Chris Cantwell is a libertarian blogger who
self styles himself as being “Anarchist,
Atheist, Asshole”. Save
for the letter A in the second descriptor, we may be twins separated at birth.
Cantwell professes that his disdain for The
State and his disbelief in a deity are mutually exclusive, that one set of
beliefs does not inform or influence the other.
They are compartmentalized components of his psyche. I’ll take his word for that.
In my case, however, acceptance of higher
authority colors my libertarianism.
It is my contention that libertarianism is,
first and foremost, instinctive.
Libertarians are people who chafe at arbitrary man made rules, who are
confounded by the contradictions of authoritarians who impose their illogic
with force.
Our instinctive response leads many of us to
seek intellectual justification and social reinforcement for our feelings. As I see it, libertarians rest their
philosophical case on one of three
distinct, but not entirely exclusive, traditions. These are the:
1.
Objectivist moral philosophy Ayn Rand
2.
Economics based Anarcho-Capitalist of Murray
Rothbard and most modern Austrian economists
3.
Classic liberalism of John Locke and fee market
economics of Adam Smith which provided the intellectual grounding of the
American Revolution and informs true American Conservatism
All three traditions share the concept of
individual self ownership. This radical
notion was first articulated by John Locke the late Seventeenth Century:
“The natural liberty of man is to be free from
any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative
authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule “
“(E)very man has a property in his own person:
this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work
of his hands, we may say, are properly his.”
Some 290 years later
Rothbard concurred:
The most viable method of elaborating the
natural-rights statement of the libertarian
Ayn Rand summarizes:
Individualism
regards man -- every man -- as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses
an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a
rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form
of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved
only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights -- and that
a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its
members.
Theist libertarians, such as
I, must dissent from the theory of absolute self ownership in one very
significant detail. As Locke explains,
we are not absolute owners. Rather we
endowed with a proprietary custodianship of our temporal bodies by “Nature’s
God” who created us.
“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is
not a state of license: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty
to dispose of his person or possessions, yet
he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in
his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for
it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every
one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult
it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and
infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the
world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose
workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure:
and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of
nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may
authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses,
as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his
station willfully.”
And beyond our lives,
neither are we free to forfeit our liberty, for to do so is tantamount to
surrendering our humanity:
“This freedom
from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a
man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his
preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his
own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one,
nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away
his life, when he pleases. Nobody can
give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life,
cannot give another power over it.”
Thus a Theist libertarian,
particularly a Catholic such as yours truly, must first and foremost insist
upon the sanctity of life and all that that implies. In our eyes, liberty is founded on the
priceless value of each and every human being born and unborn, young or old,
healthy or near death. Death by drone, “preemptive”
war, abortion, terrorism, euthanasia or heavy handed law enforcement is never
the answer.
Secondly, we will insist on
the full right to practice our Faith.
This means more than praying together in a room each weekend. We demand freedom from State or majority
coercion to accommodate those things that violate our conscience in the
workplace and in our business dealings.
Nonetheless theist, agnostic
and atheist libertarians have plenty of common ground to share. We all believe:
·
In the non
aggression principle
·
That war is
murder – of the people we kill and those that we sacrifice
·
Taxation is
theft
·
Conscription is
kidnapping
·
Monetary expansion
is counterfeiting
·
Welfare destroys
character, families and communities
·
Corporate
cronyism destroys also destroys character, competition, inflates prices and
kills innovation
·
The unfettered
free market is the only just, fair and moral system for allocating the
resources and the optimal method for meeting material wants and needs
·
Statism and
collectivism is “the root cause of “conflict, disharmony, caste struggle,
conquest and the war of all against all, and general poverty.” (Rothbard)
·
Government
corrupts and destroys every civil institution that it touches including the
family, business, religion, education, marriage, agriculture, arts and sciences
We believe that voluntary
charity is a natural reaction to those who are suffering through no fault of
their own or are temporarily down on their luck. However, we also stand with St. Paul who self
supported his ministry with his tent making skills. Paul admonished the Thessalonians that “when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was
unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”
In the area of personal yet
victimless “immorality” we find common cause.
The Church’s two preeminent philosophers did not believe that the civil authorities should prosecute victimless crime. Such
personal sins were evidence of man’s imperfection and were best left to be
dealt with between him and his Maker.
As one might expect, many of
us believing libertarians feel a knot in our stomachs when the conversation among
our libertarian friends turns to abortion and euthanasia. Remember that we, like Hebrew National,
report to a higher authority.
So let’s agree to live by
the adage of that masterful politician Ronald Reagan, “My eighty-percent friend
is not my twenty-percent enemy”
Thank you, friend, for
reading this. We have of much work ahead
to dismantle The State. The rest can be
sorted out later.
Related
Posts:
Is
Death The Answer?
The
Separation of Marriage and State
Get
Government Out of Marriage: An Austrian Perspective
The
Diminished Value of Human Beings in the Dependency State
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