Question

A question to puzzle me for later. I've have just read a snippet from a prominent libertarian arguing that a school voucher program is just as statist as any other form of public education. He argues that it is an attempt to allow government to start regulating private schools. He also lambastes Milton Friedman a bit. Gary North is the name I believe.

Here is a slightly different question about school vouchers:

Should everyone is a given school district still be required to pay taxes to support the school system or should it simply be those with children. In other words, no voucher program, but simply parents using their own money to pay for schools. One logical follow-up to this is then should education be mandatory? The purist libertarian argument would be no it should not be mandatory and that people should have to pay their own money if they want their children to go to school.

For the time being though, my thoughts rest on the Mrs. Lovejoy argument to think of the children. There are plenty of adults out there who would not provide their children with any education (home school or public) at all for the sake of saving the money. I've heard of plenty of examples from teachers about parents who neglect their children in every other basic way, so it would not be a stretch to guess that they would skimp on the really big bill of school tuition if they had a choice. This is why I would break from the purist tradition. There are parents out there who would not let their children go to school and this would punish children who have no control over the situation in the short term and likely punish society as a whole once these kids are old enough to choose between getting a job and starting trouble.

I just don't like where the logic would lead in such a system because it would likely lead to a perpetual class of uneducated people. In a technological sophisticated society, this is a recipe for disaster. Some would argue, and I could agree, that we have such an uneducated class now as a result of poor quality public schools. I would agree, but my inclination would be first to go to vouchers. If education every became so cheap that anyone could afford it, then we wouldn't need to spread the costs on everyone, just the people with schoolchildren.

Can "Progressives" be aligned with libertarians

In case you missed the memo, liberals are now trying to call themselves progressives because of the awful reputation they have given to liberalism. It is a title they did not deserve to have in the first place. Classical liberalism means a challenge to conventional means of the thinking. It means questioning, although not necessarily acting on, traditions and evaluating their merits and the any results, both positive and negative, that might result from either changing or eliminating the traditional ways of doing things.

Traditions are things that we no longer think about even though there may have been some rational explanation for the original creation. We call today Saturday out of tradition. It was not arrived at empirically. Women in our society wear dresses and mean wear ties. This is also apparently tradition. Very few people evaluate let alone attempt to change some of these traditions because they would not seemingly yield any beneficial results. The one exception is perhaps college students who somehow considered themselves enlightened by such antics, but these are more just cries for attention than legitimate challenges to traditions that have meaning.

Traditions are not, by definition, rational even if they had an originally rational explanation. Married women assume their husband's surname. This is tradition and no longer based on reason. It is something that most people do automatically out of tradition. Pink is for baby girls. Blue is for baby boys. People come up with all types of seemingly rational and psychological explanations for how these traditions arose, but more often than not, the answer is usually unknown because it is probably mundane or based on other cultural forces that are no longer present in society. However, when a so-called liberal wants to change any of these traditions, they are often quick to resort to why these traditions are racist, sexist, homophobic, what have you. They don't know either and the explanation is usually incidental to the main goal of giving the group that believes it is affected by the tradition more power. This has been the history of the 20th century.

The 18th and 19th centuries, if a generalization is acceptable, were more characterized by the true liberal tradition of applying the underlying philosophies of rationalism and natural rights developed primarily in the preceding centuries. It took about 100 years for Locke's philosophy regarding limited government as being primarily concerned with the protection of life, liberty, and property to be applied in practice in the form of the American revolution. It took 100 years after Adam Smith published ''The Wealth of Nations'' for the more capitalistic aspects of his book to be applied in the second industrial revolution of the late 19th century. As an aside, I'm aware that often philosophies are retroactively found and usually revived from obscurity to rationalize and justify what certain groups want, however, an empirical and moral proof of the justification of free market capitalism is for another day.

These earlier philosophies regarding the rights of man, individual freedom, and representative democracy were the true liberals since they questioned the existing social order regarding monarchy and the church and created virtually from scratch the idea of natural rights. In science, the classical liberals challenged the Aristotelian explanations of the natural world. All of the existing systems that they challenged were themselves rationalized, but they were traditions at the time and hence the principles of liberalism dictated the need to evaluate and change these traditional systems if they were found lacking. They could truly be called liberals because they were open to all ideas and one were not pitted in one particular direction. Hobbes was a liberal in this sense and is usually classified as one, but he is also the one who created the concept of the "commonwealth" and approved of an absolutist government.

