FROM “Liberalism: History and Future”:

Soon enough, however, such hypocrisy on everyone’s part becomes impossible to miss, as witness the exchange of barbs on the sundry “debate” shows. And “victimology” — of which the above feminism is definitely one of the more obvious examples — collapses when everyone eventually claims (on one basis or another) victim status. The “end of ideology” truly has arrived. Laws are passed, not with reference to philosophic principles, but only with an eye on the polls; “social democracy” devolves into majoritarian democracy — a one-party democracy, where Republicans and Democrats “run towards the center” as closely as possible. Realizing James Madison’s great fear in Federalist No. 10, the country has come to that stage where “measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party; but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority.”

There is, of course, another conceivable direction for the mixed economy: the opposite one, i.e., a move towards ideological consistency, be it capitalist or socialist.

We’ll examine the second possibility first. The name Ludwig von Mises gained currency during the demise of the Soviet Union because many (e.g., Robert Heilbroner, who was generally not known for his sympathy to free-market theories) pointed to his prediction that a socialized economy could only decline because its abolition of the market robbed itself of any means to rationally calculate prices and thus determine production. But the Austrian economist also made another stark prediction — that a mixed economy could not help but move towards total control. His argument ran like this: Imagine that the first control mixed into the economy is a price ceiling on the sale of milk, since the politicians promised to make it more affordable. What invariably follows is that the marginal producers of milk go out of business; milk actually becomes less plentiful. Now the politicians can repeal this control — or they can impose a new one on the “factors of production necessary for the production of milk … But then the same story repeats itself” on a wider level. If the latter course is chosen, we logically head towards socialization of the entire economy.

Let’s move from milk in theory to medicine in practice. For about a hundred years, America has been a nation of accumulating medical controls. Each new regulation was passed with the same justification made for the previous one: This measure will sufficiently correct the failings of the free market and thus save the free-market system. And the result? Today’s “crisis in health care” — as the welfare statists themselves call this iatrogenic disease. The more band-aids are applied, the more wounds appear! And with nothing but band-aids in their bags, these “liberals” (often the same aging advocates of past regulation) can now prescribe only covering the patient head to toe — i.e., the final move to the outright socialization of all medicine. What this says about the microcosm of medicine is obvious; what it means for our mixed economy is ominous.

What limits the limited welfare state? Even with socialism discredited both theoretically and practically, state control over society grows. Do the apologists for government intervention imagine that we can move isotopically towards the electrified fence of totalitarianism without ever touching it? This political progression has its semantic parallel: As the nation encompasses greater government control, so does the meaning of “liberalism.” When the term (like the country) shifted from laissez faire to interventionism, with the advocates of the former renamed “conservatives,” both the term and the policy continued down that road — unstoppably: Progressivism, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society. When some liberals (including a few leftists-turned-liberals) in the 70s opposed any further move beyond the “alphabet soup” (FDR-JFK-LBJ) consensus, they suddenly became “neoconservatives.” A person wasn’t a neoconservative because he rejected Hubert Humphrey liberalism in favor of a return to Jim Crow, but because he clung to its opposition to quotas and “affirmative action” in the face of the absorption of such programs by the “liberal” juggernaut. And when that juggernaut then absorbed the sunny disposition towards the Soviet Union of George McGovern and his supporters, “neoconservative” pushed out even “Cold War liberal” as a term to denote Henry Jackson and the older (now former) liberals. Any number of persons and publications (e.g., The New Republic) went from “liberal” to “neoconservative” merely by standing still. Despite both hope and hysteria over the possibility of the contrary, “liberal” policies expanded in the Reagan-Bush era, and by the 90s the term itself had hit the fence — and plowed through. Now no one was too left to be “liberal.” Radio personality Rush Limbaugh used it to describe the once “radical” William Kunstler, and literary theorist Stanley Fish, a “politically correct” leftist who nonetheless is himself often labeled a “liberal,” tagged civil libertarian Nat Hentoff, once the prototypical liberal, as “right wing” — for his uncompromising defense of free speech. One wonders drolly if in a few years the only “liberal” left in the Western Hemisphere will be Economic Democrat for Life Fidel Castro.

