Against Libertarianism
During my recent interview by RJ of Fourth Age, I mentioned that I was once mesmerized by the sophomoric allure of Libertarianism, a political theory of admirable logical self-consistency, but, alas, one too optimistic for fallen man to follow.
A reader asked to me expound on these comments, which I here will, too briefly. An entire book could be written on any one of these points, and many have, so I hope I will be excused in the space of this short column if I fail to lay out the argument in a nuanced and rigorous fashion.
I submit Libertarianism it is a perfectly apt political philosophy for young and healthy men in times of peace, for they have no need to have Caesar do more, and they rightly suspect that he will abuse whatever powers are given him to do good.
However, three things convinced me Libertarianism is inadequate to the needs and limitations of the real world for women, children, and old men, especially in times of war, tumult, emergency.
First, in wartime, sacrifices must be shared unequally.
For example, in THE SEVEN SAMURAI by Akira Kurosawa, villagers foreseeing a raid by twoscore bandits hire samurai to organize defense. Military prudence requires the line of defense be built at the stream to one side of the village, and that the three houses beyond be torn down, to prevent the bandits from using them for concealment or cover. These house-owners object and mutiny, throw down their spears, and declare they will organize a separate defense, fighting the bandits as they see fit. Kambei, leader of the samurai, draws his terrible sword and chases the mutineers back into ranks, saying that selfishness in war leads to sure defeat.
This scene shocked me. By libertarian standards, by their “natural law” theory and their “non aggression principle” the mutineers are entirely within their rights and entirely justified, and Kambei’s action was immoral. Common sense and common experience says the opposite: the mutineers are acting in an absurdly selfish fashion, condemning themselves and their neighbors to be conquered separately.
Second, non-aggression is only feasible if one is not currently mired in an eternally ongoing war, as is Christendom with the Dar-al-Islam, or the First World with the Communist Bloc.
For example, when the Twin Towers were knocked down by terrorists hijackers using a plane full of innocent civilians as a guided missile, my libertarian friends quickly blamed American foreign policy for the loss of life. The specific individuals who committed the act died by suicide, and so, by libertarian theory, which treats all men as individuals, there was no foreign government, no unholy religion, to blame, and nothing whatsoever to be done to prevent or pre-empt the next such attack.
Libertarianism allows for violence only in self defense and only against the aggressor, not against any fellow conspirators organizing and funding the aggression.
By this convoluted logic, the sole allowable response to 9/11 was isolationism. Isolationism would have the practical effect of abandoning the First World to communism, abandoning the high seas to piracy, abandoning Christendom to Islam. Libertarianism acknowledges no duty running from the United States to her world neighbors, and libertarian theory outlaws the pursuit of any practical act of foreign policy to benefit the United States that oversteps the non-aggression principle. We have to wait for Jerusalem to be nuked before we can act in the defense of our allied nation of Israel.
Third, the generation of children raised in an libertarian commonwealth will not have passed to them the moral principles needed to sustain the strict scruples needed for libertarianism to work. The non-libertarians among them will use the law as a form of cold war warfare to undermine libertarian teachings and principles, and so bring about the opposite.
For example, no nation can survive if the institution of marriage is not protected and promulgated by public law. The long experience of mankind makes this as clear as anything can be. Libertarianism proposes marriage be private contracts, where the women hires out her copulations like a whore, hired out her housekeeping services like a cleaning maid, hires out her childrearing services like a nanny.
To the libertarian, there is no difference between a wife and a nanny-harlot-chambermaid. Law is needed to identify who has the duty to rear the child, that is, to separate bastards from legitimate children, and to prevent divorce. Without such laws, women will abandon husbands to seek richer husbands, fathers abandon families to seek trophy wives, and fathers will be trapped into rearing, or at least paying for, the rearing of children not their own.
One sure way to abolish the institution of marriage, while retaining its name, is to legalize sodomy, and to honor the alliance of sodomite and catamite with the name and regalia of marriage. When, as per perfectly sound libertarian theory, the legislature of Massachusetts passed a law giving sodomites a right to contract a “civil union” with their anal sex partners, granting visitation rights and tax benefits exactly the same as those of a married couple, the supreme court of that state, backed by the unified voice of all perversion activists nationwide, rejected this. It was not the real legal consequences of marriage they demanded, but the name and honors. Moreover, they demanded, and got, the right to sue and punish any wedding planner or bakery refusing to participate and aid in the monstrous delusion that “marriage” was the same as “non-marriage.”
Libertarian assumes a truce. Libertarianism assumes a no-man’s-land can exist between two opposed parties, whose bounds both sides will respect: that is, libertarianism assumes a compromise can be found where both sides of a conflict can agree to settle matters privately, without recourse to law or to coercion.
Likewise, libertarians oppose censorship in all its forms, but the indecent and decent will not agree to this ceasefire. The utter absence of censorship is impossible, for in any society where pornography is not censored, the perverts will and must censor the decent, because otherwise they will be shamed and embarrassed by examples against which they cannot use words to argue. See, for example, the current censorship on YouTube of traditional motherhood and homemaker as hate speech.
Libertarianism can only operate when all parties concerned agree to the cease-fire of lawfare.
If one side is unwilling to use the law to defend their rights, and the other is not, the victories of the aggressor using the law to impose on the rights of others will be gradual and inevitable, and, as if on a ratchet, no such imposition on our rights will ever be pushed back.
Conservatism says that aggression is permissible to maintain the social order, to provide for the common defense, to uphold common decency, and when in keeping with the Just War theory. One cannot be a Catholic and be a Libertarian, because Libertarianism requires compromise and welcome be extended to perversions, rebellions, and abominations no civilized society can long tolerate.
Also, my libertarian friends want open borders, which is an insane idea during the current cold war with China, or during a global epidemic.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
