>Hello everyone,
Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty has done me the great honor of featuring one of my articles on their website. Please check it out at www.campaignforliberty.com. It is the first article under Featured Articles. More blogs coming soon. Thank you for your continued support.
Tom Mullen is interviewed by Claire Morrissey about his book A Return to Common Sense.
>For Western New York subscribers, I have been informed that my speaking engagement at SUNY Fredonia this Friday 3/27/09 at 7:30 PM is indeed open to the public, so feel free to stop by. There will be a book signing afterwards, so you can bring your copy or purchase one there, if you wish to. The event will be held in McEwen Hall on campus. There is ample parking around the hall for visitors. I hope to see you there!
>Just a reminder that I will be interviewed by Rick Williams on his show Build the Model tonight on Break the Matrix (Channel 1). As there are two channels, be careful to pick the right one or just use this direct link: https://www.breakthematrix.com/channels/1.
For newcomers to this blog, I am also a featured blogger at Break the Matrix (https://www.breakthematrix.com/), a media and social networking organization dedicated to the cause of liberty. Please check out the many wonderful writers, filmmakers, and news reporters there.
This past Friday, my new book A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America received a wonderful endorsement. Most of you are undoubtedly familiar with Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, author of Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, and frequent guest panelist on CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, and other financial broadcasts. Long ridiculed for his bearish outlook on the American economy, Mr. Schiff is now a superstar in the financial world for having accurately predicted the economic and financial meltdown we are experiencing right now.
Here is the review:
A well written primer on economics, liberty, and government that even avid Austrians will enjoy. If you have been blinded by government and Wall Street propaganda, “A Return to Common Sense” will help open your eyes. I not only recommend that you add this book to your freedom library, but that you buy a few copies for your friends.
Peter Schiff, Pres. of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc and author of “Crash Proof – How to Profit from the coming Economic Collapse.”
March 6, 2009 Interview on Free Talk Live
>There came a point between last year’s criminal bailout of the financial sector and the latest theft of $30 billion more to throw on the AIG bonfire that further acts of armed robbery by this government against its people ceased to matter, at least for me. It is not that I have thrown up my hands and given up. Far from it. Rather, I see the acceleration in both the frequency and the size of the bailouts for what they are – the death struggle of a drowning regime, flailing its arms as the water enters its lungs. With each new bailout and subsequent addition to its mountain of debt, the regime loses a little more of the only oxygen it has left – its legitimacy in the eyes of its people.
Legitimacy is the recognition by its people that their government is their rightful government, that the power it wields is legitimate power. In a free society, our Declaration of Independence tells us that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. As I’ve discussed before, the philosophy that inspired the founding of our nation asserts that such consent is given by a free people for only one reason: protection of their property. Thus, the legitimacy of the government of a free people only endures as long as that government continues to protect the property of its citizens. Once it ceases to protect property – or begins to attack and plunder property – it ceases to exercise legitimate power, for it no longer has the consent of the governed.
For those who understand these simple principles of liberty, the government of the United States lost its legitimacy decades ago. While there are many convincing arguments for an even earlier date, certainly after 1913 the matter was settled conclusively. It was in 1913 that the United States ceased to be a republic with a government whose purpose was to protect the property of the individual and became a social democracy with a government whose purpose was to plunder the property of the individual for “the good of society,” or “the general will,” if you prefer the language of the statist Rousseau. The good of society was, of course, defined by the state – the plunderer – eliminating any possibility that some inadvertent benefit might befall the governed. The good of society was defined as the twin statist pillars of tyranny that still dominate our society today: to achieve economic equality at home and to make the world safe for democracy abroad. These remain the two goals of the America democratic empire, espoused by both major political parties.
In order to achieve these ends, individual liberty – the only liberty– must be sacrificed. Why? Because in order to attempt to achieve the two pillars the state must attack the means and the tangible stuff of liberty – property. That is why in 1913, along with the new philosophy, came the insidious Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, and the 17th Amendment. These were the tools with which the new social democracy plundered the property of the individual in order to achieve its goals. Once the individual lost the right to the fruits of his labor, he lost his liberty, for there cannot be one without the other.
