German police yesterday arrested demonstrators protesting their country’s energy policies. No, they weren’t protesting the German government’s support for sanctions on Russia that have resulted in the latter cutting off natural gas supplies Germany depends upon to maintain modern civilization. They were protesting the German government’s decision to deregulate (viz. “allow”) the use of coal as an energy source in a desperate attempt to replace the natural gas imports no longer forthcoming from Russia.
Who can blame the protestors? Most likely have believed the fairy tale told by green energy proponents for at least a decade that wind power and other “renewables” are cheaper than natural gas. By 2018, U.S. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman had declared there were no longer any technological or economic obstacles to total decarbonization of the U.S. economy. All that was needed was the political will.
It is curious that Germany is falling back on coal in particular because as late as 2019, we were told that, “This April, for the first time ever, renewable energy supplied more power to America’s grid than coal—the clearest sign yet that solar and wind can now go head-to-head with fossil fuels.” The point of that Bloomberg article was that not only were solar and wind a viable alternative to coal, but that they were outcompeting coal in the free market without government intervention.
So, why can’t Germany at least use renewables for that portion of the lost Russian energy they plan to replace with coal? Wouldn’t it be cheaper?
We all know the answer to that question. The story politicians and the media told the public about renewables was a fairy tale. No, the factoids above weren’t technically false; they’re just cherry picked information with misleading parameters.
For example, the U.S. Energy Information Administration always picks April to compare the percentage of electricity provided by renewables to coal because “overall electricity consumption is often lowest in the spring and fall months because temperatures are more moderate and electricity demand for heating and air conditioning is relatively low.” The information they provide also indicates the total electricity from renewables and coal combined has fallen from 2005-2019 from about 210 million megawatthours (MWh) to about 130 million MWh.
So, either the larger population in 2019 was consuming far less electricity or some other source besides renewables and coal was making up the difference. That other source would be “not renewables.”
Indeed, a study by industry group Renewables Now indicated that between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of total energy consumption supplied by fossil fuels “barely changed,” going from 80.3% to 80.2%.
There has been no significant increase in renewables share of the energy market in the past decade. None. Politicians and media who have said there has are either lying or engaging in willful ignorance. But politicians lying isn’t dangerous in and of itself. It only becomes dangerous when the public believes them and allows them to act upon the assumption their lies are the truth. Germany has done so and it is going to cost lives, potentially a disastrous number of them.
This started as a tweet, grew into a lengthier Facebook post, and finally this short primer. The left has run amok and can hopefully be checked by a Republican landslide in the mid-terms. But understand there can be no free society while either the left or the right dominates American thought.
Here are a few thoughts on each:
The right
The abstract “America” conservatives seek to preserve or restore is actually the 19th century classical liberal society conservatives of the time fought tooth and nail.
And that classical liberal society was destroyed by the world wars and the New Deal, both of which most modern conservatives venerate.
Allying with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis – instead of standing back and letting them destroy each other – was the final nail in the coffin.
The universally condemned policy of “appeasement” was actually the smart play that could have saved Western Civilization.
Looking at a map makes clear allowing Hitler to re-annex Danzig would have resulted in his continuing his expansion plan, which he clearly stated in Mein Kampf was NOT south or West. It was east, to claim the “borderlands of Russia.”
Even as late as June 6, 1944, now a conservative holy day, there was an opportunity to not invade France and allow the Nazis and Soviets – at that time still fighting a bloody war of attrition near the Russian border – to complete their mutual destruction.
Imagine no Cold War. There needn’t have been one had the “neocons” of the time, like Churchill, not got their way.
Yet, today’s conservatives venerate both the war and Churchill, the very forces that destroyed the last hope of the civilization they seek.
The U.S. became a garrison state solely because the Soviets were allowed to seize half of Europe, something they could not have done had the U.S. not entered the war.
The national security state refused to demobilize after the Cold War ended. It morphed into the War on Terror, again with full-throated support from the right.
