On Friday, president Donald Trump tweeted:
“The problem is, no matter what the Radical Left Democrats get, no matter what we give them, it will never be enough. Just watch, they will Harass & Complain & Resist (the theme of their movement). So maybe we should just take our victory and say NO, we’ve got a Country to run!”
From a libertarian or classical-liberal perspective, that is indeed the problem. “We” do not have a country to run. “We”—or at least some of us—hope to have a country where to live free, not a country to be run by an autocrat or a minority mob or majority mob. From this viewpoint, Trump and what he calls “the Radical Left Democrats” are not that different: they want to use (and increase) the power of the state to rule over others.
Several liberal theories of the state, from Anthony de Jasay on the radical side up to the moderate James Buchanan, suggest that no matter what we give Leviathan, it will never be enough.
It appears impossible to defend individual liberty without escaping the logic of “running the country.”
P.S.: The featured image of this post is borrowed from the adventures of Tintin by Hergé. General Tapioca and General Alcazar fought to run their country.
READER COMMENTS
Joe McDevitt
Mar 30 2019 at 10:59am
“Liberty” is a problematic word, because with it comes responsibility for one’s self which is rarely welcomed. Sorry to bring the bad news, but Rome is falling.
Mark Z
Mar 31 2019 at 7:01am
Is Rome supposed to be the US in this analogy? If so, it’s certainly not self-evident that it’s falling, nor does whatever ails it seem to be due to an excess of personal liberty and a dearth of collective action through the state.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa Pérez
Mar 30 2019 at 3:49pm
I think in one sense “we” — classical liberals, libertarians — are wrong to describe the classical liberal program as merely negative, that is, the absence of state interference.
From the point of view of people who disagree with us, implementing liberal economic policies is ruling, imposing a particulary policy or point of view over them — at least from what I gather from their reaction.
Mark Z
Mar 31 2019 at 6:58am
“implementing liberal economic policies is ruling, imposing a particulary policy or point of view over them”
Well, not really, not in the sense in which implementing illiberal policies is ruling over others. For example, abolishing the minimum wage doesn’t prevent anyone from refusing to work for any wage less than $X an hour. Imposing a minimum wage does, however, prevent people from working for less than $X an hour.
Not all policies are impositions. Some policies are relaxations of impositions. A liberal policy, almost by definition, can only be an imposition in the sense that it may allow someone to do something that someone else doesn’t want them to do.
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
Apr 1 2019 at 9:22pm
Weir
Mar 31 2019 at 10:56pm
What percentage of the population is classically liberal or libertarian or autistic?
It’s not a lot.
So it should be easy to imagine the reaction if autistic people, exclusively, will henceforth constitute the electorate. Nobody else will be allowed to vote.
That’s the first new rule, and the new rulers have the same explanation for everything else they do after that: It’s rational, it’s correct, and there’s no objective reason to disagree.
Getting rid of minimum wage laws will follow soon after, along with millions of other laws. No wonder the new rulers didn’t have the patience to try persuading the old electorate, the formerly enfranchised masses, of why everybody would be better off without those laws in particular or the millions of other laws that will all have to go.
Hundreds of millions of people would feel imposed upon, and it’s partly because the old democracy involved a bit of back and forth from one year to the next, a little give and take. But it’s also partly because, even without any memory of democracy, a human being has a sense of her dignity.
Benjamin Cole
Mar 31 2019 at 9:18am
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”—-President George W. Bush. A Freudian slip of the tongue?
By all means, curb the Leviathan.
Which is more frightening: A Leviathan that can tax, borrow or even print money at will and then pay a mercenary force (hired globally no less) or a Leviathan that must depend on conscripts?
David S
Mar 31 2019 at 8:30pm
<i>Which is more frightening: A Leviathan that can tax, borrow or even print money at will and then pay a mercenary force (hired globally no less) or a Leviathan that must depend on conscripts?</i>
If you are a prospective conscript, I’d assume you’d prefer the mercenary force. If you are a target, I don’t think you’d care – you are likely dead either way.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 31 2019 at 8:42pm
This is one reason for severely constraining the state and trying to prevent it from becoming Leviathan. With limited tax resources and no conscription power (which amounts to imposing a very high tax on a portion of the citizenry), the feasibility of wars other than defensive wars would be greatly diminished.
Weir
Mar 31 2019 at 11:09pm
When I was a kid I thought it was weird and out of character to have Professor Calculus throw a fit over the accusation that he was “acting the goat” and sending him off spluttering with so much outrage. But Herge got it right.
I don’t remember Tapioca but Professor Calculus is a common type. There’s a lot of him around.
Comments are closed.