Most thoughtful commentators -- and by this I specifically exclude the ubiquitous "talking heads" of America's mass media -- attributed the Republican electoral victory of 1994 to an amorphous coalition of social conservatives (the "Christian right" which so frightened those talking heads) and what Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform calls the "Leave Us Alone" coalition of libertarians, home-schoolers, gun owners, and others favoring a radical reduction in the role of government in American life.

This coalition has been showing severe signs of strain recently, with tensions over such issues as censorship of the Internet and the War on (Some) Drugs. One symptom of this split can be seen in recent attacks on libertarianism appearing in such publications as Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard, as well as on the Web. Generally such attacks display a disgraceful lack of understanding of the basis of libertarian philosophy; one exception is an eloquent essay by Bob Struble, committeeman of the Kitsap County Republican Party in Washington State.

Because Mr. Struble's essay raises so well the fundamental points at issue, I have taken the liberty of reproducing it very nearly in its entirety, with my comments interspersed. (A second reason for this format is that Mr. Struble is better at organizing his essays than I am, and plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.)

Libertarianism is a very consistent political philosophy. It consistently opposes government intervention, whether economic or cultural. But as Albert Einstein pointed out, “politics is more complicated than physics.” So too is human nature. Human beings are not simple and consistent enough to live in peace, with law and order, under the kind of drastically limited government envisioned by libertarians.

Human beings are indeed endlessly complex as individuals, and their varied interactions in even the smallest and most isolated community are mind-bogglingly infinite. It follows from this that any attempt to exert centralized control over all details of these interactions will either be doomed to failure -- since human creativity will find some way to evade these controls, given sufficient motivation -- or result in such a narrow limitation of life's possibilities that the society will come to resemble an anthill more than a community of complex human beings. Or perhaps both, as the horrifying history of twentieth-century totalitarianism amply illustrates.

Thus Mr. Struble's opening observation constitutes an argument for, rather than against, minimizing the role of governmental constraint in human communities. 

... it is certain that a policy of no political intervention whatsoever would bring on disastrous economic consequences. Consider what our situation would be like without load limits on highways; child labor and workplace safety laws; the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), trust-busting activities by Teddy Roosevelt and his successors, the Clayton Act’s Federal Trade Commission (1914); and such mediations between management and labor as the Wagner Act [1935], and the Taft-Hartley Act [1947]... 

Passing by the highway load limits (clearly a red herring, since the owner of any property may rightly specify limits on its use, and for good or ill the government is the owner of our highway system -- not to mention that any structure has engineering design limits), let us carefully consider these examples:

• Child labor and workplace safety laws, like many such "reforms", were enacted by and large at a time when they were no longer necessary. Quite without such laws, for example, the population of Britain quadrupled in the 19th century, indicating that the increased productivity of the industrial revolution made possible widespread improvement in the standard of living for Britons, increasing average lifespan by 20 years and slashing infant mortality.

By contrast, the twin "political interventions" of the mercantilist Corn Laws and the feudal land-tenure system combined in Ireland in 1846 to starve more than half a million men, women, and children, and to force nearly a quarter of the population to emigrate, often under the most wretched circumstances.

Conservatives typically pride themselves on their "hard-headed realism", so it is disappointing to find one sharing the romantic Neverland view that the alternative to employment for these children was carefree play in some sunny park. It was not. It was equally arduous farm work to help the family eke out a meager subsistence. Does Mr. Struble seriously believe that parents cared so little about their children in those days that they would have sent them to work if there had been some realistic alternative?

In fact, the rise in general living standards had already for the most part reduced child labor to a relic by the time these laws were passed; the free market had so enhanced the level of wealth of parents that the overwhelming majority no longer required the additional income.

• On the subject of trustbusting, Prof. Dominick T. Armentano, author of Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure more than 25 years ago, commented recently:

... [Study of] two of the most influential early cases in antitrust history, Standard Oil (1911) and American Tobacco (1911), reveals that neither of the accused firms monopolized or "restrained" trade; on the contrary, both firms expanded outputs enormously, innovated continuously, and generally lowered prices for consumers. Thus, the antitrust assault on successful firms like Microsoft is not a recent policy aberration. It is entirely endemic of the history of antitrust regulation.

