives from both the left and the right have spent the better part of a century feeding a federal monster. And whenever the monster inevitably breaks loose, either to eat a few villagers in the course of elective wars or to enslave the villagers’ children with a crushing national debt, these same Progressives feign shock and horror – despite having been warned long ago about the dangers of playing God and creating such a monster. Yet no matter how much carnage the monster leaves in its wake, they still cling to the illusion that the problem is not with the size and the power of the monster itself, but only with the shortcomings of the monster’s temporary custodian.

The (Niche) Market for Liberty

A few weeks ago I had a lengthy discussion with a political campaign consultant.  Although not a libertarian himself, he claimed to be broadly sympathetic to the libertarian philosophy, and was kind enough to offer me his services in my next campaign (should there be one).

 

Ours was the typical libertarian/non-libertarian political discussion.  That is to say, it was a seemingly endless series of questions about the mechanics of a freer society.  “How would poor kids be educated if we didn’t force people to pay for public schools?”  “What about health care?”  “What about immigration?”  Yada, yada, freakin’ yada.

 

For the most part, he was receptive to my responses.  Although not completely sold on the idea that individuals are quite capable of dealing with these issues without having a gun waved in their faces, he was at least willing to ponder the concepts being discussed.  But being a political advisor, he kept returning to the question of how to get votes with these ideas, and he challenged me with the following hypothetical situation:

 

“Let’s say you’re at a candidate forum, and a woman stands up and says, ‘I’m a single mom, and I’ve got to get from my house in Arlington to my job in Dallas.  I can’t afford a car, so how are you going to help me?’”

 

My initial response was, “Well, I’d tell her that the best way to improve transportation would be to strike down any subsidies or laws that protect inefficient city bus systems.  This would allow for greater competition in the transit sector, which would lower costs and inc-”

 

At this point he interrupted, “She doesn’t care about any of that.  She just wants to know how you’re going to get her to her minimum-wage job tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. for free.”

 

I replied, “Well, I can’t promise that.  If I wanted to promise people something for nothing, I’d be running as a Republican or Democrat, not a Libertarian.  What I can tell her is that the private sector is going to be far more responsive to her transportation needs than the Arlington city council will be, and that the best thing a politician can do is dismantle the regulatory barriers that are preventing the market from working as efficiently as it other-“

 

Again he interjected, “She doesn’t care!  She just says, ‘You have to get me to work tomorrow!’ Now, what do you tell her?”

 

Exasperated, I said, “I don’t tell her anything.  There are some people who simply can’t be reached, and at some point you just have to cut your losses and move on to those who are receptive to what you’re saying.  After all, libertarian principles are not that hard to understand.  Every individual owns himself.  Using force against someone who has not first aggressed against you is wrong.  If someone cannot or will not understand that, there’s only so much I can do.”

 

I think it’s time I started taking my own advice.  Although I enjoy discussing political philosophy with a wide variety of people, there are a few cold, hard realities that I have to accept.  The first is that the overwhelming majority of people simply don’t care about these broad, theoretical concepts one way or the other.  They’re just going about their lives, trying to put food on the table and focusing on the things that do interest them.  That’s not a bad thing in and of itself but it does probably mean that they’ll never think too deeply about political theory.  They might be receptive to some libertarian ideas on a case-by-case basis, but that’s probably about as far as this group will go.

 

The second reality is that, of the remaining minority that is interested in deeper political thought, the bulk of these people will also be largely unreceptive to the freedom philosophy.  If I remember correctly, it was Brian Doherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism, who once said that if a person doesn’t feel an initial sense of revulsion toward the coercive power underlying all government action, that person will never become a libertarian.  He may be persuaded to accept the libertarian position on this issue or that issue, but he will never become an across-the-board, principled libertarian.  Anecdotally, at least, I’ve found this to be true and I think it holds an important lesson for libertarians.

 

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are plenty of things that libertarians do wrong (more on that in a future post).  But I think one of the first errors we commit is in believing that if we can just communicate the simple idea that “government is force” clearly enough and widely enough, that most people will feel that same visceral reaction against the use of coercion that we felt when we were first exposed to the concept.  They’ll be struck by the liberty thunderbolt and will immediately begin looking for voluntary, rather than coercive, solutions to the problems of societal organization.  After all, very few people point guns at their neighbors in the course of their daily interactions, so surely most people will be appalled once they finally understand that all government programs rely on force to achieve their stated objectives, right? 

 

Wrong.  Although I have no empirical data regarding this, it has been my experience that almost no one objects to using the government to achieve certain outcomes – even when they fully comprehend that by pursuing political “solutions” to perceived problems, they are merely outsourcing the pointing of the gun to people who happen to work in government.  There are a few individuals within this group who are at least honest enough to say, “So what?  As long as it’s my team pointing the gun, what’s the problem?”  The less honest will engage in a long series of ex post facto rationalizations, attempting to obfuscate the obvious truth that their preferred method of social organization is nothing less than institutionalized violence, and that all their “noble” efforts to mold society according to their own personal preferences rely on nothing but large-scale plunder.  The least honest within this group go one step further, painting their unwavering support for this institutionalized violence and large-scale plunder as virtue.  This last subgroup will also relentlessly attack anyone who dares even to question the morality of the means employed to achieve their desired ends.

