Topic: Libertarianism
Thinking About the Conditions of Liberty What are the conditions of liberty and freedom? This is a question libertarians need to think about and have an answer to before they can expect to move forward. How do we control power; and how do we encourage necessary vigilance?by Steven Yates
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Thinking About the Conditions of Liberty
Does liberty work?
At first blush, this is an odd question. Obviously it works. But wait a minute. In the present-day United States of America, we are losing our liberties at breakneck speed. So let's not be so sure. What do we mean, 'works,' anyway? Don't other political and economic forms of life 'work'?
What is liberty? Yes, we're in a predicament where things have gotten so bad we have to revisit the basics.
I'll define liberty as the social condition where individual persons have maximum freedom to live by their own choices, and not those of someone else. Economic liberty, obviously, speaks to freedom of choice in the economic realm, while personal liberty speaks for this freedom in the broader personal realm.
This suggests that there is a difference between freedom and liberty. I am free if I can make my own choices, and don't have to slavishly obey someone else's. I have liberty if my freedoms are respected by the rule of law in the larger society where all others have the same freedoms I enjoy.
That is freedom, and that is liberty, in the abstract. We have a lot of history to tell us how well they have 'worked.'
The struggle for liberty in society took centuries. Its documentary history goes back at least as far as the Magna Carta of 1215. We might even date the struggle for self-determination to William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart which dramatizes Wallace's doomed struggle against King Edward I.
The path from those events to our Declaration of Independence (1776) is well charted, but I don't think we spend enough time pondering the length of time--561 years from the Magna Carta to our Declaration, considerably longer than there has been a United States of America!
What stood in the way?
Two things. Power is one of them. It is also clear from history that some people are possessed by a lust for power. They need to dominate entire societies. I believe that today there is an elite that is obsessed with the desire to dominate the entire world if they can figure out how to do it.
I'll put it this way: there exists in every society a minority that is fascinated with power, and measures its successes in terms of how far it has come toward seizing as much power as possible. This minority is obsessed with controlling entire populations and economies for personal gain. Some of its members are naturally attracted to politics, but not all. Today some are at the helm of globalist corporations loyal only to the almighty dollar.
Allow me to distinguish the power of the sword from the power of the purse. The power of the sword represents the power of governments (i.e., kings, dictators, politicians) to further their goals through coercion. This idea is familiar to libertarians, who have always opposed it.
The power of the purse is the power the extremely wealthy have to further their goals by bankrolling what they want doneoffering sometimes enormous financial resources to those who are often willing to cooperate because they will do anything for a buck. The latter find themselves entrapped in a web of dependence to those holding the purse strings.
I believe many libertarians miss this second form of power because, like Ayn Rand, they trust too much in "free enterprise" which is often just a label--an expression as prone to Orwellian distortion as any other.
Liberty 'works' to the extent those in a society hoping to remain free can place checks on both forms of power. As the 200 year old saying goes, the price tag of liberty really is vigilance.
The other foe of liberty is a trait to which the common people are prone. The common people--or the masses, if one prefers--don't understand power. They aren't obsessed with it. They aren't interested in it. They live lives circumscribed by home and family, work and occupation, friends and neighbors, church and worship in many cases, and so on. Even the occasional "control freak" may be a dictator in his family life or as the boss in his place of work, but he or she has no need to rule the world.
None of this is bad in itself, but lack of interest in power makes the common people vulnerable to it. They aren't vigilante except against what affects them, usually directly and immediately.
The machinations of power brokers and would-be dictators can therefore sail under the radar.
To the extent their efforts succeed, the common people can have their freedoms diminished, just a little at a time. This, I think, explains what has happened with our society.
We have a vigilante minority, one might call it. But our vigilante minority isn't large enough, and it has been easy to demonize it in the controlled press (think of the many references to "gun nuts," "conspiracy nuts," and the many other ad hominem attacks that have been made against that minority in our society today who stand on the side of liberty and against encroaching tyranny).
How we can retain, nurture, and continue to grow this vigilante minority will be one of the themes of this series of columns. It will be necessary to understand both the nature of power and its pursuit, and the nature of the masses and how to proceed in the face of mass lack of interest. These are the conditions of liberty today. Only with working answers to such questions will we be in a position to answer that initial question, 'Does liberty work?'
February 6, 2008
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 7 thumbs so far
2008 Steven Yates, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The views expressed in this
article are those of Steven Yates only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Steven Yates 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.
Ahhh...refreshing...a look at core questions in an attempt to determine the essence of a theory and its opportunity for success and failure. Good article, thumbs way up. I'm interested in this series your beginning to present. Thanks for bringing it to the Charts!
Thank you... Exactly the question I have been (figuratively) “banging my head against the wall” about. "How we can retain, nurture, and continue to grow this vigilante minority will be one of the themes of this series of columns." Excellent Article... This is a very important subject, and seems simple enough a concept. Who doesn't want real freedom and liberty, right? However, as you said, most people are happy living the way they are not even realizing that rights like Habeas Corpus are being trampled by the "posers that be" (not a spelling error). On a personal level, I would think the first step is getting people interested in caring, is by asking questions of others in context of conversations, rather than confronting others with facts and figures. (To avoid sounding like a nut) Waiting for the moment to interject…. These situations happen more than you would think (when people are complaining about taxes increasing, job loss, etc… The normal things we complain about) get their wheels turning on their own. I don’t think you can’t push people to care without looking like a freak.
Just brainstorming, Not sure on the logistics, or even the possibility, but a start would be to retain the group of people that support Ron Paul
(if Ron Paul doesn't win the election... I'll just leave it at that for now.)
and spinoff a PAC of sorts. The PAC would be to push through legislation to research and put an action plan in place to retract any "unconstitutional legislation" that is currently in place.
"The power of the purse is the power the extremely wealthy have to further their goals by bankrolling what they want doneoffering sometimes enormous financial resources to those who are often willing to cooperate because they will do anything for a buck. The latter find themselves entrapped in a web of dependence to those holding the purse strings."
This, I'm afraid, is not properly "power" as should be feared. Without guns, the purse purchases nothing that can harm you.
"'Political power' refers to the power of the government. The special nature of that power is what differentiates government from all other social institutions. That which makes government government, its essential attribute, is its monopoly on the use of physical force. Only a government can make laws—i.e., rules of social conduct backed up by physical force. ...The penalty for breaking the law is fines, imprisonment, and ultimately, death. The symbol of political power is a gun.
"Economic power, on the other hand, is the ability to produce material values and offer them for sale. E.g., the power of Big Oil is the power to discover, drill, and bring to market a large amount of oil. Economic power lies in assets—i.e., the factors of production, the inventory, and the cash possessed by businesses. The symbol of economic power is the dollar.
"A business can only make you an offer, thereby expanding the possibilities open to you. The alternative a business presents you with in a free market is: 'increase your well-being by trading with us, or go your own way.' The alternative a government, or any force-user, presents you with is: 'do as we order, or forfeit your liberty, property, or life.'"
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
2008 Steven Yates, all rights reserved.