1. “The Road to Serfdom”- F.A. Hayek

2. “Capitalism and Freedom” – Milton Freidman

These are the two seminal economic texts I would use to explain the importance of the free market, and the consequences of statist interventionism regardless of the motive.

3. “The Federalist Papers” – Hamilton, Madison, Jay

There may be no greater prolonged discussion of the relationship between state and individual, and it is set in the uniquely American context of the creation of the Constitution.

4. “Democracy in America” –Alexis de Tocqueville

This is less a philosophical book in itself, and more of a study and account of the uniqueness of the world’s first modern, free (albeit still imperfect) republic. It also highlights the importance of religious virtue as it relates to a healthy, free society.

5. “Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World” – Jean Bethke Elshtain

By far the most recent work, Elshtain’s book is a wonderfully clear, moral case for the U.S. standing up for freedom against enemies, specifically the extremist wing of Islam. 

It’s no mystery why older Chinese CEO’s move carefully.  The first generation of them lived through the turmoil of the post WWII period.  At that time, the rule of law was non-existent, and a strong central government carried out its will arbitrarily.   

Fast forward to present day where China’s government has stabilized the economy and unleashed the capitalist spirit.  Since Deng Xiaoping’s reform began in 1978, China’s GDP has grown at an average rate of 9.3 percent, thanks in part to relatively steady and incremental government policies which above all favor stability. 

The older Chinese CEO’s still have their concerns.  At worst, they fear a return to the volatility of the past.  At best, they fear even the current government could, with a single regulation, wipe out their hard-fought gains.  And so they embrace caution, believing that once they have carved a safe haven for their fortunes, there is no need to invest in unnecessary risks. 

Sadly, in the U.S. an overactive central government has given rise to the same concerns.  As policymakers try to determine why the stimulus has failed to revive the economy, some are wondering why—given the reported reserves of cash in the nation’s companies—CEO’s are not using their resources to pull the economy back.  Why aren’t they investing and putting people back to work?  Fareed Zakaria wonders the same thing.

So why are (businesses) reluctant (to invest), despite having mounds of cash lying around? I put this question to a series of business leaders, all of whom were expansive on the topic yet did not want to be quoted by name, for fear of offending people in Washington.

Economic uncertainty was the primary cause of their caution. "We've just been through a tsunami and that produces caution," one told me. But in addition to economics, they kept talking about politics, about the uncertainty surrounding regulations and taxes. Some have even begun to speak out publicly . . .

One CEO told me, "Almost every agency we deal with has announced some expansion of its authority, which naturally makes me concerned about what's in store for us for the future." Another pointed out that between the health-care bill, financial reform and possibly cap-and-trade, his company had lawyers working day and night to figure out the implications of all these new regulations . . .

Despite Democratic assertions, government meddling does not produce jobs.  Government may borrow from our grandchildren to install temporary positions, but only the private sector can produce the wealth needed for real jobs and a sustainable recovery. 

Only when the wealthy (that’s right, the evil rich) come to believe the market is stable will the economy recover.  Unfortunately, only Obama can put their minds at ease and the great interventionist-in-chief has shown no sign of pulling back on his Big Government agenda.   Until he does—or the voters force him to—expect the economy to fall even farther.

He did have a point.  Every hostile government is not the Third Reich and every diplomat is not Chamberlain.  We Conservatives would do better to refrain from the WWII rhetoric unless the situation warrants (see, Iran).   Better we understand the basic lessons of WWII and bring out Hitler in extraordinary circumstances.

If Liberals are justified in their frustration with the “Hitler card,” Conservatives can be equally justified in their frustration with the “Brown v. Board card”—the oft-cited case Liberals use each time someone suggests justices should adhere to the Constitution rather than legislate from the bench. 

The latest case in point is Justice David Souter.  As E.J. Dionne reported last week after Souter’s Harvard commencement speech:

Souter attacked the fatal flaw of originalism -- which he relabeled the "fair reading model" -- by suggesting that it would have led the Supreme Court in 1954 not to its Brown v. Board of Education decision overturning legal segregation but to an affirmation of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling upholding "separate but equal" public facilities.

