Replies

Remember this one???

What, then, is Liberty?

As there have been many discussions lately about Liberty, spearheaded by Jeff Head, who will come to be ranked as one of the greatest Patriots of all time, not just our own, I feel it is time to respond, after having had a few days to consider, to the basic question of what constitutes Liberty.

As always, in any discussion, the participants must agree at least on some basic definitions in order to compare and contrast their opinions. So I am inclined here to give the definition that I have maintained, a definition that at least allows us to consider "Liberty" from the same pespective, it is a basic tenet, other considerations may be (And will be!) heaped upon it, but it serves as a starting point from which the ideas may flow:

Liberty:
Freedom from restraint
No compelled performance

This particular definition cuts to the chase, so to speak, as it it simple and relays the basic ideas, which, to paraphrase somewhat simply, are that no one can stop you from doing something, and no one can order you to do anything.

When one declares this type of definition, one is immediately assaulted by those who say "You can't have that!" "That's anarchy!" "What about the children?" and so on.

So let us dispense with such arguments from the onset. NONE of the great libertarian philosophers have ever confused Liberty with license. Read Jefferson, Mill, Bastiat, Franklin, and you will never find a single word that says a person's liberty can or should be used in opposition to the well being, goals, ambitions, or liberty of others. On this point, there is no variation, your freedom to punch ends where my nose begins.

Liberty, then, must be seen to mean neither anarchy nor lawlessness. Society, in general, has a need to expect conduct which will, if not benefit all, at least will not harm them. Such is the basis of society everywhere, an unspoken agreement that social order and peace are worthy causes. Yet such a need is more and more being assumed to be a power to regulate things not within the Governmental sphere or indeed even in the societal sphere.

The Price of Liberty

If your daughter decided to marry a drug addict, would you campaign for laws to prevent her?
I think this is a good example because it demonstrates the difference between Law and Society, it makes us consider that No matter what we know in truth to be the best, it is often not in our power to make it happen!
We may know the outcome, the script was written and has been played through thousands of times, yet come to it's own conclusion, it must.
And while such a scenario highlights outcomes that may seem to argue against liberty, as something fraught with danger and possible failure, it crystallizes the reasons for liberty, which are that it is the essential part of a person's life that helps him develop, mature, and determine his own destiny.
None of us are immune from making bad choices, but none of us have not, at least a few times, learned valuable lessons from those choices. The Perfect World

Imagine you wake up one morning and find all your dreams have come true! Perfect health, all the money you need, a fine house, whatever you value now as the way your life should be.
I think you would relish it very much, at least at first, but before long, I see the following:

Before the next New moon, you would start to be restless and bored.
Before the next change of season, despair would set in.
Before a year had gone by, you would be insane or suicidal.

This illustrates an undeniable need of man, not that our dreams are false, but that the getting part is at least as important as the having part. We learn from our endeavors, richness comes from our successes as well as our failures. Such is part of the master plan, which we cannot deny, and will iterate itself over and over for generations of bad first job interviews and failed marriages, and we are fools if we think we, or society, or government can change it. On Society

Society is not the collective will of man, it is his interaction with each other. John Stuart Mill, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, speaks of these issues in his essay "On Liberty". Mill was educated very properly, some would say severely, by his father. At 3 he was taught Mathematics and Latin. At 8 he was thouroughly familiar with the greek classics. At 15, he was an expert in the Roman Law. As a result of this strict regimen by his father, he became fiercely libertarian.
In his essay, Mill concedes that society sometimes has a need to make laws. Society indeed benefits from social order, as commerce, education, the arts and sciences and other aspects come to fruition.
Yet this concession is immediately followed by the warnings. The warnings are of a society that comes to think it knows what is right for the individual. He speaks of the "tyranny of the majority", a place and time where the desires of the many outweigh the rights of the one:

"Society can and does execute it's own mandates, and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."