Now, the national security state has declared the right the terrorists and it’s coming after them. What tragic, poetic justice.
And even now, conservatives cannot let go of the myths that allowed the means of their own destruction to be built. They want to “reform” or “restore” the national security state, rather than destroy it.
The left
The left is much simpler to understand. After history proved once and for all that communism is not only an inferior economic system to capitalism, but fatal to any society that implements it, the left began attacking capitalism on different grounds.
One must understand, though, that everything the left does is a means towards the end of changing the economic system from capitalism to some form of socialism or communism. Thus,
The left doesn’t care about “the environment.” It’s just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about African Americans. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about LGBTQ or “trans” people. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about Immigrants. They are just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
The left doesn’t care about “hate speech.” That is just a means to the end of changing the economic system.
None of this is a secret. Read Marcuse.
Every campus riot over a conservative speaker, Black Lives Matter march, Women’s march, LGBTQ march, destruction of statues, attack on language (pronouns, etc.) are all tactics out of the 1789 playbook the left has used in every revolution since.
These are all means to the end of changing the economic system. Period. Once you understand that, you understand not to engage the left on any of these grounds.
I had the opportunity last night to watch the sixth and final episode of the HBO documentary, The Anarchists. Director and executive producer Todd Schramke accomplished the primary mission of any good documentary filmmaker: he made an interesting miniseries about interesting people. He also managed to weave the events filmed over the course of three to four years into a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
While this made the series entertaining, it did fail one basic requirement of a good documentary: it failed to inform. After six approximately 50-minute episodes, I was left with more questions than answers. It’s worthwhile to review what the series got right and what it either got wrong or omitted.
The philosophy
It starts out on a positive note, clearly delineating what most people associate with the term, “anarchy,” from what the series’ protagonists are advocating. Because so many political philosophers over the centuries have operated from the assumption that chaos and disorder would result in the absence of government, most people believe the word itself means chaos and disorder.
It’s analogous to most people believing the word “inflation” means rising consumer prices, rather than the expansion of money and credit by the banking system. They confuse the effect with its cause.
Schramke clarifies that the definition these anarchists are working from is, “the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation without political institutions or government.”
While accurate, that definition on its own is incomplete. The reason anarcho-capitalists (the type of anarchists presented in the series) do not believe chaos and disorder would result from the absence of government is they have a plan to secure life, liberty, and justly acquired possessions (hereafter “property”) without government.
Anarcho-capitalists do not believe in a world with no rules. They merely believe in a world with no rulers. The natural law that no one may violate the property rights of another would still be in play in an anarcho-capitalist society. But instead of a monopolist institution like government, the defense of those property rights would be provided by the free market.
By leaving this crucial aspect of anarcho-capitalist thought out of the definition, the viewer is left to assume anarcho-capitalists believe their society would depend upon everyone “doing the right thing,” with no recourse when they don’t. This is completely inaccurate.
Anarcho-capitalists (for the most part) recognize force must be used at times to defend property. They simply don’t believe a monopoly will provide that security as efficiently as would competing firms in a free market.
The other, more egregious flaw occurs just after the 28-minute mark of Episode One, Schramke says:
“If you want to trace the origins of this philosophy, all roads will take you back to one of the most polarizing writers of the 20th century.”
He is talking about 20th century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (the episode cuts to a Mike Wallace interview with Rand), who obviously had an influence on several of the people in the series. Two are named “John Galton” and “Juan Galt,” respectively, and there are other references to Rand and her work throughout.
But Rand not only wasn’t an anarchist; she was openly hostile towards both anarchists and libertarians in general. In her own words,
“More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.”
The truth is the origins of anarcho-capitalism are much older than Rand, who had an inflated view of the originality of her ideas. I haven’t found a single tenet of her philosophy that cannot be found in the writings of John Locke, particularly the Essay on Human Understanding and the Second Treatise of Government.
