The tweet and thread have since been deleted, but here are a couple of sample screenshots.

Bone then goes on to list terms that one should not use in order to raise social awareness of how to properly respect people in the “disabled” community.

This is the first time in my over 28 years of living on the earth that I knew there was even such a thing as “Disability Pride Month.” To be honest, I find the whole notion of a pride month for people with disabilities to be just as utterly ridiculous as all the other pride or history months for any other people group. 

As a man with cerebral palsy, I find the idea of a “pride month” for disabled people to be very exclusionary. I have fought to be fit in most of my life, and to be treated just as a man and not defined by my disability or the wheelchair I use as a result. “Disability Pride Month” turns all that effort to stand out as an individual on its head. 

Yes, I have cerebral palsy, but I am not defined by my condition. I want to be judged by my character and respected for my credibility as a commentator and writer who stands up for individual liberty—not coddled because society thinks I am not strong enough to face some of the harsh realities of life because I was dealt a bad hand. On top of the whole dumb idea, Mr. Bone wants to lecture the rest of the world on what we should and shouldn’t say dare we offend a disabled person. 

Life is hard and most people with disabilities know a thing or two about hardships that able-bodied people will never know firsthand. The last thing I want is for anyone to treat me like a baby just because I use a wheelchair to get around.  

I am technically considered a minority because of my cerebral palsy, but I will not be used as a pawn to attempt to destroy America. That is precisely what social justice warrior activists like Jaecyn Bone want—to divide the people of this country by class, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and every other possible way so that communists can fundamentally transform everything that made us the greatest country in the history of the world. If the citizens of this country think that our nation is fundamentally evil, what is to stop authoritarians from pushing for a total transformation? That is the plan, my friends, and it always has been since the “Progressive Era” began in the 1890s.

 America is the greatest country in the world. Only in this country could a disabled man such as myself rise from literally nothing to a well-established journalist/commentator in just two-and-a-half years, if I didn’t have the good fortune of being born in this country, who knows what would have become of me? While there are several warts on America’s national nose, the world is a much better place because of the founding of this country. Instead of celebrating this fact, Mr. Bone took the opportunity to crap on this country on its 245th birthday. 

“Happy Independence Day ONLY to white land- owning men. And fuck everyone else I guess.” Bone said Sunday. 

While this country has strayed far from its roots as a freedom-loving, free-market nation, it is only because of these roots that a man like me is able to rise to his fullest potential and reach his dreams instead of being held back by circumstances beyond my control.

It is in this spirit that I say keep your “disabled pride.” I am Caleb Shumate, a liberty-loving American. I am not a victim. Keep your victimhood Olympics and let those of us who are willing reach the dreams no one ever thought possible!

Image: Twitter

The post My Disability Does Not Define Me: a Disabled Libertarian Responds to a ‘Disabled Pride Month’ SJW. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Walt Whitman’s Criticisms of “Fallen” America

The fears and concerns about social conditions and their solutions heard today have been expressed many a time in the past, both more distant and closer to our own time. For instance, the famous 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman (1819-92) expressed such disenchantment about the United States in his 1871 essay, Democratic Vistas:

Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.… The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official [government] services of America are saturated with corruption, bribery, falsehood, and maladministration.

Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theater, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity — everywhere an abnormal libidinousness … with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners, probably the meanest to be seen in the world.

In spite of America’s industrial achievements, the rising standards of living, the opportunities for the less well off to better themselves, and the prevailing spirit of freedom and individual autonomy, America was enveloped with cultural decay and spiritual stagnation, Whitman forlornly said. Not too surprisingly, he called for a social and cultural renaissance in America through the emergence of great novelists and poets, who would capture and inspire a higher and truer and more virtuous path for America. They would highlight the heroism, the goodness, and the greatness of Democratic America, properly understood.

Whitman’s Better America and Political Paternalism

But he was too impatient to wait for these things to fully come on their own through literature and culture, appropriately inspired. A better and more virtuous America required the middle class being broadened to include more of those currently among the poor. A more active religious sentiment and practice as the ultimate foundation for America needed to be cultivated, along with love for and dedication to “the Union” to be fostered and reinforced all across the country (after all, it was only six years since the end of the Civil War). A unified and created nationalist spirit was essential.

Whitman offered no full central plan about how to ensure America being on a renewed path to “greatness,” but he made it clear that while Democracy (always in the essay with a capital “D”) was the “divine” and moral order for humanity, most especially in the United States, a free society could only be trusted with freedom when the proper values and virtues had been developed among the population.

As long as “the people” (what Whitman called God’s “divine aggregate”) was lacking in the needed qualities for free citizenship, political paternalism would have to rule over them until they were ready to democratically rule themselves. Or as Whitman expressed it: “That until the individual or community show due signs of [democratic self-ruling maturity], or be so minor or fractional as not to endanger the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage may continue, and self-government must abide its time.”

Whitman’s Program for Remaking the American People

What Whitman did call for was a “program” to be established for all Americans, to lead them to that higher level of true Democracy:

I should demand a program of Culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the West, the workingmen, the facts of farms and jackplanes and engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of this program or theory a scope generous enough to include the widest human area.

Out of this would come a new and better American Man. This program and agenda to make and keep America great would have to include the physical training of a superior breed of people. Said Whitman:

To our model a clear-blooded, strong-fibred physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted.

Out of these we descry a well-begotten Selfhood in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor somber; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flushed, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of lashing and a general presence that holds its own in the company of the highest.

Whitman spoke of building a nation of persons imbued with a “Personality” of “Individuality.” But all of his new American individuals end up being cookie-cut from the same mental and physical mold. This renewed America, with new man (and woman), would be designed according to Walt Whitman’s imagination. In addition, the United States needed “future religious forms, sociology, literature, teachers, schools, costumes, &c., [all of] a compact whole, uniform, on tallying principles.” Walt Whitman seemed to want a peculiar individualism of national conformity in mind and body.

Hazony’s Call for Tradition and Rejection of “Rationalism”

A recent variation on the same theme is the call for a new national conservatism that rejects both the relativist multiculturalism of “the left” and what is called a “rationalist liberalism” that rejects a needed American traditionalism. It is summarized in a lecture delivered at Harvard University in April 2019 by Yoram Hazony (b. 1964), the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.

Hazony argues “Conservative Rationalism Has Failed” (part 1 and part 2). In essence, he wishes to see a political, economic, and cultural turn away from the ideas and influences of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Rationalism, individualism, the free market, and religious skepticism in America and the West, in general, have become socially decadent, culturally immoral, and philosophically foundationless due to the rejection of traditionalism as the basis of belief, values, and institutions, all of which rely upon certain religious ideas and dogmas, Hazony argues.