The problem with this argument is that—just as foreign policy can’t rest on the lessons of one war—judicial philosophy can’t rest on the lessons of one case (or even multiple cases, for that matter).  What is important is that a philosophy proves in practical application to consistently produce right results.   A philosophy is a framework, not a rulebook.

Aldous Huxley once said that, “The only completely consistent people are dead.”  At the risk of being inconsistent, then, even the originalist can admit that in hindsight the Brown case was decided justly.  What the originalist cannot admit is that the Brown case somehow gives progressives cart blanche to ignore the framework on which our system was constructed and on which we have lived prosperously for over two centuries.  How arrogant the progressive Liberal who ignores the value of tradition and the wisdom of his forefathers!  These people have an astonishing disregard for the exceptional character of our country and a delusional belief in their own intellect.

Alas, there is a backlash coming against the ambush of “progressive values”—which by the way don’t reflect the values of the founders or the values of average Americans.  Elena Kagan’s harsh poll numbers suggest growing anger against Obama’s agenda to remake the bench and along with it America.  If only we had thought of this in 2008.

For more than two hundred years, the Constitution of the United States has been the bedrock of the American government.  In one document, our Founders laid out their plans for an experiment in the politics of liberty, republics, and equality.  In seven Articles and twenty-seven Amendments, our Constitution expresses to the world our commitment to the ideals of the Revolution: Freedom, the Rule of Law, Equality, and Independence.  It is the document by which we empower our leaders and limit their authority.  It is the Great Treaty that unifies our States, the Guarantor of Rights that guards our liberty, and the Supreme Law that tempers the whims of our government.

The important thing about the Constitution (any constitution) is that it limits the scope of government.  Every government has a structure, even in dictatorships.  While we Americans are justifiably proud of the checks-and-balances structure of our government, no measure of institutional balance would help if even one of the branches had authority to do anything it wanted.  The measure of a constitutional government is the ability of the Constitution to place effective limits on the power of the government.  By and large, the U.S. Constitution has been effective.  Because of constitutional guarantees, our government has respected many of our rights even when it would have been politically convenient not to do so.

The Constitution is designed to guard against tyranny.  It was delicately balanced to avoid emergence of factions, states, presidents, or judges with enough power to oppress the American people as the English had or as the States had under the old Articles of Confederation.  As a result, the best way Americans can ensure their liberty is usually to advocate for a strict adherence to the Constitution.

Think of how powerful that is!  Americans are incredibly fortunate to have a pro-liberty Constitution in place, giving us a stable government and articulating so many rights at the same time.  All we have to do is hold our government accountable for the promises of the Constitution and we will be free.  Americans have an enormous advantage in the fight for liberty compared to many other nations, because our Founders had the foresight to enshrine liberty and limited government as the fundamental values of our political system.

All that being said, let me give a few words of warning to those who believe that the Constitution holds all of the answers for the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  Having a good Constitution does not, in and of itself, preserve our liberty or ensure limited government.  It is a significant step in that direction, and make no mistake, the American Constitution is wonderful.  But strict adherence to the Constitution must be subordinate to our other principles. 

The Constitution was not divinely inspired.  It has been wrong in the past, and in some ways it is not quite optimal even now.  For the first seventy-six years, the Constitution allowed slavery to exist in this country, and other racially charged provisions like the “three-fifths compromise” are still an embarrassment.[1]  Some provisions are so vague that they are almost useless, like the Ninth Amendment.  The much-lauded structure of our government is fundamentally different today than it was in 1789 – thanks to the 12^th and 17^th Amendments, for example, we elect the President and Vice President on the same ticket, and we elect Senators by popular vote, neither of which were part of the Constitution the Founders set up.[2]  Even with protections of liberty, there are some places where the Constitution falls short of perfect, like by failing to explicitly protect our privacy, by tying gun rights (somehow) to militias,[3] and by allowing for the suspension of writs of habeas corpus (in admittedly extreme circumstances).[4]

