The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism

On election day, 1976, the Libertarian party presidential ticket of Roger L. MacBride for President and David P. Bergland for Vice President amassed 174,000 votes in thirty-two states throughout the country. The sober Congressional Quarterly was moved to classify the fledgling Libertarian party as the third major political party in America. The remarkable growth rate of this new party may be seen in the fact that it only began in 1971 with a handful of members gathered in a Colorado living room. The following year it fielded a presidential ticket which managed to get on the ballot in two states. And now it is America's third major party.

Even more remarkably, the Libertarian party achieved this growth while consistently adhering to a new ideological creed — "libertarianism" — thus bringing to the American political scene for the first time in a century a party interested in principle rather than in merely gaining jobs and money at the public trough. We have been told countless times by pundits and political scientists that the genius of America and of our party system is its lack of ideology and its "pragmatism" (a kind word for focusing solely on grabbing money and jobs from the hapless taxpayers). How, then, explain the amazing growth of a new party which is frankly and eagerly devoted to ideology?

One explanation is that Americans were not always pragmatic and nonideological. On the contrary, historians now realize that the American Revolution itself was not only ideological but also the result of devotion to the creed and the institutions of libertarianism. The American revolutionaries were steeped in the creed of libertarianism, an ideology which led them to resist with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor the invasions of their rights and liberties committed by the imperial British government. Historians have long debated the precise causes of the American Revolution: Were they constitutional, economic, political, or ideological? We now realize that, being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other. On the contrary, they perceived civil and moral liberty, political independence, and the freedom to trade and produce as all part of one unblemished system, what Adam Smith was to call, in the same year that the Declaration of Independence was written, the "obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

The libertarian creed emerged from the "classical liberal" movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Western world, specifically, from the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. This radical libertarian movement, even though only partially successful in its birthplace, Great Britain, was still able to usher in the Industrial Revolution there by freeing industry and production from the strangling restrictions of State control and urban government-supported guilds. For the classical liberal movement was, throughout the Western world, a mighty libertarian "revolution" against what we might call the Old Order — the ancien régime which had dominated its subjects for centuries. This regime had, in the early modern period beginning in the sixteenth century, imposed an absolute central State and a king ruling by divine right on top of an older, restrictive web of feudal land monopolies and urban guild controls and restrictions. The result was a Europe stagnating under a crippling web of controls, taxes, and monopoly privileges to produce and sell conferred by central (and local) governments upon their favorite producers. This alliance of the new bureaucratic, war-making central State with privileged merchants — an alliance to be called "mercantilism" by later historians — and with a class of ruling feudal landlords constituted the Old Order against which the new movement of classical liberals and radicals arose and rebelled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The object of the classical liberals was to bring about individual liberty in all of its interrelated aspects. In the economy, taxes were to be drastically reduced, controls and regulations eliminated, and human energy, enterprise, and markets set free to create and produce in exchanges that would benefit everyone and the mass of consumers. Entrepreneurs were to be free at last to compete, to develop, to create. The shackles of control were to be lifted from land, labor, and capital alike. Personal freedom and civil liberty were to be guaranteed against the depredations and tyranny of the king or his minions. Religion, the source of bloody wars for centuries when sects were battling for control of the State, was to be set free from State imposition or interference, so that all religions — or nonreligions — could coexist in peace. Peace, too, was the foreign policy credo of the new classical liberals; the age-old regime of imperial and State aggrandizement for power and pelf was to be replaced by a foreign policy of peace and free trade with all nations. And since war was seen as engendered by standing armies and navies, by military power always seeking expansion, these military establishments were to be replaced by voluntary local militia, by citizen-civilians who would only wish to fight in defense of their own particular homes and neighborhoods.

Thus, the well-known theme of "separation of Church and State" was but one of many interrelated motifs that could be summed up as "separation of the economy from the State," "separation of speech and press from the State," "separation of land from the State," "separation of war and military affairs from the State," indeed, the separation of the State from virtually everything.

The State, in short, was to be kept extremely small, with a very low, nearly negligible budget. The classical liberals never developed a theory of taxation, but every increase in a tax and every new kind of tax was fought bitterly — in America twice becoming the spark that led or almost led to the Revolution (the stamp tax, the tea tax).

"Being libertarians, the revolutionaries saw no conflict between moral and political rights on the one hand and economic freedom on the other."

The earliest theoreticians of libertarian classical liberalism were the Levelers during the English Revolution and the philosopher John Locke in the late seventeenth century, followed by the "True Whig" or radical libertarian opposition to the "Whig Settlement" — the regime of eighteenth-century Britain. John Locke set forth the natural rights of each individual to his person and property; the purpose of government was strictly limited to defending such rights. In the words of the Lockean-inspired Declaration of Independence, "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…."

While Locke was widely read in the American colonies, his abstract philosophy was scarcely calculated to rouse men to revolution. This task was accomplished by radical Lockeans in the eighteenth century, who wrote in a more popular, hard-hitting, and impassioned manner and applied the basic philosophy to the concrete problems of the government — and especially the British government — of the day. The most important writing in this vein was "Cato's Letters," a series of newspaper articles published in the early 1720s in London by True Whigs John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. While Locke had written of the revolutionary pressure which could properly be exerted when government became destructive of liberty, Trenchard and Gordon pointed out that government always tended toward such destruction of individual rights. According to "Cato's Letters," human history is a record of irrepressible conflict between Power and Liberty, with Power (government) always standing ready to increase its scope by invading people's rights and encroaching upon their liberties. Therefore, Cato declared, Power must be kept small and faced with eternal vigilance and hostility on the part of the public to make sure that it always stays within its narrow bounds:

We know, by infinite Examples and Experience, that Men possessed of Power, rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it; and scarce ever any Man upon Earth went out of it as long as he could carry every thing his own Way in it…. This seems certain, That the Good of the World, or of their People, was not one of their Motives either for continuing in Power, or for quitting it.

It is the Nature of Power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary Power, granted at particular Times, and upon particular Occasions, into an ordinary Power, to be used at all Times, and when there is no Occasion, nor does it ever part willingly with any Advantage….

Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a Success too evident; and the Balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole Earth, and striking at Mankind Root and Branch, makes the World a Slaughterhouse; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.

Such warnings were eagerly imbibed by the American colonists, who reprinted "Cato's Letters" many times throughout the colonies and down to the time of the Revolution. Such a deep-seated attitude led to what the historian Bernard Bailyn has aptly called the "transforming radical libertarianism" of the American Revolution.

For the revolution was not only the first successful modern attempt to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism — at that time, of the world's mightiest power. More important, for the first time in history, Americans hedged in their new governments with numerous limits and restrictions embodied in constitutions and particularly in bills of rights. Church and State were rigorously separated throughout the new states, and religious freedom enshrined. Remnants of feudalism were eliminated throughout the states by the abolition of the feudal privileges of entail and primogeniture. (In the former, a dead ancestor is able to entail landed estates in his family forever, preventing his heirs from selling any part of the land; in the latter, the government requires sole inheritance of property by the oldest son.)

The new federal government formed by the Articles of Confederation was not permitted to levy any taxes upon the public; and any fundamental extension of its powers required unanimous consent by every state government. Above all, the military and war-making power of the national government was hedged in by restraint and suspicion; for the eighteenth-century libertarians understood that war, standing armies, and militarism had long been the main method for aggrandizing State power.