That last thought returns us to the question: What limits the limited welfare state? Not only has “liberalism” meant ever greater economic controls, but now it means the application of socialist ideology to social issues. This has always been a dubious dichotomy — Is a book a manufactured product or an expressed idea? — and one that didn’t exist among either the classical liberals or the Marxist regimes. Yet a surging number of voices tell us that “equality” demands, not only a redistribution of wealth, but also the banning of speech — not only an end to “economic violence,” but also the suppression of “verbal violence.” How this rhetoric translates into reality can be glimpsed by looking north. The legal perversity that pornography constitutes the criminal “exploitation” and “objectification” of women — a linguistic legerdemain whereby bourgeois feminists exculpate their own capitalist occupations as the “exploitation” and “objectification” of the proletariat, thus metamorphosing themselves from class oppressors into gender victims — was affirmed by the Canadian Supreme Court. This idea, in turn, evolved into that of “hate speech,” which was extended to “protect” other groups, such as homosexuals. So now when the Rev. Jerry Falwell airs his show in Canada, he must edit his preachings on homosexuality, which are not protected by freedom of religion or freedom of speech. Here is a “welfare state” that has gone well beyond taxing millionaires to house orphans.

It’s all really very easy to understand as the philosophic analogue to Mises’ economic analysis. The initial introduction of a socialist law into a liberal society forces the question: Do we accept or reject this violation of the liberal ethic? If we accept it, we set a precedent for the next proposed socialist law. We have made a very clear moral decision — collectivism trumps individualism. In contrast to the cynicism that leads to a deluge of special interest groups, this trend involves taking ideas seriously — i.e., recognizing the mutual exclusiveness of the capitalist and socialist paradigms, and thus the imperative to choose one. It acknowledges the hypocrisy — the incoherence — of bringing the socialist outlook to issue A but not issue B, to the “economic” issue but not the “social” issue.

A commitment to greater statism begets more such commitments, and if what we may call the Ronald Dworkin generation pooh-poohed the “silly proposition that true liberals must respect economic as well as intellectual liberty,” the Cass Sunstein generation repudiates as even sillier the proposition that liberals cannot impose on the free market of ideas the same doctrines and controls they impose on the free market in widgets. (The esteemed professor has insisted that speech, like commerce, must have its own “New Deal.” With Sunstein as thought control’s FDR, who will be its LBJ?)

As the no-end-in-sight march of greater government demonstrates, there is no reason to think that democracy is a check on despotism. An electoral majority can indeed embrace the concept and agenda of unlimited statism. “Totalitarian democracy” exists, not merely as a troubling conjecture, but as a threatening possibility.

Another possibility, however, is that people might take the idea of liberty seriously. By the end of the twentieth century, “the planned economy of the Soviet Union” finally followed into oblivion “the new forms of economic organization in Germany and Italy.” A general respect for a foundation of private property and a market economy emerged among both intellectuals and the populace, edging out hopes for socialism with any kind of face. This was due in part to the lessons of Communist experience, in part to the renascent teachings of Mises and Hayek. Free-market economists have made their influence felt in everything from history (debunking the canard that unregulated “market forces” caused the Great Depression) to theory (refuting the general theories of John Maynard Keynes, the Marx of the mixed economy) to policy — the rise of free trade between nations (even though the actual treaties often muddle free trade with pages of protectionism). An indication of this trend can be found in the latest edition of The American Heritage College Dictionary, which, in addition to a “political theory favoring civil and political liberties,” further defines liberalism as an “economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.” Possibly as a reaction against this recent semantic development, diehard proponents of statism on the left have taken to once again calling themselves “progressives” (e.g., Ralph Nader, a “liberal” until late). As a practical challenge to the welfare state, only New Zealand in the mid-80s (and Thatcherite Britain, to a lesser extent) succeeded in cutting government down to a significantly smaller size. But the ideal of laissez faire continues to thrive, most notably within the libertarian movement, which poses a challenge on all levels to the dog-eat-dog grapplings of the special interest groups. In doing so, they are reflecting the wisdom of one of their classical liberal forebears, himself something of a founder of a new “movement,” who warned that whenever “we depart from the principle of equal rights, or attempt any modification of it, we plunge into a labyrinth of difficulty from which there is no way out but by retreating.”