With that in mind, we can ask whether society can impose laws. A good example here would be speed limits in school zones. These have saved lives. But when one studies these things, you soon find out that these types of "laws" are generally civil in nature, there are ways to fight them in court and win.
As far as that goes, liberty remains. I will not discuss any of the particulars about these laws for one simple reason: I don't need an eighteen year old in court after he had just run over a six year old mumbling about sovereignty and BOP's.
In a certain sense, then, it can be said that I do not follow these laws. I don't need to be told to slow down in a school zone, or threatened by terrible retribution. I do what is right, because it is right, not because it is the "law", and my liberty remains intact.
In all times and places, there will be those who through immaturity, greed, contempt, or just general mischief, will try to push the envelope of acceptable behavior. There are laws, and if you feel they apply to you, all well and good. The Terrible Teeth

We come at last to the crux of the matter, The Terrible Teeth, the crushing jaws. Government and the Law. Law is, and will remain, the most powerful tool that men or society posess. Historically, government was organized to protect the society from conquest.The greatest leaders, the victors, were often decided to have divine guidance, they were deemed to be Kings. The succession of monarchies, where people were indeed "subjects', property of the King, as much as the trees, the wheat, and the land were his property, has only recently eroded. Mill refers to this as an "age of enlightenment", in the political sense, as much an advance as the age of reason in the scientific and industrial sense.
The change came in the form of the springing up of representative democracies and republics. The role of government was finally and absolutely determined to be that of workers for the people. The government ruled with the consent of the people.It was hoped that these means would end despotism, and truly enfranchise all the people.
But these hopes are proving to be meager, if we do not pay constant attention. Government can, if it likes, run a forty ton tank through your front wall, into your dining room, and out the back wall with nothing on earth to stop it!
Government can, now, learn more about you, listen to your private communications, the list of things in it's power grows daily.
With this in mind, as the fangs sharpen, we are obligated to be very careful when we as a society demand "laws". They had better be laws that society even has an interest in, not laws to determine who we will marry. They should be laws where all other means have failed, when I was younger, people tended not to do certain things, because there would be gossip, and a healthy dose of shame.
Law should be the last resort, the terrible fangs can shread and rip and destroy.
An Example of the Worst

In the early decades of this century, if one wanted to be a scientist, you had better learn German. Germany, at it's peak, was the worldwide center of cultural and scientific achievement. But a man soon appeared, who was able to convince the German people that there was a better way, he knew the better way, and if they gave him the power, he would advance their cause. His name of course was Adolph Hitler.
The reason I bring this up is because of the following: A little study and you soon come to realize that it was not a group of extremists, left or right, that gave Hitler and the German war machine his powers. It was mainstream society, the educational establishments, the captains of industry, the elite, the cultured, in the name of socialism! Persons who objected, or thought differently, were crushed and cooked in the German war machine, commodities for the Krupps, less than human.
This example serves as a reminder of the outcome where a society completely forgets about the liberties of man. You can bet that German ideaologies at the time were as perfectly synchronized and in lockstep as the marches of the German infantry. It shows a society gone mad, and the failure of the government being involved in areas that are most properly determined by society or the individual person. We are well reminded, then, that our afairs with each other, and with other nations, are indeed our affairs, not governments, government is representative of the people. Morality

Jeff's essay properly asked about morality and government. In this matter, I think there are two distinct parts:

Should government be made up of moral people?
Should government enforce our morality?

My answer to the first is an unqualified YES!
Due to the terrible teeth, the ripping fangs of government, there is no room in it for those who would act in an immoral fashion. Bribery, corruption, influence peddling will always rear their ugly heads, but to allow it in government, which has power and fury almost indescribable, is a recipe for disaster and death.
My answer to the second is No!. Morality, ethics, our interpersonal relationships, our bedrooms, our schools and churches are not something we want government addressing. And it is fundamentally opposed to what the founders wanted and wrote about in the Declaration, That "men are endowed (by heaven) with certain unalienable rights,... and to secure these rights, governments are instituted". This statement in actual fact and proper reading shows that government becomes an agent not of men, but is supposed to be doing the work of heaven above itself! A lofty goal indeed. In Conclusion

Liberty is the natural and most lofty state of man. Our chance to grow, to choose our hobbies, our occupations, our mates, our destinies can only reach their proper conclusion in the air of liberty. So I will close by quoting from Frederik Bastiat's "The Law", a piece written about 1850, in response to the growing socialist movement in post-revolutionary France:
The desire to rule over others
My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks - armed with rings, hooks, and cords surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his earlobes down to his shoulders." A third said "He will never see sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his head." "Stop!" cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
Let us Now Try Liberty
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of Liberty. Away, then with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their governmental schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislator and do-gooders have so futiley inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.

God bless,
in peace and liberty,
djf
November, 1998