 

So it’s likely that the number of people who are both interested in and receptive to the expansion of individual liberty is very small.  So small, in fact, that they may be little more than a rounding error when compared to the overall population.  So be it.  We libertarians are rabidly pro-free market, after all, and we may just have to accept the possibility that the market for liberty itself occupies a relatively small niche. 

 

This is not to say that we should stop trying to increase our market share by arguing forcefully for our positions.  After all, we’re selling a good product – one that would be very beneficial to society as a whole if taken in large doses.  And it’s impossible to know ahead of time where we might find those few unique souls who “get it” – or would do if they were just given the chance.  But as we all know, scarcity is a simple economic fact of life, and our time is a scarce resource.  If someone can’t or won’t be reached for whatever reason, we have to be willing to move on to the next prospect.  Life’s too short to argue with brick walls, particularly when there may be more rewarding exchanges somewhere down the line.

The Second Republic of Texas

Texas Governor Rick Perry shocked and outraged polite media society this Wednesday by daring to suggest that secession from the United States is always an option if Texans ever tire of being roundly ignored by those in Washington, D.C. Speaking to reporters in Austin after attending a Tea Party rally, Governor Perry said,

“Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot, to boot.”

Texas Democrats were quick to condemn the governor. State Representative Jim Dunham characterized Perry’s comments as “anti-American,” stating that, with regard to secession, Perry “should have said ‘That’s silly’…He refused the opportunity to disavow it and I think that’s very, very significant. Because what I read in the paper today is that the governor says secession is a possibility.”

Evidently Democrats like Mr. Dunham believe that a sovereign political body like the former Republic of Texas has the right to join a political union, but does not have the right to leave that union should the relationship ever cease to be mutually advantageous. This is what I refer to as the “roach motel” theory of political union – you can check in, but you can’t check out.

That’s not to say that I think it would be a good idea for Texas to leave the Union. I don’t. After all, it’s not as if some great libertarian wave of freedom has spread across the Lone Star State. The current state constitution reads as if it had been written in Brussels, not Austin, and I don’t imagine that a constitution of the Second Republic of Texas would be much different. Indeed, I suspect that if Texas were to secede, the result would simply be a repetition of the same mistakes that brought the US federal government to this point, albeit in a smaller geographic area.

And from what little I’ve seen from the various secessionist movements active here in the state, I don’t get the feeling that they’re motivated by a burning desire to establish a great new bastion of individual liberty stretching from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Although they may be as frustrated with a wildly out-of-control federal government as I am, that looks to be where the similarities end – I certainly don’t share the raging anti-immigration sentiment that seems to fuel so many of these movements.

Besides, Rick Perry ain’t Thomas Jefferson. It’s clear that his post-Tea Party secessionist bombshell and his recent attempts to resurrect the Ninth and Tenth Amendments by refusing federal “stimulus” money are little more than cheap political stunts designed to get to the right of Republican challenger Kay Bailey Hutchison before the upcoming primaries. Based on his record as state governor, Perry is just a run-of-the-mill, big-government Republican. As President of the Second Republic of Texas (assuming Chuck Norris had been declared ineligible for the office by virtue of having been born in Oklahoma), Perry would only replicate the same failed socialist policies of D.C. in Austin.

As ill-advised as secession under the current circumstances may be, to argue that the mere idea of secession as a political option should be taken off the table entirely, as Representative Dunham implied, strikes me as equally ill-advised. The threat of secession is a check on government overreach, and one that is consistent with the principle of peaceful association, as well as with the somewhat murkier notion of government by consent of the governed. Surely if the government’s legitimacy rests on the consent of the governed, that implies that the governed may withdraw that consent at some point. To suggest otherwise would be to utterly destroy the few existing remnants of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

As usual, the furor over Governor Perry’s comments about secession misses the point entirely. Of course it’s just a political stunt by a Republican governor up for re-election. And no, I don’t want to associate with many of the groups actively pushing for Texas to secede from the US. But to suggest that secession can never be a viable political option is to deny the freedom of association that lies at the heart of representative government. And if, as Mr. Dunham appears to believe, secession is never a legitimate option for any group of people, no matter how unsatisfied they may be with their current political arrangement, then surely both the American Revolution of 1776 and the Texas Revolution of 1836 were illegitimate. For what were these revolts if not acts of secession? What does Mr. Dunham think the American Declaration of Independence was, exactly? It was a secessionist manifesto, as was the Texas Declaration of Independence.

So although now is probably not the best time for Texans to consider actually seceding, one would be mistaken to scoff at the idea or to dismiss it outright. After all, it’s not as if it couldn’t be done. The Second Republic of Texas would be the world’s thirteenth largest economy, with a number of important resources, including a large, well-educated workforce, natural gas, oil, vast stretches of farm and ranch land, major international airports, beaches, plenty of guns, and Lyle Lovett. What else would we really need?