As far as I am concerned, Rand’s chief contribution was to translate these ideas into mid-20th century psychoanalytic jargon. No anarcho-capitalist I know of would point to Rand as the definitive authority on the philosophy. Many admire her valuable work but also recognize she made a lot of errors.
Anarcho-capitalism, or non-communist anarchism, traces back at least as far as Lysander Spooner and through 20th-century thinkers like Murray Rothbard, who was kicked out of Rand’s “court” precisely because of his anarchist ideas.
While we see links to Rothbard’s For a New Liberty as Schramke films his web searches on anarchism, we are told nothing about this more rigorous presentation of the anarcho-capitalist society. We are left with the simplistic notion that anarcho-capitalism simply means “nobody telling me what to do” or “as long as I don’t harm anyone, I can do what I want.”
In Schramke’s defense, he simply may be making the best of what he has to work with. In one scene, the likable but tragic figure, Nathan Freeman, after having been dismissed from his role as event organizer of Anarchapulco, attempts to set up a vendor booth on the conference grounds. When the new organizer tells him he is not allowed to do this, Freeman protests that this violates anarchist principles, saying words to the effect of, “I thought if I’m not harming anyone, I can do what I want.”
But Freeman was harming someone. He was violating the property rights of the event’s owners, who had every right to decide who can sell products on their property and who could not, and also had the prerogative to charge a fee for such privilege at their discretion. Were it a true anarcho-capitalist society, the owners could not only exclude Freeman, but use force to remove him if he refused to comply.
Indeed, this foundational pillar of anarcho-capitalism is found nowhere in the series. The viewer is left with the idea anarchism is simply a license to party, use and sell drugs, and enjoy the beautiful Acapulco climate.
The “community”
In fairness, most of this is due to the extensive footage of the annual Anarchapulco conference, which like most conferences here in Statistland is a combination of informative presentations and partying one would never do in one’s hometown. Fair enough. But little is shown the viewer about the “community” constantly referenced in the series and how it purported to be an anarchist one.
To begin with, it is unclear how many people comprise this community. We are shown a half dozen or so adults – the Freemans and their children, Lily Forrester and John Galton, Erika Harris, Juan Galt, Paul Propert, Jason Henza, and the guy who steals Jason Henza’s wife (his name escapes me). Were there more? How many more? Five? Five hundred? We don’t know.
More importantly, we are not told how this group of people represents or purports to represent an anarchist community. All we know of them is they have all moved to a major city in an even more authoritarian and socialist country than the one they left, although it is presented in the first episode as being inviting to anarchists because it is a “failed state.”
We are not told how most of the members of this community support themselves financially. Lily and John are somehow involved in selling drugs, although Lily maintains they were not competing with the Mexican cartels in the opioid trade. There are several references to Nathan Freeman continuing to work after the family moves to Acapulco, presumably still running his software company, Red Pill. But we don’t know for sure and are not told whether he is still complying with U.S. tax laws on the income he generates.
Beyond that, we know nothing about how the other members of the community support themselves. Neither do they seem to have attempted to replace the government’s property protection functions with any organized private institution. Some have not even armed themselves, judging by what we are told of the tragic cartel hit on Lily and John, resulting in the latter’s death and serious wounding of housemate Jason Henza.
Schramke provides no other insight into the nature of the community in Acapulco. As far as the viewer knows, they are simply people sharing the same political beliefs who moved to Acapulco and either took jobs within the local community or started businesses, all under the authority of the several layers of municipal, state, and federal government as they exist in Mexico today.
So, where is the anarchism?
Schramke forms his series into a cautionary tale about the dangers of anarchy, articulated by Lily Forester in a speech to the Anarchapulco conference in the last episode. But we don’t see any evidence of an even partially-anarchist society. Instead, we are presented with a group of people who seem to embody the hippieish strawmen in Ayn Rand’s condemnation.