American conservatism went astray in the post–World War II period by eschewing the sacred and basing its case for a free and good society on “reason.” Says Hazony:

What were once linchpin concepts such as family and nation, man and woman, God and Scripture, the honorable and the sacred, have been found wanting and severely damaged, if not overthrown. The resulting void has been filled by new doctrines, until now mostly neo-Marxist or libertarian in character. But a racialist “white identity” politics in a Darwinian key is gathering momentum as well.

All three of these approaches to political and moral questions are, in a sense, creatures of the Enlightenment, claiming to be founded on a universally accessible reason and to play by its rules. This is another way of saying that none of them have much regard for inherited tradition, seeing it as contributing little to our understanding of politics and morals.

He also rejects the founding premises in the Declaration of Independence on the “natural rights” of each and every individual, “a kind of official ideology of the state” that he considers misplaced and dangerous for America. He argues that rationalists of every stripe presume that “reason” has the capacity and ability to create society, mold it into any desired shape, and transform the human condition. Hazony considers this misplaced.

Religion and Tradition Back in Public Schools

Society is the long and cumulative product of human experience that has emerged out of the contributions of countless generations. Traditions capture the wisdom of the ages, while the current generation, cutting itself off from all that historical humanity has learned, has nothing to go by but the reality of its own time, which is a mere slice of mankind’s time on this planet. Relying on what the reasoning minds of the current generation can know and with the arrogance that that is sufficient to design society has resulted in the conflicts, contradictions, and tyrannical presumptions of those such as the politically correct multiculturalists and identity-politics warriors.

The acceptance by conservatives of this “liberal rationalism,” Hazony warns, has brought about the loss of religion in society, reflected in the banishing of religion from the government school system and the public square in general. Thus, America and the West have become increasingly godless societies. Earlier in American history and politics, Hazony wistfully reminds his audience, religion was a central part of the political; now it has all but disappeared.

So what does Yoram Hazony want? He wants to reinstate religion, most importantly, within the public school system and as a mandatory part of the curriculum:

A nation that honors its religious traditions in the schools will end up honoring traditions in the broader public sphere. A nation that heaps dishonor on its religious traditions by banning them from the schools will end up dishonoring its traditions in the broader public sphere as America consistently does today.

Without religion, Hazony believes, reasonable men guided by reason alone will simply go around in circles ending up, perhaps, with Marxist conclusions, maybe white-nationalist results, or possibly liberal or libertarian outcomes. Nobody knows and anything goes, unless there is this outside-and-above-man standard, benchmark, and imposer of right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, and free and unfree on humanity.

What should be the standards and benchmarks and expected criteria for ideas and actions, according to Hazony? In other words, according to him, what does God want of us? He tells us honor and restraint. Restraint, he says, teaches us that there are natural and social limits in the confines of which freedom is possible by specifying what is or is not right, possible or doable. Honor refers to following standards and acting accordingly.

Teaching Restraint and Honor in Public Schools

Hazony believes that reason and public discourse or introspective reflection cannot ensure the discovery, valuation, and following of restraints in our personal conduct. Reason unrestrained by God-based tradition leads to chaos and tyranny, he implies. Only tradition, that is, acceptance of what earlier generations have handed down to us, can safely guide us to know that we should not do this or that — that we are obligated to do one thing but not another — and can bring restraint to people’s personal and social conduct. Once you tell people that they can decide what is good or bad, or right and wrong, the genie is out of the bottle and social instability and discord seemingly inevitably follow.

How do you get people to act in these restrained ways, according to Hazony? By honoring people who do — that is, by recognizing, socially rewarding, and respecting honorable conduct. But what is honorable conduct? Hazony suggests:

My proposal is straightforward: Freedom cannot be maintained in the absence of self-constraint. And the only known means of causing individuals to shoulder hardship and constraint without coercion or significant financial compensation is by rewarding them with honor — that is, with status and public approval that is tied to their upholding inherited norms and ideals rather than choosing to be free of them. Thus, for example, in the old Christian and Jewish order, individuals were honored for marrying and raising children, for military service, for national and religious leadership, for teaching the young, for knowledge of Scripture, law and custom, for performing religious duties, and for personally caring for the aged.

So serving in the military or in public office, as well as caring for one’s parents, and being a good husband, father, and son, should be honored in society. But as far as Hazony is concerned,

The demolition of the nation’s traditions is, at bottom, a struggle to prevent the government, schools, and private institutions from giving honor to norms inherited from the past.… I don’t believe that America has much of a chance of righting itself, for example, so long as most children are required to attend schools in which God and Scripture are daily dishonored by their absence.

Notice that while Hazony refers to the positive influence of traditions inherited from the past, and the positive social power of people being inspired and guided by what may be learned from the long experience of mankind, he believes in the state as one or even the primary societal mechanism to inculcate those traditions and values within the nation.

Disturbed that the political and cultural rationalism that he decries is propagandized for in the government-run and government-mandated educational system, he does not call for ending the government’s compulsory schooling and allowing free, voluntary, and competitive private education to function in its place. No, he wants cultural and “conservative” centrally planned schooling as much as those on “the left” that he disagrees with and disapproves of.

Conservative-Content Public Schooling Is Still Social Engineering

Conservative values wrapped in religious training will be the political vehicle to put the “right” ideas, attitudes, and conduct into people’s heads. A competition of ideas concerning which if any traditions should be followed, an intellectual rivalry about alternative notions of “tradition” and its appropriate content, is not what Hazony wants. He says that the bedrock of American traditionalist conservatism is Judaism and Christianity, and these must be reintroduced into the curriculum and taught to every young American.

But whose “Christianity” and “Judaism”? He admits that religion has been the basis of conflict and discord in the past, but he shrugs off the possibility that once religion is mandatory in every schoolroom, the battles will bubble to the surface once again. Catholicism or Protestantism? Among the many branches, which variations on the Protestant theme will be given greater prominence?

What about Judaism, and what happens when Jewish students are insistently taught that “Jesus is their Lord and Savior, the Redeemer who has already come and died for their sins”? And by the way, words matter. What will “the Book” be called: the “Old Testament” or the “Hebrew Bible”?

This, alone, can cause flurries of conflict and controversy. Is it necessary to point out the discord that has arisen over evolution versus creationism? Once religious training is compulsory in government schools, that will cause no end of warfare among parents and proselytizers of one reading of the Bible versus another on science versus faith. What about atheists and Muslims or Buddhists?

The classical liberal and libertarian case for full privatization of education defuses all these curriculum troubles and tensions. Parents and students select their own education and schooling institutions. Schools compete in offering curricula and teaching methods to serve and suit the desires and demands of many different consumers of education.

