We libertarians often focus on the top-down restrictions on our liberty, like the Patriot Act or the bailout. But I think we often overlook the fact that much of the loss of freedom in this country is not dictated by the federal government against our will. In many cases, individuals at the grassroots level actively clamor for the curtailment of liberty. Far from lamenting the loss of their (and our) freedom, these individuals often go on to demand that government curtail it even further.
Smoking bans are a great example of this. Although most anti-smoking campaigns have financial backing from national groups like the American Cancer Society, they also enjoy a tremendous amount of popular support. The voices of anti-smoking zealots routinely drown out those who argue in favor of property rights, personal responsibility, and freedom at any city hall meeting where the issue is under review. (For an example of this, click here for a Dallas Morning News article on the lead-up to the recent expansion of that city’s ban – pay close attention to the comments section). Ben Franklin once quipped that those who are willing to trade liberty for security deserve neither. What would he say about modern Americans who are willing to trade their liberty just to avoid the slightest whiff of second-hand smoke?
A recent letter to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram provides another illustration of the degree to which Americans have become inured to government power and the inevitable overreach that accompanies it. The letter’s author is a mother who took her kindergarten-age daughters to Disneyworld. She notified the school ahead of time that her children would be absent, and asked for whatever assignments would need to be completed during the family trip. Once they returned from Orlando she received a letter from the school district summoning her to a public scolding, and threatening her with legal action if she didn’t attend. That’s right – threats of jail time for taking her kids out of kindergarten for three days! This, of course, is exactly what is meant when someone uses the rather clinical term “compulsory attendance” in relation to public schools. If your kids are absent more than the state likes, you go to jail. That’s bad enough, but it is far from being the saddest part of this particular episode. The responses to this woman’s letter submitted by readers of the newspaper are overwhelmingly in support of the school district in this case. When the average American believes that it is right and proper to throw parents in jail over something like this, we may well be defeated.
Many people often claim that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by the size and power of government these days. I tend to disagree. The Founders understood perfectly well that the nature of government was to grow. As Thomas Jefferson said, “It is the natural order of things for government to grow and liberty to yield.” They expected government to behave like government, and took steps to prevent its growth through the system of checks and balances. The three branches quickly learned, however, that there was more power and money in it for them if they colluded to expand the scope of each branch, so we quickly moved from a limited government to an omnipotent one. One might say that the system of checks and balances was one of the founding errors of the Republic.
A more fundamental founding error, though, may have been the Founders’ belief that average Americans would value the liberty guaranteed them by the Constitution enough to defend it once it was inevitably threatened by government. Sadly, we have proven utterly unworthy of the great faith they placed in us. Nowadays if we don’t like something, we just turn to the government to criminalize it. We do not consider the larger ethical issues involved with using government as the means to a given end. No thought is given to the detrimental effects on private property rights. The few people who do bring up these abstract and esoteric issues are usually met with blank, uncomprehending stares at best, or ridiculed and marginalized at worst. We simply do not engage issues at that level anymore in this country. It’s something that just isn’t done in polite society.
Maybe freedom is just too hard. Maybe it requires us to be better than we are. Maybe most of us will always recoil from the notion of organizing society along ethical lines. Maybe we actually like the constant conflict that results from trying to force others to live according to our dictates.
Or perhaps the train wreck that is the national economy will cause more people to reconsider the value of the individual liberty that has fallen out of fashion as of late. Perhaps the War on Terror or the War on Drugs will become so oppressive to even the average non-terrorist, non-drug using American that he will reconsider the wisdom of the Founders (their founding errors notwithstanding). If that’s the case, then there may yet be time for a libertarian renaissance. We shall soon see…