This is the point: for all of its virtues, the Constitution is imperfect.  Over the years we have adjusted it, changing one provision or another to deal with our changing needs.  But even with our years of development and experience, it is still imperfect.  To venerate the Constitution as an end to pursue is a mistake.  I worry that too many conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Party activists, in their enthusiasm for a return of government to strict Constitutional standards, forget that the Constitution itself is not the prize.  The Constitution is merely a means to other ends.  The Founders understood that; they wrote it into the preamble.  The Constitution was established as a tool to “secure the blessings of liberty.”  Those principles and values in the preamble are the ends for which we strive.  Liberty, justice, security, prosperity, equality – these are the values we must fight for.  When the Constitution stands for them – as it usually does – we fight for the Constitution.  But when it is wrong, we should not revere it so much as to falter in our principles.  And we must not allow ourselves to forget that the Constitution can be wrong – as it has been before.  That is why we have the amendment process, after all.

So, as we approach the mid-term elections, we should hold our candidates up to the standards of the Constitution to see how they measure up.  But even as we do that, we have to make sure that the values and principles that our candidates serve are the right ones.  The important thing is that our leaders use constitutional provisions for the furtherance of liberty, not just to attract voters who hear “constitutional government” and come running.

[1] U.S. Const. Art. I, Sec. 2.

[2] See U.S. Const. Art. II, Sec. 1.

[3] U.S. Const. Amendment 2.

[4] U.S. Const. Art. I, Sec. 9.

As this mid-term election year heats up, the political sphere is becoming more and more splintered.  New Senator Scott Brown won his seat for Massachusetts in no small part by distancing himself from the GOP establishment.[1]  President Obama’s healthcare initiative fell apart amid criticism from the left wing of his own party that it did not go far enough,[2] while the more “moderate” democrats in the Senate commanded millions in political favors and held up the bill in favor of more moderate provisions.[3]  Senator John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, is taking heat this week for calling herself a “Progressive Republican.”[4]  A controversial National Convention is threatening to split up the Tea Party movement, which has been struggling to maintain its distance from the GOP anyway.[5]  It is becoming more and more difficult to keep track of all of the different views within the two major parties.

This is the time in our electoral process when party primary rivals try to out-radical one another, with Republicans jockeying for position farthest to the Right, and Democrats racing Left.  In a few short weeks those same candidates will be running to the center, vying for independent voters with the same vigor that they pursued their party’s most ardent ideologues.  We live in a polarized America – the most polarized it’s ever been with a first-year president.  Americans are farther Right and Left than they’ve ever been, and politicians don’t even know where they are.  But the worst problem is this: we’re not even using the right scale.

Politics should not be measured by “Left” and “Right.”  The best way to understand the political spectrum is on a scale from “Individualism” to “Collectivism.”  The real question is whether a candidate wants to use political power for the protection of the individual, or for the advancement of the community.  At first glance, this question seems easy.  Why wouldn’t we work together?  Shouldn’t the greater good outweigh the interests of the individual?  Shouldn’t the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one?  The answer to all of these questions is undeniably, “Yes!”

Unfortunately, collectivism in politics is an inherently state-centered philosophy.  To say that the needs of the many should outweigh the desires of the few is to say that you know what the needs of the many are.  People who advocate for policy in the name of the community invariably are asking the government to enforce their view of what society should be and where society should go.  Efforts to plan and direct the directions of countries in the name of the common good generally lead to tyranny of everyone.  On the other hand, protecting each person as an individual leads to a freer, flourishing society.  Why?  Because using the coercive power of the state to promote any given end necessarily and artificially chills the benefits of alternative directions, but when individuals are left to themselves, they can pursue conflicting ends without arbitrary obstacles.  When you take care of the flowers, the garden takes care of itself.

There will be other places to discuss exactly how and why and individualist society is superior to a collectivist one.  Benefits of things like free markets, private property, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and political participation all flow from the principle of individualism.   For the moment, it is most important to see that the state should set individual rights and interests above collective interests simply because each person is valuable as an individual, and failure to recognize that value is a threat to liberty.  We believe that “all men are created equal,” but implicit in that statement is that all men are created people.  Each person has dignity and value as an individual, regardless of his circumstances, his history, his race or his creed.  To pursue a policy in which the individual’s interests are cast aside in favor of a group interest (as determined by mere individuals) is asking for tyranny. Collectivism requires the state to determine winners and losers and to enforce that decision over everyone. 