But this is not what Hazony wants to hear. For him, this demonstrates the supposed bankruptcy of “liberal” rationalism. There is one true tradition and one true faith to be taught in America. And if he is in charge — or those who think like him — all of us will get it whether or not we want part, all, or none of it. Yoram Hazony’s conservative traditionalism is a potential road to theological authoritarianism.

Hayek on Reasonable vs. Rationalistic Enlightenment

But what is most missing in Hazony’s harking back to pre-Enlightenment premises for society is a failure on his part to appreciate that there were several intellectual strands within the Enlightenment tradition that emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries. His caricature of Enlightenment liberalism is one of them, albeit a highly influential one.

In 1946, Austrian economist F.A. Hayek delivered a lecture on what he called “Individualism: True and False.” The gist of his argument was that there had been a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding concerning the relationship between the individual and society, both in terms of social theory and practical politics.

He juxtaposed what he suggested could be considered two traditions of social and political individualism that emerged out of the Enlightenment: the British and the French. The British tradition included such thinkers as John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, Edmund Burke, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson (the last three of whom were among those often referred to as the Scottish moral philosophers). For these British thinkers, social theory began with a focus on the individual because they understood that “society” is not an entity separate from the interactions of the individuals who comprise it. To understand the origin and evolution of society, we must understand the logic and interactive processes of human action.

For especially the Scottish philosophers, John Locke’s conception of an original state of nature prior to government, out of which a “social contract” emerged for the formation of government so individuals may be more secure and protected in their “natural rights” to their respective lives, liberty, and honestly acquired property, was a mental experiment to deduce the logic of a limited government desired to ensure liberty rather than abridge it.

It was not claimed that this was the origin of society or government. It was understood and explained by David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and others that the ideas and institutions of a free society had emerged and taken form through long societal evolutionary processes up until their own times. It was asking precisely what our reason and our historical knowledge and our human experience tell us about the nature of man, the heritage of earlier generations, and the practices of governments in the past that led to the suggested benefits of, in Adam Smith’s words, “a System of Natural Liberty,” with its wide personal and economic freedom, if liberty and prosperity was to be cultivated for all.

Furthermore, in this British or Scottish tradition the conception of man is not that of a rational calculator presumed to possess perfect knowledge and guided only by a narrow material notion of “self-interest.” Instead, man was seen as motivated by passions as much as by cool reason, with imperfect and limited knowledge. The social order and many of its institutional traditions, customs, and rules of interaction have evolved slowly and in unanticipated and unpredictable ways over many human lifetimes. Much of what is called human society and civilization is, therefore, seen as “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (to use the phrase coined by Ferguson and often quoted by Hayek).

Thus the British and Scottish Enlightenment tradition of individualism had little confidence in the ability to plan society. And particularly because of man’s imperfections and foibles, these thinkers were reluctant to see power centralized in the hands of government. Far better to decentralize decision-making in the private competitive market so as to limit the potential damage from error and abuse.

In the alternative French tradition represented by thinkers such as Descartes, Hayek argued, there was a tendency toward hyper-rationality, a belief that man through his reason could understand clearly and definitely how to remake society. All social institutions and traditions not “provable” through logic and rational reflection to be “useful” or “good” were to be criticized and torn down. In their place would be constructed a new world according to a politically planned design. In many of his writings over the years, Hayek tried to show the “fatal conceit” in those who presumed to possess the knowledge and ability to reconstruct man and society in their own “enlightened” image.

Hazony’s Failure to Appreciate the Importance of Liberalism

If Hazony knew about or appreciated the Scottish variation on Enlightenment thinking, particularly as interpreted and formulated by someone like Friedrich Hayek, a reasonable conclusion would be that it is classical liberalism that not only respects individual liberty and economic freedom, but cultivates a social setting in which the evolved traditions and institutions of society are able to endure and “naturally” evolve over time in the context of the heritage of the past.

It is of note that in volume one of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (1973), Hayek’s last major work, he warned that the “rationalism” that Hazony opposes often fosters that type of revolt against reason that can lead blind faith, emotional irrationalism, and calls to higher intuitions claimed to be possessed by political ideologues and fanatics to arise as the false alternatives to the use of reason properly understood.

So that society can escape from both dangers — the hyper-rationalism of the social engineer and the anti-rationalism of the coercing traditionalist — Hayek explained, “Liberalism for this reason restricts deliberate control of the overall order of the society to the enforcement of general rules as are necessary for the formation of a spontaneous order [of a free society], the details of which we cannot foresee.”

Yoram Hazony’s call for a conservative traditionalism supported by government through enforced public schooling and political propagandizing in the public square for developing “honorable” conduct among the citizenry is another variation on the collectivist and statist theme. It is the other side of the same paternalistic and central planning coin as the politically correct multiculturalists that Hazony wishes to unseat.

Once there is an attempt to re-create or design the institutions of a society and their content, the “traditionalist” becomes the very type of “rationalist” social engineer that Hazony says he opposes. The very nature of the traditions of belief, values, codes of conduct, and inherited conceptions of “right things to do” is precisely their lack of centralized planning and construction.

Real Traditions Are Part of the Spontaneous Order

Traditions and the social institutions in which they are embedded emerge, take their forms, influence, and guide human action and interactions most often in unplanned ways. They originate out of the actions of individuals or groups of individuals usually pursuing purposes of the moment and their personal futures, with unintended consequences of which they have little or no forethought and which oftentimes they could not fully imagine if they tried.

Think for a moment of an example from Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on Civil Society (1767) concerning the emergence of property rights, law, and government:

Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniences, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrives at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate, and pass on, like animals, in the track of their nature, without perceiving its end. He who first said, “I will appropriate this field: I will leave it to my heirs,” did not perceive, that he was laying the foundation of civil laws and political establishments.

Or Adam Smith’s explanation in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766) of part of the institutional origins of probity, punctuality, and trustworthiness arising from the self-interested conduct of commerce and trade:

Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it.… It is far more reducible to self-interest, that general principle which regulates the actions of every man, and which leads men to act in a certain manner from views of advantage, and is as deeply implanted in an Englishman as a Dutchman.

A dealer is afraid of losing his character, and is scrupulous in observing every engagement. When a person makes perhaps 20 contracts in a day, he cannot gain so much by endeavoring to impose on his neighbors, as the very appearance of a cheat would make him lose.