Here is the problem with so-called progressives. Their thinking is pitted in one particular direction at all times and more often than not, they are not original thoughts, but merely irrational contempt for traditional values that are often characterized as being conservative. The liberals of today often do not rationally evaluate traditions and decide whether or not they should be changed based on identifiable criteria of what is best. Instead, it is almost as if they need to wait for conservatives, i.e. white Christian males, to state their position on a given subject before making their decision. And their decision is ALWAYS to oppose that consensus in the name of "diversity". Like the term liberal, though, the term diversity has been exposed as the Trojan Horse of gaining power for one particular group at the expense of another through the use of state action.

It is this final reason why "progressives" can never agree with libertarians. Progressives have never been advocates of free market capitalism. This is so obvious is does not need a proof. Progressives are often mislabeled as socialist though for these tendencies. The reality is that on economic issues so-called progressives tend to be socialist on only a few issues and interventionists on just about every other issue. The purest and perhaps best definition of socialism is that the state owns the means of production. This is what our education system is. The is the way most of our transportation and utility infrastructure are run. They are slowly attempting to do the same with health care. The vast majority of policies favored by "progressives" however are interventionist and deal primarily with regulating behavior either through laws prohibiting certain activities, making changes in the tax codes to coerce market behavior to punish and reward activities, or outright government subsidies to encourage market behavior. The private individual still ultimately controls the means of production, they are just increasingly limited in what they can do with that means through interventionism.

The real place where progressives might claim to be in lock step with libertarians but are not is in the area of civil liberties and rights. They claim to be in favor of increased liberty, but are more likely than conservatives to call for new laws to coerce social behavior and thinking. Speech codes, laws against smoking in private establishments, hate crime laws, hate speech laws, and campaign finance laws, are all attempts by so-called free thinkers to get the state to coerce behavior among the general public for things that involve the mere acts of individuals exercising individual rights that do no direct harm to others against their will.

To promote so-called "gay rights" the progressives do not call for the state to remove their intrusion from the personal and purely religious institution of marriage. Instead they demand that society pass and change these laws to "empower" gay citizens who wish to marry by adding yet more people who will now be subject to state control in determining whether or not they are married. Progressives have no choice in this matter, however, since "gay marriage" is not about marriage, but about entitlement to government benefits given to married couples. It is, to some extent also about acceptance from the general public through attempting to change legislation and forcing "society" to recognize "gay rights" in this area. Nothing has ever prevented gay people from calling themselves married and nothing ever will. This also tends to show the problem with progressives which is their confusion of society as being synonymous with government. It is problem that conservatives have as well. The true libertarian understands that society and government are not and should not be the same and that it is morally reprehensible for government to interfere in the decisions individuals make in society that do not directly harm anyone else.

This is why so-called progressives and libertarians are incompatible on most issues. Progressives are often just as statist as so-called conservatives who also often want societal norms and traditions to be codified and enforced as laws. It makes them feel so much better than facing the fearful notion that someone somewhere might be acting or thinking differently than what they find to be acceptable.

Fundamentals of Libertarianism

Too much von Mises on the brain:

Everything around you, everything you wear, all of your material goods were produced by society. They were produced by individuals specializing in certain trades to make goods that you decided to purchase to make your life better or more enjoyable. That is the benefit bestowed upon individuals by their decision to participate in society. Society is not the same as government. Government did not create anything you use.

This country's foundation lay in the fundamental philosophy of Locke that government's sole purpose should be to protect life, liberty, and property. When government goes beyond that role, its function then becomes not the creation of wealth, but merely its reallocation. Government does not produce anything. Government can only take from those who produce and give to another group whether in the form of individual welfare to those who do not produce or corporate recipients who are either failed producers or who merely add the extra income to their positive bottom line.

Once you see the benefit of society and that society is not a zero sum game, but something mutually beneficial to all participants, then you begin to see the advantage of free markets. Once you see that any extension of government power beyond protecting life, liberty, and property is contrary to the goals of society, you will start to embrace the basic tenants of libertarianism.

Rome was not built in a day. The Roman Republic did not fall in a day either. It was gradually altered by politicians with the consent of the governed who were willing to exchange freedom for security in steps of various sizes until the momentum became to great for anyone to resist the anti-republican forces. Julius Caesar was assassinated because he was the culmination of anti-republican forces personified in the role of permanent dictator. A label that even those who clung the fiction that the Republic still existed could not tolerate. The problem is that after the killed the general, they failed to see that the republic was already dead, not because of Caesar, but because of the previous generations of Roman citizens who let their freedom go rather than take responsibility for their own lives.