Revisionist case analysis nicely corresponds with recent scholarship concerning the actual origins of antitrust law. The original rationale was that before the Sherman Act of 1890, monopolistic abuse laced the economy. Yet Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas Hazlett, and others have shown that market outputs were expanding and prices falling relative to the rest of the economy in many of the "trust" industries prior to 1890. Thus, antitrust laws and antitrust cases are more accurately seen as special interest legislation designed to protect less efficient organizations and redistribute income.

In the last decade, we have watched IBM go from a de-facto monopoly in the computer industry to a frantic competitor trying to maintain its share of a diverse and incredibly dynamic market. The only permanent monopolies are those created or maintained by government fiat; eliminating them requires repealing, not enhancing, existing law.
• The Federal Trade Commission has become a center for corporate welfare and (now) corrupt political fundraising. Reagan-era deregulation of such industries as air travel and trucking have lowered consumer costs, again increasing the standard of living for all Americans. Unfortunately Mr. Struble gives no specific indication of the useful role he believes the FTC currently plays in the American economy.
• Labor law in this country has a mixed and complex history, vacillating from promoting the unions to supporting management. Libertarians would severely punish use of violence by either side to settle contract issues, while otherwise leaving the two sides alone to work out their disputes.

It must be pointed out that the worst bloodshed in the history of the labor movement was caused or exacerbated by corrupt government officials using their armed power to help influential businessmen suppress strikes.

To be sure the profit motive is the great engine that drives the market economy--the economic system which has materially improved the lot of all classes in society. Nonetheless capitalism is far from perfect, and the profit motive needs to be checked--not quenched as Marx and Lenin would have mandated--but regulated where natural market forces more resemble the gloved hand of Dr. Strangelove than the benevolent hidden hand described by economist Adam Smith.

Indeed, "capitalism is far from perfect." But the quest for perfection through state control -- whether the total control of communism and fascism or the so-called "fine tuning" of the doddering welfare states of western Europe -- has resulted everywhere in increasing the general level of misery, while removal of these well-intentioned regulations has resulted in improvement in the standard of living everywhere it has been tried, from Chile to New Zealand.

I cannot allow this paragraph's odd metaphor to pass without commenting that America's "invisible hand" has 200 million fingers, each working cooperatively with the others on its task, while the glove of government employee Dr. Strangelove conceals the mailed fist of state coercion. Does Mr. Struble believe that the sledgehammer is an appropriate instrument for adjusting a watch?

Also in the cultural sphere, libertarians remain consistent by deferring to market forces. Like a belle at the ball who never says no, a libertarian country rejects no invitations; she dances to every tune the marketplace conjures up; and, alas, more than a few numbers rival the infernal din that passes for music on MTV. Black market capitalism in Russia includes, for example, the kidnapping of street kids by profiteers... Horror stories about the emerging marketplace in China are equally gruesome. On occasion, therefore, the marketplace cries out for intervention; it needs guidance and supervision by what Alexander Hamilton [Federalist #71] called “the deliberate sense of the community”--deliberation being intrinsically collective and therefore political.

In "deferring to market forces", libertarians are not by any means claiming everything is equally good -- I've never heard a libertarian call for government subsidy of the Edsel, for example, or New Coke.

The question is not whether some products, practices, and beliefs will become widespread and successful or not; the question is who shall decide what will succeed and what will vanish. Mr. Struble here argues that taste and morality shall be arbited by Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich. Very well; he may subject his personal taste to whatever arbiter he may wish.

If I were personally in charge of running the world, I should probably first abolish grand opera. But I am not (and it's just as well; I'm too busy already), and noone is forcing me to watch it. But the National Endowment for the Arts is forcing me to pay for it, just as it is forcing Mr. Struble to pay for exhibitions of offensive graphic art. This the inevitable result of Mr. Struble's "guidance and supervision": Mr. Struble himself will not always be the one guiding and supervising.

It is disheartening to find such an obvious straw man example as criminal kidnapping in an otherwise perceptive essay; clearly the writer does not believe that libertarians either condone violent crime and slavery or deny that it exists. In fact, in the United States at least, organized crime was created by government "guidance" (the Volstead Act) and is now principally nourished by prohibition of drugs and prostitution. Organized crime cannot survive free-market competition; it reduces their profit margin unacceptably.