We like to say, “If there is a will, there is a way” – and our acceptance of that maxim is our downfall.

Gene,

You are a fatalist and I try to counter fatalists. Why is it that Austrians have the best economic system in history but seem to be totally overwhelmed by horrible systems. Mises is right. There is no inevitable socialist or central planning state. The state is what we make of it and the United States can return to greatness, but not on the back of fatalism. Fight man! Stand up!

Gene, BioTube, and any other reading this thread:

Apropos of the need of politicians to be seen as ‘doing something,’ ‘acting boldly,’ etc., I think that those in favor of laissez faire should try to think up ways to describe in active terms (with lots of transitive verbs) the movement from what we have now to a preferred system non-intervention.

So often, I’ve watched videos of Ron Paul or Peter Schiff being interviewed on CNN, MSN, or Fox, and just when it looks like the good guys are going to win the interviewer over with their cogent explanations as to why this or that policy “doesn’t work” or “will make matters worse” or “will be repeating the very policies that got us into this mess,” the interviewer will ask either (i) “So what should we do, instead?” or (ii) “Do you mean that we [the state?] should just sit on our hands and do nothing?” Or, perhaps the interviewer will acknowledge the force of the argument for non-intervention but will say, “but, Mr. [not Dr.] Paul, wouldn’t you admit that what your proposing is not politically feasible?” after which Paul will usually admit that politicians want to feel relevant, etc. If those being interviewed were to add to their repertoir a few new ways to describe in active terms the movement to a system of non-intervention, then these last-ditch arguments in favor of interventionism might be more effectively refuted.

This would be a largely, but not entirely rhetorical tactic. Not entirely: because there are a lot of policies that need to be repealed (which is an action after all). Or better yet, one could propose new laws with ‘bold’ names, that consist entirely of either repealing bits and pieces of laws already existence, or superceding the ‘mandatory’ provisions of those old laws with ‘default’ or ‘enabling’ provisions that would at least allow individuals and/or organizations to ‘opt out’ of provisions that were previously un-opt-outable.

Another ‘active’ thing that could be proposed is laws merely operating to impose further regulations on (or surveillance of) the government itself (I should admit that Paul has done this somewhat through his proposals to audit the Fed).

There are all manner of policies that could be adopted which could be restricted in operation to those already within the state apparatus (or perhaps the ruling class more generally) that are worth supporting in their own right.

Moreover these sorts of laws probably have a better chance of passing than ‘pure’ libertarian ones (which aim at reducing rights violations of the general public directly) by virtue of the fact that they might be supported not only by libertarians, constitutionalists, “good government” types, those from whatever party happens to be in the opposition at the time. They might also divert the attention of the busy-bodies out there who can’t sit around and allow everyone to go unregulated so long as there remains a single problem in the world.

Any thoughts?

Politicians always fear being seen as passive, since they’ll almost surely be kicked out in favor of a more active one – there’s a reason a number of silly, yet sensational, bills get filed every year across the country(fortunately, they often get killed, usually quietly, so they do no harm).

They do do harm. People have to deal with them, and sometimes it takes significant effort to stop them. And sometimes they pass anyway.

Consider the bailout….

Destiny of America
Friday, April 3, 2009

Congress As An Archive Of Liberty Seeds For the Future Historians!

It is wonderful to receive all of the formal presentations into the Congressional record by the greatest Statesman in American history. These are gems for this generation and for future generations.

The only society that will survive and endure all of this economic ignorance during these ‘Dark Ages’ of economics will be the one that is prosperous simply because it eventually came to adopt the principles of classical liberalism.