When people seldom deal with one another, we find that they are somewhat disposed to cheat, because they can gain more by a smart trick than they can lose by the injury that it does to their character.… Wherever dealings are frequent, a man does not expect to gain so much by any one contract as by probity and punctuality in the whole, and a prudent dealer, who is sensible of his real interest, would rather choose to lose what he has a right to than give any ground for suspicion.…

When the greater part of people are merchants they always bring probity and punctuality into fashion, and these therefore are the principle virtues of a commercial nation.
The inability to know where and how these institutions emerge and the details and importance of their forms and patterns was emphasized by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Weiser in his treatise Social Economics (1914):

The economy is full of social institutions which serve the entire economy and are so harmonious in structure as to suggest that they are the creation of an organized social will. Actually they can only have originated in the cooperation of periodically independent persons. Such a social institution is illustrated by money, by the economic market, by the division of labor.…

How could any general contractual agreement be reached as to institutions whose being is still hidden in the mists of the future, and is only conceived in an incomplete manner by a few far-seeing persons, while the great mass can never clearly appreciate the nature of such an institution until it actually attained its full form and is generally operative?

And, finally, as Ludwig von Mises expressed it in Theory and History (1957):

The historical process is not designed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all individuals. No man can plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

All that most likely can be effectively done to create the “space” for the reemergence of traditions reflecting the actions, experiences, and the heritage of intergenerational wisdom is the removal of the political planning, regulation, and redistributive government policies that handicap and restrain the free action of multitudes of individuals.

In their place should be the “end-independent” general rules of individual rights, private property, free and voluntary exchange and association, and an impartial rule of law recognizing and protecting those “natural” rights to personal freedom and peaceful interrelationships among the members of society.

In this setting the use and role of “reason” to guide our actions, the appeal to some of faiths (and which ones), the forms of conduct considered appropriately “restraining” and deserving to be “honored” would spontaneously emerge anew. No doubt, this process will draw upon the heritage and legacies of the traditions of the past that remain as the residues of human affairs, in spite of the impact of the social-engineering mentality and its works.

But Yoram Hazony’s central plan to socially engineer the re-creation of the tradition-based society will be defeated by the very rationalist uses of government that he has chosen to reverse the rationalism of the political Left he so strongly opposes.

Richard M. Ebeling

The post Hazony’s Tradition-Based Society Is a Form of Social Engineering appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Everyone in the political arena assures us that they represent and wish to preserve or purify “American values” and “the American way of life.” President Trump insists that he speaks for American values in wanting to make America great again, or now with the start of his reelection campaign, his desire for a chance to “keep America great,” under the presumption that his first years in the White House have successfully restored that which had been lost. That’s what tariff walls and real walls along the border are all about — or so insists Donald Trump.

After the first round of two nights of the Democratic Party wannabees trying to prove why they should be their party’s standard-bearer in the 2020 presidential election, it is clear that all of them, also, want to maintain or refine “American values” for, as they see it, a more socially just society. Each one made it unequivocally clear that they consider freedom essential to the American way of life; how else can you interpret their respective promises to make so many welfare and redistributive programs totally “free” for the unlimited taking by all who want something — at someone else’s expense, of course. “Freedom” for them means something for nothing for the many.

The Self-Evident Individual Rights of Everyone

Has this anything to do with the values and way of life captured in the ideas and ideals of that Declaration of Independence of 1776 that set America on its course over the next nearly 250 years? Let us turn to the document itself, and to that first portion that most students in school have heard — or at least used to hear — repeated over and over again in history and civics classes from one end of the United States to the other.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Notice that the rights spoken of are declared to be prior to and independent of governments. It is said that these individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness arise from a higher authority than kings, princes, or democratically elected officials. But it might be said in response that not all people in America today believe in or accept the existence or power of such a supernatural authority. So that argument, it might be claimed, falls to the ground. Yet, if one looks behind the Declaration of Independence to the intellectual sources from which these principles arose, it can be shown that reason was considered as much of a demonstrable basis of these rights as any belief in God.

Right Reasoning and the Rights of Man

The ancient Romans developed their idea of “universal law” transcending the customs and traditions of any one group residing within the confines of their empire by asking, What could dispassionate men of good will, regardless of their particular societal backgrounds, agree to as just and right among them, given the nature of man? (See my article “The Ancient Romans, Who Went From Rule of Law to Inflation and Price Controls.”)

When John Locke articulated his explanation and rationale for “natural rights” in his Second Treatise on Government (1689), he asked us not to simply take his defense of individual rights purely on faith. He called for us to reason with him. Does not every one of us wish to preserve and better our own lives? Do we not all wish to be safe and secure from the violence and predation of our fellow human beings? Do we not all consider it just if someone has taken from the previously unowned and unused resources found in nature and molded them into some other useful and useable form through their mental and physical labors that it should be considered “rightly” and “justly’ the property of that person whose hands has made this transformation?

Would not each and every one of us consider it unjust if another were to forcibly or fraudulently take that which someone had peacefully and honestly made, and therefore without their agreed-upon and voluntary consent? Is it not equally reasonable for people to form a common system of protection and enforcement of an unbiased and impartial rule of law, which is known as “government”? (See my article “John Locke and American Individualism.”)

We can find the same call to introspective reflection and mutual reasoning in the words of the Scottish philosopher Francis Hutchison (1694-1746), who taught at the University of Glasgow and was one of Adam Smith’s influential professors. From Hutchison’s System of Moral Philosophy (1737):

The following natural rights of each individual seem of the perfect sort: A right to life, and to that perfection of the body which nature has given, belongs to every man.… This right is violated by unjust assaults, maiming, and murder.

As nature has implanted in each man a desire of his own happiness … tis plain that each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor, or amusements, as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods….

This right we call natural liberty. Every man has a sense of this right, and a sense of the evil or cruelty in interrupting this joyful liberty of others….

Each one has a natural right to the use of such things as are in their nature fitted for the common use of all; and has a right, by any innocent means, to acquire property in such goods as are fit for occupation and property, and have not been occupied by others….

For the like reasons every innocent person has a natural right to enter into an intercourse of innocent offices or commence with all who incline to deal with him.

A more “modern” reply to such a view of personal freedom and unrestrained individual liberty might be, But do not individuals sometimes choose wrong or misguided courses of action? Should they not be restricted in some of their private conduct and “nudged” into better directions? Hutchison commented on this, as well:

Let men instruct, teach, and convince their fellows as far as they can about the proper use of their natural powers, or persuade them to submit voluntarily to some wise plans of civil power where their important interests shall be secure. But till this is done, men must enjoy their natural liberty as long as they are not injurious [by violating the individual rights of others].

This right of natural liberty is not only suggested by the selfish parts of our own constitution but by many generous affections … as the grand dignity and perfection of our nature.