Certainly, the free enterprise juggernaut that was created by the former republic continued to thunder forward. However, it was now progressing under the weight of the coercive power of the state, which constantly attacked it, rather than under the rightful protection of the state, which had previously acted only in defense of property. The drag on free enterprise was light at first, but relentless in its growth. While America enjoyed good decades and bad after 1913, the seeds of systemic failure were sown, and the end to which we have now come inevitable.
This argument certainly begs the question of why the 1913 coup was a bloodless one. Why would a nation “conceived in liberty” quietly allow the very core of their liberty to be taken from them? The answer is that it was not taken from them, but given away. One must remember that the power in a democracy lies in the majority. This is where the significance of the 17th Amendment comes into play. This was the masterstroke of the new social democracy. By giving more “power to the people,” and eliminating the key check on federal power that the state legislatures possessed when they chose U.S. senators instead of popular vote, it was then a simple matter for the federal government to buy the liberty of the people. They deftly picked the pocket of an unsuspecting public by relieving them of their property (and therefore their liberty) by promising them other people’s property. This was the deal with the devil that was offered to the American people, and they took it. For those who objected, the two pillars were there to be thrown in their faces, with a hundred million voters to shout them down. As the Star Wars III character so eloquently put it, “So this is how liberty dies – to thunderous applause.”
So, at that point, the link between legitimacy and property rights was broken. Legitimacy remained dependent upon the consent of the governed, but after 1913 the American public no longer consented to government for protection of their property. Increasingly over the ensuing decades, that consent was given in return for the promise of other people’s property. Inevitably, “progress” for society became defined as the extent to which property could be stolen from one group and redistributed to another – at home through social programs, regulation, and other “economic policy” and abroad through military adventurism and empire-building. It should be obvious to the reader that this type of “progress” can only lead to the prospect that we may soon face ourselves: no property, and thus no liberty, at all.
One might be tempted to despair that a thousand years of tyranny awaits us. However, there is one flaw in the social democracy’s model: it is unsustainable. It has lived off of the productive capacity of the former republic for almost 100 years, but in that time the parasite has killed off the host. There are now a few in the minority that argue that government shouldn’t destroy the property rights of the individual in pursuit of the two pillars. What will become obvious very soon is that government cannot achieve its goals in this way. The model depends upon a productive element in society supplying the property needed for plunder, but without liberty there is eventually no productivity either. This is why empires fall, and for no other reason.
Thus, since the government’s legitimacy is now based upon its ability to provide its citizens with other people’s property, and because it will soon no longer be able to do so, it will obviously soon lose its legitimacy. Without legitimacy, regimes fall. If the surrealism of a government spending staggering sums of money in its last death throes has not hit home to the average American, the first medical claim unpaid for lack of funds under one of its socialist medical programs, the first Social Security check that bounces, or the first time a local welfare department closes its doors will spur this epiphany. If nothing so dramatic occurs (we do, in the end, have a printing press), then there will come a day – and that day is months or years away, not decades – that tens of millions of unemployed Americans are going to wake up and realize that the government’s promise of security via other people’s property was false. Then, the regime will fall.
Lest one assume that there is no work to be done by the majority of Americans, let us not create new illusions to replace the old ones. History shows that a corrupted people that throws off the tyranny of an oppressive government can only create something worse in its place. We must face the fact that the American people are corrupted – not because they drink too much liquor, have too much sex, or don’t go to church – but because they have lost all recognition of the rights of their fellow human beings to the fruits of their labor. The French Revolution should serve as a perfect example to Americans at this point in history. While the French rightly threw off the tyranny of a government that plundered their property, they merely transferred the privilege of plunder to themselves, all for the misguided cause of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” The result, as we know, was a bloody reign of terror.
We will achieve similar results with our own revolution without a change of ideology. We must reject entirely the notion that we have any right whatsoever to the property of others, and restore our founding principles as the organizing principles of our society. Should we again base our government on its original purpose of protecting property, we will once more secure the blessings of liberty and resume the pursuit of happiness. The true “time for choosing” is coming soon.
>“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
– John Adams (1787)[1]
It is starting to become apparent to even the most disinterested observer that something much bigger than even a worldwide recession is happening. The seeds of revolution have taken root. Iceland led the way by taking to the streets to force regime change through peaceful demonstration. The French are currently protesting en masse against their government’s bailout of the banking system. One would be naïve to think that these are isolated incidents. It is apparent that these are just early warning signs of a worldwide cauldron that is about to boil over, catalyzed by the financial and economic cataclysm that will plunge untold millions into poverty and desperation.