The modernization of American Politics and government during and after the Revolution took the form of a sudden, radical realization of the program that had first been fully set forth by the opposition intelligentsia … in the reign of George the First. Where the English opposition, forcing its way against a complacent social and political order, had only striven and dreamed, Americans driven by the same aspirations but living in a society in many ways modern, and now released politically, could suddenly act. Where the English opposition had vainly agitated for partial reforms … American leaders moved swiftly and with little social disruption to implement systematically the outermost possibilities of the whole range of radically liberation ideas.

In the process they … infused into American political culture … the major themes of eighteenth-century radical libertarianism brought to realization here. The first is the belief that power is evil, a necessity perhaps but an evil necessity; that it is infinitely corrupting; and that it must be controlled, limited, restricted in every way compatible with a minimum of civil order. Written constitutions; the separation of powers; bills of rights; limitations on executives, on legislatures, and courts; restrictions on the right to coerce and wage war — all express the profound distrust of power that lies at the ideological heart of the American Revolution and that has remained with us as a permanent legacy ever after.

Thus, while classical liberal thought began in England, it was to reach its most consistent and radical development — and its greatest living embodiment — in America. For the American colonies were free of the feudal land monopoly and aristocratic ruling caste that was entrenched in Europe; in America, the rulers were British colonial officials and a handful of privileged merchants, who were relatively easy to sweep aside when the Revolution came and the British government was overthrown. Classical liberalism, therefore, had more popular support, and met far less entrenched institutional resistance, in the American colonies than it found at home. Furthermore, being geographically isolated, the American rebels did not have to worry about the invading armies of neighboring, counterrevolutionary governments, as, for example, was the case in France.

Thus, America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power. The revolution resulted in governments unprecedented in restrictions placed on their power. But while there was very little institutional resistance in America to the onrush of liberalism, there did appear, from the very beginning, powerful elite forces, especially among the large merchants and planters, who wished to retain the restrictive British "mercantilist" system of high taxes, controls, and monopoly privileges conferred by the government. These groups wished for a strong central and even imperial government; in short, they wanted the British system without Great Britain. These conservative and reactionary forces first appeared during the Revolution, and later formed the Federalist party and the Federalist administration in the 1790s.

During the nineteenth century, however, the libertarian impetus continued. The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian movements, the Democratic-Republican and then the Democratic parties, explicitly strived for the virtual elimination of government from American life. It was to be a government without a standing army or navy; a government without debt and with no direct federal or excise taxes and virtually no import tariffs — that is, with negligible levels of taxation and expenditure; a government that does not engage in public works or internal improvements; a government that does not control or regulate; a government that leaves money and banking free, hard, and uninflated; in short, in the words of H. L. Mencken's ideal, "a government that barely escapes being no government at all."

"America, above all countries, was born in an explicitly libertarian revolution, a revolution against empire; against taxation, trade monopoly, and regulation; and against militarism and executive power."

The Jeffersonian drive toward virtually no government foundered after Jefferson took office, first, with concessions to the Federalists (possibly the result of a deal for Federalist votes to break a tie in the electoral college), and then with the unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory. But most particularly it foundered with the imperialist drive toward war with Britain in Jefferson's second term, a drive which led to war and to a one-party system which established virtually the entire statist Federalist program: high military expenditures, a central bank, a protective tariff, direct federal taxes, public works. Horrified at the results, a retired Jefferson brooded at Monticello, and inspired young visiting politicians Martin Van Buren and Thomas Hart Benton to found a new party — the Democratic party — to take back America from the new Federalism, and to recapture the spirit of the old Jeffersonian program. When the two young leaders latched onto Andrew Jackson as their savior, the new Democratic party was born.

The Jacksonian libertarians had a plan: it was to be eight years of Andrew Jackson as president, to be followed by eight years of Van Buren, then eight years of Benton. After twenty-four years of a triumphant Jacksonian Democracy, the Menckenian virtually no-government ideal was to have been achieved. It was by no means an impossible dream, since it was clear that the Democratic party had quickly become the normal majority party in the country. The mass of the people were enlisted in the libertarian cause. Jackson had his eight years, which destroyed the central bank and retired the public debt, and Van Buren had four, which separated the federal government from the banking system. But the 1840 election was an anomaly, as Van Buren was defeated by an unprecedentedly demagogic campaign engineered by the first great modern campaign chairman, Thurlow Weed, who pioneered in all the campaign frills — catchy slogans, buttons, songs, parades, etc. — with which we are now familiar. Weed's tactics put in office the egregious and unknown Whig, General William Henry Harrison, but this was clearly a fluke; in 1844, the Democrats would be prepared to counter with the same campaign tactics, and they were clearly slated to recapture the presidency that year. Van Buren, of course, was supposed to resume the triumphal Jacksonian march. But then a fateful event occurred: the Democratic party was sundered on the critical issue of slavery, or rather the expansion of slavery into a new territory. Van Buren's easy renomination foundered on a split within the ranks of the Democracy over the admission to the Union of the republic of Texas as a slave state; Van Buren was opposed, Jackson in favor, and this split symbolized the wider sectional rift within the Democratic party. Slavery, the grave antilibertarian flaw in the libertarianism of the Democratic program, had arisen to wreck the party and its libertarianism completely.

The Civil War, in addition to its unprecedented bloodshed and devastation, was used by the triumphal and virtually one-party Republican regime to drive through its statist, formerly Whig, program: national governmental power, protective tariff, subsidies to big business, inflationary paper money, resumed control of the federal government over banking, large-scale internal improvements, high excise taxes, and, during the war, conscription and an income tax. Furthermore, the states came to lose their previous right of secession and other states' powers as opposed to federal governmental powers. The Democratic party resumed its libertarian ways after the war, but it now had to face a far longer and more difficult road to arrive at liberty than it had before.

We have seen how America came to have the deepest libertarian tradition, a tradition that still remains in much of our political rhetoric, and is still reflected in a feisty and individualistic attitude toward government by much of the American people. There is far more fertile soil in this country than in any other for a resurgence of libertarianism.

We can now see that the rapid growth of the libertarian movement and the Libertarian party in the 1970s is firmly rooted in what Bernard Bailyn called this powerful "permanent legacy" of the American Revolution. But if this legacy is so vital to the American tradition, what went wrong? Why the need now for a new libertarian movement to arise to reclaim the American dream?

To begin to answer this question, we must first remember that classical liberalism constituted a profound threat to the political and economic interests — the ruling classes — who benefited from the Old Order: the kings, the nobles and landed aristocrats, the privileged merchants, the military machines, the State bureaucracies. Despite three major violent revolutions precipitated by the liberals — the English of the seventeenth century and the American and French of the eighteenth — victories in Europe were only partial. Resistance was stiff and managed to successfully maintain landed monopolies, religious establishments, and warlike foreign and military policies, and for a time to keep the suffrage restricted to the wealthy elite. The liberals had to concentrate on widening the suffrage, because it was clear to both sides that the objective economic and political interests of the mass of the public lay in individual liberty. It is interesting to note that, by the early nineteenth century, the laissez-faire forces were known as "liberals" and "radicals" (for the purer and more consistent among them), and the opposition that wished to preserve or go back to the Old Order were broadly known as "conservatives."