Hutchison also warned about and feared the paternalist state, in making his case for limiting government. Which government official or bureaucrat has the knowledge, wisdom, and ability to know what each of us “really” deserves as a distributive share from the cumulative outputs of the private actions of everyone in society? And would this not soon reduce everyone to the political whims and personal judgments of those holding such material and social power over all? Or as Hutchison expressed it:

Such constant vigilance too of magistrates and such nice discernment of merit, as could ensure both a universal diligence, and a just and humane distribution, is not be expected…. What magistrate can judge of the delicate ties of friendship, by which a fine spirit may be so attached to another as to bear all toils for him with joy? … And what plan of policy will ever satisfy men sufficiently as to the just treatment to be given to themselves … if all is to depend on the pleasures of the magistrate? … Must all men in private stations ever to be treated as children, or fools?

The Reflecting Common Sense of Liberty

The philosophical underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence, therefore, proclaim a self-evident truth of individual liberty and right to honestly acquired property that all men of unbiased reasoning could and should agree with and see as essential to a free, just, and prosperous society.

I would ask any reader, Which one of us does not want to be respected and protected in the safety of our life from injury and murder? Which one of us does not desire the liberty to guide and direct our own life, as our own ideas of the desirable, the useful and valued suggest to us? Which one of us wants to be a human puppet at the end of strings pulled by others against our own will and wishes? And which one of us does not want others to interact with us in honest, truthful, and fair dealing?

Does it matter whether the killing of us, the restricting and restraining of us, or the deceitful manipulation of us is done by either a private individual or by a government, regardless of whether that government is an absolute monarchy or a democratically elected body of politicians and appointed bureaucrats?

Anything that government does that goes beyond the securing of such individual rights for each citizen must, by logical necessity, involve an abridgement of one or more aspects of a person’s freedom. It is the use of political authority and power to make some the compelled servants or providers of various things for the benefit of others.

Concentration of Power and Arbitrary Rule

The American Founding Fathers explained in the Declaration of Independence how intolerable an absolutist and highly centralized government in faraway London had become. This distant government violated the personal and civil liberties of the people living in the 13 colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America.

In addition, the king’s ministers imposed rigid and oppressive economic regulations and controls on the colonists that were part of the 18th-century system of government central planning known as mercantilism.

“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” the signers declared.

At every turn, the British Crown had concentrated political power and decision-making in its own hands, leaving the American colonists with little ability to manage their own affairs through local and state governments. Laws and rules were imposed without the consent of the governed; local laws and procedures meant to limit abusive or arbitrary government were abrogated or ignored.

The king also had attempted to manipulate the legal system by arbitrarily appointing judges that shared his power-lusting purposes or were open to being influenced to serve the monarch’s policy goals. The king’s officials unjustly placed colonists under arrest in violation of writ of habeas corpus, and sentenced them to prison without a proper trial by jury. Colonists often were violently conscripted to serve in the king’s armed forces and made to fight in foreign wars.

A financially burdensome standing army was imposed on the colonists without the consent of the local legislatures. Soldiers often were quartered in the homes of the colonists without their approval or permission.

In addition, the authors of the Declaration stated, the king fostered civil unrest by creating tensions and conflicts among the different ethnic groups in his colonial domain (the English settlers and the Native American tribes).

Government Violation of Economic Liberty

But what was at the heart of many of their complaints and grievances against King George III were the economic controls that limited their freedom and the taxes imposed that confiscated their wealth and honestly earned income.

The fundamental premise behind the mercantilist planning system was the idea that it was the duty and responsibility of the government to manage and direct the economic affairs of society. The British Crown shackled the commercial activities of the colonists with a spider’s web of regulations and restrictions. The British government told them what they could produce, and dictated the resources and the technologies that could be employed.

The government prevented the free market from setting prices and wages, and manipulated what goods would be available to the colonial consumers. It dictated what goods might be imported or exported between the 13 colonies and the rest of the world, thus preventing the colonists from benefiting from the gains that could have been theirs under free trade.

Everywhere, the king appointed various magistrates who were to control and command much of the people’s daily affairs of earning a living. Layer after layer of new bureaucracies were imposed over every facet of life. “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” the Founding Fathers explain.

In addition, the king and his government imposed taxes upon the colonists without their consent. Their income was taxed to finance expensive and growing projects that the king wanted and that he thought were good for the people, whether the people themselves wanted them or not.

Burdensome Taxes, Tax Evasion, and Violent Government

The 1760s and early 1770s saw a series of royal taxes that burdened the American colonists and aroused their ire: the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767, the Tea Act of 1773 (which resulted in the Boston Tea Party), and a wide variety of other fiscal impositions.

The American colonists often were extremely creative at avoiding and evading the Crown’s regulations and taxes through smuggling and bribery. (Paul Revere smuggled Boston pewter into the West Indies in exchange for contraband molasses.)

The British government’s response to the American colonists’ “civil disobedience” against its regulations and taxes was harsh. The king’s army and navy killed civilians and wantonly ruined people’s private property. “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people,” the Declaration laments.

Opposing Oppressive Government to Be Free

After enumerating these and other complaints, the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Thus, the momentous step was taken to declare their independence from the British Crown. The signers of the Declaration then did “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” in their common cause of establishing a free government and the individual liberty of the then three million occupants of those original 13 colonies.

Never before in history had a people declared and then established a government based on the principles of the individual’s right to his life, liberty, and property.

Never before was a society founded on the ideal of economic freedom, under which free men were declared to have the right to live for themselves in their own individual interest, and peacefully produce and exchange with each other on the terms they find mutually beneficial without the stranglehold of regulating and planning government.

Never before had a people made clear that self-government not only meant the right of electing those who would hold political office and pass the laws of the land, but also meant that each human being had the right to be self-governing over his own life.

Indeed, in those inspiring words in the Declaration, the Founding Fathers were insisting that each man should be considered as owning himself, and not be viewed as the property of the state to be manipulated by either king or Parliament.

How far we have moved away from these ideals of 1776. National “greatness” and not individual freedom is the watchword of President Trump. Raising tariffs and threatening trade wars is in the tradition of the mercantilist regulatory schemes of 18th-century Great Britain and France that presumed the right and responsibility of governments to manage and direct the trade of nations.

The American economist Thomas Cooper (1759-1839) explained the wrongheadedness of all such interventionist policies in his Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy (1820; 2nd ed., 1830), one of the most widely read works on economic principles in the America of the 1820s and 1830s:

The true principles of Political Economy, teach us that a system of restrictions and prohibitions on commercial intercourse, cuts off the foreign market, diminishes the number of buyers and the demand for our national produce; hence the consumer is compelled to accept of less for his produce, which he is compelled to pay more to the home monopolist. Hence, the wealth of the nation is wasted; every consumer is abridged of comforts that he might otherwise procure, and his means of purchasing even home-commodities are diminished.

