Talk of liberty always spikes when Republicans are out of office. Then, it should have come as no surprise that I heard a presentation on the meaning of liberty by Marlene McMillan, “America’s expert on the principles of liberty,” at a Republican convention in Fort Worth last month. (If anyone is interested in my reasons for attending, I might write about that later.)

By far, my favorite speech of hers was at the Bedford city council meeting last year in which she spoke against the city’s daytime curfew ordinance.

McMillan offers a $377 online seminar on the concept of liberty centered around Biblical teachings, which consists of a handful of streaming videos and pre-recorded phone calls. Last month’s presentation was her second I had attended. The first came last year at an Educators of Liberty event in Fort Worth after the April 15 tax day rallies. Both presentations were about the same. The audience received a card with the trees of liberty and tyranny printed on one side and her definition of liberty on the other.

McMillan’s definition of liberty is “the opportunity to make a choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences.” There are number of things that I like about her definition.

First, by using “opportunity,” she is seemingly implying that liberty does not guarantee success, only the pursuit of success.

Second, choices are a good thing. Choices are maximized in a decentralized decision-making process, so she seems to acknowledge a move away from authoritarian tendencies.

Third, responsibility and consequences are part of the fabric of liberty that makes it so beneficial. Allowing people to experience the reward (or failure) of their labor gives an automatic feedback for future decisions. Liberty and responsibility go hand-in-hand as each requires the other to have any true meaning.

However, as appealing as these concepts are to liberty, they are just a few of the consequences of liberty, but not liberty itself. She is applying a package deal to the concept of liberty, as Ayn Rand would say.

Defining ‘Capacity’

I think what McMillan is defining in the notion of capacity. The operative words in her definition are “the opportunity to make a choice.” For example, Merriam-Webster defines “capacity” as “the facility or power to produce, perform, or deploy.”

Let’s look at it. Under one scenario, say that a flower nursery only sold yellow flowers. That would certainly limit the opportunity for some customers who want red roses. If the flower shop was not open on Thursdays, they are limiting the liberty of customers and employees, according to McMillan’s definition. In fact, almost any act limits someone else’s “opportunity to make a choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences.” If two parties make an exclusive contract, they have limited the opportunity for other to do business with them. In fact, every action I take comes at the exclusion of all other actions within that moment in time. Making any “choice to assume responsibility and accept the consequences” could conceivably be an act of tyranny because that choice could exclude others from making that same decision at that moment in time. So truly, liberty is tyranny, according to McMillan.

In addition, one could characterize charity as anti-liberty by this definition. Charity allows people to escape the full consequences of their actions and not assume responsibility.

Defining ‘Liberty’

So what is a clear, coherent definition of this solemn word? Dating back to John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government, philosophers have called liberty the existence of being removed from the violence of others. Locke said, “For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.”

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) calls freedom “the absence of government coercion.” (Note: McMillan dislikes the connotation of the word “freedom,” but for this discussion I have used the words interchangeably.) Murray Rothbard said liberty is “the absence of coercion” in his book The Ethics of Liberty. F.A. Hayek agreed with Rothbard, but the two disagreed on the meaning of coercion.

French pamphleteer Frederic Bastiat asked, “In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?”

I think it is important to use “coercion” rather than “violence” because there are many substitutues for violence that people can use, such as fraud and theft. I think of coercion as “an act by an individual against the will or without the permission of another human being with respect to that which the human being has rightful control, such as his or her body or property.” This would very clearly include such decietful acts as fraud and theft.

I asked McMillan by e-mail about my interpretation of liberty. She said:

The problem with defining a word by what it does not include, rather than what it does include, is that in the end you still do not know what it is. You only know what it is not. Because we get more of what we talk about as well as more of what we focus upon, a definition that only includes the negative is flawed in premise and therefore is flawed in result.

But “the absence of coercion” is not defining liberty by what it is not. It is stating what condition must not be present for liberty to exist, namely coercion. Saying that “liberty is not coercion” would be defining liberty by what it is not. The definition of black in the color spectrum is the absence of any color. Only color has an existence of its own. A vacuum is the absence of matter. I accept that the same is true of liberty.

I think Bastiat would back me up on this. He said that justice is identified by a lack of injustice. “Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”

McMillan appears pretty successful delivering her message and is a great orator and presenter. Ultimately, however, her message is flawed in such a way as to eschew the violence of the state, a territorially monopolistic and individually non-consensual political organization. It is great that people are talking about liberty — what it means and how they can act upon it in their lives. Yet, in an age when pro-war, pro-torture, pro-empire politicians (like Sarah Palin) call themselves pro-liberty, then it is worth examing what they mean so as to avoid being manipulated by false rhetoric.

I do think those terms have a legitimate use in referencing the means and the scope to which those means are used.

With that said, Darian Worden gave a great presentation (below) on why libertarianism is a left ideology. You can learn more about left-libertarianism at the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and join local ALLies in the Metroplex at the DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left.

More of Worden’s work can be found at the Center for a Stateless Society.

That is OK. Those who believe aggression is wrong are actually at a distinct advantage — several actually — when it comes to spreading our ideas. The first is that we are not trying to impose beliefs or positive obligations on others. We are seeking but a “mere negation,” as Frederic Bastiat said. We only “oblige him only to abstain from harming others.” For anyone but authoritarian sociopaths, that seems simple enough. Other political ideologies require coalition building for a dominant majority to implement and sustain them, while the believers in a voluntary society must only win over a much lower threshold, something of a passive neglect on the part of anyone who does not share our opinions. We only have to convince them to leave peace lovers alone, you see.

Second, we seek to respectfully disagree. If some think that the best way to protect us from terrorists is to build military instillations in foreign countries, I say go for it. I am confident they are just looking out for our best interests. Personally, I disagree and think that trading with others promotes mutual aid. It was Bastiat again who said that “When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.” (What does some French guy know about war anyway?) In this instance, it seems both sides are at a stalemate as to what to do together. There really is no settlement that could be made, so both sides should be free to part ways and spend their time and money how they best see fit. Surely, in a free country, peaceful and civil people can agree to that much.

And if we do live in a free country, then surely anyone who peacefully disagrees should not be attacked or threatened by the government for having a different opinion. What good is freedom, after all, if we can’t peacefully disagree? Freedom of thought would be a petty and shallow consequence if others did not respect that freedom themselves. For that matter, what good would it do to disagree if someone could use force without repercussion to compel peaceful people’s obedience? Free people should not be made, by force, to counteract their conscience by being taxed to pay for or participate in actions and programs they found repugnant. Surely, in a free country, peaceful and civil people can agree to that much.

If someone can’t simply agree to disagree, anyone who insists on imposing a positive obligation on peaceful people is just a bully. In fact, what took place was not a discussion at all. It was more a hostage negotiation — between hostage negotiator and hostage taker. That is important to remember. Hostage negotiations are distinct from discussions. It is no longer an examination of facts and hypothesis, but a relationship based on control. Early in a negotiation, the hostage taker may attempt to take the dominant role of authority figure. The early role of the hostage negotiator is to access the circumstances and uncover background information, finding what brought the subject to those conclusions. Once the assessment is made, it is time to build rapport and perhaps reduce the stress of the situation. The goal is always to convince the hostage taker to let everyone go free. If no progress can be made, however, it is best to halt the negotiation to retain some self pride.

Some Advanced Techniques

One post-negotiation technique I have practiced over the years is building cognitive dissonance. I save it for after the negotiation period because it creates a sense of tension by making observations the listener believes are true yet should not be true by his or her own assumptions. The tension can be applied quickly and has a way of building over time, like a delayed detonation in the mind.

