Liberty Crazy Talk

Libertarian writer Lee Harris tries to put scientific and historical clothes on Tea Party ranting in this barely comprehensible essay. He divides the world into two kinds of people, those who think they control their own lives and those who think their lives are controlled from outside (by fate, or God, or what have you). The self-controllers are, he asserts, the "Natural Libertarians," and it is their mission to struggle against the evil powers that want to reduce us to a state of serfdom:

Of no less importance to the tradition of independence is the seemingly paranoid fear that power will fall into the wrong hands. The great nineteenth-century champion of liberty, Lord Acton, coined the famous maxim: “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This obsessive fear of power is key to understanding why natural libertarians will automatically rebel when some overbearing elite threatens to rob them of their cherished tradition of independence. They rebel because they instinctively understand the high cost of not rebelling.

Notice that people in power are always "them"; the notion that democracy represents the people wielding power themselves seems to have escaped Mr. Harris. Or perhaps he regards democracy as another self-serving lie told by would-be dictators; he doesn't say. He simply assumes that They, whoever they are, are trying to dominate Us, and that we should resist them.

These days the would-be dictators don't assault us with tanks, they bribe us into complacence with goodies:

The condition of learned helplessness can be induced by pain, but many kinder, gentler ways can achieve the same insidious results. When today’s natural libertarians express their alarm at the inroads of “the nanny state,” they are recognizing this fact. A good nanny’s duty is to protect from harm the children she watches. But it is all too easy for the nanny, despite her best intentions, to overprotect her wards. If they act independently of her wishes, they might hurt themselves. To prevent this, a nanny might require her wards to ask permission before they do anything. Her message is: “Come to nanny first. Let her decide what is best for you.” If the kids obey, they will imperceptibly become dependent on nanny to make decisions for them—indeed, they may become alarmed at the very idea of having to make decisions for themselves. By this point, the children have entered a state of learned helplessness, but one brought about by the most benevolent intentions.

Harris notes (correctly) that Otto von Bismarck created some of the key institutions of the modern welfare state, even though he had little regard for the welfare of the people:

The nineteenth-century German politician Otto von Bismarck was hardly anyone’s idea of a nanny, but he constructed the world’s first nanny state for the sole purpose of making German citizens so codependent on the German Reich that they would never think of rebelling against it. By offering Germans a prototype of the modern welfare state, Bismarck’s goal was not improving the common man’s lot—it was his way of inducing the common man, when faced with personal difficulties, to expect the state to look after him, instead of relying on himself to deal with his own problems.

Thus the perils, I suppose, of government-guaranteed healthcare.

The first thing I would note about libertarianism is that it is a fantasy born of safety and ease. For most of human history, people who were not sufficiently well organized to defend themselves soon found themselves conquered by better organized enemies. No doubt the Mediterranean world was once full of lightly-governed societies, but eventually they all fell under the control of Rome. Does Harris think a libertarian state could have resisted the Nazis, or the Soviets? Should the Chinese have embraced liberty, refused to support either Mao or the Nationalists, and hoped that their Japanese conquerors would respect their rights? Sometimes the only way to preserve any freedom, even the freedom to stay alive, is to band together. This is the principle behind labor unions, which I suspect Harris hates. Alone, workers are at the mercy of powerful employers, but by banding together they were able to greatly improve their lives. What contributes more to the freedom of the average American than the reduction of the work week to 40 hours?

What about government-run health care and retirement programs? I think they increase our freedom. Honestly, I think the libertarian model of rugged individualists who develop their strength by fending for themselves is a joke. Liberty means being able to do what we want. (John Stuart Mill: "The only freedom worthy of the name is being able to pursue our own good in our own way.") I want to go to a doctor whenever I feel sick. How does having the government guarantee that for me make me less free? I suppose there is the matter of taxes; spending money is a kind of freedom, so taxes make us less free. On the other hand, as I have often argued, the enormously productive modern economy seems to require a large, expensive state. Compared to people of a century ago we pay much higher taxes, but our incomes are so much higher that even after taxes we are still much richer and therefore more free. I believe that this is how modern civilization works. Yes, we lack some freedoms enjoyed by frontier farmers or fur trappers. But we have others that, to me, more than compensate: the freedom to travel the world, access to healthcare that can help us live to be 90, and so on. We give to get. What's more, under democracy, we decide as a people how much we want to give and how it is spent. I think that makes us far more free than survivalists in their mountaintop compounds.