They teach us also, that men should be permitted, without the interference of government, to produce whatever they find it their interest to produce; that they should not be prevented from producing some articles, or bribed to produce others. That they should be left unmolested to judge and pursue their own interest; to exchange what they have produced when, where, and with whom and in what manner they find most profitable and convenient; and not be compelled by theoretical statesmen to buy dear and sell cheap; or to give more, or get less, than they might do if left to themselves, without government interference or control.

Such are the leading maxims by means of which Political Economy teaches how to obtain the greatest sum of useful commodities at the least expense of labor. These are indeed maxims directly opposed to the common practice of governments, who think they can never govern too much; and who are the willing dupes of artful and interested men, who seek to prey upon the vitals of the community.

Thomas Cooper also warned of the methodological mistake in thinking of “nations” and “peoples” as if they were actual, distinct, and living entities different and separate from the real individual human beings who live, work, produce, sell, and buy in their respective attempts to improve their lives:

Much difficulty and deplorable mistake, has arisen on the subject of Political Economy, from the propensity that has prevailed, of considering a nation as some existing intelligent being, distinct from the individuals who compose it; and possessing properties belonging to no individual who is a member of it. We seem to think that national morality is a different thing from individual morality, and dependent upon principles quite dissimilar….

The grammatical being called a NATION has been clothed in attributes that have no real existence except in the imagination of those who metamorphose a word into a thing; and convert a mere grammatical contrivance into an existing and intelligent being.

What Thomas Cooper explained and warned about applies not only to those who insist upon “making the nation great,” separate from and with compulsory sacrifices imposed upon numerous actual human beings through trade restrictions and import taxes. It has its parallel in contemporary America with those who conceptually reduce multitudes of distinct and different human beings to the aggregated categories of “race” or “gender.”

The New Collectivism in Place of Individuals With Rights

Race and gender, for the practitioners of “identity politics,” are made the defining and determining qualities and characteristics of every member of the society; that is, people are reduced to a skin color and a claimed sexual orientation and “feeling.” For the modern gender and “anti-racist” race warriors who have created “identity politics,” they, like the nationalist, consider that individuals are nothing more than the collective classification into which they have been defined.

The unique and different human beings, with their individual rights, as declared and hailed in the Declaration of Independence, disappear from the human stage. Groups, tribes, collectives have “rights,” and the individuals composing these groups and tribes receive only what their assigned collective is deemed to be “rightfully” deserving through the pressure-group horse-trading of the political decision-making of modern democratic politics.

Benito Mussolini defined the hyper-nationalism that he called “fascism” in the following way: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” The gender and race warriors of identity politics conceive of a politically controlled and designed world in which the guiding principles appear to be: everything within your gender and race, nothing outside your gender and race, and nothing against your gender and race. Here is the new gender and race totalitarianism of the 21st century: a repackaged Mussolini for a postmodern “progressive” and “democratic” socialist world. (See my articles “Collectivism’s Progress: From Marxism to Intersectionality” and “An ‘Identity Politics’ Victory Would Mean the End to Liberty.”)

All of this makes it sadly clear that when the backyard grills are fired up this July 4, and the burgers and brats are consumed in huge quantities while being washed down with untold gallons of beer, and the beautiful fireworks are oohed and aahh-ed over as the evening sky darkens, much of what is claimed to be “the American way” or “American values” in our contemporary world has, in fact, little to do with the ideas and ideals that inspired and guided those individuals who signed the Declaration of Independence.

But neither despair nor pessimism should becloud our celebration and enjoyment of the day. We, who believe in the liberty for which the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in that war of independence, must do all in our power to restore that crucial understanding and appreciation of individual freedom and individual rights among our fellow citizens, without which that great American “experiment” in political, social, and economic liberty may be lost beyond recovery but which can be restored and improved upon, if only enough of us are willing to try.

Richard M. Ebeling

The post The Real Spirit of the Declaration of Independence appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

All the more shocking it is then that despite all of this, many libertarians simply don’t know too much about his actual ideas. To know of the existence of Hayek has become something quite different to reading Hayek and understanding his ideas. The latter is surprisingly hard and quite a few people, me included, had the experience of almost falling asleep while reading his most famous work, The Road to Serfdom, for the first time.

Where to start then? If you want to learn more about Hayek’s ideas and his most important concepts, there are a number of essays and shorter works, which especially because of their simpler way of writing, are quite easy to understand, but (still) worth reading. Here is a selection of just five ways to get to know Hayek:

1. Hayek’s Individualism—and His Attack on Rationalists

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1952). Individualism: True and False

One of Hayek’s more well-known essays called Why I am Not a Conservative is already provocative thanks to its title. It is here where Hayek attacks conservatism full-front and shows his rejection of this line of thought. But it’s quite interesting as well why Hayek even felt the need to write this text. The reason for that was that conservatives had always seen him as one of theirs (even today, because they think Hayek’s criticism only pertained a specific kind of conservatism, but not theirs).

That’s not without a reason, and especially in his essay Individualism: True and False, the first chapter of his compilation Individualism and Economic Order, his traditionalist roots become evident (though he equally never neglects the possibilities of progress). Hayek differentiates between two kinds of individualism: he attacks the rationalist one, which puts reason first in all decision-making, and tries to get rid of everything which the rationalist doesn’t deem as “rational.”

But for Hayek there is also another kind of individualism. It’s the individualism of Burke, Tocqueville, Acton, Smith, and Hume. This individualism sees the individual as born into a society—and social relationships within the family and closer environment are crucially important. The social institutions, traditions and rules are of a fundamental importance and secure an “ordered liberty” as opposed to chaos. Without social institutions and rules, which the rationalists try to explain away, Hayek believes that life in a society would not be possible.

2. The Knowledge Problem

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1974). The Pretense of Knowledge

Two ideas stick out of Hayek’s writings: one is the idea of the “spontaneous order” (see point 3), the other is the “knowledge problem.” The latter is the topic of two of his most famous essays, The Pretense of Knowledge, his Nobel Prize speech, and The Use of Knowledge in Society.

Briefly put, the knowledge problem goes as follows (be aware, the term knowledge will appear quite often in the next few sentences): knowledge is extremely dispersed around the world. Each human being only has access to an infinitely small part of it—and no single human could own all knowledge there exists. The benevolent dictator could, for instance, never know what all individuals in a society know for themselves—what a mason, a shoemaker, a computer scientist and so on, know. Should the government—or whoever—still have the pretense to want to know everything, it would result in chaos. Only the market, with the price system, can coordinate this scattered knowledge.