For longer encounters, use Socratic questioning, which requires more finesse from the questioner and intellectual honesty from the listener, to create some cognitive dissonance. Jan Helfeld is especially adept at this. His questioning of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) illustrates an example of how this might be done. In this clip, Helfeld got the senator to admit that those in government use coercion and that individuals in their ordinary capacity had no right to initiate force. The senator said that the government had been delegated that power by the people through the constitution. Helfeld again confirmed with the senator that ordinary individuals do not have the right to initiate force, and then he asked how individuals could delegate to the constitution the power to initiate force if they themselves do not have that right to delegate. Basically, how can they delegate a right they do not have?

Try isolating the moral nature of the relationship being proposed; get to the root of the issue; get to the priority of it all. You know you’ve found it when someone responds by saying “Yes, but.”

At other times, it can be helpful to make a statement and ask listeners what they think of it. The most important lesson I’ve learned about discussion is that I cannot change anyone’s mind. Only they can. The harder I try and the more effort I expend, the less I am likely to succeed. It really is like any other relationship. Coming across as pushy or arrogant leaves healthy people resentful of the time they spent with you. The key to it all is asking questions. (I mean in a real way; I think people recognize someone acting artificially.) If I am genuinely curious about the reason why someone thinks a certain way, more often than not I am reciprocated in kind. If nothing else, it helps me understand the objections others have and how I can improve my own ideas. I also listen to words and phrases that are repeated or given an extra emphasis. The great thing about speech is how much easier it is to recognize the different vocal inflections. Those are all little insights that reveal what is important to someone.

It is nearly impossible get a reversal of opinion, a complete conversion, on the spot. It’s probably some ego thing we have in our mind. So I’m not that ambitious when introducing these ideas for the first time. It’s easy to forget that I didn’t always hold the beliefs I do now; we are all trying to integrate our own understanding of the world. Since we can’t change their minds, we can change the assumptions on which their ideas are based. If you want to light the fires of liberty, be patient for these combustive ideas to soak in.

(Note: In a later post I will write about the three most important points to get across in any political discussion.)

While anarchy may be viewed as a Utopian state, so long as a single individual wishes to undermine the rights of their (sic) neighbor, the response will always be a de facto government. As soon as you have de facto government, you will have those that will advocate that the role of that government extends out into providing services that are viewed to be not efficiently achieved individually.

I think that is a fair point. I like rules, and those rules need some governance to be implemented. If that is called a government or a dispute resolution organization, I don’t mind. It’s like when Frederic Bastiat said just because he does not want the state to raise grain that does not mean he wants to go hungry. I don’t agree it is necessary for a single organization to claim a monopoly by force on the enactment and enforcement of rules that others must follow. That is an imposition of a positive non-consensual obligation on the individual.

The knock that a stateless society is utopian because it is believed neither practical nor achievable is commonplace. Yet, we wouldn’t say that a law against murder is utopian even though no one thinks it could prevent all murders. And if I am at fault for holding grand, immaculate goals for what is possible in this world, that is how I would rather spend my short time on Earth.

Total liberty as a function of society is therefore not achievable and the degree of liberty achievable is reliant on the morality of those that control government’s decisions.

I think the breakdown begins in our meaning of liberty. For me it is simple, the absence of coercion. Hayek and Rothbard differed on the meaning of coercion, but that is a much simpler disagreement than trying to divine the meaning of 200-year-old colloquial phrases in the constitution. When I speak of complete liberty, I don’t mean that everyone in society lives in peace. That is probably unattainable given human history. However, it is the norm that most individuals live a condition of complete liberty with one another every day. I only seek to abolish those institutionalized usurpers of our liberty — when people are ready for it.

Another interesting point raised is who controls the government. I contend that the actual reason for establishing a state is for a tiny minority to impose its will on the majority. I’ll explain my thinking below because it ties into how a stateless society might resolve conflicts between different legal standards, an important point of concern.

“… it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

To advance a state of anarchy is to advance that man has another alternative for the protection of life, liberty and property. Time and time again, man has come to the conclusion that only laws will protect and therefore has rightfully rejected anarchy.

No genuine consent can be given, as Lysander Spooner argued and I cited before, just as a payment of taxes and voting is done under duress.

I do think there is another process, the marketplace, which serves as the bridge among differing people. I understand the appeal to moderation, that some government is necessary to protect our liberties. However, just because something has existed for a long time does not mean it is valid. And even if it were valid, there would be no reason for it to be implemented by force unless those who did not agree were using force. Slavery was considered a natural part of the human condition, too, for thousands of years. We wouldn’t say the slaves approved of slavery just because there had always been slaves. I mean, what’s with all the whips and chains? The fact that the majority of people believe something is irrelevant as well. After all, it is no coincidence they support government since most everyone went to the same 12-year indoctrination camps to stunt their imagination and curiosity in favor a deference to authority.

Better yet, I don’t understand how it is accurate to say that the majority of people believe laws are necessary to protect them. There are laws to prohibit stealing, to take property by force or the threat thereof. But some are given an exemption to steal and call it taxation. Max Stirner said, “The State’s behavior is violence, and it calls its violence ‘law’; that of the individual, ‘crime.’ ” If laws are our means of protection, then why are those with grossest history of abuses not governed by them? The state conclude that stealing is both morally necessary and emphatically evil. The state is hypocrisy, for it allows a tiny minority to steal but punishes the masses for the same behavior.

If that is the way people choose to live, saying morality is relative and not universal, who am I to say they shouldn’t? But the state is about imposing one set of values over others. If the argument is that might makes right, then I don’t understand how a state is necessary either. The costs of maintaining the state and checking its growth is terribly expensive and a waste of resources to impose it by force if most everyone supports it. The state is actually composed of a number of special interests minorities seeking to impose their own values on others. They could never exercise control without it. Bastiat said as much: “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” The foolhardy thing is that everyone thinks they are getting the best of everyone else.

Libertarians are also a tiny minority, so why haven’t they gotten their way? First, for libertarians to gain control that would mean that everyone else would have to relinquish theirs. Liberals would have to give up their economic planning schemes and social welfare experiments. Conservatives would have to stop imposing their own cultural preferences on everyone. So there is a lot of resistance to libertarianism. Second, most importantly, strict libertarians have no power to lend to others. Electoral politics works like a buddy system, where enough people support each other’s projects to get them all passed. Strict (principled) libertarians aren’t willing to do this, so they never get traction. That is why electoral libertarianism, even with all the evident failures of government, has made no material progress as the state marches on. Libertarianism proper has made measured progress, meanwhile, in the areas of education and circumventing the controls of government.

A Possible Solution for Conflicting Legal Norms in a Stateless Society

It is important to recall that under today’s conditions, the state subsidizes aggression with taxes on consensual behavior like earning an income or trading goods. For example, wars are very costly and they are financed with money from income taxes or through Federal Reserve debt. If only the neo-cons who supported the Iraq war had to pay for it, they might have a little more humble and judicious foreign policy. However, they get to shift the costs on everyone else, including future taxpayers. That is why you see a steady escalation in the size of government. Only a few thousand might benefit from a post office in rural Kansas, but legislators work in concert to support each other’s projects and everyone pays for them. Then, they are left to create subsidiary laws to finance their plunder and restrict competitors.

The way I imagine a stateless society functioning is that people would join dispute resolution organizations (DROs) for their protection and see to it that their contracts are honored. You might even have after-the-fact DROs that provide assistance only once coercion has occurred. One concern is that people might contract with DROs that are really aggressive. They hunt down people with little or no evidence of guilt, go after political enemies, and cause general mayhem in the community. Basically, they would act like every other government.