The quotation from Hamilton, that old hypocrite, reads in full:

The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.

Many years ago I listened to my parents' unqualified condemnation of Elvis Presley, and much later I heard them as grandparents, disgusted by the current teenage noise, long for the relatively dulcet sound of "Nothin' but a Houn' Dog", so I hope Mr. Struble will forgive me if I cannot help but view his mention of MTV as one of Hamilton's "sudden breezes of passion", a "transient impulse."

The community has an inherent right to defend their social mores against cultural decadence. In conducting that defense, depending on the severity of the threat, it may be necessary to use collective weapons via the political realm...

Last year on behalf of the Republican party, I spoke to a community college assembly regarding a bill in the legislature to limit access by minors to X-rated materials. The student body president and most of the students had libertarian notions that call to mind Mona Charon’s observation that the United States is “drunk on civil rights.” Few students were interested in the idea of defending the country’s social integrity, but rather in maximizing yet another “right” without reference to responsibility. 

Here again, it has apparently been forgotten that, although the writer clearly regards “cultural decadence” as manifest in pornography, many others see “cultural decadence” in some perceived European ethnocentrism, male dominance, intolerance of homosexuality, economic inequality, or indeed Christianity itself.

It does no good for the defender of political action to argue, “but don't you see the difference? They're wrong and I'm right” -- because in a system in which all questions are political and everything is decided by democratic means, “right” and “wrong” are reduced to 50% plus one. If we are to take seriously the dictum of Rush Limbaugh, hardly known for his libertarian fanaticism, that moral questions are not to be determined by majority vote, then our only option is to place some areas of human life beyond the reach of politics. The libertarian view is that religion, taste, and personal morality are too important to be left to politics.

Libertarians recognize that government is force, nothing else; and wish to restrict it -- whatever its form, democratic, authoritarian, or theocratic -- to the punishment of force and fraud. Because as soon as one says, “this is so important that we must use the government to promote it”, one sets the precedent that someone else may use the government to suppress it. Even dictatorships may reverse their policies (witness Red China now attempting to adopt “free market” economics), and the “sword of government” is always double-edged.

When conservatives talk of “responsibility” in this sort of context, they typically mean “if you do this, laws I agree with will get you thrown in jail.”  When libertarians use the term, they mean “the nature of the universe and human existence is inherently such that this activity may lead to undesirable consequences.”  For example, a conservative will probably lock you up for smoking marijuana (though The National Review has come out for an armed truce in the War on Drugs).  A libertarian would point out that it is hazardous to operate machinery with impaired alertness (whether from alcohol, some other drug, or simple lack of sleep), and that frequent use of such substances may affect your efficiency enough to get you fired. 

Libertarians believe that the universe tends to reward virtue and punish vice more or less automatically.  Conservatives lack this faith, believing that the universe needs their constant help and guidance.

... As James Madison put it [Federalist #63], "liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power." Libertarians unwittingly solicit long-run tyranny, for by eschewing the political weapons necessary to defend liberty against internal enemies, they set democracy up for destruction.

In this paper, Madison is discussing the role and structure of the Senate, and the "abuses of liberty" he mentions are clearly the "transient impulses" to which Hamilton refers in #71, so at least on those grounds the quotation is irrelevant (except insofar as it condemns faddish legislation like internet censorship, the war on immigrants, and so forth).

Conservatives unwittingly solicit long-run tyranny, for by taking up the political weapons necessary to defend their particular view of democracy, they place these same weapons within easy reach of internal enemies, and set liberty up for destruction. Recall the words of Madison in Federalist #63:

The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people...

The Bible reveals the flaw inherent in libertarianism [Romans 13]: “... not without reason does it (government) carry the sword. For it is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who does evil.”

St. Paul, a man of his time, was a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings, a view not widespread among contemporary Americans, Christian or otherwise.

Not too long after writing this letter, St. Paul was himself faced with “God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who does evil” in the form of the City Council of Jerusalem, which demanded that he be executed for heresy against the Hebrew faith, to “defend the country's social integrity”.