Hayek’s knowledge problem is another essential argument against central planning and shows, like Mises’ calculation problem, the impossibility that socialism could ever work.

3. The Spontaneous Order in the Tradition of Smith and Menger

Horwitz, Steven (2001). From Smith to Menger to Hayek: Liberalism in the Spontaneous-Order Tradition

His second famous concept, the one of the spontaneous order, combines the first two points to a certain degree. For Hayek, the individual plays the decisive role in the analysis—only the individual can act after all—but always in perspective to others, by cooperating and trading with them (or potentially of course by waging war). This way everyone contributes to society. This cooperation between people let’s a spontaneous order come into being—by itself. In the economy, the price system coordinates market activities. In society and politics, social and political institutions and rules develop.

It’s essential that this process happens bottom-up, not top-down. It would once again be a pretense of knowledge should a higher authority try to control and steer society. In this, Hayek follows a prominent tradition. According to Steve Horwitz’ From Smith to Menger to Hayek, the Scottish enlightenment thinkers took the first steps towards the concept of the spontaneous order, among them Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, and Bernard Mandeville (the latter one admittedly not being Scottish). And it’s true: Smith’s idea of the invisible hand is quite similar.

Following the Scots came the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, who explained the emergence of social institutions by referring to them as the result of spontaneous, organic processes. None of the individuals necessarily knew what the result would be. But through their self-interest, they all participated in the process and those institutions seemed to come into being almost randomly (especially Menger’s example of the Origins of Money is well-known). Hayek pushed these ideas one step further by putting the knowledge of the individual in the center. (Another great example of this tradition is the small essay of FEE’s founder Leonard Read, I, Pencil.)

4. The Denationalization of Money

Hayek, Friedrich A. (1976). The Denationalization of Money

Hayek Friedrich A. (1977). A Free-Market Monetary System

In libertarian circles there are, to put it mildly, some disagreements on how a classical liberal monetary policy should look like. It would go beyond the scope of this article to simply talk about the differences between the Austrian School and the Chicago School (around Milton Friedman). Even between the Austrians, there are more than enough different views. Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises for example, vehemently argued for a return to the gold standard.

Hayek had a different idea: for him, the solution to the problem that the state could, in principle, print an infinite amount of money if it is in the hands of the government, would be, putting it a little crudely, to simply privatize the money, i.e. denationalize it. Every bank, every financial institution, every company—really everyone, could invent their own currency, and offer it on the market. As with any other good, a market for the best product would come into being, and some currencies would probably prevail in this competition (since the transaction costs with hundreds of currencies would probably be too high).

Especially in today’s age of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, this idea has found new popularity—some even see the electronic currencies as the realization of Hayek’s vision.

5. The Impossibility of Social Justice

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Is There a Case for Private Property? (1977) (YouTube)

The second part of Hayek’s trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, covers the concept of “social justice”—not without a reason it is called The Mirage of Social Justice. But on this topic, a rare video footage of Hayek is available, namely an episode of William F. Buckley’s discussion show Firing Line.

Here Hayek explains that the concept that a society as a whole can be just or unjust is simply a myth or sometimes even a pretext to expand government competences. Only an individual can be just or unjust in his actions.

Next to the Firing Line episode, a more detailed explanation of mine on Hayek’s arguments on social justice is available over at The Conservative Online.

The Challenge of Hayek

To read Hayek’s works can be an unexpected challenge and many are discouraged quickly to continue reading. Others will stop with the conclusion that he is simply overrated—which is almost as bad as those who see him as a socialist (a different, but quite bizarre story for another time).

Considering that, one can be well advised when it comes to “Fritz” to start with some of his easier works and essays. This should not mean that his longer books aren’t worth reading—quite the opposite. Indeed, they are at least as good (including The Road to Serfdom after all). But they are hard to read and take a while to get used to.

Hayek’s thought system is as complex as little to no other thinker of the last century. Getting to know those ideas is rewarding, not just for libertarians, but for everyone. Hopefully this list will help to find an easier introduction into the thoughts of one of the greatest classical liberals in history.

Previously published in German at Peace Love Liberty

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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… one filled with up close witnessing of man’s inhumanity in World War I, the economic ruin of the Great Depression, and a dangerous game of brinkmanship with respect to Western civilization itself, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the end, he would become one of the most influential thinkers of the century, providing the intellectual ammunition for the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Ludwig Erhard and serving as a hero for classical liberals and conservatives alike around the globe. Likewise, he was one of the main orchestrators of the creation of a movement in favor of classical liberal ideas, trying to bring together often antagonistic schools of thought, including the Austrians, the Chicagoans, and the German ordoliberals, particularly through the creation of the Mont Pelerin Society.

And yet, today, most people do not even know who Hayek is or what his main teachings are. Even more disturbingly, some parts of the movement he helped found see him, at worst, as a “socialist”—a good monetary economist, perhaps, but of no use on any other issues—and at best, a lesser Ludwig von Mises, a copycat who ultimately stole his mentor’s Nobel Prize. All of this is quite tragic. Especially in today’s world—with threats to our liberties arising right and left (quite literally)—Hayek’s incredibly deep system of thought, which spans across economics, law, culture, politics, and philosophy, is crucial.

Ideas of centralization are more en vogue in the West today than at any other point since the fall of the last ultra-centralized state, the Soviet Union, in 1989. One could perhaps assume that the 20th century overwhelmingly showed that mega-states and collectivism of any kind don’t work. Nonetheless, these utopian dreams have returned once more in recent years.

Centralization Doesn’t Work

On the left, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and activists all across Europe hail the dream of socialism, all while its most prominent real-world example, Venezuela, is burning down in front of their eyes. The youth leader of the center-left Social Democrats in Germany proposed just last week that corporations such as BMW should be nationalized despite the fact that another socialist experiment, Eastern Germany, burned down right in front of his eyes (he was born in West Berlin). All of these disasters were not “real” socialism, of course (it never is), but the next attempt will surely work. To defeat the greed of the free market, it needs to be replaced by a powerful government.

The right is not much better at this point. Nationalists around Europe, from Marine Le Pen in France to Matteo Salvini in Italy, attack capitalism as ferociously as the left does. But unlike in socialism, the economy isn’t really that important. The nation itself is on the line, and everything needs to make way for its survival—regardless of whether it’s free trade, immigrants, or even the rule of law, as in Hungary.

In all of this, it is easy to forget that the status quo—the current political establishment—is not in favor of individual liberty and the market economy, either. Ever more centralization, for instance at EU institutions in Brussels but also far beyond the Belgian capital, is highly popular. A powerful government is yet again the answer.