The important point to remember is that DRO policies are just some means to an end. Each policy provides a cost and benefit of implementing. If you’ve got a bunch of extraneous policies that you want to impose, then someone has to be paid to enforce them. In a stateless society, people who want to practice aggression will face the full expense of that decision. An additional burden of enforcing excessive or aggressive policies is going to the lack of reciprocal relationships with other DROs willing to enforce them. The reason e-mail is a valuable services is because service providers have adopted the same protocol standards necessary to transmit messages across servers. So the more people who use it, the more value the service provides — like how credit cards can dispense cash around the world in local currencies. This could be true for dispute resolution. If a DRO is so burdensome that other DROs are unwilling to deal with it, then its customers are limited to confidently trading with the number of people in the same DRO. This will not immediately dissuade all DROs from implementing highly onerous regulations, but the price mechanism will limit their reach. A framework to this could be reputation rating services and insurance providers. There really is no telling with the dynamism of the market system. How this might come about is up for debate. Might it come about by supplanting the government policing apparatus, as agorism prescribes? Or might it come about through the gradual dissolution of government as its credibility is shattered? A lot of it is speculation, which is necessary to evolve beyond institutionalized coercion.

It makes sense to assume that most people don’t favor using open violence against others, so they would not support DROs that did either. If I am assuming wrong, then a government won’t help because those same people who favor aggression will most likely control it. In fact, it would be worse because the victims would in some way be forced to fund their own oppression. It’s an easy trap to be caught in. If we can’t think of a way to resolve conflicts consensually, then we need immaculate violence to obliterate conflicts. The truth is we don’t need it, no more than slaves needed their masters.

The impression that only government can solve large public challenges, called “public goods” in economics lingo, is one of the reasons people will continue to believe an intrusive government is necessary, until libertarians break down people’s reflexive attitude of yielding to authority, that is. The assumption behind this support is that only government can provide these so-called public goods, which some people believe could not otherwise be provided, and thus society would be worse off if government didn’t forcefully compel financial support.

The problem is that people in government don’t really come up with workable, affordable solutions to things like transportation and security. How could they? To quote Frederic Bastiat, “Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” They have no incentive to solve any problems. Empirically, they have quite the opposite personal incentives, in fact. The government can’t provide lasting solutions because it has no solutions, only force. Force cannot inspire or innovate; it stagnates. When the government steps in to solve a problem, when it applies force, any progress halts and new problems arise. In the late 1800s, the advent of mass government education, teachers wrote with chalk on blackboards in front of classrooms of students who sat in neat little lines. Sound familiar today, one hundred years later? Force is a distraction from real solutions. If the government can’t provide answers to these legitimate questions, then the true purpose in forwarding statism is simply to obscure the question.

By trying to solve the question of public goods with government, greater public goods are created, including the public goods of a well-informed electorate and just laws. Taking the time to become informed on the issues, studying the economic and social impact for each of the differing policies, and investigating candidates’ records, just to know which candidates to support can be very consuming. Yet an individual’s vote makes an insignificant difference in the outcome of the overwhelming majority of races. Cost-benefit wise, it just doesn’t make sense to put that much effort into it. Many times, votes are cast based on some superficial trait or because the candidate confirms a voter’s bias. Even then, voters are inclined to support only someone with a good chance of winning. The second public good of government is the creation of just laws. For argument’s sake, let’s imagine that trustworthy candidates who have the best interest of all their constituents at heart, not just their supporters, are elected. Those lawmakers are beholden to the narrow interest of their distinct constituents. Lobbyists have a much greater incentive to push for special interests that are at the expense of everyone else or future taxpayers. Together, these public goods create a third public good of limiting the power and abuses of government. Of course it would be in everyone’s best interest for government to be restrained to certain powers, but meanwhile private interests are at work to see that government is not limited for long. It becomes socially acceptable to use coercion of government, which subsidizes the use of violence (via legislation and regulation) against competitors.

Maybe business could be convinced that special interests legislation is actually bad for them in the long run. You never know. Maybe voters could be made aware of the benefits of lower taxes and free trade. But the people who have no interest in seeing the government shrink are the government bureaucrats, their families and friends. Including benefits, the average federal worker makes more than twice the compensation as a private-sector employee. They have a big stake in expanding government, all 2.7 million of them.

Some Alternatives

I also think there is a case that so-called public goods would be significantly less important in an stateless society, where I believe workers would have much greater influence over their working conditions and wages than in limited-liability corporations. Different enterprises would have different aims, not only the maximization of its monetary wealth. It would also be true that in a stateless society individuals would become much more wealthy than they are today and would be more inclined to support environmental preservation. Private property rights would also become better defined because government regulation has often been used by well-connected special interests to lobby for protection from liability where common law tort cases were used to recoup damages. In other cases, governments have simply granted license to polluters.

Most everybody likes to hang their hats on national security. To be considered a credible candidate, even “Internet Constitution Jesus” Ron Paul had to say he supported a strong defense. The fact is that the only security people in government provide is for themselves. They’ve got all the big guns, mind you. There was a case just a few weeks ago of a Northwest Airlines crew that lost contact with ground control for over an hour. No military jets were scrabbled to intercept the plane. We’re talking post-9/11. Nothing. They were luck they were not headed toward Washington, D.C., or New York—else they might have been shot out of the air. To some degree, I understand why people in government would react that way. To conquer a nation, you have to control its capitol. That is the seat of the government, where the main bureaucrats operate, and you can bet the tax records are going to be pretty nearby. Because when nations are at war, they are fighting over who controls the tax livestock in the country. That is one of the advantages of a stateless society; there is no central headquarter on which to lay siege, no infrastructure in place to seize property and taxes.

Besides, if we are to believe that we could cultivate this total activist population, which valued liberty vigorously and made personal sacrifices to secure that liberty for its posterity against an entrenched government, then why would they roll over when an organization a fraction of the size of government with no perceived legitimacy tried to usurp those liberties? It seems to me that if there were such an organization that tried to aggress against others, it takes a lot less effort to prevent. You literally wouldn’t have to lift a finger. You just stop doing business with them.

A Faded Hope

What limited-government activists offer is an uninspiring vision for society, a limited slavery, one in which the best they can hope for is a constant struggle to halt the expansion of the state. It should be self-evident why the “eternal vigilance” struggle is a losing battle. A radical limited-government mindset is neither consistent philosophically nor convenient politically. It does not distinguish itself in principle, as it sanctions the use of violence to solve social problems, and is outside the mainstream of political reality. What are its chances of sustaining a groundswell of support if it is fundamentally no different than other political beliefs yet it hampers the political viability of its supporters? I don’t believe the chances are positive.

Bless those in the battle for limited government. I’ll be cheering for them, no doubt. I’ll be with them 90 out of 100 times. But if I got bribed well enough, I might even starting pitching socialized healthcare when in office. Until then, I don’t feel like idolizing a theoretical government that never existed in practice.

The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.

Challenging the premise that one who opposes torture should not practice it, Tarrant County political activist and adviser Chris Howe responded.

How does this quote square with this advice?

That while the probability of a tender-hearted person getting the job of whipping master is low, that should the job be offered, the tender-hearted person should reject the job of whipping master? Instead they should gather around with other tender-hearted people and from a distance complain among themselves: “Oh that new whipping master, he shouldn’t be beating and shackling those men with inalienable rights. It would be far more economical to offer to pay those men a wage and let them come and go from the plantation as they saw fit. The plantation owner would then realize that they wouldn’t need a whipping master to ensure the work got done. Think of the savings”?

I completely understand the limitations on personal resources argument. There is only so much leisure time and only so much of that time to expend toward liberty causes. I know this well as I’ve stretched myself thin. But to leave the bounty of a field that you have sown to rot in the sun strains reason.

If there are other fertile fields available that your skills are better suited, certainly pursue those instead. Just make sure there is someone qualified to offer your arguments on that board. [Note: I made a few punctuation edits to each of Chris' original e-mail to conform to the style on this site. The board referenced in his last sentence is a committee a resident had the opportunity to serve on in a local city.]