The final episode closes with a quote from founder Jeff Berwick: “There’s quite a few people who came here who were just damaged, you know, just because they didn’t fit in in society. But they kinda felt like they had a bit of a, a bit of a community. I don’t know why that makes me emotional.”
The anarchist society proposed by anarcho-capitalists wouldn’t be a community of “misfits.” It would be comprised of the same people we see every day – farmers, doctors, plumbers, CEOs, cashiers, auto mechanics, etc. – pursing the same, mundane lifestyle they do in our present, statist world, simply with better security of their property than currently provided by the government.
Due to the choices or ignorance of either the director, his subjects, or both, viewers new to the concept of anarcho-capitalism will have no idea it would look nothing like what was presented in the documentary. Worse, they will take away from the series that anarchism was attempted and failed in Acapulco 2017-2020. Based on what is shown in the series, nothing of the sort occurred.
An article on Revolver today laments the sad state of the U.S. military. Calling its soldiers “too fat” and its generals, “woke, parasitic, and incompetent,” the news outlet longs for the bygone days when Americans had, “the military they once did, and the one they deserve.”
This on the heels of the unprecedented FBI raid on former President Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. Conservatives have had a five-year-long reality check on the true nature of that organization, which conspired with the intelligence community to manufacture the Russian collusion narrative that dominated much of Trump’s presidency.
Even then, conservatives couldn’t face the reality that the FBI has always been a political organization, placing top priority on its own survival and expansion of power, as longtime observer of the federal bureaucracy, Dr. Frank Sorrentino, said on a recent episode of Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.
Likewise, they can’t see the military for what it is and has always been: just another government bureaucracy primarily concerned with its own survival, expansion, and ever-increasing funding. Instead, conservatives cling to myths about the military’s glorious past and the need for a great leader to come in and restore its previous virtues.
This unwillingness to acknowledge reality no matter how hard it punches them in the nose is tied to the most basic pillars of conservative thought. Unlike the libertarians who founded the United States, conservatives do not believe governments are instituted among men to secure natural, inalienable rights. That would require a view of human nature wherein man was capable of good and evil; government being the institution to restrain the evil side.
Conservatives don’t share that view. They believe man by nature is completely depraved, his savage instincts tenuously held in check by government power and longstanding societal customs. They truly believe law enforcement is out on the front lines of a war every single day, risking their lives to keep civilization from devolving into chaos.
This dovetails with the conservative view of Christianity, which sees man as fallen and only redeemable by the grace of God. Forget Jesus’ own words that, while sinners, we are also “the light of the world” and the salt of the earth.” Conservatives only hear the sinner part. Many seem to regard the Apocalypse as the most important book in the New Testament, its warlike imagery about the “end times” suiting their worldview much better than Jesus’ admonishment to Peter to “put your sword back in its sheath.”
And so, the unmasking of one federal institution after another, starting with the so-called “intelligence community,” proceeding to federal law enforcement, and now even the military, represents an existential crisis for conservatives. They should finally acknowledge these institutions were never what they thought they were. But they can’t. To do so would undermine their entire view of the world.
Instead, they yearn for the days when the “rank and file” FBI agents rooted out dangerous threats that might otherwise have destroyed the republic and the military heroically won “the good war” and saved the world from tyranny. They decry the sad comparison between political hacks like Christopher Wray and James Comey vs. hardnosed, incorruptible Elliott Ness (actually a Treasury agent) or between the fat, woke, and dimwitted Mark Milley vs. the steely-eyed General Patton.
While liberalism, based on a mad quest for absolute equality, provides no path to freedom, neither does conservativism, which is at its root based upon a suspicion of liberty itself. If we’re interested in a free society, conservatism’s myths must be busted once and for all.
The myth of the noble, apolitical FBI is an easy one. Right from the beginning, the agency was a political organism through and through. It’s longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover, infamously kept files on everyone from Congressmen to presidents to ensure his position and power could never be questioned. Neither was he particularly interested in pursuing organized crime during most of his tenure, preferring to target a series of “Public Enemy Number One” solitary criminals.