That is what we are awaiting in this country every time we expect a new tax code revision or tax giveaway will somehow improve our situation.

The Litte Green Book

One of the biggest crimes with our education system - especially in history and social studies - is the lack of explanation about what could be called basic conservatism and basic capitalism. Instead, our history is mostly taught around personalities, not principles. This might be because younger minds do not understand such abstract concepts or see their application to the world. It could also be that we are lazy and prefer to make history into fun stories.

What I would define as true conservatism is perhaps more like libertarianism. It is the idea that the focus on individual rights and freedoms should be the foundation of society. This train of thought is apparently fundamental in the Federalist Papers and perhaps more so the Anti-Federalist Papers. The idea is that the founder fathers, when forming a new government, decided to make the individual the focus rather than the state or someone who represented the state. This was a fundamental change in Western Thought, which, although based on earlier philosophers (Locke, Hume, and Hobbes), was tried for the first time in practice with the United States.

I call this idea of the focus on the individual true conservatism for two reasons: (1) it hearkens back to the philosophical origins of the nation and (2) it repeats the sentiments in Goldwaters's Conscience of a Conservative.

Dovetailing into this is the capitalism propounded by Adam Smith which could also be accurately characterized as philosophy focusing on the individual. Pure capitalism, however, has taken much of a beating in the 20th Century in the form of the welfare state, the creation of the Federal Reserve, Social Security, and the advent of Keynesian Economics. What we have now is the freedom to engage in capitalism within the confines of a welfare state that takes a substantial portion of our earnings no matter how we choose to earn a living. This does not prevent some from amassing great fortunes, but many of those fortunes are made on the back of the masses in the form of coerced spending from the government (such as military spending) or monopoly created by government fiat (such as cable TV companies).

But here is my point. Conservatism and Capitalism, as I have defined them above, based on the focus on the individual, appear to have a tough time making converts in the U.S. The democratic party, has more or less become hostile to the free market in every form decrying every problem that occurs as a result of the "excesses of capitalism". The Republican party claims to be for both of these items, but in recent years has done the exact opposite on nearly all fronts. What's more, is that many regular people registered as Republicans do not understand the ideals of capitalism or conservatism as anything more than a platitude. The Republican party has, in reality, become the party that professes to keep taxes low and to support the pro-life movement. It does nothing else to forward the ideals of capitalism and conservatism, and often acts against these interests to steal issues from the democrats by either expanding government programs or bringing home government pork.

What struck me most recently about all of this is that my sentiments are neither new nor original nor recent. What is written above is basically a paraphrase of the opening of Conscience of a Conservative by Goldwater (or his ghostwriter actually). These sentiments are repeated today in the Ron Paul campaign as well as by the Austrian School of Economics with its emphasis on individual behavior and pure capitalism. These sentiments are also found in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. To my great misfortune, I have only starting to embrace the ideals contained in the books recently. To my horror I realized that most people in the U.S. have no real concept of any of these ideas, even the few that are informed about them, because the ideals of conservatism are either loathed because of the label, or not understood by their supposed supporters.

As much as I have enjoyed reading portions of these works, I have to admit that they can be tough reading. They are written with passion but they are not passionate reads. Even Atlas Shrugged, which attempted to turn these ideals into a more enjoyable novel format, was not something I was able to finish - and I have read Moby Dick at least three times. In my mind, the problems is perhaps one of formatting. Essays to a great job of explaining how you reach your points, but the essayist often forgets to concisely summarize these points, obviating the need to constantly reread these works to try and understand their conclusions.

I would propose that modern capitalism and conservatism really need a sort of new "little green book" or something similar to a short Bible to help spread the message. The message has to be one of simple, short sentences, organized by topic or along some other lines that clearly expose the basic tenants of modern conservatism. Perhaps literary stories or actual history could be used to illustrate points. The point is that we need a work that either gives basic principles to help define modern conservatism and also to help shape arguments whenever a question arises as to "what is best" for a particular situation. A work that can be quoted as chapter and verse - even if only guidelines. In addition, it is probably a good idea to have a work of literature that is really enjoyable and relatively short that exemplifies these tenants. It can be an historical novel. It could be pure history. Both these philosophical/economic and literary works could even be combined just as the Bible combines Genesis with the laws of Leviticus. There may be such a book out there that explains conservatism so succinctly, but I have not seen it.