I can certainly see Chris’ point about the desire to minimize the immediate harm inflicted. It should also not surprise us, especially Bastiat readers, especially when the means conflict with the ends, that short-term benefits may have unintended consequences. TANSTAFL! [Interestingly, the hypothetical has present-day implications as many libertarians view the current social construction as a form of enhanced slavery.]

I responded.

I think the quote is addressing the corrupting nature of power as much as anything. That is, for a person to become a master whipper, he or she must have taken several steps to be awarded that position, like practicing as an apprentice and proving him- or herself as an effective torturer. So that, even if that young apprentice was at one point a kind and gentle person, all that has been sapped from him or her by leading this contradictory life that on one hand sanctions violence and on the other feels mercy. In the pursuit of greater power, the master whipper most likely would have rationalized in favor of the slave master’s opinion that slavery is proper, and or necessary, to rule others by force.

In a sense, I agree that it would be silly and dumbfounding to just complain amongst ourselves about the violent nature of government. I believe that the most powerful forces in the world are ideas, but they must be expressed to have any effect. Yet those who find value in controlling others are more concerned about votes, money, and staying in power to care about such esoteric concepts.

What I would suggest is that rather than playing damage control, we should go on the offensive, presenting and practicing consistently the ideas of complete liberty, reason, and objective morality (and probably join the Free State Project) to demonstrate to others the practical benefits of our ideas by working together to thwart the arbitrary controls others seek over us.

From The Market for Liberty:

We can bring about a laissez-faire society, but only through the tremendous, invisible power of ideas. Ideas are the motive power of human progress, the force which shapes the world. Ideas are more powerful than armies, because it was ideas which caused the armies to be raised in the first place, and it is ideas which keep them fighting (if this weren’t true, political leaders wouldn’t have to bother with their tremendous propaganda machinery). When an idea gains popular support, all the guns in the world cannot kill it.

In addition, I feel reluctant to compel political independence upon others. If it reassures some to be ordered about and commanded on high, then that is their wish. A great source of antagonism people have with libertarians is they feel they are being “forced” into this mysterious new world without a safety net. Fortunately for them, I am certain that there will be no shortage of people willing to tell others what to do. That I am certain of. And the safety net of the state will not be necessary as we will live in greater peace and abundance.

Chris then responded.

You’re conflating.  The quote is referencing a whipping master, not a master whipper.  It’s a position, not a skill set.  He even mentions “get the job.” He’s referencing that it is an anomaly for an individual who does not like power to seek a position of power.

While the economics of that is true, it’s not the result of a moral people who are capable of governing themselves.

I feel it is a semantic difference. In any case, I think that these various forms of institutionalized oppression are the products of people’s misunderstanding of the necessary conditions for human flourishment. We can probably agree that statism is the most apparent form of oppression, but it is by no means the only one. Even if solid libertarians were to somehow capture control of the government apparatus and sabotage its controls, people would just transition their ideals of how society should function to another vehicle. Meanwhile, our efforts are diverted and principles abandoned (by making political payoffs) to maintain that hold on government. The state is only the current means. It is only the most convenient vehicle for delivering oppression because others grant its legitimacy on some fragile hinges called national security or free riders. Statism is the pretext, an excuse for controlling others.  So long as the notion prevails that one person’s benefit is another person’s loss that pretext will exist. I’m afraid that by confining this individualism philosophy to one aspect of human interaction, in politics, we have diminish the explosive impact of what a society or the bounds of human nature could achieve.

An approach I’ve been trying to develop in my own mind is something of an inside-out approach that focuses on personal development and self-improvement for ourselves and those around us. I think we can realize the benefits of these concepts (emotionally and materially) in a real concrete way. I also think this is more consistent with the principles of individualism because it focuses on changing individuals’ opinions primarily and institutions secondarily, if at all. A certain type of individual will flock to the message of liberty because our message is clear, consistent, and conforms to their own experiences and understandings. If you ask me how this will play out, I can’t say. I agree with Nathaniel Branden that now is the time to showcase the dignity of our volitional nature and exemplify the heroic nature of our accomplishments. I don’t think either is possible with a whip in your hand.

This discussion has been a benefit for myself, because I have been thinking of how to reconcile practicality and principles. Ayn Rand spoke to this better than I could. Those insights continue to bloom in my own mind. I guess I should stress that I don’t think participating in government, through electoral politics for example, is unprincipled. I’ll save what I think those standards to engage the government should be for another post. Also, I want to thank Chris, whom I consider as righteous and politically aware as anyone I know, for letting me share his comments on the site.

She said, “Forcing me to get a license on my property is like using the aggression of the law to take what is rightfully mine.” Quoting from Bastiat’sThe Law , she said, “When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.”

Mayor Bill Lanford then responded to Katy. In one exchange he said, “I want to rebut the idea that your property is yours and we have to leave it all alone. That’s not true; that’s not true. It never has been true.” The mayor also admitted they were committing an act of violence by using force against residents, saying “We forcibly take your tax money; we make you pay taxes.” Calling liberty a “half-truth,” he said aggressive force is necessary to create a sense fear, or what he deemed “responsibility.”

Katy responded, “I do fundamentally disagree because before there were laws, we had rights. Our rights are derived from property; our rights are derived from God. When we keep putting registration on people, when we keep asking people to pay taxes on things they have worked so hard to own, then we are violating people’s rights.”

During a break in the meeting, I interviewed assistant city manager Chuck Barnett. I asked what should happen to someone who refuses to obey or pay the fine. He said it was acceptable to imprison someone who does “challenge the system.”

We’ll try to better organize opposition to the proposal next time. The council did not set a hard date for reintroduction, so we don’t know when it will be heard again. The most frustrating thing for me was to hear little principled opposition, like debating with a pirate how deep the sword should go. That’s election politics. I can only hope that the council members ask themselves what is it about their psychology that they are willing to use force against peaceful people.

I forgive them, of course, for their transgressions, but it is still wrong.

He believes that by paralyzing the coal and oil industries in regulation and taxes, the federal government can transfer those funds to his preferred, Earth-friendly energy producers, creating jobs for the industrial base. (Here, I’m referring to Obama’s pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry.) With this limited economic impact in mind, a large, aggressive organization is necessary to carry out this agenda. If a city or even state government tried imposing Jones’ vision, imagine the rate of exodus for energy-sensitive companies, including the very industrial companies needed to build highly machined “green” devices. I don’t suspect that people are willingly going to pay double to cool their homes or drive to work when they can just as easily migrate from those tax-heavy municipalities. First, one would need to centralize a great deal of power into the hands of the executive branch. An intrusive revenue collection agency would be necessary to bully people into compliance. Finally, the organization must be able to dislpay an overwhelming threat of force to minimize any dissent.

What I am saying is that the Republicans had six years to do away with all the requirements necessary to carry out this agenda. They did worse than nothing to dismantle these institutions; they expanded them. They made them more entrenched, more invasive.

Van Jones was just a bit player. Now he’s a martyre. He’s going to get some thinktank gig that pays double his old sallary. He’s going to be replaced with someone who has the same agenda, minus the YouTube baggage.

Let me state for the record that I, too, want to live in a clean, safe neighborhood, a neighborhood that is welcoming to all people, and a neighborhood that is safe from violent individuals. After all, that’s why you and I are all here tonight. Although my primary objection is to the means used to collect this money, I do believe that the rates are already too high as well. However, seeing that the discussion tonight is about the tax rates, I will limit my remarks to just that.

If we kept the government to its proper functions, then the city government could be run on a fraction of its current budget.

As the French philosopher and pamphleteer explained, the role of government is the protection of life, liberty and property. And when the government violates those bounds, then individuals must bear the unintended consequences that inevitably follow from that decision. It’s what he called the seen and the unseen. The unseen consequences may be less obvious but none the less relevant. He offered a tremendous insight into why this must be so. For the sake of time, I won’t go into those now.