Apologists for the agency who acknowledge its corruption during the Hoover years point to a “golden age” after his tenure where the FBI supposedly became the apolitical force for good conservatives imagined it to be. But this is just more hokum.
A statue of the blindfolded lady justice in front of the United States Supreme Court building as the sun rises in the distance symbolizing the dawning of a new era.
This is an attempt to answer the question, “what is justice?” in as few words as possible:
All human beings are created equal in one way only: no one has an inherent right to rule over another.
Based on this equality, all human beings own themselves.
Self-ownership means exclusive use and disposal of one’s body, thoughts, words, deeds, and legitimately acquired possessions (i.e., “life, liberty, and estates”), called by the general name of “property.”
Everyone has a right to his or her property (and nothing else). No one may violate the property of another.
Property may be exchanged only with the mutual, voluntary consent of all parties.
“Justice” is the preservation of property or the making whole of someone whose property has been violated.
“Every revolution starts in the minds of the people” says the tagline of Tom Mullen Talks Freedom. This was most directly inspired by a statement written by John Adams in 1818:
“The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.”
As I wrote last week, we are at war. It is being fought in the political and media sphere, meaning it is, for the moment, a war of ideas.
That’s not to say our enemies are not willing to enforce their ideas with violence. To a certain extent, they are doing so already. If you are an employer in the healthcare industry, for example, you must require your employees to be vaccinated. It is the “law,” as written by an executive branch agency called the Department of Health and Human Services, which along with myriad other executive branch regulatory agencies make most of the laws U.S. citizens live under.
So much for the legislative power being delegated to Congress.
Many under the spell of progressive brainwashing might ask, “But how is this violence?” It is important to remember that every law, regulation, or other government edict is a threat of violence. That’s not “extremism;” it’s the truth. Anyone who doubts that should simply choose not to obey one.
Pick the most insignificant amongst them, like a traffic ticket. Sure, the first response to your disobedience might merely be a letter demanding some money. But ignore the letters long enough, fail to show up for the inevitable court date, and men with guns will eventually arrive at your door to take you away or kill you if you resist.
This is the nature of government. To deny it is to depart from reality.
Deep down, everyone knows this, and our enemies know we know this. That is why it is so important for them to obtain, at the very least, our tacit consent. Thus, the massive propaganda drive in the media, the deplatforming of dissidents, and the scapegoating of “extremists.”
They need to control the way people think because they cannot overcome the whole population by force. Neither can they completely brainwash the entire population. They only need to do what they have succeeded in doing so far, which is to recruit a significant minority of the population to actively propagandize for them and rely on another significant minority of the population to “go along to get along.”
That leaves the last significant minority of the population, those willing to actively resist, to battle the government, the media, corrupted business interests, and most of their fellow citizens.
Needless to say, with this monumental task in front of them, it is important that the resistors have the right ideas. At the very least, they must avoid the enemy’s false premises. Otherwise, like an army that has been lured into advancing in the center without protecting its flank, the resistance ends up right where its enemies want them.
Our enemies have succeeded in poisoning the resistance with many false premises which need to be rejected or we will find ourselves, like the Romans at Cannae or Washington at Brandywine, rushing headlong forward only to be surrounded and destroyed.
One false premise accepted by virtually everyone is that the United States is “a democracy.” Calling the American system of government “a democracy” is like looking at a birthday cake and calling it “an egg.”
Yes, democracy is one of the ingredients in the U.S. Constitution, but it is not the only or even the main ingredient. It is more accurate to say there are a few democratic elements in the Constitution and the rest is designed to protect us from democracy.
Everyone knows there is something wrong. America and much of the world is now firmly into its third year of unrelenting “emergencies,” real and imagined, that forbid them from returning to the quiet comfort of their previous lives. For twenty-eight months they have been told they must sacrifice their personal interests for the government-media complex defined “greater good.”
