The difference in being a liberal

The only difference between me and the liberals is that I'm a liberal.^[1]

What defines a liberal?

Rights

Any liberalism that ignores rights is no liberalism. Rights make up the very core of liberalism. Randy Barnett's phrase "the presumption of liberty" nicely captures the spirit of these rights and how we may fold them into the real world of law.^[2]

The Ninth Amendment, the enumerated rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and our Declaration already recognize these boundaries. What a wonder it is to be born into an age where such documents already exist as a foundation for our laws, defining the ends and limits to government power.

"What?", you ask. "These boundaries on liberal government are already recognized in the Ninth Amendment? And the Fourteenth Amendment?" The socialist squirms, the conservative balks, the anarchist says, "Yeah, whatever..."

If a party calls itself liberal and begins trampling on rights with impunity, and so becomes a faction, it is no longer liberty-minded. It is no longer liberal. It is one thing to tax and spend in a measured, constitutional manner. It is quite another to "criminalize" innocent behavior.

I remember how shocked I was in the '80s when I first learned that the federal government had a half-century earlier criminalized monetary gold. Somehow in my fine education, this important piece of history had escaped me. I identified myself then as a liberal, in the same spirit as I do now but less discerningly. Even then I felt strongly that the bounds of liberalism clearly had been overstepped.

Independence

I despair deeply now when I hear that some states, such as Massachusetts, are making it a "crime" for an independent citizen to choose not to have state-defined "health insurance"^[3]. The argument on behalf of the state goes something like this.

Since the state is your rescuer, even when you say, "No," the state gets angry. After all, it's paying the bill. It insists.

You know the type. The guy who actually gets angry when you insist on paying your own tab. The state, in this case, is that guy.

It's a pose. This is a classic, dysfunctional victim's-triangle writ large, where the state dances between playing the roles of rescuer, victim, and perpetrator, all in the blink of an eye. We stand guilty in our innocence.

The most important right we have is the right to say no, to strive to live peacefully, to strive to live without the use of force.

Moreover, in my view a liberal ought to encourage and celebrate such independence. To tempt a citizen into dependence is a warning sign, a design to corrupt; to mandate such dependence, evidence of a design to control.

Yes, not everyone has the strength to remain independent, but liberal parties must at an absolute minimum leave open the door.

Version 1.2 (Apr 19, 2007)


Notes

1. ↑ With apologies to Salvador Dali, whose reputed quip was, "The only difference between me and the surrealists is that I'm a surrealist." Source.


2. ↑ See: Randy Barnett (2004) Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty.


3. ↑ Or, more accurately, health insulation, as described by Arnold Kling (2006) Crisis of Abundance.

Update: For more on RomneyCare, see Romney lets loose a Rhinoceros in Massachusetts.

Update: (Apr 18, 2007) An editorial at the Investor's Business Daily, Living Off of Others, dated Apr 16, speaks to the issue of tax dependency, describing where we are and its dangers. "Today, more than half of our country is dependent on Washington, continuing a trend that should disturb anyone who doesn't consider himself or herself a socialist." The final sentence reads ominously, "A dependent nation is a nation that cannot last long."

The editorial refers to an article written by Mark Trumbull in the Christian Science Monitor, Apr 16, As US tax rates drop, government's reach grows, which in turn refers to a paper by Gary Shilling.

It's my view that government taxation and dependency should be but an exception to the rule, a small fraction of activity compared to the activity of society... in the language of physics, a perturbation off of equilibrium. I find the diagram in Trumbull's article disturbing.

Update: (Apr 19, 2007) Here's a poll asking what you think would be the best, realistic tax rate 10 years from now, if we were to have a flat tax (with a reasonable poverty exemption). What should the total rate be, including all levels, local, state, and federal?

In short, what tax rate should we aim to have in 10 years?

Poll: Flat tax - what should it be in 10 years?

Update: (July 31, 2007) Bulgaria goes to a 10% flat tax.

Update (Nov 15, 2007): They're at it again.

Liberalism, socialism, and conservatism

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?
     George Orwell (1949) 1984

There is such confusion in the American language, making political discussion increasingly difficult. In this story one word stands out, "liberalism".

Somehow in the United States, this wonderful word has been hijacked, its oldspeak meaning thrown into the memory hole, preventing people from thinking clearly for lack of a better word.

It has become a mere euphemism in this country. This wonderful word, liberalism... a mere euphemism.