While I applaud the peaceful demonstrations going on in France and Iceland, I also recognize that they are premature. As did Americans in the last election cycle, these Europeans are demanding “change.” However, also like Americans in the last election cycle, they have failed to first answer the crucial questions, “From what? To what?” They have not looked within to assess who they are, what their society is, and what they want it to be. Therefore, they run the risk of simply replacing one oppressive tyranny for another.
Likewise, we will never regain our freedom in America until we address the fundamental problem in our society. I say “the problem,” because at the root of all of what we perceive as a myriad of problems, including the police state, the welfare state, the warfare state, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street oligopoly, the high cost of healthcare and education – everything – there is one philosophical problem that ultimately leads to them all: the repudiation of property rights.
It is likely difficult for most 21st century Americans to absorb this statement, based upon the fact that they have been told now for generations that property is about greed, that accumulating property is oppression, or even that “property is theft.” However, let us look back at the philosophers who inspired our founders and see what they have to say about property. Of course, as I have written here, the primary philosophical basis for the American Revolution came from Locke. What did Locke have to say about the purpose of government?
““The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”[2]
Certainly this statement must be startling to most 21st century Americans, who believe that they are supposed to look to their government to fight unemployment, manage the economy, ensure access to healthcare, promote democracy abroad, and pursue a myriad of other ends outside of protecting property. Surely, Locke has over-emphasized property rights here, has he not? Certainly he is alone in his simplistic assessment of the role of government, is he not?
He is not. In seeking guidance on how to construct our government, the American founders also looked to the ancients, particularly the Roman Republic. There, we find Cicero writing,
“For the chief purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. For, although it was by Nature’s guidance that men were drawn together into communities, it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of cities.”[3] [emphasis added]
The conditioned response of Americans today is to view these ideas as a defense of one class of people at the expense of another. We have been trained to associate “property” as a concern of the “property class,” or in more common American terms, “the haves,” as opposed to the “have nots.” This is a great deception that has lead directly to our ruin. In fact, it is the poor and those of modest means for whom property rights are most important. It is they who, not possessing significant material wealth, must all the more jealously guard the property that they do have. In the end, however, we are all property owners when one considers the most fundamental, most important property of all: our labor itself.
We learn from Locke that all property has its roots in labor. In order to survive, man must work to produce the means of his survival. This is true for people no matter what their financial circumstances. The doctor, the lawyer, the construction worker, the janitor – yes, even the Wall Street financier – must sell his efforts to his fellow man in order to acquire the means of his survival. Therefore, whoever has control over the individual’s labor has control over the individual’s life, and control over the individual’s future. If I steal all of your possessions, you can acquire more. However, if I appropriate your labor, I own all of the property you can ever or will ever acquire. This is an undeniable reality that we have lost sight of, to our peril.
America was founded upon the idea that each individual had an unqualified right to the fruits of his labor.[4] This more than anything was what the founders meant when they spoke the word “liberty.” It was the extent to which this right was respected that made America different than every other society in history, before or since. This was the great secret that made America the engine of prosperity and innovation that it was. This is what made America the land of opportunity to change one’s lot in life. It was this right that gave birth to the American dream.
However, we no longer hold this right up above all others. Instead, we have become a society that is based upon competing groups seeking to plunder each other via the force of government. The rich plunder their neighbors with corporate bailouts, subsidies, and regulatory fascism. The middle class plunder their neighbors with Social Security, Medicare, and criminal unions. The poor are forced to accept legal plunder that they do not want and which provides them with the most miserable quality of life, when the stolen capital that underwrites it could employ them all if it weren’t seized from its rightful owners. Of course, these examples are only the tip of the iceberg; there is much, much more. Virtually every political movement in America is based upon a promise to provide its followers with other people’s property.
This scenario is neither unprecedented nor has it been unrecognized by the great lights of liberty. Bastiat wrote,
“Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.”[5]
This vision of Bastiat’s has become reality in America. However, it cannot go on forever. Fortunately for humanity, a society based upon legal plunder is ultimately unsustainable. Just as respect for property rights provides the means to prosperity, violation of them leads to poverty and want. As force replaces voluntary exchange, productivity decreases, and subsequently more force is required to plunder even more. This cycle repeats until society is reduced to an authoritarian nightmare, the first signs of which are becoming apparent in the former “land of the free.” If the people wake up, the nightmare can end. If they continue to slumber, the nightmare can get much, much worse.