Indeed, conservatism began, in the early nineteenth century, as a conscious attempt to undo and destroy the hated work of the new classical liberal spirit — of the American, French, and Industrial revolutions. Led by two reactionary French thinkers, de Bonald and de Maistre, conservatism yearned to replace equal rights and equality before the law by the structured and hierarchical rule of privileged elites; individual liberty and minimal government by absolute rule and Big Government; religious freedom by the theocratic rule of a State church; peace and free trade by militarism, mercantilist restrictions, and war for the advantage of the nation-state; and industry and manufacturing by the old feudal and agrarian order. And they wanted to replace the new world of mass consumption and rising standards of living for all by the Old Order of bare subsistence for the masses and luxury consumption for the ruling elite.

"Slavery, the grave antilibertarian flaw in the libertarianism of the Democratic program, had arisen to wreck the party and its libertarianism completely."

By the middle of and certainly by the end of the nineteenth century, conservatives began to realize that their cause was inevitably doomed if they persisted in clinging to the call for outright repeal of the Industrial Revolution and of its enormous rise in the living standards of the mass of the public, and also if they persisted in opposing the widening of the suffrage, thereby frankly setting themselves in opposition to the interests of that public. Hence, the "right wing" (a label based on an accident of geography by which the spokesmen for the Old Order sat on the right of the assembly hall during the French Revolution) decided to shift their gears and to update their statist creed by jettisoning outright opposition to industrialism and democratic suffrage. For the old conservatism's frank hatred and contempt for the mass of the public, the new conservatives substituted duplicity and demagogy. The new conservatives wooed the masses with the following line: "We, too, favor industrialism and a higher standard of living. But, to accomplish such ends, we must regulate industry for the public good; we must substitute organized cooperation for the dog-eat-dog of the free and competitive marketplace; and, above all, we must substitute for the nation-destroying liberal tenets of peace and free trade the nation-glorifying measures of war, protectionism, empire, and military prowess." For all of these changes, of course, Big Government rather than minimal government was required.

And so, in the late nineteenth century, statism and Big Government returned, but this time displaying a proindustrial and pro-general-welfare face. The Old Order returned, but this time the beneficiaries were shuffled a bit; they were not so much the nobility, the feudal landlords, the army, the bureaucracy, and privileged merchants as they were the army, the bureaucracy, the weakened feudal landlords, and especially the privileged manufacturers. Led by Bismarck in Prussia, the New Right fashioned a right-wing collectivism based on war, militarism, protectionism, and the compulsory cartelization of business and industry — a giant network of controls, regulations, subsidies, and privileges which forged a great partnership of Big Government with certain favored elements in big business and industry.

Something had to be done, too, about the new phenomenon of a massive number of industrial wage workers — the "proletariat." During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, indeed until the late nineteenth century, the mass of workers favored laissez-faire and the free competitive market as best for their wages and working conditions as workers, and for a cheap and widening range of consumer goods as consumers. Even the early trade unions, e.g., in Great Britain, were staunch believers in laissez-faire. New conservatives, spearheaded by Bismarck in Germany and Disraeli in Britain, weakened the libertarian will of the workers by shedding crocodile tears about the condition of the industrial labor force, and cartelizing and regulating industry, not accidentally hobbling efficient competition. Finally, in the early twentieth century, the new conservative "corporate state" — then and now the dominant political system in the Western world — incorporated "responsible" and corporatist trade unions as junior partners to Big Government and favored big businesses in the new statist and corporatist decision-making system.

To establish this new system, to create a New Order which was a modernized, dressed-up version of the ancien régime before the American and French revolutions, the new ruling elites had to perform a gigantic con job on the deluded public, a con job that continues to this day. Whereas the existence of every government from absolute monarchy to military dictatorship rests on the consent of the majority of the public, a democratic government must engineer such consent on a more immediate, day-by-day basis. And to do so, the new conservative ruling elites had to gull the public in many crucial and fundamental ways. For the masses now had to be convinced that tyranny was better than liberty, that a cartelized and privileged industrial feudalism was better for the consumers than a freely competitive market, that a cartelized monopoly was to be imposed in the name of antimonopoly, and that war and military aggrandizement for the benefit of the ruling elites was really in the interests of the conscripted, taxed, and often slaughtered public. How was this to be done?

"Classical liberalism constituted a profound threat to the political and economic interests — the ruling classes…" In all societies, public opinion is determined by the intellectual classes, the opinion moulders of society. For most people neither originate nor disseminate ideas and concepts; on the contrary, they tend to adopt those ideas promulgated by the professional intellectual classes, the professional dealers in ideas. Now, throughout history, as we shall see further below, despots and ruling elites of States have had far more need of the services of intellectuals than have peaceful citizens in a free society. For States have always needed opinion-moulding intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable; into believing that the "emperor has clothes." Until the modern world, such intellectuals were inevitably churchmen (or witch doctors), the guardians of religion. It was a cozy alliance, this age-old partnership between Church and State; the Church informed its deluded charges that the king ruled by divine command and therefore must be obeyed; in return, the king funneled numerous tax revenues into the coffers of the Church. Hence, the great importance for the libertarian classical liberals of their success at separating Church and State. The new liberal world was a world in which intellectuals could be secular — could make a living on their own, in the market, apart from State subvention.

To establish their new statist order, their neomercantilist corporate State, the new conservatives therefore had to forge a new alliance between intellectual and State. In an increasingly secular age, this meant with secular intellectuals rather than with divines: specifically, with the new breed of professors, Ph.D.'s, historians, teachers, and technocratic economists, social workers, sociologists, physicians, and engineers. This reforged alliance came in two parts. In the early nineteenth century, the conservatives, conceding reason to their liberal enemies, relied heavily on the alleged virtues of irrationality, romanticism, tradition, theocracy. By stressing the virtue of tradition and of irrational symbols, the conservatives could gull the public into continuing privileged hierarchical rule, and to continue to worship the nation-state and its war-making machine. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the new conservatism adopted the trappings of reason and of "science." Now it was science that allegedly required rule of the economy and of society by technocratic "experts." In exchange for spreading this message to the public, the new breed of intellectuals was rewarded with jobs and prestige as apologists for the New Order and as planners and regulators of the newly cartelized economy and society.

To insure the dominance of the new statism over public opinion, to insure that the public's consent would be engineered, the governments of the Western world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moved to seize control over education, over the minds of men: over the universities, and over general education through compulsory school attendance laws and a network of public schools. The public schools were consciously used to inculcate obedience to the State as well as other civic virtues among their young charges. Furthermore, this statizing of education insured that one of the biggest vested interests in expanding statism would be the nation's teachers and professional educationists.

One of the ways that the new statist intellectuals did their work was to change the meaning of old labels, and therefore to manipulate in the minds of the public the emotional connotations attached to such labels. For example, the laissez-faire libertarians had long been known as "liberals," and the purest and most militant of them as "radicals"; they had also been known as "progressives" because they were the ones in tune with industrial progress, the spread of liberty, and the rise in living standards of consumers. The new breed of statist academics and intellectuals appropriated to themselves the words "liberal" and "progressive," and successfully managed to tar their laissez-faire opponents with the charge of being old-fashioned, "Neanderthal," and "reactionary." Even the name "conservative" was pinned on the classical liberals. And, as we have seen, the new statists were able to appropriate the concept of "reason" as well.

