Liberty, Dicta & Force: Why Liberty Brings Out the Best in People and How Government Brings Out the Worst

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. — H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)

Goodness in man can only grow in a climate of liberty. — F.A. Harper (1905–1973)

Liberty is a concept of non subordination that those who embrace politics find most difficult to accept because without subordination political governments would not exist. Regardless of their titles, all political structures begin with the presumption of subordination. Classifying people into rulers and subjects is a prerequisite to the Constitution. Absent such classification, the rules of conduct would apply equally to everyone. As discussed throughout, government brings out the worst in people by granting constitutional immunity to acts by ruling members that are deemed criminal when done by others.

There are those in politics — even those claiming to be libertarians — who believe in the necessity of government, provided its power to rule is limited. They claim the Constitution grants the federal government the rightful authority to rule but contend it has abused its authority and power. The government is authorized to levy taxes, impose tariffs, wage wars, commandeer warriors, print money, prohibit trade, seize private property, and grant immunities and privileges. To contend that an abuse of power occurs only when these authorized activities exceed some arbitrary limit is a tortuous stretch of reasoning. To endorse such authorized powers even at a minimal level is to disavow any meaningful concept of liberty. Liberty is not something to be doled out by, or subject to, a superior authority, because the very notion of a person of such superiority is that mythical artifact libertarians find troublesome. Thomas Paine succinctly expresses this notion in Common Sense: “There is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS.”

Justifying the legitimacy of a government based on the authority conferred on it by a proclamation authored by a few self-appointed individuals is spurious, regardless of their best intentions. The Constitution has no more authority to proclaim a superior ruling class than a king’s proclamation that his authority to rule is God-given or a similar notion proclaimed by a few of my friends and me.

Defending the Constitution as a vehicle to curtail state intrusions into people’s lives certainly cannot be based on its efficacy to do so. Once the Constitution was ratified, federal intrusions followed almost immediately, with expansions limited only by the time required to shepherd them through the constitutional political maze. As early as 1798, when the Constitution was only nine years old, the government passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which, among other things, prohibited speech critical of the federal government. One need only scan an issue of the Wall Street Journal or any other major newspaper and tally the articles covering state intrusions into citizens’ peaceful affairs to recognize the Constitution’s ineffectiveness as a means to curtail such intrusions.

Those enamored with government claim that roads, schools, defense, laws, and justice would not exist without it. Absent government, some claim wages would be pitiful, working conditions would be dismal, criminals would run loose, schools would disappear, women would be scorned, slavery would return, aliens would invade, air and water would be polluted, oceans would be depleted, the Earth would be scorched, food would be contaminated, and so on. According to Hobbes, without an all-powerful sovereign, humans would return to a state of nature, where life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”1 This allegedly necessary all-powerful sovereign has a historical record of hundreds of millions of lives cut short by famine and war, wherein every known form of brutality and nastiness has been used.2

When we envision the political state, we imagine an amorphous enigma, a kind of faceless “Uberman” that can miraculously defy nature by creating prosperity out of plunder, peace out of war, money by fiat, freedom out of mastery, and harmony out of divisiveness. Those who rely on such sorcery to bring about order and prosperity, regardless of who waves the magic wand, are destined to be disappointed because the actions taken are directly opposite to those that would naturally achieve the desired ends.

The belief that there is a plan that if implemented will bring about a better society begs for someone with exceptional insight who knows the plan and can make it a reality. With that mindset, people open their door to every sort of political pundit claiming to be that messiah, ready and willing to implement his or her miraculous plan if given the chance. Political democracy encourages people to believe in the false notion that miraculous plans and political messiahs exist and in the equally false notion that dicta and force can bring about social order and a better society.

When confronted by the political mind with regard to how X would be provided or accomplished in the absence of government, the urge is strong to respond with descriptive ways X could be provided and accomplished. Yet, the more apt response, while not particularly satisfying, would be: “I can’t know, since free markets don’t come with blueprints.” The political world is one of blueprints with myriad drafters and architects in constant debate, each with a notion of certitude. Thus, to suggest that the best solution is to scrap the blueprints would likely make for a very short debate! Those in the political world find such hands-off, bottom-up emergent workings too uncertain and slow. They are confident that their use of dicta and force can expedite a more peaceful and prosperous social outcome than that which emerges spontaneously from volition.

Nonetheless, whether by force or volition, we know that people — not the state — produce goods and services. Teachers educate, engineers build roads, financiers create financial markets, arbiters resolve disputes, guards provide protection, and physicians and nurses provide health care. These are real people. Yet they do not become more brilliant, energetic, efficient, moral, creative, or superhuman by way of the state. An abundance of facts shows that the very opposite is engendered in people at the hands of the state.

Politicians are masters at employing words and phrases that tell us what we want to hear while avoiding language that tells us what they are actually saying and doing. Companies such as Luntz Global use focus groups to evaluate the impact of words and phrases in political speeches. Its motto is “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” Founder Frank Luntz asserts, “My job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion.”3 Precise language can turn negative-sounding words into positive ones and vice versa. Such sophistry is the art of politics.