This is the great truth that we must rediscover before any revolution can be successful. Before we commit to “change,” we must answer the questions, “From what? To What?” The answers to those questions must be “from a nation of looters to a nation of free individuals who acquire property in the only civilized manner: via voluntary exchange.” We must reject the use of force as the means to pursue our happiness, and renew our faith in freedom. Once this great work has been accomplished, let the revolution begin.
[1] Adams, John A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787)
[2] Locke Second Treatise Ch. IX, Sec. 124
[3]Cicero, Marcus Tullius De Officiis Book II Chapter XXI
[4] “Individuals” who were included in the system. Of course, the founders recognized but did not remedy the obvious contradiction to this inherent in slavery.
[5] Bastiat, Frederic, The Law
For high school or undergraduate college students, it is probably difficult to imagine how the dusty old books they are forced to read are relevant to their lives. Who can blame the average teenager for caring little about what lights up the face of his eccentric professor, regardless of the passion said professor may exhibit for Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, or Locke? Yet, despite the understandable lack of interest in the worldview of philosophers of several hundred years past, this is probably the last real chance the young student will have to consider them. Once out of school and faced with the realities of life and making a living, there is little time or motivation for one to go back and explore the world of ideas. Ideas and philosophy are for dreamers. This is how a society forgets what it is trying to do.
The enlightenment that inspired our founding fathers was a period of explosive creativity and learning. Newton, Bacon, Sidney, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Smith – these giants were all children of the enlightenment that inspired Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and the rest to create a society based upon reason which recognized that all men were created equal. Today, we tend to think about both the enlightenment and our founders as if they all shared one, homogenous philosophy and one vision of man and society. However, this is far from true.
“The enlightenmnet” did not produce one archetypal philosophy, but three. They were all quite well known to our founders, but only one of them informed the philosophy of liberty that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in history. It has been the gradual erosion of those founding principles and their replacement by tenets of the rejected philosophies that has led America to the edge of ruin.
The first to talk about “the social contract” during the enlightenment was Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes believed that man in the state of nature (the absence of government or any higher authority) was in a state of perpetual war, or as he put it, “war of everyone against everyone.” This was the result of Hobbes assertion that in that state, man had “a right to everything,” following from his opinion that reason dictated only that man is restricted from doing anything to harm himself. Thus, for Hobbes man was ultimately a depraved creature who needed a strong government – an absolute ruler – to save him from himself. While for Hobbes the law of nature dictated that man should seek peace, man would never find it by employing reason, which would only ensure that he tried to preserve his own life against the “violent death” that threatened his every living moment. The purpose of government, then, was to protect man from his own depraved nature and that of his neighbors with a strong, paternal hand, sanctioned by God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s vision of man and the purpose of government was quite different from that of Hobbes. Rousseau asserted that the idea of a “state of nature” was a purely academic one, having likely never actually occurred in human history. However, he did use the idea of a state of nature as a philosophical tool to develop his ideas about man in society and the purpose of government. For Rousseau, man had to give up his natural rights when entering society, and while society granted him individual rights, they could be set aside when the needs of society outweighed them. In his own words,
“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our coporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”
Therefore, government’s purpose for Rousseau was to accomplish the “general will” and achieve the common good, which included economic equality, as Rousseau recognized man’s property rights to end at what he needed to survive. “Having his share, he ought to keep it, and can have no further right against the community.”
John Locke represented yet a third philosophy of man and society. Locke’s view of man in the state of nature was vastly different from that of Hobbes, as was his definition of reason. As he said,
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
So, for Locke, reason did not merely dictate self-preservation, but the Non-Aggression Principle as well. While Locke recognized that man was not safe from harm from other people in the state of nature, he believed that the laws of nature preceded man and society, and thus individual rights were inalienable. Man did not give up those rights when entering society, but instead entered society solely for the purpose of defending them. He had a right to as much property as he could legitimately acquire, whether that resulted in more property than possessed by his neighbor or not. So long as he did not harm another in their “life, health, liberty, or possessions,” he was free to “order his actions as he pleased.” The purpose of government for Locke was to protect life, liberty, and property as the societal extension of the individual right of self defense. This was also government’s strict limit.