It started with “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” a reasonable-sounding request in the face of a supposedly novel respiratory virus. One hundred years of science had already confirmed quarantining asymptomatic people is ineffective, but it was only going to be fifteen days.
It is only now, after the fifteen days turned into fifteen months or more in some places, after mask and vaccine mandates were enforced long after it was obvious both are ineffective, after the demand for sacrifice seamlessly metamorphized from “flattening the curve” to “slowing the spread” to “defending Ukraine” to “climate change emergency,” that a critical mass of people have finally realized they are being had.
If it were just your money they were after, it would be bad enough. And make no mistake, they do want that. Trillions have been fleeced from the many and handed to the few during this long con. But it isn’t just your money the perpetrators are after. Neither is it merely your freedom, although there is no “life” beyond biological existence without it.
No, the architects of this dystopia aren’t satisfied to loot your wealth and crush your liberty. Even controlling your physical movements isn’t enough. They want to control your thoughts, what many people would call your “soul.”
It’s not as if they make any secret of this. What else can the obsession with stamping out “misinformation” mean? They do not want you exposed to information contrary to their ends because you may think the wrong thoughts.
You may question whether the vaccines really are “safe and effective,” whether the war in Ukraine really is any of your concern (or “unprovoked,” for that matter), whether there really is a “climate change emergency” that demands you make enormous sacrifices to solve, or whether those sacrifices would really make a difference if there were.
There are only two possible reasons why information questioning any of the above narratives would need to be kept from you. Either the claims being made aren’t true and would not hold up to challenges or you are incapable of discerning truth from falsehood. If the former is true, there are criminal trials that need to be held. If the latter, then why this anguished cry about dangers to “our democracy?”
The question is constantly raised whether the architects of this assault on civilization are evil or merely misguided and incompetent. Does it matter? Is there even a clear distinction between the two? Was Vladimir Lenin evil or merely misguided? Did he not believe he was acting in the best interests of his fellow man and merely had to “break a few (million) eggs to make an omelet?” Can we not say the same for Stalin, Hitler, or Mao?
I hear it all the time. “Mussolini defined fascism as the merger of state and corporate power.” It has been suggested that modern American corporations like Disney, Meta (Facebook) or Alphabet (Google) acting in ways that align with the federal government’s wishes constitute fascism, based on this “merger of power” definition.
Here is the problem. Not only did Mussolini never define fascism that way, but he said almost precisely the opposite. “Merger” implies cooperation, partnership, or a meeting of the minds between equals. Fascism bore no resemblance to this. Mussolini’s actual words were, “The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others.”
What was a fascist “corporation?”
When Mussolini used the word, “corporation,” he didn’t refer to a single company like Disney or Alphabet. Rather, each corporation was a cartel formed from all companies in a particular economic sector. Mussolini divided the economy into twenty-two such “corporations,” which were run by members of the Fascist Party appointed by Mussolini himself. As John Gunther wrote in Inside Europe,
“Every corporation contains three supervising delegates of the Fascist party; each corporation is headed by a member of the cabinet or an under-secretary, appointed by Mussolini. The deputies, moreover, are “voted” into he chamber from an approved list chosen by the Grand Fascist Council; electors are privileged simply to say Yes or No to the whole list. Mussolini’s two general “elections” have been grossly dull affairs.
The state, being supreme, regulates economy for its exclusive benefit. Fascism may be, spiritually, “an attempt to make Romans out of Italians,” but physically it made Italy a prison.”[1]
This was not a “merger” of powers. It was the state exercising absolute power over the economy. It was autocratic rule over private businesses by the government.
So, why is this misquote and misunderstanding of fascism so popular? Because it coincides with a general tendency towards the “anti-capitalist mentality” Von Mises described and which is again ascendant across the political spectrum in America.