"For the old conservatism's frank hatred and contempt for the mass of the public, the new conservatives substituted duplicity and demagogy." If the laissez-faire liberals were confused by the new recrudescence of statism and mercantilism as "progressive" corporate statism, another reason for the decay of classical liberalism by the end of the nineteenth century was the growth of a peculiar new movement: socialism. Socialism began in the 1830s and expanded greatly after the 1880s. The peculiar thing about socialism was that it was a confused, hybrid movement, influenced by both the two great preexisting polar ideologies, liberalism and conservatism. From the classical liberals the socialists took a frank acceptance of industrialism and the Industrial Revolution, an early glorification of "science" and "reason," and at least a rhetorical devotion to such classical liberal ideals as peace, individual freedom, and a rising standard of living. Indeed, the socialists, long before the much later corporatists, pioneered in a co-opting of science, reason, and industrialism. And the socialists not only adopted the classical liberal adherence to democracy, but topped it by calling for an "expanded democracy," in which "the people" would run the economy — and each other.

On the other hand, from the conservatives the socialists took a devotion to coercion and the statist means for trying to achieve these liberal goals. Industrial harmony and growth were to be achieved by aggrandizing the State into an all-powerful institution, ruling the economy and the society in the name of "science." A vanguard of technocrats was to assume all-powerful rule over everyone's person and property in the name of the "people" and of "democracy." Not content with the liberal achievement of reason and freedom for scientific research, the socialist State would install rule by the scientists of everyone else; not content with liberals setting the workers free to achieve undreamt-of prosperity, the socialist State would install rule by the workers of everyone else — or rather, rule by politicians, bureaucrats, and technocrats in their name. Not content with the liberal creed of equality of rights, of equality before the law, the socialist State would trample on such equality on behalf of the monstrous and impossible goal of equality or uniformity of results — or rather, would erect a new privileged elite, a new class, in the name of bringing about such an impossible equality.

Socialism was a confused and hybrid movement because it tried to achieve the liberal goals of freedom, peace, and industrial harmony and growth — goals which can only be achieved through liberty and the separation of government from virtually everything — by imposing the old conservative means of statism, collectivism, and hierarchical privilege. It was a movement which could only fail, which indeed did fail miserably in those numerous countries where it attained power in the twentieth century, by bringing to the masses only unprecedented despotism, starvation, and grinding impoverishment.

But the worst thing about the rise of the socialist movement was that it was able to outflank the classical liberals "on the Left": that is, as the party of hope, of radicalism, of revolution in the Western World. For, just as the defenders of the ancien régime took their place on the right side of the hall during the French Revolution, so the liberals and radicals sat on the left; from then on until the rise of socialism, the libertarian classical liberals were "the Left," even the "extreme Left," on the ideological spectrum. As late as 1848, such militant laissez-faire French liberals as Frederic Bastiat sat on the left in the national assembly. The classical liberals had begun as the radical, revolutionary party in the West, as the party of hope and of change on behalf of liberty, peace, and progress. To allow themselves to be outflanked, to allow the socialists to pose as the "party of the Left," was a bad strategic error, allowing the liberals to be put falsely into a confused middle-of-the-road position with socialism and conservatism as the polar opposites. Since libertarianism is nothing if not a party of change and of progress toward liberty, abandonment of that role meant the abandonment of much of their reason for existence — either in reality or in the minds of the public.

But none of this could have happened if the classical liberals had not allowed themselves to decay from within. They could have pointed out — as some of them indeed did — that socialism was a confused, self-contradictory, quasi-conservative movement, absolute monarchy and feudalism with a modern face, and that they themselves were still the only true radicals, undaunted people who insisted on nothing less than complete victory for the libertarian ideal.

But after achieving impressive partial victories against statism, the classical liberals began to lose their radicalism, their dogged insistence on carrying the battle against conservative statism to the point of final victory. Instead of using partial victories as a stepping-stone for evermore pressure, the classical liberals began to lose their fervor for change and for purity of principle. They began to rest content with trying to safeguard their existing victories, and thus turned themselves from a radical into a conservative movement — "conservative" in the sense of being content to preserve the status quo. In short, the liberals left the field wide open for socialism to become the party of hope and of radicalism, and even for the later corporatists to pose as "liberals" and "progressives" as against the "extreme right wing" and "conservative" libertarian classical liberals, since the latter allowed themselves to be boxed into a position of hoping for nothing more than stasis, than absence of change. Such a strategy is foolish and untenable in a changing world.

But the degeneration of liberalism was not merely one of stance and strategy, but one of principle as well. For the liberals became content to leave the war-making power in the hands of the State, to leave the education power in its hands, to leave the power over money and banking, and over roads, in the hands of the State — in short, to concede to State dominion over all the crucial levers of power in society. In contrast to the eighteenth-century liberals' total hostility to the executive and to bureaucracy, the nineteenth-century liberals tolerated and even welcomed the buildup of executive power and of an entrenched oligarchic civil service bureaucracy.

Moreover, principle and strategy merged in the decay of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century liberal devotion to "abolitionism" — to the view that, whether the institution be slavery or any other aspect of statism, it should be abolished as quickly as possible, since the immediate abolition of statism, while unlikely in practice, was to be sought after as the only possible moral position. For to prefer a gradual whittling away to immediate abolition of an evil and coercive institution is to ratify and sanction such evil, and therefore to violate libertarian principles. As the great abolitionist of slavery and libertarian William Lloyd Garrison explained: "Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend."

Socialism was a confused and hybrid movement because it tried to achieve liberal goals by imposing the old conservative means of statism, collectivism, and hierarchical privilege. There were two critically important changes in the philosophy and ideology of classical liberalism which both exemplified and contributed to its decay as a vital, progressive, and radical force in the Western world. The first, and most important, occurring in the early to mid-nineteenth century, was the abandonment of the philosophy of natural rights, and its replacement by technocratic utilitarianism. Instead of liberty grounded on the imperative morality of each individual's right to person and property, that is, instead of liberty being sought primarily on the basis of right and justice, utilitarianism preferred liberty as generally the best way to achieve a vaguely defined general welfare or common good. There were two grave consequences of this shift from natural rights to utilitarianism. First, the purity of the goal, the consistency of the principle, was inevitably shattered. For whereas the natural-rights libertarian seeking morality and justice cleaves militantly to pure principle, the utilitarian only values liberty as an ad hoc expedient. And since expediency can and does shift with the wind, it will become easy for the utilitarian in his cool calculus of cost and benefit to plump for statism in ad hoc case after case, and thus to give principle away. Indeed, this is precisely what happened to the Benthamite utilitarians in England: beginning with ad hoc libertarianism and laissez-faire, they found it ever easier to slide further and further into statism. An example was the drive for an "efficient" and therefore strong civil service and executive power, an efficiency that took precedence, indeed replaced, any concept of justice or right.

Second, and equally important, it is rare indeed ever to find a utilitarian who is also radical, who burns for immediate abolition of evil and coercion. Utilitarians, with their devotion to expediency, almost inevitably oppose any sort of upsetting or radical change. There have been no utilitarian revolutionaries. Hence, utilitarians are never immediate abolitionists. The abolitionist is such because he wishes to eliminate wrong and injustice as rapidly as possible. In choosing this goal, there is no room for cool, ad hoc weighing of cost and benefit. Hence, the classical liberal utilitarians abandoned radicalism and became mere gradualist reformers. But in becoming reformers, they also put themselves inevitably into the position of advisers and efficiency experts to the State. In other words, they inevitably came to abandon libertarian principle as well as a principled libertarian strategy. The utilitarians wound up as apologists for the existing order, for the status quo, and hence were all too open to the charge by socialists and progressive corporatists that they were mere narrow-minded and conservative opponents of any and all change. Thus, starting as radicals and revolutionaries, as the polar opposites of conservatives, the classical liberals wound up as the image of the thing they had fought.

