There is a rather long discussion going on at the post The Government IS The Devil. In that post I suggested that the government was limited to protecting public order and that its intrusion into the business of schools (currently a socialist enterprise called the Public School System) and the socialization of morality through ventures such as alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition was wrong headed and that the championing of all three by Cultural Conservatives in an attempt to bring True Morality to the American Public through the use of government guns was at minimum misguided and at worst a consorting with evil in the hopes of doing good. And we all know how bargains with the Devil usually work out. Everything is going swimmingly and then the balloon payment becomes due.
Now a commenter brought up this point.
By advocating absolute liberty as an end to itself, devoid of any contextual reality such as the role of virtue, you’re asking people to ask their government to stand for…nothing.
Well except in the craziness of my youth I never have stood for absolute Liberty. What ever the hell that is. Well maybe I do know what that is: “It is good to be King”. Yes. It is. If you are the King. The kind of Liberty I have in mind is better expressed by Thomas Jefferson:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
But you know. That Liberty thing. Scary stuff. Who knows what people might do if the government isn’t watching. They might be having fun in unapproved ways. Why they could be harming their eternal souls. Or piercing their eye brows. I think the eye brow piercing probably hurts more. But that is just me.
In any case I’m not asking the government to stand for nothing. I’m asking it to stand for Liberty.
Probably the scariest substance on earth. Also the costliest.
What a weak lot so many Americans have become to be so afraid of Liberty. Men died to give it to you and you treat it like a toxic substance. I laugh at your wretched condition. Groveling before government to protect you from Liberty. Not a man among you – those who fear Freedom.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” Samuel Adams
Craven cowards the lot of you.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
20 responses to “Standing”
If you’re asking the government to “stand for liberty,” then you are asking it to limit itself.
Not gonna happen. Further, you are asking your fellow citizens to ask government to limit itself.
Not gonna happen.
If you take away any observations from the past three or four decades of our relationship with the govenment, it ought to be that we don’t want a limited government, if it means we quit our claim on more goodies. So indulge your pipe deasm all you want, but we as a population have already decided that we want free stuff and cradle to grave guarantees over liberty.
And that is not a conservative/liberal battlegorund. You are painting yourself into the classic Big L libertarian irrelevance, shaking your clenched fists at the Department of Education or whatever the current bete noir is, shrieking “I deny your legitimacy!”
I don’t know what the eventual fix will be, short of a catastrophic economic and social collapse that throws us all back into survival mode and forces a redefinition of the social contract.
Well, if we’re going to bring Jefferson into it:
“Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1816
“Self-love… is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities by education, instruction or restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor.”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1814
“What a weak lot so many Americans have become to be so afraid of Liberty. ”
The best line of a truly beautiful topic. Sadly, true in many respects.
Steve, I wholeheartedly disagree with your first four sentences. If one looks only to the newspaper headlines of the last few decades, that conclusion is justified; however, there is no particular reason to so limit your sight.
A great many Americans have asked and will gladly ask the government to limit itself and instances of the government voluntarily limiting itself, while sadly rarer than previously, still abound.
Steve,
The piece was more a rallying cry than a description of what is.
Kim,
Yes governments can pass laws. I give three general examples of government passing laws. The question is not what is allowed. The question is the what is wise.
Just exactly what parts of the culture is it wise to socialize? I can’t think of any. But of course that likely is due to my libertarian sensibilities. So perhaps you can help me out.
I think the general tenor of Jefferson is that without virtue we can’t keep Liberty. I agree. And without that intrinsic virtue government is powerless to enforce virtue.
OTOH without the the Liberty to be a libertine you don’t get St. Augustine. If we fail to allow youthful follies how is youth going to learn the error of its ways from the only teacher some will have: experience.
Anon.
Thank you.
tim,
My view is historical. If you have been following the various pieces I have done on the subject in the last few weeks you would know that each of the policies mentioned was strongly supported by social conservatives at their inception roughly 100 years ago.
I’m not going to go into the details here but let me give you one data point that you may have heard of in school. Re: alcohol prohibition – Rev. Billy Sunday.