As Mr. Struble is surely aware, the evangelist did not meekly submit, as he counsels in the epistle, but rather insisted on his civil rights as a Roman citizen to a hearing before Roman officials. I assume that Mr. Struble agrees with me that this was the right thing for St. Paul to do, since if he had been stoned to death at that time, it is unlikely that the gospel would have reached Europe. Or was St. Paul “drunk on civil rights”?

Government of a libertarian bent is flawed in that it would forbear to execute wrath on cultural arsonists such as pornographers, drug pushers, practitioners of euthanasia, abortionists, bigamists and presumably even pedophiles. In wielding the power of the sword, a democracy dare not exempt the grievous domestic decay that happens to be promoted by non compulsory and non-governmental means.

Who is more of a “cultural arsonist”, the person who peacefully takes photographs of sex or the bureaucrat who orders a hundred people burned to death in a Texas church? The fundamentalist Mormon or the IRS thug who harrasses his family and forces him to make bastards of half his children, all because the government's tax tables don't specify how much is to be extorted from him? A fisherman who doesn't fire a hardworking crewman just because he sometimes has a joint instead of a beer, or the greedy official who uses his badge to confiscate the fisherman's life's savings?

Is the pornographer forcing you to display his pictures in your den, or the Mormon forcing you to take another wife?

Which of us is here more afraid of personal responsibility?

... Among mainstreamers and other types of libertarians, a common thread is opposition to anything that would enforce the pro-life, pro-family agenda by law. They seem willing to pay the price--the cost being an anything-goes society, a laissez faire culture, as an inevitable adjunct of non-interference by government into private behavior.

Among adherents of the religious right and other types of conservatives, a common thread is promotion of anything that would enforce their concept of a pro-life, pro-family agenda by law. They seem willing to pay the price -- the cost being a tightly-controlled society, a politically correct culture, as an inevitable adjunct of ever-growing interference by government into private behavior.

In the words of Hayek:

"Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom."

A new manifestation of the libertarian mindset in America is the widespread opposition among internet providers to censorship of anything that goes online. For the most part they will not fight individual forms of self-denial, like the new software technology that screens materials which children can access. But beyond that, libertarians are ferocious in resisting most any form of collective self-restraint by society.

In fact, libertarians oppose government censorship under any pretext. Mr. Struble here -- for utterly mysterious reasons -- apparently believes libertarians might object to a technology which allows parents worried about this (non-)problem to address it directly, while others need not concern themselves with it. But the larger question is why, if he insists on raising, educating, and protecting everyone else's children, he believes he could legitimately object if, say, Frank Zappa decided to take the Struble family under his wing.

I have addressed the internet issue elsewhere; suffice it to say that there is no such thing as "collective self-restraint by society", because there is no "self" for "society" to restrain. "Society" is simply a word for the aggregate actions, beliefs, and so on of a body of individuals, and when the writer says "self-restraint" what he means is trampling on -- "restraining" -- some individuals solely on the basis of the moral or esthetic beliefs of other individuals. We are indeed ferocious in resisting persecution of peaceful, honest people -- or at least I sincerely hope we are.

Libertarians see the internet as a new frontier and have made a veritable cause célèbre of opposing the onset of law and order. One wonders whether if transported back to 1881 Tombstone, Arizona, libertarians would not have sided with the Clanton gang rather than let Wyatt Earp carry a Marshall’s badge. After all, the O.K. Corral was private property! Certainly the child pornography, bestiality, and sadistic abuse of men and women now portrayed online would, by comparison, make the Clantons look almost virtuous. But of course it is precisely the morality judgments intrinsic to distinctions between virtue and vice that libertarians would forbid to government.

In fact, it is likely that libertarians would have stayed out of the Tombstone ruckus altogether, since by all accounts both the Earps and the Clantons were lawless, violent thugs.

I am astonished that Mr. Struble has managed to find all of this terrible perverted material on line; he must have spent a great deal of time searching diligently for it. I'm on the internet for hours every day, and I've never found anything remotely resembling this description.

And once again, Mr. Struble appears willing to put "the morality judgments intrinsic to distinctions between virtue and vice" into the hands of a crew of politicians who, to put the matter as tactfully as possible, have not shown themselves by and large to be suitable models of uprightness and virtue.