Take the case before us. I grant you that increasing taxes will generate more revenue, which will provide for more city services. Now, let’s investigate for just one minute what could be the unseen consequences of increasing taxes.

Individuals would have spent that money how they saw fit to improve the lives of their children and their families. We have all dealt firsthand with the increasing burden of consumer prices for gasoline and groceries as the Federal Reserve continues to devalue the dollar with its inflationary policies. Families could have used that money to buy school supplies, to save for the future, or to invest in their business or themselves. Someone may decide to start a new business because the city is seen as more tax friendly, and then new jobs are created. By allowing everyone in the city to improve their lives ever so much, hasn’t the general welfare of the people also improved? They may not have used the money how I saw fit, but the point is that I can never use that money to best improve their lives as they could themselves. Allowing free people to live freely, that is how we have come to enjoy the greatest abundance that the world has ever known. It’s what makes this discussion over how much wealth to take even possible.

I would even go so far to challenge the idea that the quantity of government services is a measure of community’s values. I believe that a government should not be measured by the services it provides, but by the rights it protects.

With freedom comes the responsibility for how we use that freedom. Once we have the courage to accept that, we automatically become part of the solution by honoring our peaceful neighbor’s choices and no longer trying to control them. When you think about it, that really is the good neighbor policy. Thank you.

Two other residents gave testimony opposing a tax increase after me, but they were also commenting on their desire to increase the quality and quantity of various city projects. One individual told me that he appreciated my comments, and we had a quick discussion about Debra Medina’s proposal to end property taxes and the Texas Liberty Campaign. The next meeting is Monday, Aug. 31, when the vote will likely occur.

The Idea of a Passive Mankind

This fallacious idea of the state as the primary motivator of progress was repeated during his day, Bastiat said. In one Frenchman’s account, “Whatever the issue may be, persons do not decide it for themselves; the prince decides for them. The prince is depicted as the soul of this shapeless mass of people who form the nation. In the prince resides the thought, the foresight, all progress, and the principle of all organization. Thus all responsibility rests with him.”

If this isn’t the common belief today, it surely is close. And that’s the problem. If an individual or organization is responsible for a task, it’s reasonable that the same entity would seek to secure those powers necessary to carry out that task. The problem lies in recognizing an entity’s legitimacy in exercising aggression to accomplish a task, because it then becomes injurious or detrimental for a bystander to not only question the means of fulfilling a task, but the mission itself. That act of questioning the actions and consequences becomes threatening to the entity’s continued legitimacy. The bureaucracy and constituency directly benefiting from those acts are then heeded to mobilize in support. So the state advances, and liberty yields, as Thomas Jefferson noted.

Socialists Ignore Reason and Facts

The same French author that Bastiat quoted from above assigns the credit of Egyptians civility, not to the reason and virtue of the citizens themselves, but to their benevolent leader. “Happy,” said Fenelon, “is the people ruled by a wise king in such a manner.”

Socialists Want to Regiment People

“We are taught to treat persons much as an instructor in agriculture teaches farmers to prepare and tend the soil,” Bastiat said. Well said.

A Famous Name and an Evil Idea

Bastiat quoted theorist Charles Montesquieu as an example of how socialists desire to command and to control:

To maintain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary that all the laws must favor it. These laws, by proportionately dividing up the fortunes as they are made in commerce, should provide every poor citizen with sufficiently easy circumstances to enable him to work like the others. These same laws should put every rich citizen in such lowered circumstances as to force him to work in order to keep or to gain.

Bastiat then lists Montesquieu’s script to achieve such a society. The first step is to “Establish common ownership of property as in the republic of Plato.”

This is de facto the case today. If property is not already owned by a government authority, then the manner in which that property may be used certainly is subject to thousands of contradictory laws, regulations, and judicial decisions. In the vast majority of cities, a certain portion of a property’s wealth is confiscated on an annual basis.

The second step is to “revere the gods as Plato commanded.” Plato viewed gods as beings with perfect knowledge of justice and goodness, A.K.A the state, which holds the premier sovereign territorial authority. We may not have Zeus any longer. Our gods — democracy, obedience, duty, equality, and in sum, the collective — are in sense more tangible but equally fabricated.
The fourth aspect of forced egalitarianism is to “prevent foreigners from mingling with the people, in order to preserve the customs.” Luckily, the interconnectedness of the Web makes this an impossible task. Nevertheless, immigration laws serve to wedge “illegals” from respectable culture.

Next, “let the state, instead of the citizens, establish commerce.” This is surely true. Legislators govern with whom an individual can trade, by what terms, and even when trade is permissible. The government then commands that it’s own debased currency be accepted as payment. If the federal government can claim authority over a chicken farmer raising grain with water from his own well to feed chickens for his own consumption, the transformation is already complete.

Finally, “legislators should supply arts instead of luxuries; they should satisfy needs instead of desires.” Montesquieu’s meaning of luxuries is anything above the level of subsistence living. His failure is a failure to integrate and differentiate the concepts of individualism and collectivism when encountering the nature of human beings and their needs. Instead of viewing human beings as individuals who are social creatures, the prevalent opinion views society as apart and greater than the actions of individuals.

A Frightful Idea

Bastiat concludes this critique of Montesquieu by damning these popular ideas. “These random selections from the writings of Montesquieu show that he considers persons, liberties, property — mankind itself — to be nothing but materials for legislators to exercise their wisdom upon.”

The next part of the series will continue with “The Leader of the Democrats,” a further critique of Montesquieu view on the supreme authority of government.

Are compulsory participation and taxation inherent components of a republic?

They are not. A republic, by definition, does not have to include forceful compulsion or taxation. I should have made that point clearer when I said, ” … why I believe any state-imposed government is antithetical of liberty and, therefore, illegitimate.” The emphasis is on “state-imposed.” As I said in the essay, I support the idea of competing government-like organizations to provide services within the same territory. It’s just that statist governments throughout history, including the American one as originally conceived, have been compulsory because they used initiated force to form a territorial monopoly.

Competing forms of government most typically results in war, such as the case of the Union and the Confederacy in the United States. Would that be the case when these government-like organizations are competing withing the same geographic space?

I draw the exact opposite conclusion from that war. The Union and Confederacy were the very statist governments that I oppose. They were literally at war because they disputed which side would control this territorial monopoly. Domino’s and Pizza Hut compete peacefully in the same territory, as do millions of other organizations, because neither attempts to use force to establish a territorial monopoly. So everyday, millions of organizations compete on a daily basis, and yet you will never find Domino’s invading a Pizza Hut. It’s when that organization uses force to form a territorial monopoly that arms are used.

What keeps Domino’s and Pizza Hut in peaceful competition?

Look to the American empire. The financial costs of aggression are tremendous, while the costs of defending property (look to the Iraqi insurgency) is far less. These firms are profit driven, so it is not justified, financially or otherwise, to aggress against others in a society of free association.

Capitalistic (or free-market) competition is not a win-loss scenario. It benefits everyone. The profitable shareholders and the customers clearly benefit. Shareholders of a bankrupt or unprofitable company also benefit because they can put their resources to more profitable uses sooner and be better off than they otherwise would have been instead of further cannibalize their assets.

Some companies do rely on the state’s coercion for a competitive advantage, but that coercion is paid by a belief in the state’s legitimacy by the American taxpayer.

What will keep these voluntary governments limited to protecting individual liberties? If they move beyond those bounds, what will keep them from taking further initiations of force?

There are three reasons I believe an aggressive agency would fail: it is too costly, it would have a terrible employee base, and it would not have the means of funding its violent operation.