The problem with the conventional Left-Right political spectrum is that it only asks, “What should the government place above the individual?”  Leftists would sacrifice the individual for material equality, environmental protection, and other things.  The Right is often just as ready to sacrifice the individual for security or for moral or social order.  As we move into primary and election season, we need to begin asking not just when, but how much we should value the individual.  There will always be pet projects and politically expedient policies that will tempt one side or another to put forth a collectivist policy.  There are even cases in which collective action is entirely justified.  But if we fail to understand that basic human dignity can only be measured on the individual level, we risk following the good intentions of either party down a road to oppression that cannot be reversed.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/19/polls-close-competitive-massachusetts-senate-race/

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/11/pelosi-health-care-reform_n_214303.html

[3] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/02/mary-landrieu-defends-louisian.html?wprss=44

[4] http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/36115/

[5] http://www.aolnews.com/the-point/article/controversy-brews-ahead-of-first-national-tea-party-convention/19340071

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) Market-based healthcare reform and oppose Obama-style government-run healthcare;

(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap-and-trade legislation;

(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing "card check";

(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing healthcare rationing and denial of healthcare and government funding of abortion; and

(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Republicans decided against adopting this litmus test for candidates and—in true United Nations fashion—passed a watered-down, non-binding resolution instead.  From a political standpoint, a litmus test is probably a bad idea.  But instead of a non-binding resolution, why not force candidates before receiving GOP funds to sign their name to a statement like this:

I, ________________, as a representative of the Republican Party, believe in the principle of limited government.  If elected, I will underscore my actions with the wisdom of the founding fathers who, having better judgment than I, enacted an open system through which free Americans created the most just, decent, and prosperous society on Earth. 

Cursed be my descendants if I do anything to weaken the limited government principle that made my country great.

 

Signed,

 

______________________

Okay, so the last line was a bit over-the-top, but you get the point.   In my estimation, there really is only one principle upon which all Republicans must agree—limited government.

Like it or not, the Republican Party is the home of the Conservative movement.  The Conservative coalition—originally a hodgepodge of libertarians, anti-Communists, and traditionalists[i]—is held together by a shared belief in the dignity of the individual and a common distrust of government.  Now, as Conservatives unite against the dangers of big government, we can only afford to nominate those who share our purpose.

[i] See Alfred S. Regnery, Upstream:  The Ascendance of American Conservatism, (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 2008).

It really comes down to what our conception of liberty should be.  In the political context, there are two basic ways of thinking about liberty: positive and negative.  One has positive liberty to do something if they have the affirmative power to do it.  One has negative liberty to do something if no one is stopping them from doing it.  In other words, if you want to buy a house in a fancy neighborhood you can only do it if it’s legal for you to do so (negative liberty) and you have enough money to buy it (positive liberty).

In order for liberty to have any real effect, it’s clear that we must have both positive and negative liberty.  The key is, government cannot create liberty – either kind.  For the negative kind of liberty, that seems obvious: negative liberty is the lack of obstacle, the lack of intervention in our lives, so the less government does, the better.  Government’s duty, more than anything else, is to guard against encroachments on negative liberty.  Sometimes government acts proactively to protect our negative liberty, like when it puts up safeguards to make it difficult to take our liberty away (like the writ of habeas corpus or the public defender system).  Still, these actions protect our ability to act without intervention from government or other citizens.

Positive liberty cannot be created by the government either, at least not for everyone.  When the government tries to enforce positive liberty, it has to give the ability to act (usually money) to someone who doesn’t have it.  This brings with it all manner of problems, including the need to determine (often arbitrarily) who will get this benefit and who will not, who will be paying for it, how to make them pay for it, and how to keep the program going into the future.  Many, if not most, of the United States’ attempts at creating positive liberty for people have been mismanaged, causing new inequalities at new cutoff points, treating different citizens as though they are not equally valuable, and driving America into debts so deep that we will be paying for them for generations.