Underlying this sophistry, however, is the decaying stench of political democracy — most evident when a person can dictate with authoritative pride how others are allowed to conduct themselves in their most intimate relationships. Such a degrading and pompous display of inhumanity permeates every nook and cranny of human activity and exemplifies why political democracy brings out the very worst in people. The actual prohibitions that are adopted and enforced are the unavoidable symptoms of a political system wherein all human matters, no matter how intimate or innocuous, are subject to the dictates of a consensus.

To oppose a political policy on moral grounds but embrace the idea that a consensus is sufficient to rightfully enact it as law is to oppose a symptom while endorsing its cause. The idea that a political consensus is righteous has become so ubiquitous that most people today believe they are not only justified in sticking their nose into everyone else’s business but also have a patriotic duty to do so. Political voting is a display of that belief, and to embrace such means to rule the lives of others is to believe in the same righteous fiction kings once employed. In each case, people are forced to behave at the pleasure of another. Whether people are forced to live at the pleasure of a tyrant or a political consensus, nature’s feedback is indifferent. Using force to make people behave better will only make them behave worse!

Those who propose a mini-state to regain the degree of freedom Americans enjoyed when the nation was young and governed by a less intrusive government must envision a state based on an arrangement far different from that of the Constitution or a political democracy. Otherwise, such an arrangement, if attained, would simply revert to the same level of intrusion that now exists. In principle, a mini-state is no different from a maxi-state because the inherent nature of any state, regardless of size, is to forcibly prohibit individual secession — the very antithesis of freedom.

The Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) — whereby everyone in a given neighborhood agrees to a set of rules — is sometimes invoked to demonstrate the legitimacy of the state. An arrangement in which everyone in a community or neighborhood volitionally agrees to conduct themselves and maintain their property in a prescribed way is not incompatible with the concept of liberty. However, the alleged corollary of such a community to the state is foundationally invalid since one is founded on volition while the other is founded on force. The need for physical force in a political democracy implies that few people would buy or opt into the social arrangement volitionally.

The Constitution is not a set of rules agreed to by those who became subject to them. By eminent domain and without compensation, its authors simply commanded everyone residing within their claimed segment of the planet to obey their rules — like it or not. Libertarians who embrace liberty, freedom, personal responsibility, nonaggression, individualism, the Golden Rule, peace, and personal property while simultaneously embracing the Constitution must envision in each of those terms conditions that fall far afield from their general, everyday understanding.

In his popular book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt claims that society would be better served if everyone understood why their political opponents think the way they do.4 He sees those in the political world as primarily divided by their moral inclinations, not by reasoning. He identifies the moral inclinations of the left (liberals) as “caring and equality” and those of the right (conservatives) as “loyalty and justice.” Haidt suggests that the better we understand the underlying moral instincts that drive our opponents, the more persuasive we will be in getting them to understand and appreciate our own views. He considers the use of reason and logic far less persuasive than appealing to people’s emotions. Emotions certainly run high in the political world, where the more popular an opponent’s views are, the more threatening they become to yours.

Regardless of a person’s political leanings, it is the win/lose nature of the system that makes one so rabid about his or her views. When you are battling for things dear to your heart that someone else is trying to take away, it is difficult to think rationally. The ugliness of politics is not due to mere differences of opinion — it’s the win/lose scenario that creates its ugliness. Outside the political world, people have myriad differences of opinions and preferences they can express without repressing the expression and preferences of others. The market seeks out every kind of expressed preference as an open invitation to provide satisfaction. You do not have to understand why someone’s preferences are different from yours — you are simply thankful that they are. In contrast, the political world is a battlefield where you had better shoot down the other guy’s preferences before he shoots down yours.

Haidt is concerned about the ugliness of politics. He believes the arena of the political world would become more civil if people were to step outside their “moral matrix,” as he puts it. This moral matrix is not the instinctual moral compass that guides both liberals and conservatives. Neither group would likely advocate in their private lives with friends, neighbors, and associates that which they advocate in their political lives for public affairs. Imagine a conservative forcing a neighbor to be loyal and just or a liberal forcing his neighbor to be caring and equal. The personal behaviors of liberals and conservatives are likely indistinguishable in their private affairs but completely at odds in the realm of political affairs.

People behave abhorrently in a political context because such conduct is the accepted norm. Sadly, Haidt is trying to cure what he sees as an ailment while embracing the disease. His claim that “hatred and mistrust damage democracy” is clearly backward. It is political democracy that damages respect and trust by pitting people against each other in a divisive frenzy for power that provokes hatred and mistrust.

If political democracy were as wonderful as many claim, the threat of physical force would not be needed to gain allegiance. Only this threat gives politicians an audience because without it, people would, for the most part, mind their own business. Without force, a political democracy would last but a few years because common sense, moral sentiment, reason, and secession would oblige politicians to find useful work, producing goods and services that people would buy volitionally.

It would be difficult to construct a more inhumane, demoralizing, and divisive social scheme than one based on political democracy, in which common sense and goodwill are scorned and individual predation is praised.

• 1Hobbes was an English philosopher and political theorist best known for his book Leviathan (1651). There, he argues that the only way to secure civil society is through universal submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign.
• 2Matthew White, Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013).
• 3“Interview: Frank Luntz,” Frontline, PBS, November 9, 2004, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/luntz.html.
• 4Jonathan Haidt, Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage, 2013).