“If libertarianism works, why has there never been a libertarian country?” We hear it all the time from those whose historical perspective can be measured in weeks and months. We also know the answer to this question: “There has been: the United States of America.”
The American republic was libertarian to the core at its birth. The Declaration of Independence posited the existence of natural rights that preexist government, and that government is instituted for one purpose and one purpose only: “to secure these rights.”
Conservatives don’t believe this. Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke didn’t believe it. Nor did Russell Kirk. Republican politicians may claim to believe it to get votes, but they legislate as if they do not. True conservatives believe the purpose of government is to restrain man’s savage inclinations. What liberty is permitted is subordinate to that end.
Neither do liberals believe in this “American Creed.” Like their philosophical father, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, they believe the purpose of government is to restore some mythical “equality” that existed in nature before private property evolved and ruined everything. A just society, Rousseau and the liberals contend, requires, “the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community.”
Rights cannot be both inalienable and totally alienated. This worldview, like the conservative, is fundamentally opposed to the ideals of the Declaration.
In opposition to Hobbes, Rousseau, and their contemporary Edmund Burke, the founding generation were all “channeling” John Locke in 1776. Jefferson called Locke one of the three greatest men who ever lived on multiple occasions. Near the end of his life, he penned a resolution for the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia to ensure it was Locke’s worldview that was taught to students.
When George Mason referred to himself as “a man of 1688,” he was referring to the Glorious Revolution and English Bill of Rights, both inspired by Locke’s principles.
So far from these founding principles had the republic strayed under Federalist rule, believed Thomas Jefferson, that he referred to his presidential election as “the revolution of 1800.” In his first inaugural, he called for a return to libertarian principles, describing “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”
It was not the only time Jefferson asserted a libertarian role for government. In an 1816 letter to Francis Gilmer, he wrote, “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.” In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson wrote, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
These principles won election after election and led to the death of two opposing parties, the Federalists and the Whigs, in the first half of the 19th century. The Federalist platform of high protectionist tariffs, government infrastructure projects, and a central bank was defeated over and over again until the new Republican Party found success by being on the right side – the libertarian side – of the slavery issue.
The new party was able to ride a coalition of former Whigs and abolitionists to victory in 1860 and dominance over American politics for the next half century. Unfortunately, the Republicans were on Alexander Hamilton’s side rather than Jefferson’s on most policy matters.
Still, it was not until the Progressive Era that Jefferson’s libertarian principle was officially repudiated by Woodrow Wilson, directly, and indirectly by the American electorate when they put Wilson in the White House. Wilson couldn’t have been clearer that it was a government limited to enforcing the libertarian non-aggression principle that had to go. He wrote in The New Freedom,
“We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple that all that government had to do was to put on a policeman’s uniform, and say, “Now don’t anybody hurt anybody else.” We used to say that the ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the idea that obtained in Jefferson’s time. But we are coming now to realize that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for us to live.”
It doesn’t get much plainer than that.
Jefferson had defined liberty as, “unobstructed action according to our will, within the 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 right of an individual.”
For Wilson, it was something quite different. “Human freedom consists in perfect adjustment of human interests and human activities and human energies,” wrote Wilson. Of course, it was the government that was to do the “adjusting” necessary to achieve this “new freedom.”
The Great Reset is the logical conclusion of this reasoning.
The 20th century was dominated by progressives attempting to do precisely what Woodrow Wilson said needed to be done: adjust mankind until they achieved their utopian vision of perfect equality and “social justice.” Today, those adjustments have reached the ridiculous extremes they were always destined to reach.
From time to time, the Republican Party, notably during the Reagan years, has opposed this vision with a watered-down libertarian message, always riddled with loopholes that allowed it to expand the government even faster than the liberals when elected. But notice it was the libertarian message that resonated. Ask rank and file Republicans what attracts them to conservatism, and they will often say things like “limited government” and “God-given rights.” George W. Bush won in 2000 promising “a humble foreign policy.’ But these are antithetical to true conservative principles.