It is interesting to consider how these three philosophies played out during the 18th century. In America, our founders chose the philosophy of Locke, specifically excluding the other two in writing our Declaration of Independence. However, our founders were not of one united mind on their vision of the most effective form of government. In fact, there was a deep divide between two factions, led by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, respectively. Jefferson believed in the philosophy of Locke, whom he on more than one occasion named (along with Newton and Bacon) “one of the three greatest men who ever lived.”
Hamilton’s view of man and society was much more Hobbesian. As Jefferson put it, Hamilton was “honest as a man, but, as a politician, believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern man.” To Jefferson’s assertion that Locke, Bacon, and Newton were the greatest men the world had ever produced, Hamilton replied, “the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar.” While Jefferson asserted that the power of the government was limited to defense against aggression, Hamilton advocated a “more vigorous government,” with the ultimate instrument of control at its disposal – a central bank.
This was the great struggle of ideas in early America. Very generally, it was a struggle between Hobbes and Locke. While Hamilton was able to accomplish many of his goals while serving in Washington’s cabinet, Jefferson’s vision ultimately prevailed by he and his successors winning the presidency, paying down the national debt, and eliminating the central bank (an accomplishment that had to be repeated by Jackson a few decades later). It was his Lockean vision that dominated, albeit under constant challenge, during the great century of innovation and prosperity that followed.
Rousseau’s philosophy did not find footing in early America, but did in France. While America’s revolution was based upon Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, drawn from Locke’s Life, Liberty, and Property[1], France’s revolution was based upon Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. It is no accident that one revolution was wildly successful and the other devolved into a bloody reign of terror and eventual despotism. The French had the same results trying to achieve economic equality through the force of government that later collectivist societies would under communism.[2]
While America lived by Locke’s principles, she enjoyed a meteoric ascent, leading the industrial revolution and creating much of what we now call the modern world. The explosion of prosperity for common people that occurred during America’s first century has been unequaled in human history. Indeed, while many are quick to point out that mass production was invented in America, let us not forget mass consumption – the enjoyment by the common people of the bounty that living by Locke’s principles of freedom and individual rights had provided.
By now, the relevance of these three philosophies should have jumped off the page. While all three competed during the enlightenment, only two have informed the political parties in America for the past century. It is no coincidence that today virtually all Americans feel that they must vote for “the lesser of two evils” when choosing representatives in their government. It is because they are choosing between the Hobbesian Republicans, with their strong, central government, sanctioned by God to save people from themselves, and the Rousseaian Democrats, still striving to use the force of government to achieve their perverse vision of economic equality, despite the tens of millions that have died as a result of that same vision. Gone are the individual rights, liberty, and Non-Aggression Principle of Locke, and with Locke’s philosophy has gone America’s greatness.
Most ominously, the two parties that previously followed either Hobbes or Rousseau are now merging together into a terrifying hybrid, finding common ground in their mutual belief in the absolute sovereignty of the state over the individual. While they may have appeared radically different in decades or centuries past, these two philosophies have always had this in common. In the end, that makes them for all practical purposes the same.
However, all is not lost. While Locke has completely disappeared from the American ethos, his philosophy can never really die. Very soon, the artificial society created by the Hobbes/Rousseau hybrid is going to collapse upon itself, a victim of its own systemic flaws. The supreme justice in the universe is that society cannot violate natural rights indefinitely. Just as market forces eventually reassert themselves in economics, natural law eventually does so in the organization of society as a whole. When the use of force can no longer sustain society, as it ultimately never can, voluntary exchange will take its place. As the illusion of legitimacy disappears from the present paternal state, the Non-Aggression Principle will reemerge to replace it. Do not fear the coming collapse. Embrace it. When the moment comes, let us seize it and shout joyously, not for equality or security, but for liberty.
[1] Property being implicit in “the Pursuit of Happiness”
[2] Tragically, the cause and effect relationship between the economic policies that accompany a government striving to achieve economic equality (at the point of the sword) and the subsequent famine, war, and destruction that result still eludes us. It was demonstrated in France in the 18th century, Russia in the early 20th and China later in the 20th, yet history seems to have taught us nothing. The voices crying for government-enforced equality, perhaps this time under the guise of “spreading the wealth,” are louder than ever.
Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.