Libertarianism

The phenomenon of Libertarianism is gaining some currency among right-wing conservatives due in part to the 2008 candidacy for president of Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas. Paul was a candidate for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988. The official candidate of the Libertarian Party in 2008 was the battered and discredited old hypocritical hack, Bob Barr, former congressman from Georgia.

In spite of fact that some libertarians oppose drug laws, right-to-life laws, and laws banning same-sex marriage, one should not confuse libertarianism with liberalism or with the ideology of the American Civil Liberties Union. Libertarians also oppose gun control, social programs, and most regulation of business. Their philosophy is widely embraced by elements of the tax resister movement, militias, the NRA, and motorcycle gangs.

It is difficult to describe the philosophy of Libertarianism because there are a number of different types of libertarians. Most libertarians believe that any restraint of liberty by government is improper, illegal, and unconstitutional. Libertarians believe in an absolute right to private property and that the owner of private property cannot be forced by government to in any way relinquish total control over that property.

That idea of economic liberty is reflected in the Libertarian Party Platform which states: “We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade.”

Unlike conservative Republicans who would reduce taxes, the Libertarian Party Platform says: “We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution.”

Although Ronald Reagan made libertarian noises when he declared that “Government is the problem, not the solution,” he did nothing to dismantle the elaborate structure of the federal government that had grown-up over the decades. Conservative Republicans like to proclaim the virtues of smaller government, but during the eight years of Bush rule they did nothing to advance that idea. Republican conservatism is something very different from Libertarianism.

One source of libertarian ideas is the philosophy of the late novelist, playwright, and screen-writer, Ayn Rand (pronounced ‘ain ‘raend), born in Russia under the name Alisa Rosenbaum. She wrote several novels, including “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” I read her books many years ago and found them to be mediocre literature and sophomoric philosophy--a judgment shared by most literary critics. Nevertheless, many college students are impressed by her political views which emphasize independence (from parents?), individual rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism. One biographer recently dubbed her books: “part of the underground curriculum of American adolescence.” In her novels, the heroes, such as John Galt and Howard Roark, are independent-minded capitalists fighting against insipid, weak-kneed do-gooders.

To Ayn Rand, the cause of much of the evil in the world is “Altruism.” Rand said: “Even though altruism declares that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive,’ it does not work that way in practice. The givers are never blessed; the more they give, the more is demanded of them.” Rand’s philosophy leaned toward that of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, even though she later repudiated him. Like Nietzsche, she was an atheist who rejected Judeo-Christian ethics which hold charity and altruism as the highest virtues. Rand held that the only moral social system is laissez-faire capitalism.

Unfortunately for Libertarians, Ayn Rand was not a very profound thinker. I found her to be shallow and, at times, silly. Western civilization has long recognized altruism, selflessness, and charity as noble qualities that enrich society and separate us from the animals.

When the Congress passed a law giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate the tobacco industry, Libertarian/Republican Congressman Ron Paul was the leading critic denouncing the law. That kind of law is abhorrent to Libertarians. To them, if people want to smoke and contract cancer, that is their right, and government has no business deciding what is best for people’s health.

On the theory that government is the problem and not the solution, Libertarians would abolish many of the programs that define American civilization. They would eradicate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They would block our current efforts to reduce global warming, reform health care, and regulate the food, pharmaceutical, energy, and other industries. They seem to be saying that government has no role in the advancement of human welfare or the alleviation of human suffering.

They oppose laws regulating the usury of payday loan and credit card companies. They oppose laws against false advertising. They oppose antitrust laws and laws controlling the prices that may be charged by public utilities. They oppose federal regulation of commerce, agriculture, labor, energy, housing, urban development, the environment, trade, health, transportation, and the airways.

They would, no doubt, abolish the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Trade Commission, and all other governmental agencies that control the marketplace. They believe, as Michael Douglas said in the movie “Wall Street,” that “Greed is good.” They think that by doing away with all governmental regulatory agencies, they would free superior men to act creatively in the marketplace. Perhaps so, but they would also free the likes of Bernard Madoff, Michael Milkin, Ivan Boesky, Kenneth Kozlowski, Charles Keating, Bernard Ebbers, and R. Allen Stanford to engage in massive fraud, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, and insider trading. To the Libertarian laissez faire capitalists, it is buyer beware no matter how crooked the seller.

There is an essential and dangerous error at the core of Libertarian philosophy.
They assume that if brilliant men are left alone to pursue their goals, they will accomplish great things and, in the process, benefit mankind. Now I recognize that great men have produced great advances in industry, and that they have often produced great wealth and jobs. However, there is a downside to the strivings of powerful men. Such men have often used their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their fellow men. They have promoted their commerce at the expense of slave labor, exploitation of workers, devastation of the environment, destruction of competition, and the promotion of dangerous, unsafe, and poisonous products.

I suppose that if you do not believe in altruism, you would have had no problem operating the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz concentration camp. IG Farben built a factory (named Buna Chemical Plant) for producing synthetic oil and rubber (from coal) in Auschwitz during the Nazi Holocaust. At its peak in 1944, this factory made use of 83,000 slave laborers. Many thousands of those laborers were annihilated in the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz. Someone with altruism, like Oskar Schindler, might have tried to ameliorate the conditions of those murdered masses, but not some laissez faire capitalist seeking only profit.

There are two sides to mankind. We are capable of great goodness and generosity as well as great evil. Government exists to promote civilization. Without government, we would have no civilization. Life would be as it was before civilization, when the condition of man was, as Thomas Hobbs described it: “a condition of war of everyone against everyone” and life was “nasty, brutish, and short.”