This utilitarian crippling of libertarianism is still with us. Thus, in the early days of economic thought, utilitarianism captured free-market economics with the influence of Bentham and Ricardo, and this influence is today fully as strong as ever. Current free-market economics is all too rife with appeals to gradualism; with scorn for ethics, justice, and consistent principle; and with a willingness to abandon free-market principles at the drop of a cost-benefit hat. Hence, current free-market economics is generally envisioned by intellectuals as merely apologetics for a slightly modified status quo, and all too often such charges are correct.

A second, reinforcing change in the ideology of classical liberals came during the late nineteenth century, when, at least for a few decades, they adopted the doctrines of social evolutionism, often called "social Darwinism." Generally, statist historians have smeared such social Darwinist laissez-faire liberals as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner as cruel champions of the extermination, or at least of the disappearance, of the socially "unfit." Much of this was simply the dressing up of sound economic and sociological free-market doctrine in the then-fashionable trappings of evolutionism. But the really important and crippling aspect of their social Darwinism was the illegitimate carrying-over to the social sphere of the view that species (or later, genes) change very, very slowly, after millennia of time. The social Darwinist liberal came, then, to abandon the very idea of revolution or radical change in favor of sitting back and waiting for the inevitable tiny evolutionary changes over eons of time. In short, ignoring the fact that liberalism had had to break through the power of ruling elites by a series of radical changes and revolutions, the social Darwinists became conservatives preaching against any radical measures and in favor of only the most minutely gradual of changes.

In fact, the great libertarian Spencer himself is a fascinating illustration of just such a change in classical liberalism (and his case is paralleled in America by William Graham Sumner). In a sense, Herbert Spencer embodies within himself much of the decline of liberalism in the nineteenth century. For Spencer began as a magnificently radical liberal, as virtually a pure libertarian. But, as the virus of sociology and social Darwinism took over in his soul, Spencer abandoned libertarianism as a dynamic, radical historical movement, although without abandoning it in pure theory. While looking forward to an eventual victory of pure liberty, of "contract" as against "status," of industry as against militarism, Spencer began to see that victory as inevitable, but only after millennia of gradual evolution. Hence, Spencer abandoned liberalism as a fighting, radical creed and confined his liberalism in practice to a weary, conservative, rearguard action against the growing collectivism and statism of his day.

"This utilitarian crippling of libertarianism is still with us." But if utilitarianism, bolstered by social Darwinism, was the main agent of philosophical and ideological decay in the liberal movement, the single most important, and even cataclysmic, reason for its demise was its abandonment of formerly stringent principles against war, empire, and militarism. In country after country, it was the siren song of nation-state and empire that destroyed classical liberalism. In England, the liberals, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, abandoned the antiwar, anti-imperialist "Little Englandism" of Cobden, Bright, and the Manchester School. Instead, they adopted the obscenely entitled "Liberal Imperialism" — joining the conservatives in the expansion of empire, and the conservatives and the right-wing socialists in the destructive imperialism and collectivism of World War I. In Germany, Bismarck was able to split the previously almost triumphant liberals by setting up the lure of unification of Germany by blood and iron. In both countries, the result was the destruction of the liberal cause.

In the United States, the classical liberal party had long been the Democratic party, known in the latter nineteenth century as "the party of personal liberty." Basically, it had been the party not only of personal but also of economic liberty; the stalwart opponent of Prohibition, of Sunday blue laws, and of compulsory education; the devoted champion of free trade, hard money (absence of governmental inflation), separation of banking from the State, and the absolute minimum of government. It construed state power to be negligible and federal power to be virtually nonexistent. On foreign policy, the Democratic party, though less rigorously, tended to be the party of peace, antimilitarism, and anti-imperialism. But personal and economic libertarianism were both abandoned with the capture of the Democratic party by the Bryan forces in 1896, and the foreign policy of nonintervention was then rudely abandoned by Woodrow Wilson two decades later. It was an intervention and a war that were to usher in a century of death and devastation, of wars and new despotisms, and also a century in all warring countries of the new corporatist statism — of a welfare-warfare State run by an alliance of Big Government, big business, unions, and intellectuals — that we have mentioned above.

You can listen to this article as a Mises.org podcast. The last gasp, indeed, of the old laissez-faire liberalism in America was the doughty and aging libertarians who banded together to form the Anti-Imperialist League at the turn of the century, to combat the American war against Spain and the subsequent imperialist American war to crush the Filipinos who were striving for national independence from both Spain and the United States. To current eyes, the idea of an anti-imperialist who is not a Marxist may seem strange, but opposition to imperialism began with laissez-faire liberals such as Cobden and Bright in England, and Eugen Richter in Prussia. In fact, the Anti-Imperialist League, headed by Boston industrialist and economist Edward Atkinson (and including Sumner) consisted largely of laissez-faire radicals who had fought the good fight for the abolition of slavery, and had then championed free trade, hard money, and minimal government. To them, their final battle against the new American imperialism was simply part and parcel of their lifelong battle against coercion, statism and injustice — against Big Government in every area of life, both domestic and foreign.

We have traced the rather grisly story of the decline and fall of classical liberalism after its rise and partial triumph in previous centuries. What, then, is the reason for the resurgence, the flowering, of libertarian thought and activity in the last few years, particularly in the United States? How could these formidable forces and coalitions for statism have yielded even that much to a resurrected libertarian movement? Shouldn't the resumed march of statism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries be a cause for gloom rather than usher in a reawakening of a seemingly moribund libertarianism? Why didn't libertarianism remain dead and buried?

We have seen why libertarianism would naturally arise first and most fully in the United States, a land steeped in libertarian tradition. But we have not yet examined the question: Why the renaissance of libertarianism at all within the last few years? What contemporary conditions have led to this surprising development? We must postpone answering this question until the end of the book, until we first examine what the libertarian creed is, and how that creed can be applied to solve the leading problem areas in our society.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) was dean of the Austrian School. This article is excerpted from the first chapter of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.

An audiobook version of this chapter, read by Jeff Riggenbach, including a new introduction, written and read by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is available for podcast or download. The full audiobook will be available by the end of the summer.

You can receive the Mises Daily Article in your inbox. Go here to subscribe or unsubscribe.

However, to attribute any supposed expansion of federal power to directly elected senators is more than a stretch.

I don't think this statement stands up to historical review. The ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 immediately and permanently altered the balance of power between the states and the federal government. Almost immediately after the passage of the amendment, there was a rapid growth in the power of the national government, especially at the expense of the powers of the states.

While the Founders were careful to guard against the “excesses of democracy, ” the Seventeenth Amendment embodied a notion that the cure for the ills of democracy was more democracy. Clearly, then, the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment was a direct assault on Our Federalism, because, as the Founders noted, the idea of a state having a direct voice in the national government was a key check to the power of the national government. Without the careful check in place, the national government began to legislate in areas traditionally only available to the states.

For instance, following the adoption of the amendment in 1913, Congress quickly passed the Child Labor Act of 1916 and the Child Labor Tax Act of 1919. While this legislation might have been meritorious, such legislation was always understood to be beyond the power of the national government, and its passage was a direct assault on the states as states.

Although the New Deal legislation was probably the high-water mark on the assault on the states by the national government, the clear trend following the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment was that Congress was given an essentially blank check to legislate according to any perceived problem without any consideration of the states as separate entities.

This problem remains today in a variety of areas, but perhaps most conspicuous is Congress’s increasing legislation in criminal law, a sphere that historically has always been left to the states. Indeed, even following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, in which Congress was given power to enforce equal protection and due process requirements, the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Cruikshank still held that Congress had no power to make general criminal law, striking down an indictment against several whites accused of killing a group of black men.