Hayek’s work offers a powerful response to all these different demands that still sound so dangerously similar. More centralization cannot be the answer, regardless of who is proposing it. Jonah Goldberg was on point in a recent article when he called on conservatives to read Hayek once more: on the right,

the new proponents of “economic nationalism,” no longer think elites can’t run the economy—just that liberal elites, or “globalists,” can’t run it. Part of this stems from the often-paranoid conviction that liberal elites have brilliantly rigged the system in their favor. So, the thinking goes, if they can pull that off, so can we. It doesn’t work that way.

The Power of True Liberalism

Demands for a powerful government, responsible for all areas of life, are misconstruing the world we are living in. For centuries, ever since industrialization put liberalism fully on the map, our world has grown more complex. Largely locally organized economies have grown into today’s global economy, where everyone can trade freely with one another (as long as governments don’t interfere).

Hayek called this international world the “Great Society.” And while this extended order certainly brought with it major breakdowns in communities and identities and always delivered (temporary) negative economic effects for some, it also brought forth the immense wealth and prosperity we enjoy today.

What can be difficult to understand is that this order is so complex that no single mind could direct it. With billions of people interacting with each other across thousands of miles every day, involved in economic processes in which products are created by millions without anyone knowing each other, this order is difficult to comprehend. But it is the daily reality.

Who could ever take care of this all by him or herself without destroying the structure itself? Who could know every little detail on the ground, know what every individual, from the farmer to the factory worker to the Silicon Valley engineer, thinks and does at every moment in time? This complex order, if left to itself, can take care of its own functioning. All small parts of this fabric work together, and if one falls apart it will be replaced by another. But could any one human being alone take care of it all (or even produce something so simple as a pencil for that matter)?

A benevolent dictator—or president or even parliament—in charge could try to organize all of these activities. But he would fail. And with it would perish the complex order itself. It would be impossible to still function by itself, being intruded upon constantly. Individuals could not do what they want to do anymore. It would only be the wise man or woman making the decision. Poverty and a significant loss in liberties would be the result.

Outcomes over Intentions

Yes, the intentions of those in charge may be well and good, but the actions would prove disastrous. Bernie Sanders, while trying to help the poor in the US, would impoverish them, along with “The 1 Percent,” by taking away all their means to prosper.

Marine Le Pen, while trying to protect the French nation, would create a wholly different, autarkic France, which would, from there on, merely follow the road to serfdom until authoritarianism eventually fully prevailed because everything that is not furthering France, in her mind, would have to be eliminated.

As Hayek wrote,

Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes which horrify us follow of necessity.

Instead, Hayek argues, we need to let go of these dreams. We should instead embrace the idea of a society based on the liberty of its members to find fulfillment in their lives by themselves. Instead of central planning by one, the individual planning of each member of society, coinciding with one another, would prevail. Hayek saw the role of the government in this as one of an English gardener: one who lays the groundwork and prevents any clear and damaging breaches of the overall structure but does not interfere actively in its processes—or tries to design it all by himself.

This does not mean that the economy could simply do whatever it wants. Indeed, as Hayek pointed out, a free economy would also need the moral foundations that supplement the economy and prevent it from going rogue. Social institutions, mores, traditions, and habits, which have been developed over decades and centuries not by government but by the actions of individuals themselves interacting with one another, would act as a check against those results of the market we do not like. That is, a free society would need a healthy civil society next to a free economy.

It is here where many of today’s classical liberals can also still learn something from Hayek. A society that is not allowed to critically examine any outcomes in the economic realm, even if there are clearly adverse consequences in other orders of the society, such as a further breakdown of social institutions, would fail completely—and it possibly does at the moment.

It does not have to be this way. Liberalism can survive. It is what Hayek coined “true individualism,” based on the view that free individuals are born into a society, a family, and other institutions and that human relations will influence individuals at every point in their lives as much as individuals influence their surroundings. Humans are social animals, not rationalistic animals striving for their maximum economic gain.

This individualism is based on the belief that orders are created spontaneously, not centralized, and that traditions, social rules, and institutions—that is, culture—do matter.  And that humans, because they are social animals, sometimes prioritize other things in life more than simply economics. That they have an innate need for a sense of belonging, for an identity that goes beyond oneself, and for strong communities that can help in times of personal crises. And yet, it is also based on the realization that a free economy, undisturbed by constant government intervention, can be pure dynamism for one’s own community or country but also humanity at large—and for every member of society.

Decentralism and localism on one hand, the market and the global on the other. They might seem contradictory at first. But what Hayek showed is that with the right mix of the two, they prove most successful. It is liberalism that is both attractive as well as sustainable. And it is the kind of liberalism we need today.

A version of this article appeared at the Austrian Economics Center.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

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by Ian Tartt

Libertarians have a reputation for being “atomistic”. Those who attach this label to libertarians assume that they think the individual is all that matters or that cooperation is unnecessary. Let’s take a look at some problems with that type of thinking.

When libertarians talk about individual effort, they are not saying that an individual can do everything by himself or that there is nothing he can gain from working with another person. Rather, they are pointing out that the individual is the foundation of every group, community, and society. There can be a lot of individuals in the same area without forming a group, but there can’t be a group without individuals. Likewise, without individual effort, there can be no group effort.

Accordingly, libertarians recognize the value of voluntary cooperation and free markets. An example of the latter is this video of Milton Friedman talking about what goes into making a pencil. Another example is libertarians helping victims of natural disasters, such as those who’ve been hurt by Hurricane Harvey in Texas through the Liberty Coalition for Disaster Relief. Both examples require thousands of individuals coming together and working voluntarily toward a common goal; libertarians would not applaud or participate in such activities if they didn’t believe in teamwork.

Some who accuse others of atomistic thinking do so because they either think of or want to portray their targets as being indifferent to other people. This criticism certainly doesn’t apply to libertarians who participate in relief programs or help people in other charitable ways. Further, libertarians believe in individual rights. Rather than putting people into groups and assigning them value based on which groups they’re in, they say that everyone has value and rights by virtue of being human. This distinguishes libertarianism from other philosophies that value some people more than others or say that certain people are not deserving of rights for reasons that are beyond their control. How can anyone who understands this accuse libertarians of being indifferent to others?

In conclusion, individualism doesn’t equal atomism. Believing that every individual has certain inherent rights and recognizing that group effort first requires individual effort are quite different than not caring about anyone outside of the self or rejecting cooperation. If this article has helped explain the important difference between the two, then it will have served its purpose.

WATCH TLR’S LATEST VIDEO:

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