The Libertarian Party has recently had a dramatic change in leadership. The Mises Caucus won every national committee seat it ran a candidate for, including the national chair. It won based on repudiating what it said was weak party leadership too concerned with not offending anyone and too focused on approval from the progressive establishment. The new leadership promises a bolder, purer libertarian message focused on the issues that truly affect the lives of most Americans.
To them I humbly offer this advice: Do not forget we are not conservatives or liberals or any combination of the two. We do not fall on any “spectrum” between right and left. We are not “socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” We see the world in a completely different way, based on completely different principles than conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats.
I use the words, “conservative” and “liberal” solely in a political sense. They have nothing to do with one’s personal preferences, although many try to blur the line between personal and political to skew the libertarian message one way or the other. These political terms refer exclusively to the role of government, or for hardcore Rothbardians, what can be responded to with force even in a stateless society. Our answer is simple: only a previous violation of property rights.
Americans are starving for a radical message. That explains both the Trump phenomenon and the success of Bernie Sanders and “the Squad.” But unlike these conservatives and liberals, libertarians can point to a clear record of success when their principles were implemented. It was called the Industrial Revolution and the meteoric rise in living standards for the majority of society.
Libertarians should resist pedantic distinctions between “classical liberal” and “libertarian” – they are one in the same, merely at different points in development. As the late, great Will Grigg once said, “I reserve the right to get smarter over time.” So do libertarians, who have learned over time to apply their principles more consistently than their proto-libertarian ancestors.
Do not be afraid to take “extremist” libertarian positions. Jefferson cut military spending by over 90 percent. Libertarians should run on doing likewise. That’s what allowed Jefferson and his party to eliminate all internal taxes. But it doesn’t end there.
All of the damage done during the progressive era must be undone. Repeal the New Deal root and branch. Close the federal Department of Education and then go to work on ending public schooling at the state and local levels. Legalize competing currencies for the dollar. And once sound money’s superiority to central bank larceny is clear to all, End the Fed.
Unlike fringe issues like “legalizing sex work,” however valid they might be from a libertarian perspective, these are the policies that can change the lives of every American citizen. They also have the potential to reawaken that yearning for liberty that Bastiat said, “makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world.” At the same time, they will be most viciously opposed by all the forces who benefit from an unfree world.
If you’re not being falsely labeled a racist, a bigot, a Russian operative, a fascist, or all of the above by the totalitarian establishment, you’re probably not being effective. Refuse to engage the enemy on its terms. Trust that there is an untapped yearning for freedom out there in those who see through these cheap, cartoonish tactics, especially now as the Regime is failing so spectacularly.
The 20th century saw a reversal in the trend towards human freedom. The 21st has so far been worse. We are at a crossroads. It is not hyperbole to say the choice is freedom or slavery. Let no one for a moment be confused as to which side we’re on.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in late 1776, when the newly independent American states were at war with the mightiest empire in the world and not doing terribly well. Seven more years of hardship lay ahead, during which even John Adams’ family would struggle to keep body and soul together during the lean years of the Revolutionary War. Abigail Adams sold pins, handkerchiefs, and other trade goods sent home by her husband to feed the family while he was away making history.
246 years later, things aren’t nearly so bleak for Americans…yet. But they do suffer from the worst inflation in decades, growing shortages of food and other items, and an impending economic “hurricane,” if JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is correct.
The difference is this hardship is completely self-inflicted and unnecessary. Americans don’t suffer deprivation now to preserve newly declared independence and found a republic that will go on to inspire the world. They suffer from policies their own government imposed upon them, starting with Covid lockdowns, that have done no good whatsoever while causing immense harm.
With Washington, D.C., it’s always all pain and no gain.
In April, 2020, I asked, rhetorically, “When the Coronavirus Shutdown is over, will anyone blame their governments for the economic devastation they caused?”