Despite recent trends by the Rehnquist Court to judicially impose requirements of federalism, the judiciary was not intended by the Founders to act as a check on the power of the national government vis-à-vis the states, and the weakness in attempting to extend the power of the judiciary that far becomes clear: the court simply cannot declare the vast number of laws intruding on the powers of the states unconstitutional and still retain any aura of legitimacy. In a nominally republican society, an unelected judiciary simply cannot, on an extended basis, continue to invalidate legislation passed by a democratically elected Congress; thus, the check on the power of the national government must come from the legislature itself. The Seventeenth Amendment removed this check. AS to your comment about the Senate not necessarily being composed of the wealthy any powerful, I note only that it wasn't called "the millionaire's club" for no reason.

Legalization of recreational drug use is a de facto “encouragement,” rather than “discouragement” of non-productive, resource draining citizen activity.

Resource draining as in 'can't grow your own'? (I know, productivity draining. Yet, modern music would not exist as we know it, were it not for some 'mind altering' substances)

Let me postulate a hypothetical and have you provide a response.

Assume a war has occurred with an implacable enemy who has successfully perpetrated severe, population depleting attacks on the US. The US won, albeit at a terrible price in terms of casualties and lost infrastructure. Although at peace technically, the US, no longer a super power, faces potential threats from several totalitarian states and the economy is severely crippled. Because of the terrible conditions, a significant portion of the population chooses to escape through hallucinogens and narcotics. Without this portion of the population contributing, the US is no longer able to produce enough goods and services to sustain the remaining population and provide military equipment. What is your solution (assuming you are among the remaining productive portion of the population)?

The level of communitarianist tyranny at all levels (got a child in a car seat backwards, upsidedown, is your gun unloaded and locked in your trunk, please pull into the un-warranted DUI check-point, etc.) is enough to make a true American wanna puke.

More questions for you… Is a child a citizen? Are not all citizens entitled to the full protection of the law from those who threaten their lives?

As kids, we didn't even wear seatbelts, my dad might have had a loaded shotgun in the trunk and driven on a few beers on the way home. We were Americans. By today's standards, we'd be next to Bonnie and Clyde, for Christ's sake.

Do you know the percentage of children killed today in auto accidents versus “when we were kids?” Do you know the percentage of innocent people killed today by drunk drivers versus the number killed in the day when your Dad drove on a few beers? How would you react if your child or spouse were the fatality created by a drunk driver?

Carried to the extreme (and I believe they're headed that way) real patriots/conservatives would vote for anarchy over a continuation of the 'liberty' espoused by the PC infested parties of today.

You may be correct, but ultimately the business of any society’s legal system has always been about achieving a balance between the competing values of the society it exists to serve. While you and I may prefer to see the balance more toward the individual rights and liberties side of the scale, we can only have our way through the ballot box.

It'll be a sad day when a majority of Americans come to say: "I didn't leave my country, my country left me."

As long as it is legal for every citizen to vote, run for office and voter fraud is illegal, if your country leaves you, it is your fault.

PS, as a taxpayer these excesses are becoming a burden I find less justifiable in the face of reality, as I refuse to live life in their 'dream' world. Give me reality, or give me death. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

You have reality. Do you vote in every election? Are you active in the political party of your choice? Do you run for office at any level? Do you, or have you, served in the armed forces? Do you communicate with your elected representatives? Do you write letters to the editor of your local newspapers?

Because of the terrible conditions, a significant portion of the population chooses to escape through hallucinogens and narcotics.

Has this ever happened anywhere? Getting high is a luxury (not sure where it falls on the heirarchy of needs, but it certainly isn't down there with food and shelter).

the US is no longer able to produce enough goods and services to sustain the remaining population and provide military equipment.

Would the Federal Dept. of Education have suffered as well? Good, 'cause at the moment, drop-out rates are sufficiently high to question whether we'll have the people necessary to produce goods and services needed to sustain anything other than provide fodder for our overseas adventures.

Are not all citizens entitled to the full protection of the law from those who threaten their lives?

Directly, yes. Indirectly, no. Otherwise, where do you stop? ex.: The 80 year old woman who sued McDonalds for the hot coffee that produced third degree burns wanted over a million, she got less. Had it been shown that the drive-up window operator intended to cause harm, she'd have been entitled to the full amount.

How would you react if your child or spouse were the fatality created by a drunk driver?

I'd react emotionally like most. Then, I'd make certain the perp received the severest punishment allowed. But, I wouldn't invite the State to punish every driver on the road for an act for which they had no complicity.

the business of any society’s legal system has always been about achieving a balance between the competing values of the society it exists to serve.

And yet, there are limits as to how far a 'society' may go and they are ignored with impunity. Ignore the 2nd ammendment and get elected as being 'tough on crime'. Pass CFR, have the president sign it (hoping the US Supreme Court will nullify it) and they'll pat you on the back as a true election reformer. Never mind you just screwed the 1st ammendment, you'll smell like a rose in the rose garden (someday, if you get elected, that is).

As long as it is legal for every citizen to vote, run for office and voter fraud is illegal, if your country leaves you, it is your fault.

I'm sorry, we've voted overwhelmingly for things like prop 187 (denying benefits to illegals) and had the 'courts' nullify them. The mere existence of federal restrictions on guns and the BATFE are examples of absolute violations of the 2nd ammendment (if you take the view that the BOR apply only to the Fed) and yet, they still exist. Much the same way states must follow Roe v. Wade as they have been nuetered on the subject of abortion.

Yeah, the vote-thingie works real good. And I must be one of those Bush I thousand points of light. If I run out of candles, I can always burn my copy of the constitution.

Let me postulate a hypothetical and have you provide a response.

Has this ever happened anywhere? …

Nice non-response... By definition, a “hypothetical” hasn’t happen. You completed avoided the question. Why not just answer the question directly? Would providing the obvious answer force you to admit something you are in cognitive dissonance over? Go ahead, answer it directly, if you have the intellectual integrity and intestinal fortitude.

Are not all citizens entitled to the full protection of the law from those who threaten their lives?

Directly, yes. Indirectly, no.

From your indirect response, it appears you would concede that child safety belt laws are ok, after all. These citizens are not mentally capable of making cogent decisions on the risk management implications of choosing to wear such devices themselves. Therefore, it seems that you agree that it is appropriate for the government to mandate that they be protected by the safest course until such time as they have the mental capacity to make fully informed decisions.

…where do you stop?

That issue is exactly the balance of rights and liberties that we elect legislators to enact laws to determine and take issues to court to get disputes resolved over. As I noted earlier, you and I may prefer to see the balance more toward the individual rights and liberties side of the scale, but we can only have our way through the ballot box.

How would you react if your child or spouse were the fatality created by a drunk driver?

I'd react emotionally like most. Then, I'd make certain the perp received the severest punishment allowed. But, I wouldn't invite the State to punish every driver on the road for an act for which they had no complicity.

By the logic of your response, we should not enforce any traffic laws until someone has been harmed. From this reasoning, it seems that you would prefer a driver kill someone speeding, than be punished for violating the speed limit. In theory, there is no difference between requiring a driver to observe the traffic laws concerning speed limits and in not driving drunk. Law enforcement is entitled to stop a speeding driver even though he or she has not yet killed anyone. Why should they not be entitled to stop a drunk driver before he or she has killed someone?

the business of any society’s legal system has always been about achieving a balance between the competing values of the society it exists to serve.