All three examples given are attempts by people to use government to improve the culture. And each may have done so for a while. Now each is performing the opposite function.
Another example: the drug war is taking marriageable Black men out of circulation or reducing their desirability as a marriage partner. And what is one of the current cries of the Cultural Socialist? “We must strengthen the family – and BTW government can help.” Idiots.
You’re not courting the Left.
CitiBank courted the Left. It seems, successfuly.
Ronald Reagan–our modern day Thomas Jefferson–said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant: It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Whether it’s golf, poker, plumbing,tree falling or economics, fundamentals are important. Especially true for basketball.
If you’ve ever taken up the game (golf, poker, basketball) you probably had at some point a friend or coach criticize parts of your game. The purpose here is to improve your ability to compete. How you hold your hands when you’re shooting a free throw is a fundamental. How you grip your club is a fundamental. Knowing the odds of filling an inside straight is a fundamental.
And yet, when it comes to the economy, it seems the general populace lacks an appreciation or understanding of the fundamentals. On the Left and the Right. Weird, crazy, flawed thoughts and statements are regularly stated, peated and repeated. The Paulists with their Gold Buggery. The Socialists with their redistributionist cant.
What works, and how does it work should be classed as fundamental economic thought. Why? Who cares why? Why is a BS question.
It is the schools…in part. Worse is the total lack of fundamentals in math, statistics and economics in the buildings that house newspapers and broadcast television studios. Newspapers and broadcasters regularly hire people with no skills to report on the actions of governments and businesses.
And the depth of skills–the fundamentals–is reminscent of Saturday’s Soccer Mom coaching her daughter’s U-8 team. Do we require Soccer Mom to have an understanding of the fundamentals of soccer? Well, yes and no. After all, the purpose of recreational soccer is for the kids to have fun.
And so, too, is the political debate taking place. On the Left, there’s lots of fun. On the Right? Doom and gloom.
We’re not courting the Left.
the championing of all three by Cultural Conservatives
You keep repeating this canard as if somehow it will be believed.
While there are prohibitionists on both the left and the right (alcohol, drugs, tobacco, firearms, recreational vehicles – ATVs, jetskis, etc, – name your item.) This often seems less of a typical left/right conservative/liberal thing than a Heinleinian division of “those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
But you need to supply some credible evidence of cultural conservatives who champion Federal control of the education system. GW Bush falling in with the likes of Teddy Kennedy being a very poor example of any such thing.
Steve,
I do not deny the legitimacy of any of it. Laws were passed. And vetted all up and down the line. And I’m a small “l” libetarian for two reasons: pragmatism in general and Foreign Policy/Military in particular.
The people are getting the government they want. Better – they are getting the government they deserve. This piece is more of a Jeremaid, a call to repent, than a critique of any particular program. Although I do use some programs to provide examples.
Thomas D,
I have written a number of pieces on the subject in the last month or so. I follow the history. It is not my fault your ignorance remains. I have never said social conservative s were the sole champions of these measures. They were in cahoots with the Socialists. Or as they liked to call themselves then (and now) Progressives. So that is one point in favor of the Social Conservatives in the Republican Party. They see the folly of Economic Socialism. I’m trying to take them the rest of the way and teach them the folly of Cultural Socialism.
Now if social conservatives do not want to repent? Well that is up to them. They can keep their alliance with the government and see if it leads to the moral nation they so crave.
Now why start in on the Social Conservatives? Well a few of them are listening – I get e-mails – and I currently have no clout with Democrats. And might I add the Republicans are supposed to be the small government party. It is an ancient piety honored more in the breech than in the practice.
But they have come half way. They do want small government economically. So that is something.
Thomas D. I go back much farther than the George Bush era. I go back to the alliance between the Socialists and the Cultural conservatives that brought us the Public School System in an attempt to indoctrinate newly arriving Catholic and Jewish immigrants. Any way you can look it up.
If that history embarrasses you perhaps it is time to look at the errors and fix them. Perhaps alliances with government to fix culture work no better than alliances with government to fix economics.
Remember when your freedom ended at my nose? Now, my freedom doesn’t even include my nose.