Some libertarians will, no doubt, concede the importance of private citizens distinguishing between right and wrong; but they readily brand anyone a fascist, Nazi, or born-again inquisitor who seeks to have society enforce morality on the collective level. Essentially libertarians reject the spiritual basis of America, whose Founding Fathers argued that if a country loses the ability to distinguish between liberty and license that nation will eventually lose the liberty.

Apologies are due to Mr. Struble, of course, if some libertarians have descended to epithets and namecalling in their discussions with him. I am, however, bemused to find an author who opens his essay with the implication that his opponents condone abduction and abuse of children now complaining of their rhetorical excess.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions... Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Since, as noted above, Mr. Struble wishes to put "the morality judgments intrinsic to distinctions between virtue and vice" into the hands of government, he clearly believes we have found angels. I do not. In this century alone, nearly a quarter of a billion human beings have been murdered by their own governments, governments which thought they were on the side of the angels, or on the side of history, or on the side of the very common people they were butchering.

Like passivist Quakers of the colonial period who resigned the government of Pennsylvania rather than let the Pennsylvania militia resist French and Indian encroachment on the western frontiers of the colony, so modern day libertarians would leave us to wage a kulturkampf without the unifying and coordinating power that government alone can provide. Unlike the Quakers, libertarians seek political office and influence without pacifist scruples, and a primary purpose of their government would be to stand guard at the gate in force lest Christians, communitarians, or patriots counterstrike against anti-social conduct.

Hmm. We must have "the unifying and coordinating power that government alone can provide". But clearly General Motors, a unified, coordinated organization if ever there was one, is larger in its budget and personnel base than many countries. So why does this agenda require government?

And, since libertarians oppose only the use of force and fraud, what sort of "counterstrike" does Mr. Struble envision? Certainly a libertarian government would punish, for example, beating up peaceful gays, or burning down convenience stores which sold Hustler. Are these the activities he wishes to promote? Are these activities sanctioned by his version of the Christian religion?

Mr. Struble apparently wants government on his side so that it can beat up the gays and burn down the shops, with an air of democratic legitimacy lacking in a mob of "Christians, communitarians, or patriots". (I know many Christians, communitarians, and patriots, by the way, and all of them would be seriously offended by Mr. Struble's implication.)

On all sides we hear the call to "reform society" by using the threats and violence of government to banish this evil or that forever from our midst. Why the attraction of an institution with no power other than coercion? Very simply, it's easier to point a gun a someone to make him do your bidding than it is to persuade him. Persuasion and genuine leadership are difficult; hobnobbing with politicians is easy (if you have a strong stomach). These self-anointed reformers are just too lazy to make use of persuasion.

I am supposed to place my faith in an institution that has consistently abused any power granted to it and murdered a quarter of a billion people, merely because someone strongly believes that his world-view is correct but is too lazy to try to convince me.

... Should libertarians come fully to power in the 21st century, they may well undermine the pragmatism that made the American experiment economically and politically successful during its first two centuries. Indeed libertarians seem less willing today to make concessions of a pragmatic nature than in the days of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century sage of libertarianism. Mill’s protégés might profit by reading their mentor. In chapter four of On Liberty, Mill defends society’s collective right of self-defense: If a citizen "has infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his fellow creatures, individually or collectively," says Mill, "the evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him."

On Liberty, Chapter 3:

As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person's own character, but the traditions and customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress...

On Liberty, Chapter 4:

 The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law...

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical sort...

The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights of others, is not a merely nominal distinction...

If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable...  It is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him; ...

But with regard to the merely contingent or, as it may be called, constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.

Thus Mill here is quite obviously talking about specific violations of the rights of other individuals, not some putative lifestyle offense against some chimerical collective.  But I am pleased that Mr. Struble has been reading Mill, albeit selectively, and I hope he will continue to study and share Mill's insights with his fellow conservatives.

---

So I remain unconvinced that Mr. Struble's America is one in which I would be comfortable, though interestingly in nearly all points of personal morality I'm sure our views are indistinguishable.

And I greatly fear that if the Republican Party wholeheartedly adopts the position Mr. Struble advocates, we are in for a long, long night of the socialism that both of us utterly detest.

October 22, 1997