And yet, there are limits as to how far a 'society' may go and they are ignored with impunity. Ignore the 2nd ammendment and get elected as being 'tough on crime'. Pass CFR, have the president sign it (hoping the US Supreme Court will nullify it) and they'll pat you on the back as a true election reformer. Never mind you just screwed the 1st ammendment, you'll smell like a rose in the rose garden (someday, if you get elected, that is).

As I noted in my previous response to you, if you don’t like the balance, it is potentially within your power through the ballot box to change it, if you can convince enough of your fellow citizens to support your position.

As long as it is legal for every citizen to vote, run for office and voter fraud is illegal, if your country leaves you, it is your fault.

I'm sorry, we've voted overwhelmingly for things like prop 187 (denying benefits to illegals) and had the 'courts' nullify them. …

I noted a distinct lack of address the issue of running for office. If you don’t like the situation, get yourself elected and change it.

Yeah, the vote-thingie works real good. And I must be one of those Bush I thousand points of light. If I run out of candles, I can always burn my copy of the constitution.

I say again: Do you vote in every [includes all of the local primaries, school boards, etc.] election? Are you active in the political party of your choice? Do you run for office at any level? Do you, or have you, served in the armed forces? Do you communicate with your elected representatives? Do you write letters to the editor of your local newspapers?

You didn’t answer all of the questions. Why not?

Did you know that the US Constitution gives Congress the power to remove federal judges through impeachment? Did you know that it also gives Congress the power to limit even the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction not directly named in the Constitution? Did you know that Congress has the power to eliminate any federal court below the Supreme Court? Did you know that amendments do not have to start in Congress according to the Constitution?

As I noted before, if you don’t like the situation, convince enough of your fellow citizens, get yourself elected and change it.

I’ll be off line until late this afternoon… Sorry, have to work so I can pay my internet connection fees. I look forward to your direct responses.

Did you know that the Delanos and Morgans made huge fortunes in the China clipper opium trades?

I am not quite sure of your point with this comment other than the fact that the drug trade was legal in China, initially. However, I will point out that the opium trade severely weakened China. In fact, as I recall, it was one of the motivators for the “Boxer Rebellion” which colonial powers (including the US) put down. If legalized drug trade hurt China, it can potentially do the same for any other country… including the US.

The progressives of both parties are the primary creators of leviathan, copying policies from the euro-collectivists, bent on "scientifically" managing and planning economies and societies, for our own good of course, nudge - nudge.

Again, I am unsure of how this comment relates to our previous discussion. Nonetheless, even if you are correct, the fact that such "scientifically" managing and planning has taken place has been at the volition of the voters. While the corruptness and ineptitude of the political parties and politicians of all stripes is certainly a topic worthy of investigation and, perhaps, correction, it has still been the American voter who has put in power the various politicians enacting such laws and endorsing activities.

Besides the amendment process, the Constitution has mechanisms within it to dissolve federal courts, impeach judges, and limit jurisdictions of every federal court, even the Supreme Court (except for matters of original jurisdiction specified in the Constitution).

The only productive government activity there ever was, according to the constitution, is a Govt commited to adhering to the constituion that gave it life, and whose sole purpose was in protecting our shores, our property and our pre-existing natural & civil rights.

In very general terms and philosophical grounds, I am inclined to agree with you. However, there are certain natural & civil rights that come into conflict with each other as well as with the government’s duty to protect our shores and our property. Additionally, there are issues of long term protection versus the short term limitations for the sake of that long term action. Beyond these issues are states’ rights issues. In short, “it as easy as it looks.”

It just never did allow Congress to constitutionally create such as the ICC, the Fed'l Reserve, an income tax, SS, welfare, graduated taxes, bridges to nowhere and all other grandiose monuments to politicians at taxpayer expense. IE nothing Congress spends should have ever been spent that does not benefit all taxpayers equally, as a battleship would.

By your logic, it didn’t allow Congress to create the FAA or the FCC, either. Do you maintain that these agencies should not exist? If you maintain that these agencies should not exist, then, exactly, who do you think should handle the air traffic system or the regulation of radio frequency allocations, etc.

Income tax was specifically authorized by the XVI Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment did not restrict Congress in how it could implement the amendment. Consequently, your are mistaken about the lack of Constitutionality of “graduated taxes.” Such are, in deed, very Constitutional. As to Social Security and other forms of welfare, I agree with you philosophically. However, the courts have consistently ruled that these programs are Constitutional. So as I have posed to another poster on this thread: if you think it is wrong, run for office get yourself elected and change it. The Constitution gives the power to do so to Congress.

The several states were intended to be the individual testbeds of liberty, that only a limited Fedl Govt can foster. Giving citizens the ability to vote with their feet, rewarding the states that best treated their citizens and protected their rights. Such is the dilemma still inescapable today in publik edukation - no free choice, a totally unAmerican situation.

Again, as I put it to another poster:

Do you vote in every [includes all of the local primaries, school boards, etc.] election? Are you active in the political party of your choice? Do you run for office at any level? Do you, or have you, served in the armed forces? Do you communicate with your elected representatives? Do you write letters to the editor of your local newspapers?

If you think the current system and/or situation is wrong or “screwed up,” change it… It is within your power if you can convince enough of your fellow citizens.

Why not just answer the question directly?

Your hypothetical assumes a bit much and I disagree with this presumtion: that under such duress a 'significant portion' of the population would seek to get 'high' rather than pursue survival activities. I don't think anything like that took place in New Orleans, but I could be mistaken.

The only 'solution' would be to rally the troops you might have left, and 'lead' them out of the abyss. Granted, it would take leadership rather than it's cheap cousin- invoking the police state. Perhaps this is what you had in mind?

From your indirect response, it appears you would concede that child safety belt laws are ok, after all.

No. Your questions were: Is a child a citizen? Are not all citizens entitled to the full protection of the law from those who threaten their lives?

They would be if a person were actively (directly) 'threatening' their lives (by planning to hit a tree at 60mph, for example). You prefer to invoke the power of the state over the parent (a red flag if ever there was one) by imposing a risk reduction scheme that may or may not apply to them, certainly not under all driving conditions.

In rare cases, children may die because they couldn't be extracted from your state mandated car seat quickly enough. Who do I sue? Some nanny stater/busybody just killed my child.

it seems that you would prefer a driver kill someone speeding, than be punished for violating the speed limit. In theory, there is no difference between requiring a driver to observe the traffic laws concerning speed limits and in not driving drunk.

In theory, speed limits are references as to what would be 'safe' speeds under good driving conditions. In a theory that I shall now pull out of my butt (as you did), exceeding the recommended 'safe' speed may be exactly the same as driving above the 'safe' legal BAC limit when one can do so without causing harm to others.

Germany has the Autobahn. Nevada 'used' to have no-limit sections of highway. While I can't point to any particular place where drunks get home without incident, I'll take comfort in the knowledge that the thousands of bars and restaurants serving liquor enjoy a significant repeat business.

Law enforcement is entitled to stop a speeding driver even though he or she has not yet killed anyone. Why should they not be entitled to stop a drunk driver before he or she has killed someone?

Entitled? Did you say entitled? Title goes only to those who have ownership. The state doesn't own anything beyond a bunch of parks, they certainly don't possess a 'title' to your driving priviledge, any more than they have 'title' to your breathing priviledge.