Government may not be able to create positive liberty, but it still has a responsibility to protect positive liberty.  It may be legal for you to buy that fancy house, but if the finances and private property you will use to purchase it are not protected, you will be out of luck!  When government sets fair, clear rules for operating in society and in the market, and when it protects you and your property from those who would threaten them with violence, fraud, or law, then government is protecting your ability to act.

This brings us to the moral of the story:  negative liberty begets positive liberty.  Trying to ensure positive liberty artificially, by creating it with government policy, leads to unforeseen injustices that also need to be corrected, and the whole thing can spin out of control very quickly.  However, protecting negative liberty, getting out of the way of the people, lets them create and prosper for themselves.  It moves society forward – in whichever direction society naturally decides is “forward” – without the arbitrary direction of mere politicians.  Best of all, when people don’t have government in the way, they can prosper, and prosperity is positive liberty. 

Ultimately, liberty is a concept with many facets, but when people say they want to be free, usually they just mean that they don’t want the state to stop them from doing what they want to, and the people will take care of the rest.  There are times when government must step in and provide means for citizens to avoid severe injustice, but those are the outlying cases, the extremes.  If we citizens want to prosper, and want each other to prosper, then we must focus the power of government on increasing our negative liberty, and protecting our positive liberty.  Then, we can move forward with vigor and hope, as only a free society can.

- Jimmy Stewart as Jefferson Smith, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

America’s Great Experiment, our great democracy, our whole society, from the first colonist who stepped onto a ship to look for a better life outside Europe, to the first patriots who died to rid us of the English King, to the Great Emancipator who wrested our embattled lands from the horrors of slavery, from the brave ones who marched abroad to win an end to tyrants, to the brave ones who marched at home to win an end to injustice and inequality – all of it has been in pursuit of this one powerful thing: liberty.  Sure, there are other things – important things – that Americans have fought and sweated for all these years.  Things like equality, the rule of law, prosperity, love, religion, pride, honor, achievement, and science – even baseball.  But at the heart of everything American, you can find a deep love for liberty.  Why?  What is it about liberty that makes it so much of who we are as a nation?

Liberty is bigger than just an idea.  It’s almost tangible.  It’s a truth. The truth that all people should be allowed to determine the course of their own lives, that no one has the right to make others subservient. The truth that every man’s thoughts are his own, his to express as he wants to anyone who will listen, his to believe what he chooses.  The truth that the individual must be protected, or the collective will be oppressed.  The love of liberty runs through every part of our culture – usually without anyone realizing it.  That is, until somebody tries to take it away.  The uproar and fury that rises up when the liberty of the American people is threatened has toppled nations – and many a politician, too.

And yet, we take it for granted.  When expanding empires attack our harbors, when terrorists destroy our buildings, when our enemies attack our friends, we know how to fight.  And when we fight, woe to those who would harm us.  But when, with best intentions, our own leaders chip away at the liberty we love, we acquiesce.  We say to ourselves, “This cause is worth losing a little freedom!  Just a little!  After all, won’t we all be a little safer?  A little richer? A little more happy?” I only hope that we don’t wake up one day and wonder where all of our liberty has gone.

Of course, the alternative, anarchy, is unacceptable.  As much as our society is founded upon liberty, we are also founded upon the notion that government is necessary to protect our liberty, to protect each man’s rights against his neighbor.  Endless liberty, unlimited freedom, and anarchy lead a society to just as much oppression as a tyrant – only this way people are oppressed by their neighbors, not the state.  We need to curtail liberty to protect liberty.  That much is clear.  The only question, then, is, “how much?”

How much liberty must we give up to ensure that we may live in a free society?  What causes are important enough to sacrifice liberty?  Some of the answers are easy:  we want the state to protect us from crime, fraud, and foreign threats, and we’re willing to give up some freedom to ensure that security.  We happily allow the state to settle our disputes for us, in the courts and by setting rules about property and public safety, and we give up our rights to vigilante justice in the process. 

Most of the time, however, the problems of our society are less clear.  After all, there are a great many causes that compete with liberty for our attention, wealth, and power.  Some want to ensure that no one has to live in poverty.  Some want to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare.  Some want to ensure that everyone lives a moral life.  Some want to ensure that science flourishes.  Some want to ensure that no one can ever attack us.  The problem is that every one of these goals is wonderful!  Every one is a worthy cause.  But each one requires us to give up a little liberty, if the state is to accomplish it. 