In today’s comment section, the part of Steve will be played by Ming the Merciless: “Foolish libertarians! Who will defend your liberty now? Submit!”
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
That IS Absolute Liberty. Absolute, within its self-delimited sphere as logically defined by the same rights of others (as opposed to the pernicious notion of being limited or “balanced” by society).
Self-love… is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
Mrs. du Toit, thank you for that Thomas Jefferson quote. It encapsulates the contradiction at the genesis of this country, which was the seed of its current travails: the contradiction between life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and “Don’t Tread on Me” — versus the “morality” of altruism.
Ultimately, liberty boils down to the individual’s right to pursue one’s own happiness, and if you aren’t willing to make that stand, you are not a consistent defender of liberty.
Freedom is a selfish thing; such things as the right of self-determination logically follow from egoistic moral principles, not altruistic ones. If a man is free, he is free to be selfish — and this is right, a good thing.
There is no way around that fact, especially when it comes to *defending* liberty against its enemies.
That’s why altruism is always the ultimate moral ace card used against libertarians, by conservatives and Left alike: it’s their ultimate weakness.
And it will remain so as long as they insist that the moral trump card is not necessary.
Seerak,
Suppose we allow, for the sake of argument, that the moral trump card is a requirement.
Whose rules? Shall we punish adultery? Rand would have failed that test. Not very moral of her by some lights.
Once you have to consult a table of morals in order to have the correct government the question always becomes: whose table?
My preference is to avoid the religious wars altogether and leave morals to the people. If the people can’t handle morals they can’t handle Liberty and we might as well surrender that Liberty to the first group to come along who captures the government.
Seerak,
Let me note that Rand’s adultery was hurtful to her husband and to the wife of her partner in “crime”. Just full of self love to the exclusion of the obligations she willingly took on.
And yet I would not have government touch a hair on her head because of it.
Now as a full supporter of Jefferson’s statement perhaps you might care to explain why Rand should escape a Government prosecution? The dance should be interesting.
It’s Connie, not Kim.
The “liberty” the founders described had nothing to do with personal liberties, in the sense of how we use the word today (or is used by many).
It meant, literally, “the ability to have a government of their choosing.” The degree to which a person advocates and recognizes a society’s right to form whatever government THEY want (and change it as they see fit) is the extent to which the support the liberty the Founders were describing.
If you read the Original documents and other quotes with that meaning, it has an entirely different meaning and intent.
All I’m suggesting is not to bring the Founders into it when you’re describing unfettered government regulation into the matter of personal conduct/behavior.
The Adams quote would be (in today’s parlance): If ye love wealth better than a country free from rule of the monarchy, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom to make a government of and by The People…
Connie,
My apologies. It should have jumped out at me except it was late and as you know Kim in America these days is mostly a female name and… well some times I’m just stupid.
If you are correct about that (all though I have other Jefferson quotes that might indicate the word had different meanings depending on contexts) then no worries. We are as free as it is possible for a country to be. Because we have a government of our own choosing. Hand gun bans. Assault weapons bans, etc. Well we chose our government.
And as long as we get to choose our government personal liberty is irrelevant.
And you know the Rights and Liberties in the IXth Amendment? Bork was right. Meaningless. It is just an ink blot.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
–George Washington
The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.” – Copy to Clipboard
–Theodore Roosevelt
dragonlady,
So tell me – what can government do about it?
Can government make people good?
If so why did we give up on all the goodness that alcohol prohibition was responsible for?
OK. Scratch that. America is a mainly Christian church going nation – so can churches make people good?
If so who have so many people who had church weddings divorced? Why are there so many children of divorce from parents married in church?
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OK. Government can’t make people good and churches are failing at the job as well.
Care to suggest your fall back position?
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Note: the per capita consumption of alcohol is way down from colonial times. Is that a sign that we are actually more moral than the community that founded the nation?
It seems to me that what is happening is not an increase it vice. It is that people no longer feel the need to hide it. And why would that be? We have cut back on the persecution of those involved with vice. Jesus would be proud.
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And the advantage of not persecuting vice? People can see who the fools are. They become object lessons otherwise unobtainable when vice is hidden.