Imagine for a moment that one of these defense organizations turned to aggression and started attacking innocent people, even by accident. The agency has now become a target of retaliation. Businesses and individuals would recognize that any association with murders is harmful of their own character, because of the stigma of that association, and of their own person, because any disagreement with the aggressing agency could result in their own injury.

Influential business interests like insurance companies that rely on protecting and preserving assets would also shun the acts of the agency because aggression and the inevitable retaliation are an inherently wealth-destructive processes. Without this financial backing to protect its valuables, the aggessing agency has borne an even costlier burden. Even if an insurance company continued its coverage, it would have to raise its premiums drastically to cover the added liability. If insurer tried to pass down these costs to peaceful individuals, those customers would hire cheaper firms, putting the original insurance company in jeopardy. A whole host of services like contract insurance and other business dealings of a modern economy could be lost by the aggressing agency.

From the point of view of the employees, aggression is also a heavy burden. If, or should I say when, government employees commits aggression today, they are shielded from justice by the state by the concept of sovereign immunity. In a society of free association, lines like, “I’m just doing my job,” no longer hold any validity. Private employees have no such immunity and are held accountable for their actions. Knowing this, any honest employee of the aggressing agency would resign or refuse such orders, and the agency’s ability to carry out any violence would also be substantially crippled.

Does that mean only dishonest people would work for such defense agencies? If so, and only dishonest people would employ such services on their behalf, then honest individuals would have no interest in dealing with them. These dishonest individuals would have to rely solely on force to survive, raising the costs of providing their defense dramatically. Such people today make their profit off the black market, but in a free society there is no black market to inflate their profits and subsidize their aggression.

Thus, such dishonest individuals come to power, to the extend that that they do, because of the infringements that the state creates in the first place.

This sounds good in theory, but isn’t it too complicated for the real world?

A noose is also a lot less complicated than court proceedings and the rule of law. The horse and buggy is much less complicated, less deadly, and more environmentally friendly, I understand, than automobiles. But the benefits vastly outweigh their costs. It’s an obvious point, but it deserves to be stated: everything has a cost.

One of these defensive firms could rise to power and form a monopoly of its own to exclude competition and plunder its customers. How can competitive defense agencies prevent that from taking place?

That is a legitimate concern, and the state is the largest monopoly of them all. In a society of free association, there will still be those who prefer aggression to association. The forces of economics and self-interest are much better equipped to prevent such monopolies from granting an organization such a monopoly from the outset and hoping it doesn’t exercise its might.

What is the natural law response to some proposed slight aggression for the public good?

I, for one, see aggression as aggression, whether it is wielded by tyrants with machine guns or by polished politicians who hire gunmen, the police, to instill their will on others. Each requires a unique response, but the lesson is still the same.

Natural law simply tries to establish and maintain an order in which individuals may realize their full potential as rational, sensitive beings. Force is used to negate another’s own judgment and, therefore, limit an individual’s primary means of survival, the mind. Force is thought control.

The initiation of force, even for the most noble purpose, is universally immoral, while self-defense is moral because it attempts to restore the primacy of the mind.

Aggression (force, for the sake of brevity) creates nothing; it leaches off the products of reason for its own destructive ends; and it only does so to the extent that individuals allow it. There can be no compromise with with aggression, no mitigating it. Ayn Rand
said, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

I believe the primary method of human advancement is reason, not aggression. Humans used reason to build skyscrapers, to fly 400,000-lbs. metal tubes in the sky, to visit the moon, and to split the atom. It is force that is used those to destroy those gains. It will be when reason is fully released, when the mind is freed of this crippling aggression, that human beings will be able to achieve their full potential. That is when free association and free exchange will be fully achieved.

Rand also said, “Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.” I take heart in that.

Why is natural law anymore moral than a republican form of government?

Natural law helps individuals achieve their greatest potential because it seeks to be in harmony with their requirements for a full life. A republic, if it holds a territorial monopoly by force, is immoral because it necessarily limits an individual’s life since it initiates force, or the threat thereof, to maintain that monopoly.

Lord Acton said, “The philosophy of natural law defends the rational dignity of the human individual and his right and duty to criticize by word and deed any existent institution or social structure in terms of those universal moral principles which can be apprehended by the individual intellect alone.”

Wouldn’t voluntary arbitration be overly burdensome and require an unlikely near agreement on the role and authority of government in an individual’s life?

That standard is an agreement not to aggress against each other. That authority is their self-interest. Frederic Bastiat said, “All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern.”

An Illegitimate Republic: The Moral Case Against a Republic

I have questioned if a republic is the best political form to protect individual rights. Some have stated they are confused by what I mean, so I have asked to speak before the body to clear up the matter. I want to take this opportunity, on the record, to explain why I believe any state-imposed government is antithetical of liberty and, therefore, illegitimate. Now when I said “the state,” I mean any political entity that claims the monopoly on the initiation of force within a geographic area. Or as Frederic Bastiat put it, “The state is the great fictitious entity in which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”

Morally, I oppose any initiation of force or coercion. As Ron Paul said, “The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence.” That is not such a radical claim, is it, that we should restrain from initiating force against out neighbors and that force should only be used in self-defense against such hostility? Yet, it is self-evident that the state constantly initiates force to impose its will. It is institutionalized violence.

But wait, a republic is different, you say. In its proper form, supposedly, it defends individuals against this abuse. But I disagree. Its most fundamental method of initiating force, the one on which its other powers rest, is the claim to have governing authority over all people within a geographic area regardless of a peaceful individual’s objection to do so. Even competing governmental services (such as for defense, law enforcement, judicial arbitration, and law making) must submit to and comply with these higher authorities or face violent retribution.

Rightly, most people would oppose an individual using force to be the monopoly supplier of a product or service. Yet, too often, most people accept the state’s aggression against every entity that threatens its monopoly. The most common method of initiating this force is taxation, allegedly the price you pay to live in civil society. How can a group of people that enforces its will at the end of gun be called civilized? How can a mob be called civilized?

The abolitionist Lysander Spooner summed it up: The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man:

“Your money, or your life.” And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. … Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so.

As Bastiat pointed out: If every person has the right to defend even by force—his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. … Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Since no individual may justly use force to seize the justly acquired property of others, then no group—for the same reason—may justly use force to seize the justly acquired property of others. The state violates it’s own laws, and therefore, is neither a legitimate lawmaker nor law enforcer. Just and proper laws would be those that impose a “a mere negation. They oblige [an individual] only to abstain from harming others.” As Bastiat said time and again, “Law is force.” He added: But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed—then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

Then I must be some kind of radical for questioning this. Quoting Bastiat again, “If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is boldly said that ‘You are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a subversive; you would shatter the foundation upon which society rests.’ ” He then continued, “Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law.”

Well, I confess. I am a radical. As Barry Goldwater claimed, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. … Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

So, if I don’t like the state, why not just leave? After all, am I not granting consent by staying put? Well, no. It is no more consensual than preferring to live in a neighborhood prone to burglary because I don’t want to live in a neighborhood prone to murder. The burglar is still immoral and a criminal. As Bastiat reminded us, “It was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” The question pre-supposes that the state and the burglar have some higher claim to my property than I do, but the state and the burglar have only come to power because of their past successful conquest and plunder.

I could more rightly ask, and I do, why doesn’t the state just leave? The state doesn’t own my property. The state doesn’t own my labor. The state doesn’t own my mind. I do. Then if I oppose the state, what am I in favor of and how do we achieve it? My ideal world is one in which human interaction is voluntary. That means individuals should be free to do as they consent so long as they do not violate the rights of another. That includes what competing governments, if any, they choose to be subject to and financially support, what they produce, what they consume, and how they live your life. Bastiat said, “If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail among the people … whatever its political form may be” [emphasis mine].