Among all the great ideals and causes that swirl around the world of politics, we must never forget that liberty is the greatest.  In the political context, liberty alone is the value that allows each of us to pursue the ends we deem best.  Liberty alone allows two men who disagree to pursue incompatible goals without subjecting one another to the coercive power of the state.  Liberty alone allows us to live without a state that picks winners and losers, enforcing advantages and disadvantages based on the arbitrary determinations of men who are no more special than those they rule. If you want a man to avoid poverty, protect his freedom to produce, work, and earn without obstacle, fraud, or arbitrary or uncertain rules.  If you want a man to be equal, treat him equally by protecting his liberty from the neighbors who might oppress him.    If you want a man to have healthcare, protect the liberty of those who would provide it to him, and give him the liberty to choose what’s best for him.  If you want a man to live morally, then give him the liberty to choose what he believes, and protect the freedom of others to try to show him a better way.  If you want a man to make discoveries, give him the liberty to research and to reap the benefits of his efforts.  If you want a man to be safe, fight for him, and never forget that it is liberty that you fight to preserve, not just his life.

There will be other times to discuss how and why (and if) liberty works more efficiently in ordering society and moving nations forward.  There can and will be millions of pages written about when and where to temper the liberties we have for the sake of other causes.  For now, though, I think this is enough: that when we protect the liberty of each person, then every man or woman has a chance to change their situation if they don’t like it.  Circumstances can seem insurmountable sometimes, and disasters and evil can be discouraging to the point of breaking, but when the state does not say, “you must always be in this situation we have determined for you,” then every person has a chance to try to make things better.  With no one in the way, everybody has a shot at finding a better way.  And that audacious thought shows us this final truth: that liberty begets hope.  

To that end, I thought it helpful to introduce two economists and fervent defenders of private property rights, Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973) and Thomas Sowell.  In the 20th century, Von Mises was a leading thinker in the Austrian School of economics and a widely respected defender of free market economics.  Sowell, a popular modern day economist, author, and commentator has dedicated his life to combating economic fallacies of the left.   Below excerpts underline two plain truths about the necessity of private property in a free and prosperous society.  Hopefully, in an age where leftists demean private ownership and daily interfere with individual decisions, these thoughts can help the conservative defend this basic principle.

First, Von Mises explains how private property is a check against the encroaching power of government.

“To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities—this is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives.  If only private property did not stand in the way!  Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state.  It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.  It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power.  It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state.  It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted.  In this sense, it has even been called the fundamental prerequisite for the development of the individual.”[i]

Second, Sowell explains why countries with established private property rights far exceed the prosperity of countries that do not respect individual property.

“For economic activities that take some time, property rights are a prerequisite, so that those who farm or invest in business can feel assured that the fruits of their activities will be theirs.  Even people who own no property have a large stake in property rights, if they are to be employed in an economy made prosperous by the presence of property rights…

Many of the great corporate enterprises of the world began at an extremely modest level, such as those already achieved by innumerable entrepreneurs in the Third World.  The Hewlett-Packard corporation, for example, began in a garage that was rented with borrowed money; the J.C. Penney department store chain was begun by a man who grew up in worse poverty than most people on welfare today; the NBC broadcast network was begun by a man who had to support himself as a teenager by hawking newspapers on the street.  The list could go on and on.  But all these people without money lived in a society where they had access to other people’s money, as a result of a legal system where property rights facilitated the transfer of money from those who had it to those who had entrepreneurial talents but no money.”[ii]

[i] Von Mises, Liberalism:  The Classical Tradition, (Indianapolis:  Liberty Fund, 2005),  43-45.