Historians in the future will have little interest in the barbarian ego-driven interventionists and their economic terrorism. They will be searching for the seeds of liberty and justice and tracing these seeds back to their sources.

Congress is an archive of these liberty seeds.

Here is the perfect example, submitted by Congressman Ron Paul:

Before the US House of Representatives, April 2, 2009

“Madame Speaker, Burton Samuel Blumert passed away on Monday March 30, following a long battle with cancer. Burt was a true hero of the freedom movement and my close friend, advisor, and business partner.

As the founder and manager of Camino Coins in Burlingame, CA, Burt was one of the nation’s leading dealers in gold and silver coins. A student of Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian school of economics, Burt understood the important role precious metals played in protecting ordinary citizens from the damage wrought by fiat money and inflation. Thus, he regarded his work as a coin dealer not just as a business, but as an opportunity to help people by providing them with some protection from the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax.

After I stepped down from Congress in 1984, I partnered with Burt in the coin business, a partnership which lasted until I returned to Congress in 1996. Our partnership was based on nothing more than our words. As anyone who ever dealt with Burt could testify, that was all that was needed, because Burt’s word was truly his bond. I am unaware of anyone who dealt with Burt who questioned his integrity or his commitment to his customers.

As well-known and respected as he was for his leadership in the coin business, Burt was best known as a promoter of libertarian ideas. Burt was a long time friend and patron of Murray Rothbard, one of Mises’s top American students and a pioneer in economics, political theory, history, and much else. Burt helped Murray establish the Center for Libertarian Studies, and served as its president from 1975 until his death.

Burt also played a key role in the flourishing of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which, as its name suggests, is the leading center for the promotion and development of Austrian economics and libertarian political theory in the nation. Burt served as a founding board member of the Institute and he chaired the Institute’s board after the original chair, Mrs. Margit von Mises, passed away in 1993. He also published The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, a well-read libertarian newsletter written by Murray Rothbard and Mises Institute President Lew Rockwell.
Burt played a major role in making the ideas of liberty a force on the internet by serving as the publisher of LewRockwell.com, as well supporting the development of Mises.org. Burt also played an instrumental role in the development of Antiwar.com. Burt also served as chairman of my first run for the presidency, and important counselor in the second.

In addition to his work with these organizations, Burt was a friend, mentor, and patron to numerous libertarian scholars and activists. He was incredibly generous with both his time and his resources. Talking to Burt was always a treat, because he had one of the best senses of humor I have ever known, and it seemed like he was always in a good mood. Events that would send his friends into fits of depression, rage, or both would be used by Burt as fodder for a series of jokes and wisecracks. Even in the last days of his battle with cancer he remained upbeat. One of Burt’s friends called him shortly after learning about Burt’s cancer, but instead of consoling Burt, this friend ending up having his sprits lifted by Burt’s humor.

It is somewhat of a comfort to myself, and I am sure to Burt’s other friends, to know that he lived long enough to see so many of his efforts bear fruit. Today, the Mises Institute teaches sound economics and the principles of liberty to thousands of students every year while Mises.org is one of the leading economics websites in the world. LewRockwell.com is one of the top providers of political, economic, and cultural commentary on the web, while Antiwar.com is the leading source of information for scholars, journalists, and activists looking for material to combat the propaganda of the war party.

As I travel across the country, I am astounded at the number of young people I met who are interested in the cause of individual liberty, peace, and sound money. Many of them got their introduction to these ideas through one of the many organizations nurtured by Burt Blumert.
Madame Speaker, perhaps the highest compliment one can pay to a departed friend is to say that they left the world better than they found it. That is certainly true in the case of Burt Blumert. While I am saddened that I will never again benefit from Burt’s good humor and wise counsel, I am comforted by knowing that I was blessed by his friendship and the thought that the vibrant and growing freedom movement will serve as a living monument to Burt for years to come. I therefore join friends of liberty around the world in mourning Burt’s passing, and saluting all he accomplished during his lifetime.”