How do you explain it when people who call themselves "liberal" advocate socialism ? Conservatives love this since then they can drag the word "liberal" through the mud of socialist disasters.

The end result? Well, Trey Parker and Matt Stone summed it up quite elegantly in the South Park episode Douche and Turd, which aired just before the 2004 election. We are not alone. There are Egyptian and Russian variations on this theme, where people are presented a false choice between two factions.

So what's one to do? How can liberal parties grow in the United States? How can liberals argue for liberalism without a word to hang their hat on, without a word to have their conversations with, without a word to think with?

Back in 1955, Dean Russell from the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) saw a way out. He claimed the "good and honorable word 'libertarian'" for liberals to use ... to avoid confusion. To good advantage... for a while. Notice how Russell clearly defined "libertarian" to mean what the word "liberal" once meant.

So, as you may have noticed, this took off. The word libertarian has entered the lexicon. Everything is fine, right? Everyone understands that libertarians are for both economic and personal freedom, the Nolan chart, yada, yada, yada...

Well, not exactly. If you call yourself a libertarian, you now risk being confused for an anarchist. You're asked, "Don't you believe in government?"

How did this happen? Liberals believe in limited government. Liberty and anarchy are distinct. Liberals argue for the rule of law, not the rule of men.

Russell, himself, distinguished between anarchism and libertarianism in his book Anything That's Peaceful. Brian Doherty, senior editor at Reason magazine, writes in his book on the history of the libertarian movement, "[Dean] Russell ... declared--both in private letters and in a Freeman article--that anarchists were positive enemies of human freedom, whether they knew it or not." (Radicals for Capitalism, p. 320)

The experience of Russia, with its lack of rule of law, speaks volumes. So do fatwas.

Are we to await, yet again without word, for anarchists, now clothing themselves with a liberty word, to drag liberalism through the muck of their tax-free insanity?

I say no.

But what is there to do then?

Fortunately, there is the rest of the world. If you just peer over the borders, you will find that the word liberalism lives on happily in its meaningful sense.

Proof?

Read the essay, Analysis of Conservative, Socialist and Liberal Paradigms, by Werner Hoyer, in The Liberal Aerogramme, Issue 46, July 2003, pp. 28-32, a publication of the Liberal International. I just discovered this organization last night via Gregory Yavlinkski's website. Their virtual hall of fame of liberal thinkers includes Hayek, Constant, Nozick, Mises, Popper, Bastiat, Rand, Humboldt, Wollstonecraft, and Williams.

Werner writes,

For the liberal, the central value is "freedom for the individual"--which explains why choice, tolerance, rule of law, civil and political rights, property and entrepreneurship are so important for liberals.

...

[A]ll liberals share a common denominator: they believe in putting freedom and the individual first. Another distinguishing feature of liberalism is that it distrusts decisions made on behalf of collective entities, whether these entities are nations, classes..., castes, religious groups..., or whatever. All such decisions tend towards arbitrariness in that they ignore differences within such an entity, overlook individual needs and create new injustices.

Fortunately the world is a big place, and liberalism lives on.


Update (Mar 7, 2007): Brian Doherty has written an excellent article today Libertarianism: Past and Prospects, which is germane here. The anarchism I oppose is that which is oblivious to the art of a constitution and excuses the rule of men.


Update (Mar 9, 2007): In response to Brian Doherty's article, Brink Lindsey has written an excellent essay Libertarians in an Unlibertarian World, in which he faces reality head on and concludes by calling for a "new political identity", "a genuinely liberal identity". Lindsey writes,

What needs to be developed is a set of ideas that can serve as the basis for a new political identity. Not a strictly libertarian identity – there simply aren’t enough strictly defined libertarians to base a mass political movement on. Rather, a genuinely liberal identity – one that brings together “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” voters from across the current left-right spectrum. One that recognizes a more expansive role for government than committed libertarians would like, but which nonetheless supports both economic and personal liberty. Here, then, is the way forward as I see it: to articulate an appropriately inclusive political vision that puts freedom at the center of its commitments.

This sounds a lot like Werner.

However, if unqualified, this approach is fraught with danger, in particular when you open the flood gates to "a more expansive role for government".

Principled lines must be drawn, where the presumption of liberty is not only supported, but insisted upon.

Update (Apr 9, 2007): Here's an entertaining outreach introduction to liberalism by Daniel Tourre of the Alternative Libérale in France. In it he distinguishes between liberalism, socialism, and conservatism, as I do. I particularly like how he starts it off with this wonderful Magritte painting La condition Humaine.