Voicing heresy

Over at his blog based at South Carolina's aptly named The State newspaper, Brad Warthen is doing his best to be incredibly dense about why libertarians don't want to be dragooned into supporting government programs of which they disapprove.

He starts off with the usual strawmen.

Doug, why do you feel that way -- about wanting to make sure that you're not expected to help anyone else in retirement?

That might sound facetious, or provocative, but I'm sincere about wanting to know. The concern you express seems to be at the heart of the whole libertarian impulse, which I find it so impossible to connect with. And one thing I keep wondering is, how do people develop an attitude of "this is mine; it's just for me; don't anybody expect me to share it?" ....

But I'm not sure I feel that impulse at all. I mean, if somebody came and took all I had so that I was hungry and cast into the cold, I'm pretty sure I'd feel like saying, "Hey, that was mine! You can't do that." But when I'm able to get by, however hard it might be paying bills from month to month, I just don't even feel a murmur of protest at the idea of paying into a system that makes sure nobody else starves in old age, or into a system that makes sure no one will be turned away when they need medical care.

As is often the case with people being deliberately obtuse about what Warthen calls "the libertarian impulse," he takes his correspondent's antipathy to the coercive taking of his income for purposes of government officials' own choosing as a general lack of charitable feelings and actions toward his fellow humans. Prefer to give to Oxfam or your church instead of being mugged by the IRS? Well you're just a miserly bastard.

But about that mugging ...

As for your [another correspondent's] assertion that "both government programs that take private property from individual without their direct consent — the situation Ross outlines — is not much different from the hypothetical you construct with someone taking things from you..." Well, in America the two things are as different as night and day. The mugger violates the laws we came up with through our republican system. The levying of taxes such is the republican system in action. ... Of course, in a republic, the "government" is the will of our neighbors expressed through their elected representatives, making decisions within the context of a constitution. And no, individuals do not get to opt out if not consulted PERSONALLY. That takes us back to anarchy.

Ah, there we go! There's something almost theological about Warthen's conception of state power. It's an expression of "the will of our neighbors." As such, it apparently embodies all morality, since mugging is wrong only because it "violates the laws we came up with through our republican system" and not because it is a coercive deprivation of one person's rightfully obtained property by another person. Presumably, a simple whim of the legislature could make robbery hunky dory.

With the state taking on such an all-encompassing role, it's no wonder that Warthen is offended by Doug's preference for privately chosen charity over government programs funded by forcibly extracted loot. Nothing, in his mind, legitimately exists beyond the reach of government. To voice disdain for the institution of government and a preference for operating outside its orbit is not merely an expression of differing values and preferences from those of Warthen; it's to give voice to heretical deviation from Warthen's civic religion. Doug, the original correspondent, simply doesn't worship at the same altar as Warthen, and the journalist is utterly shocked to find that his god is not universally exalted.

No, I don't think I'm exaggerating the matter.

You don't have to be an anarchist to recognize the brutal nature of state power. As Tom Paine said, "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Even people who believe in the necessity of government can recognize that it is, at best, a flawed means of organizing and managing human interactions. As such, it needs to be kept within strict limits lest it become an exercise in tyrannical control used by the powerful against the powerless.

The school of thought that holds that government is anything more than a temporary institution created to exercise coercive force on behalf of dominant factions against their opponents--or, if you prefer, to exercise the supposed will of a majority on a given issue over the minority--veers rather heavily off the rational road into the territory occupied by religion. The idea that government--even democratic government--represents the will of the people (whoever they are and whatever they may will through their apparent mass mind) is every bit as mystical a concept as a priest's invocation of god's will.

Brad Warthen's faith in an obligation for us all to act collectively through government programs might be charming in a naive, fourth-grade social-studies class sort of way, but it's not a political philosophy; it's a religion.

And some of us are perfectly happy to be heretics.