[ii] Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies, (New York:  Basic Books, 2008), 200-202

As Congress debates yet another bill that is several thousand pages long, and which no member of Congress will read thoroughly, I feel the need to examine the purpose of government, and its scope.  In this environment of ever-expanding government, many Americans are calling for more limited government.  This is nothing new. The call for “limited government” has echoed through American political discourse throughout our history.  I add my own voice to that chorus, but these days I’m finding that “limited government” is a term with so many different meanings that it has become nearly useless.  It surely means “NOT the status quo,” but what is the principle we can strive toward?  Are advocates of limited government simply trying to “put on the brakes?”  No!  Are they trying to eviscerate the law, to approach anarchy?  Certainly not!  Yet the range of views on what “limited government” may mean is broad enough to encompass both of these opposites. 

That broad range exposes a fundamental issue: there is a lack of philosophical unity, even on the political right, about what the most basic purpose of government is.  I suggest that we turn to one of America’s favorite literary and philosophical figures, Walt Whitman, for the principle we ought to follow.  The following is from an editorial he wrote for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, from July 26, 1847.

In plain truth, ‘the people expect too much of the government.’  Under a proper organization, (and even to a great extent as things are,) the wealth and happiness of the citizens could hardly be touched by the government—could neither be retarded nor advanced.  Men must be ‘masters unto themselves,’ and not look to Presidents and legislative bodies for aid.  In this wide and naturally rich country, the best government indeed is ‘that which governs least.’

….While mere politicians, in their narrow minds, are sweating and fuming with their complicated statutes, this one single rule, rationally construed and applied, is enough to form the starting point of all that is necessary in government: to make no more laws than those useful for preventing a man or body of men from infringing on the rights of other men. [Italics in original] [1] 

Whitman has outlined the basic principle for us: governments are established not for happiness or wealth, but to protect rights.  Government is not equipped for anything else, or so we claim.  But those on the left will point to the millions of Americans whose livelihood has been salvaged from calamity by government; whose lives are sheltered from the ravages of poverty by Uncle Sam’s purse.  And there we have the crux of the matter:  “limited government,” as Walt Whitman has described it to us, sounds right, but what about all of the good that government does apart from simply defending rights.  Are we to simply throw all of that away? 

That line of reasoning is understandable, but it’s wrong.  The principle that Whitman articulated does not throw the poor to the wolves, but it does reflect the reality of what government is and what government can do.  The nature of government is coercive.  Everything that government does is coercive.  When the government makes a law, it must be followed by everybody, or there will be consequences.  The power of the government to rule is in its ability to use force, in varying degrees, to ensure that its policies take effect. 

Government’s coercive power works best when it is employed against something, rather than for it.  You can use a gun to fight off an intruder, but you’ll have a hard time building a house with it.  Governmental power is like that.  It works when it’s used to stop people from doing bad things to each other, like violence or fraud, because government power is designed to coerce people toward a direction that they don’t necessarily want to go. 

On the other hand, when government tries to employ its power to increase somebody’s happiness or wealth, it can only do so by coercing somebody else.  Governments don’t create anything.  If government wants to give anything to anyone, it has to take it from somebody else by force of law.  When government spends money on benefits, that money is taken from other citizens.  When one business is given preferential access to a market, another business necessarily has its opportunity taken away.  Every one of those programs that seem to do good for some carries with it the unseen negative effects forced upon other citizens.

Many economists tell us that free markets do a better job of eradicating poverty and giving people hope than government programs can ever do, but limiting government is not just about prosperity.  The fact is that if government is not limited to defending rights, as Whitman urged, then it has to force one person down for each one it lifts up.  It has to make distinctions between citizens to decide who deserves the favor of government and whose rights will be forced aside to pay for it.  Government has to treat people unequally to try to achieve its ends.  Then, unintended consequences drive it to enact more laws to correct for new injustices, and government naturally grows and becomes more complex with every new bill Congress passes. 

I find it far more palatable morally for government to limit its actions to defending rights, treating each person equally under the law.  Under such a limited government, distinctions between people are not made arbitrarily or enacted with force.  I’m not suggesting that every public social program be canceled, but we need to be clear about the cost of expanding the role of government.  Citizens, unlike government, can create wealth and happiness.  If they’re going to have an opportunity to do it, though, the law has to get out of their way, and somebody’s going to have to protect their rights.  That is what government is for.  Those who think otherwise, as Whitman pointed out, are expecting too much from government.

[1] Issues of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle may be found by date at http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org.