From The Founder's Desk
columnist: Walt Thiessen

Topic: Political Parties
Human Beings Can Be Trusted...Within Limits

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New columnist Logical Premises wrote a few days back that human beings cannot be trusted. This is my reply to that claim.

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by Walt Thiessen
(Libertarian)
Monday, January 28, 2008

In a reader comment under his opening article, "What Is A Statist," a new columnist on the Nolan Chart writing under the pen name, "Logical Premises" raised an interesting question. He wrote, "I don't trust human beings very much. A statist government would require all of the people in power to be rotated OUT of power regularly and exceedingly strong checks and balances, which is why it has never been attempted in a democratic setting -- it won't allow the sort of corrupt crap we have."

I have to admit that this website's administration (in addition to my paying jobs) have made it impossible for me to read everything of interest posted here, so I'm just now noticing his article.

With that caveat out of the way, I want to challenge the foundation of his claim. His claim is that human beings cannot be trusted. I counter that human beings can be trusted within limits, and that the most important (and the most stringent) limits should be placed on political power. The more political power someone has, the less they can and should be trusted. A person with little or no political power can be trusted more (although again not without other limits).

What can human beings be trusted to do? They can be trusted to look out for their own self-interest. With a few exceptions, that rule holds very true for human beings. Does that mean that every human being can be trusted in this way without exception? Of course not, but does that really matter? I say no. What matters is knowing how and what to recognize when dealing with others who demonstrate a lack of trust where their own self-interest is concerned.

Nor is it necessary for complete trust of human beings to exist in order to have a free society. This is a common misconception about libertarian thought. The misconception is that libertarianism cannot work because it requires perfect people, and people are not perfect. But the fact is that libertarian ideas work best precisely because people are not perfect, not because they are presumed to be perfect. This is also why libertarian ideas are better than statist ideas, because statist ideas actually depend upon a non-existent perfection in those who gain political power. Libertarian ideas themselves are not perfect, but they are nevertheless the best way to promote peaceful, civil society among human beings who are, themselves, not perfect or even (necessarily) trustworthy. The reason this is true is that political power creates distrust.

Politically speaking, the great danger from human untrustworthiness derives directly from human access to political power. Political power is the greatest threat that constantly interferes in human growth. It repeatedly and uniformly threatens to encourage strife among human beings. It disturbs the peace and undermines human development. It is political power which most accentuates the dangers of untrustworthy humans. Reduce that power, and the threat from untrustworthy humans is diminished.

Logical Premises argued in his article, "This country was founded on the mailed fist of governmental power. It was founded on the imperialistic designs of a group of people fed up that they were being oppressed, and so they came here, drove the inhabitants off their land, cheated them, revolted against their government, nearly lost until they decided to unify and fight together, and could only be called a country when the ridiculous Articles of Confederation were laid aside and a true federal central government was constructed."

That's true, but it does not prove that government in this country was not also founded upon what, as Logical Premises describes as follows: "They proclaim loudly that our country was founded on the principles of freedom, democracy, indepdance, justice, blah blah blah"? In other words, does the fact that horrible tyranny was initiated by many who came here seeking refuge from tyranny mean that reduction of tyranny was not one of their primary motivations? The answer, of course, is no. Just because someone engages in tyranny does not mean that he cannot oppose tyranny. It can also mean that he has not yet learned all the ways that tyranny can be manifested, including by himself.

A useful metaphor is the realm of human dysfunction. Drug, alcohol, and abusive addictions are often handed down from parent to child, almost always unwittingly. Children learn that such addictions are "normal" because they are brought up in them. Even if they rebel against that "normality" and resolve to avoid it with their own children, it is uncanny how often they end up recreating the exact same circumstances which led to the original dysfunctional behaviors in the first place. This phenomenon is often noted by psychologists and therapists who work "in the trenches" trying to help people overcome the debilitating effects of such dysfunctionalities in their lives. It is why so many experts will so often note that it can take at least three generations of continuous therapy to end a dysfunctional pattern in a family.

And yet, despite all of this, you will rarely find anyone with such a dysfunctionality who doesn't believe that overcoming that dysfunctionality and working to avoid passing it along to their children is not desirable. In other words, they oppose the dysfunctionality, then they pass it along anyway, often unconsciously.

So no....just because people who came to this country seeking refuge from tyranny and then subsequently engaged in their own tyrannical behavior does not mean that they no longer opposed tyranny once the shoe was on the other foot.

It is more accurate to say that there were competing views in this country of the proper role of government. The reason that Jeffersonian ideals continue to ring through history is that those are the ideals which have captured the imagination of so many who came later, including the present generations. Does this mean that Jefferson's ideas were universally adopted in his own time? Hardly. Does this failure to adopt his ideas universally mean that those same ideas were not a basis for the government? Of course not.

The struggle of ideas between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians was pronounced in early American history, and the struggle continues to this day. What libertarians say is that the Hamiltonian view, which on this website we describe as the statist view, should be rejected as an ideal for government, as a "practical" basis for government, and that the Jeffersonian view should be enhanced and developed.

Does this value judgment mean that Jefferson was not a man of contradictions? Does it mean that Jefferson was not a slaveholder? Does it mean that Jefferson had all the answers?

Of course not. He himself repeatedly stated as much.

Do we then conclude that Jefferson did not stand for individual rights, and that individual rights are not good, and just, and right? Do we then conclude that Jefferson did nothing to try to end slavery and oppression? Do we conclude that Jefferson did not seek to make government more responsive to the governed and effectively inferior to the governed? And do we also conclude that what Jefferson stood for was not what motivated a majority of the population during his lifetime?

Again, our answer must be: of course not.

So what exactly is the statist objection to a libertarian society? It is this. If and when a libertarian society is successfully achieved (or even approached), it will mean that the statists among us will no longer be able to exercise the levers of power to quell it. And that's what's at the root of their fears regarding the "untrustworthiness" of human beings. Statists simply don't trust human beings who have not been effectively rendered harmless by statist power, and they are less concerned by what those in power do. Libertarians have opposite views to these beliefs.

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2008 Walt Thiessen, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, January 28, 2008
Last modified: Monday, January 28, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of Walt Thiessen only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Walt Thiessen is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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