Again from Bastiat, “It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” Just because I do not want a state-imposed government, that does not mean I am blind to the value of voluntarily organizing a common defense and consolidating the rule of natural law, such has been the case for common-law judiciaries and the admiralty law at sea. Just because I don’t want the state to provide my education, that does not mean I want to be ignorant.
< br />Luckily, these ideas are not that foreign to us, not yet. Most governmental entities are voluntary, such as in business, non-profit organizations, and activists organizations such as this one. The people who are governed by them have consented voluntarily, and both parties have an opportunity to peacefully dissolve their relationship. And I support using the political process to work within the system, as one of many strategies. Until the time comes when the state’s coercive powers can be peacefully abolished, one of those temporary stepping stones could be a republican form of government, which I consider to be the least worst forms of statism, that is, the belief that sovereignty rests with the state.

But that is not the finish line. Liberty is the ultimate political means and the ultimate political ends. A limited constitutional republic, fundamentally, suffers from the inherent contradictions of violating individual rights in an effort to protect them. As Maximilian Robespierre, the French republican responsible for the “Reign of Terror” in revolutionary France said openly, “The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means required to establish virtue is terror.” Deep down, we all understand this. If the state provided exactly what each individual wanted from it, as the market does best, there would be no need for its coercion.

Those governmental services would be available in the market because it is dynamic and responsive, while the state is slow and inefficient. It is because the state uses coercion to transfer wealth from one individual to another that slave masters were so receptive to forming its first primitive models. Inevitably, that contradiction of attempting to uphold liberty by initiating force will be exploited, just as every republic in all of history has been. Lest we forget, power corrupts, Lord Acton said.

Thus, a true republican government can only exist for a brief moment in time until its coercive powers are used to expand its reach. I believe an alternative approach that does not employ coercion provides for the greatest possibility of justice and liberty. Bastiat said, “Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.” So I ask of you, is it not utopian to believe in a hypothetical republican form that has never truly existed, that will not exists because it cannot exist, that is contradictory to its purpose, and that would require a shift in the fundamental nature of human beings? Is that not madness?

Or is it more reasonable to believe that some individuals are good, some aren’t, and we should not entrust our lives and liberty to a structure that has violated them at every moment since its inception? Even still, some wonder if order and society would break down without this sweeping threat of force to keep others submissive. From that rationale, a world government is needed because every nation-state also exists in a state of anarchy with one another. It is easy to understand why some believe there must be a supreme international governing body to keep each national government in check. Paraphrasing Benjamin Tucker, just as it has been said there is no stop between Rome and Reason, so it can be said there is no logically consistent third way between international state socialism and liberty.

Thank you for hearing me out. If anyone has questions for me or would like to discuss what I have said, I will gladly give you my e-mail. The reason I wanted to write this is because I believe our philosophy guides our actions; however, there is no purpose in requiring that each and every person in the liberty movement agree point by point. What is important is that we can defend our means and motives as just. The economic and pragmatic cases for liberty are compelling and need to be told. Too often, though, I fail to acknowledge our most potent and successful principle, the moral case for liberty. I hope this does a little bit to make up for that. In the end, my belief in the perseverance of life convinces me that someday we will truthfully say “with liberty and justice for all.”

The Fate of the Non-Conformists

The non-conformist Bastiat spoke of is the person who would question the morality of these forms of legal plunder. He said, “… it is boldly said that ‘You are a dangerous innovator, a utopian, a theorist, a subversive; you would shatter the foundation upon which society rests.’ ”

If there are laws in force that are anti-liberty, Basiat asked, how can those with ties to the state be expect to speak out against these laws. “Still further,” he added, “morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this [unjust] law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law.”

Who Shall Judge?

Bastiat rarely mentioned any of his intellectual opponents by name, but this is one of those exceptions when he named the followers of the Rousseau school of thought, “who consider themselves far advanced, but whom I consider twenty centuries behind the times.”

The section headways into Bastiat’s section on political privileges. He criticized the phrase “universal suffrage” because even its supporters do not really mean “universal” as in every single person in the country.

For example, there are 36 million people in France. Thus, to make the right of suffrage universal, there should be 36 million voters. But the most extended system permits only 9 million people to vote. Three persons out of four are excluded. And more than this, they are excluded by the fourth.

The Reason on Why Voting is Restricted

Bastiat makes another claim as to why the franchise is so sought after. He says that people clamor for the right to vote because they know the law can be exploited in their favor or against them. That alone is enough to prove that the law is corrupted.

If the law were confined to its proper functions, everyone’s interest in the law would be the same. Is it not clear that, under these circumstances, those who voted could not inconvenience those who did not vote?

The Fatal Idea of Legal Plunder

“Under the pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law takes property from one person and gives it to another; the law takes the wealth of all and gives it to a few …. Then certainly every class will aspire to grasp the law, and logically so.”

That is what we continue to experience today. Each interest group lobbies for its piece of protection. Some lobby for special privaleges that they couldn’t achieve on a free market. I can understand the firms that lobby as a defensive strategy to protect itself from the initial government interference. I can even support those firms that are successful in unchaining themselves from government shackles so long as they do not encourage those same restrictions on their competitors.

He demanded, “And what can you say to answer that argument!”

Perverted Law Causes Conflict

He began, “As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose—that it may violate property instead of protecting it—then everyone will want to participate in making the law.”

He appealed to the American system, circa 1850, as an example of law being kept in its proper place. That is not to say it was perfect, Bastiat said, but “there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.”

Those contradictions were slavery and tariffs, as Bastiat identified. How salient is it then that 10 years later the United States would go to war with itself and lose 650,000 lives over those two issues? It was during Reconstruction that the KKK and other hate groups emerged and poisoned race relations.

Slavery and Tarrifs Are Plunder

“Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.” The sentence that follows is chilling in its accuracy. “It is a most remarkable fact that this double legal crime—a sorrowful inheritance from the Old World—should be the only issue which can, and perhaps will, lead to the ruin of the Union.

You can date the destruction of the American ideal back to the Civil War. It was no longer a union of the “united States of America,” as penned in the Decloration of Indepenence, but the Union of The United States of America.

Two Kinds of Plunder

Here Bastiat destinguished between legal and illegal plunder. “The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world,” as it should he said. It is the legal plunder that ignored, he believed.

That is evident in the halls of congress. Politicians and the media rightfully condemn the actions of Wall Street cheats and pyramid scheme hucksters but never mention their own budget and accounting fibs or the biggest ponzi organizations to date, the Social Security Administration.

The Law Defends Plunder

Bastiat’s point here was that the law is sometimes used as a middleman for this plunder. The law spares these crooks “the shame, danger, and scruples which their acts would otherwise involve … and treats the victim—when he defends himself—as a criminal.”

I made the same argument in one of my latest posts on the site. The classic example of this is tax protesters losing their homes as a punishment for refusing to back taxes imposed upon them.

How to Identify Legal Plunder

It’s simple, really, he said. “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

The solution? That’s even simpler. “Abolish the law without delay.”

“The present-day delusion [of these acquired privelages] is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.”

Legal Plunder Has Many Names

There are many, for sure, including “tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.”

Socialism is Legal Plunder

The remedy to fight socialism is not more law.

But it is upon the law that socialism itself relies. Socialists desire to practice legal plunder, not illegal plunder. Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. … For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.

The solution is to not elect socialists and strike bad laws. Bastiat fears though this is going to be a difficult struggle “so long as legal plunder continues to be the main business of the legislature.”

The Choice Before Us

According to Bastiat, voters have three choices: “the few plunder the many,” “everybody plunder everybody,” or “nobody plun
der anybody.”

It is the third choice. “This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs.”

The Proper Function of the Law

“Law is organized justice.” Simple as that.

The Seductive Lure of Socialism

“It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic.” Bastiat warned that these uses for the law are contradictory. “We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.”

Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty

To critics, limiting the law to the enforcement of justice is unsatisfactory. They believe law should be used to bind the nation together under a system of justice and in a common experience. Bastiat answered that the “second half of your program will destroy the first.”

In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally trampled underfoot.

Plunder Violates Ownership

So what is plunder?

When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it–without his consent without compensation, and whether by force or fraud—to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.

I think the word “plunder” is accurate historically and metaphysically. Early plunders practiced their crafts on the high seas, demanding payment as if it were their right to do so. A thief on the other hand has no pretense that he has any claim to another person’s property. A government is true to form. It demands its booty because it believes it has a right to the loot.

Law is Force

If the law is to organize justice, Bastiat said, “the socialists ask why the law should not also organize labor, education, and religion.”

In order to organize these acts, it must first destroy justice, which is the very basis for law in the first place. “When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others.”

Law is a Negative Concept

Bastiat’s sentence that the law is not meant to create justice but to prevent injustice is so profound, despite being so simple, that it bears repeating. “It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”

“But when the law … imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed–then the the law is no longer negative …. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives.”

He added, “… you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.”

The Political Approach

[The politician] attempts to remedy the evil [of inequality] by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. We have seen that justice is a negative concept. Is there even one of these positive legal actions that does not contain the principle of plunder?

The Law and Charity

Bastiat said, “The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.”

The Law and Education

Bastiat said that the law provides just two options for funding education: “It can It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge.”

The Law and Morals

But there are some who lack morals or religion. Yet you cannot regulate one’s morality with anymore success than you can regulate one’s thoughts.

For the first time that I remember, Bastiat refered to we. He doesn’t distinguish what he means by that just yet. “Because we ask so little from the law—only justice—the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist.”

Socialists do not actually support fraternity, or unity, or organization, he said. They support forced fraternity, forced unity, and forced organization. What they support are handcuffs and chains, nothing more.

A Confusion of Terms

Bastiat said that socialist conflate the people and the government, so “every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.”

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain [emphasis mine].

The Influence of Socialist Wirters

In one of Bastiat’s longest headings, he dates this conceited thinking that someone should direct the lives of others to a central idea, the wrongheaded belief “that people are inert matter, passive particles, motionless atoms, at best a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own manner of existence. They assume that people are susceptible to being shaped—by the will and hand of another person—into an infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected.”

He continued, “And just as the gardener needs axes, pruning hooks, saws, and shears to shape his trees, just so does the socialist writer need the force that he can find only in law to shape human beings.”

The Socialists Wish to Play God

It is necessary to conclude then that socialists, Bastiat said,

will demand that a small portion of mankind be set aside to experiment upon. … But what a difference there is between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his elements, between the farmer and his seeds! And in all sincerity, the socialist thinks that there is the same difference between him and mankind!

The Socialists Despise Mankind

How fortunate we must be that “While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators aspire for enlightenment; while mankind is drawn toward vice, the legislators are attracted toward virtue.” What a farce.

A Defense of Compulsory Labor

Bastiat quotes a French turor who yearns for the long-failed Egyptian civilization’s ever-present direction by the state: “Among the good laws, one of the best was that everyone was trained (by whom) to obey them. As a result of this, Egypt was filled with wonderful inventions, and nothing was neglected that coul
d make life easy and quiet.”

Bastiat’s quip, “by whom,” handsomely negates the idea with just the most minute effort. The answer is rulers, with force.

A Defense of Paternal Government

The tutor continues his defense of the Egyptians, whom he claimed to be the source of progress for the early Greeks.

“And according to [the tutor], the Greek people, although exceedingly intelligent, had no sense of personal responsibility; like dogs and horses, they themselves could not have invented the most simple games” such as “exercises, foot races, and horse and chariot races…. But the best thing that the Egyptians had taught the Greeks was to become docile, and to permit themselves to be formed by the law for the public good.”

(Part 3 to follow with “The Idea of a Passive Mankind”)

The edition I’ve chosen to read was reproduced by the Foundation for Economic Education in 1998 and includes an introduction by Walter E. Williams and a forward by Sheldon Richmond.

The Law

Only two paragraphs long, this section highlights the dramatic reversal that the rule of law has taken in post-Napoleonic France, and no doubt elsewhere. In part he says, “The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!”

Life Is a Gift from God

He claims that life consists of “the physical, intellectual, and moral life.” By applying our mental faculties and harnessing our natural resources, all of which he believes a higher supernatural being is responsible for creating, we are able to convert our labor into products.

Now these three foundational principles (life, faculties, and production) stair-step onto one another into what we call life. It’s not all so different than another logical sequence that justifies the three stages of freedom, that is life, liberty, property. Life is freedom in the future tense; liberty is freedom in the present; and property is the freedom to posses one’s past.

Insightfully, he says that these three principles did not come about because of the existence of law, well no more than law came before the existence of life itself. Rather, law came about because of the existence of these principles.

What is Law

He said, “It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”

He says that if a person possess these natural individual rights, then he or she shall have the right to defend these rights. If that is true, the logical extension is that a group of people may get together to defend these rights collectively. He calls this a collective right. But the term has much different meaning that it does today, where a collective right like the claim to free education actually usurps individual rights because an individual’s property must be seized in order to fund that act.

In fact, today’s collective rights are more akin to privileges than actual rights. As more and more actual rights are being ignored, we are given these revocable privileges in their place. These privileges are subject to the state’s discretion and outright termination.

Bastiat said that no group of people has the right to infringe on the right of another individual because no person in that group has that right to take another person’s life, destroy his property, or enslave him. A group does not conjure rights above and beyond those of its individual members.

He said, “It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”
“A Just and Enduring Government” A government formed with that understanding, Bastiat said, would be just and tolerant, “whatever its political form might be.”

‘When successful, we would no have to thank the state for our success,” Bastiat said. “And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost.”

The Complete Perversion of the Law

Bastiat warns of the law straying from its original intent, “The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. … The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.”

He says there are two main culprits for this perversion of law, “stupid greed” and “false philanthropy.”

A Fatal Tendency of Mankind

“When they can,” he said, “[people] wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. … This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man—in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.”

I believe human beings are morally neutral, neither good nor bad by default. The philosophy one holds and the actions one takes are what define a person’s morality. This desire to live at the expense of others is very real. It’s also dependent on a very short-term outlook. In the long run, trade and mutual cooperation are the greatest means of advancement.

But in short-term survivalist cultures, complex and paradoxical ideas like comparative advantage are not fully realized because people are not willing to lend themselves to reason for survival. The cause for that rejection of reason is controversial itself, having to do with superstition and rituals more than anything else.

Property and Plunder

Man has two choices, Bastiat reminds, production or plunder.

Our wants and needs, which include all the possible wants and needs of every future generation, are infinite. He said that since “man is naturally inclined to avoid pain—and since labor is pain in itself—it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.”

The solution then is to make plunder more painful than production. As a consequence, “the proper purpose of law is to use power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency ….” Knowing this, those plunders then take the reigns of law to become the “invincible weapon of injustice.”

Victims of Lawful Plunder

Bastiat claims that there are two types of classes, and each has drastically different purposes. “Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”

This not some radical new chain of thoughts, after all. As more and more people get wise to the fact that their own wealth is being taken, they seek to take part in it themselves. Eventually , or inevitably, this pyramid scheme runs out of suckers to pay for it. Then, we have a circumstance that too many hard-working Americans find themselves today, with their wealth drained, their self control stripped, and their will power crushed.

The Results of Legal Plunder

At it’s core, legal plunder turns justice on its head and manipulates our strong sense of allegiance to the state.

“There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate,” Bastiat said. “This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to
decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them”

(Part 2 to follow with “The Fate of the Non-Conformists”)