What they have is: permission, permission by the legislature to filch your wallet under the same false risk-reduction protocol as mentioned above re: child safety seats. Or "Click it- or Ticket". Nothing more than revenue enhancements for the state at the loss of your individual rights.

Stopping a drunk driver before they kill someone requires a degree of crystal ball reading that I doubt most cadets acquire upon leaving the academy. Most of them would probably refuse to go by the first name: Madame- while wearing a silk scarf on their head. So, we institute a standard instead: .10 (whoops, change that [see Clinton E.O.]), .08 (better- we get the highway funds), .01 (for anyone under 18).

it is potentially within your power through the ballot box to change it, if you can convince enough of your fellow citizens to support your position.

This is THE bright spot in your post. I agree wholeheartedly. Yet, politics are a fickle thing when it comes to changing hearts- while trying to come to the defense of liberty in a world where acceptance of individual responsibility (liberty) is so easily traded for that bag-o-sh*t called security.

Why not just answer the question directly?

Your hypothetical assumes a bit much and I disagree with this presumption...

You still have not directly answered the question, unless you consider the following your direct answer:

The only 'solution' would be to rally the troops you might have left, and 'lead' them out of the abyss. Granted, it would take leadership rather than it's cheap cousin- invoking the police state. Perhaps this is what you had in mind?

If the above is, in deed, your response, then the “translation” is you would allow (in the hypothetical situation presented) the US to collapse or be over run (absent such miraculous leadership) rather than restrict hallucinogenic and narcotic drug use. Correct?

From such a response, it would appear that you value a nation of liberty too little to restrict, even, the most egregious non-productive behavior to save it. Is this statement also a correct representation of your position?

From your indirect response, it appears you would concede that child safety belt laws are ok, after all.

No. Your questions were: Is a child a citizen? Are not all citizens entitled to the full protection of the law from those who threaten their lives?

They would be if a person were actively (directly) 'threatening' their lives (by planning to hit a tree at 60mph, for example).

Perhaps you have never heard of the term, “negligent homicide” (known as “manslaughter” in some jurisdictions)? Last I checked, it didn’t require “planning to hit a tree” (which, by the way, would have made it premeditated murder). Nonetheless, it is still a crime, i.e., against the law. Citizens (including children), in deed, have a natural right to “life,” (as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) i.e., to be protected from those who would unlawfully deprive them of this right through “negligent homicide” or “manslaughter.”

You prefer to invoke the power of the state over the parent (a red flag if ever there was one) by imposing a risk reduction scheme that may or may not apply to them, certainly not under all driving conditions.

For your information, we, the people, have established and ordained a government through a constitution that does invoke the power of the state (although not at the federal level) to, in fact, impose a risk reduction scheme on those who would commit negligent homicide. Exactly, what part of that is a “red flag?”

In rare cases, children may die because they couldn't be extracted from your state mandated car seat quickly enough. Who do I sue? Some nanny stater/busybody just killed my child.

Your proposed suit is a matter to be settled at civil law, not criminal law. Whomever is the subject of your suit, should you chose to pursue it, would be a common law issue, not a criminal law issue.

it seems that you would prefer a driver kill someone speeding, than be punished for violating the speed limit. In theory, there is no difference between requiring a driver to observe the traffic laws concerning speed limits and in not driving drunk.

In theory, speed limits are references as to what would be 'safe' speeds under good driving conditions....

You are only partially correct. The speed limit is also a legal restriction, i.e., legal prohibition against exceeding it. An apprehension for violation of this legal prohibition results in a misdemeanor or a felony charge in some jurisdictions (depending upon the degree of excess).

In a theory that I shall now pull out of my butt (as you did), exceeding the recommended 'safe' speed may be exactly the same as driving above the 'safe' legal BAC limit when one can do so without causing harm to others. ... While I can't point to any particular place where drunks get home without incident, I'll take comfort in the knowledge that the thousands of bars and restaurants serving liquor enjoy a significant repeat business.

Your reference to a certain portion of the anatomy as a source for your opinions notwithstanding, the issue is not as you have postulated. Using your reasoning, it is possible to intentionally and knowingly fire a weapon in the direction of another person and not hit them (not causing harm to others) and not be guilty of attempted murder, negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, or some other violation of the law. I do not think that you would be so willing to assume this position if you or your loved ones were the ones at the discharge end of the weapon.

There were 16,694 alcohol-related fatalities in 2004 – 39 percent of the total traffic fatalities for the year. An estimated 248,000 people in that same year were injured in crashes where police reported that alcohol was present. Is it your position that these victims should not be protected from deprivation of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness by the law?

Germany has the Autobahn. Nevada 'used' to have no-limit sections of highway. While I can't point to any particular place where drunks get home without incident,

Similarly, there are section of the Autobahn that have speed limits and, as you observed, sections of highway in Nevada that also have them. The law, as enacted by the representatives of the people, has established a limit on certain behaviors, i.e., speeding.

Law enforcement is entitled to stop a speeding driver even though he or she has not yet killed anyone. Why should they not be entitled to stop a drunk driver before he or she has killed someone?

Entitled? Did you say entitled? Title goes only to those who have ownership. The state doesn't own anything beyond a bunch of parks, they certainly don't possess a 'title' to your driving priviledge, any more than they have 'title' to your breathing priviledge.

You are mistaken. Law enforcement is entitled by the law, as in, for example, Title 10 US Code, etc. However, beyond your misunderstanding of the usage of a word, your misunderstanding extends far deeper. You correctly identified driving as a “privilege,” i.e., it is not one of those “natural rights” to which all citizens are “entitled” such as life, i.e., “breathing.” The representatives of the people, i.e., government, may restrict whatever “privileges” as they choose as long as such restrictions apply uniformly to all citizens. I trust your misunderstanding is clarified, now.

What they have is: permission, permission by the legislature to filch your wallet under the same false risk-reduction protocol as mentioned above re: child safety seats. Or "Click it- or Ticket". Nothing more than revenue enhancements for the state at the loss of your individual rights.

While I certainly can not argue that some corrupt officials use speed laws as a revenue enhancement, such is not the intended outcome of state enacted speed limitations. Additionally, as you noted above, driving is a privilege, not a right.

Stopping a drunk driver before they kill someone requires a degree of crystal ball reading that I doubt most cadets acquire upon leaving the academy. Most of them would probably refuse to go by the first name: Madame- while wearing a silk scarf on their head. So, we institute a standard instead: .10 (whoops, change that [see Clinton E.O.]), .08 (better- we get the highway funds), .01 (for anyone under 18).

It is possible to require the installation of “breath-o-lizers” into the ignition circuitry of automobiles. Such would certainly stop most drunk drivers from killing someone. Would you prefer this alternative? (Actually, except for increasing the cost of automobiles, such an approach has a certain egalitarian merit to it.)

In any case, police officers can not, under the color of law enforcement, stop a driver without reasonable suspicion. Such suspicion is usually evidenced by erratic vehicle control or other obvious indicators.

it is potentially within your power through the ballot box to change it, if you can convince enough of your fellow citizens to support your position.

This is THE bright spot in your post. I agree wholeheartedly. Yet, politics are a fickle thing when it comes to changing hearts- while trying to come to the defense of liberty in a world where acceptance of individual responsibility (liberty) is so easily traded for that bag-o-sh*t called security.

Well, it nice to know that we do, in fact, agree. Now, perhaps it is time for those who would complain to take action, regardless of the “fickleness of politics when it comes to changing hearts.” Granted, it would take leadership...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.