Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, said principles are not compromised; they are abandoned. Principles, by their nature, are utilized or they are not.

That is an important reminder for those who believe the maximum role of government should be the protection of life, liberty, and property — which I think, logically construed, means self-government; however, I respect that others disagree. Our time is going to be most wisely spent improving ourselves and building relationships with like-minded liberty people. Even still, while the conventional political process is still dominant, there are ways for principled people to use political tools for their own benefit.

The conventional political dichotomy is a struggle between short-term opportunism and long-term progress. I think there is a simple reconciliation that can be made between the two camps. That is, under no circumstances, never ever, should we ever support an expansion in the role of government or a further restriction on a peaceful person’s liberty. Second, any policy support should be done with the explicit purpose of decreasing the role of government and directly benefiting peaceful individuals.

Any strategy or policy goals that we recommend or follow should be consistent with the purpose of restoring individual liberty and responsibility. I understand the importance of intermediate goals or markers to help fully achieve our ultimate purpose. But our means of achieving that purpose should not be contradictory to that end. For example, a lot of politicians try to justify tax cuts because they believe it will actually increase the total revenues to the government treasury. I believe this is wrong and sends an inconsistent message.

The goal of a tax cut should be to reduce the burden of government. Again, we should not advocate the re-legalization of cannabis on the grounds that it will raise tax revenues, but because prohibition is immoral and counterproductive. Expanding government and further restricting the liberty of others to correct another ill-fated government policy is an abandonment of principle. As Ron Paul said, “Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive.” Reducing the level of coercion in people’s lives is a worthy goal.

Principles in Practice

The goals that we have should be radical — not liberal- or conservative-lite. This serves two purposes. First, it provides cover for not-so-radical views to be considered more mainstream, thus limiting the fear of ostracism people might have for holding these slightly less radical views. It provides an objective guidepost — like a lighthouse — for gauging the success of our efforts during darker times.

I would also like to suggest two methods of communicating these ideas. We should definitely take the time, on an intellectual basis, to refute anti-liberty or collectivist ideas. But we must acknowledge that the people advocating these mistaken ideas are not dimwitted. In fact, many know exactly how they benefit from these policies. They are ripping us off, so we must make direct, populist appeals that reveal that fact.

By its nature, government is crude and unaccountable, so there will be an infinite supply of aggrieved individuals. Ideally, that means that we don’t have to convert individuals fully to the virtue of liberty before taking action together. Over time, I hope that those who are “liberty minus one” or “liberty minus whatever” come to see the error of their ways.

Some Ideas to Bat Around

Sometimes, pick losing issues to get the message out by presenting a pro-liberty analysis. I’m not saying be a stick-in-the-mud. The situation might provide an opportunity to get some free media publicity or lay the groundwork for winning progress on the issue in the future. Liberals have deployed this technique by pushing socialized health insurance and environmental regulations.

Now, I don’t even know how possible this next one is. Those arrested for committing consensual crimes could be high-target prospects for the liberty message. When I’m passing out Fully Informed Jury Association literature on jury nullification, those called for jury duty are naturally receptive to the material I am providing. I’ll usually stay a little past the time when potential jurors are due to report in downtown Fort Worth in order to catch any stranglers. When I do, I just happen to pass out literature to defendants, and they are just as interested in the concept of jury nullification as potential jurors, if not more so. There has got to be a way of contacting those folks by getting ahold of  some public records.

(Image credit: john curley, with Creative Commons license)

Not only are we all anarchists now, there are abundant examples of anarchism working fabulously well. However, instead of opening anarchic relationships to everyone, governments have worked to abolish them from the private sphere and instead centralize anarchic relationships into the hands of politicians. I know it sounds strange that anarchy exists internally within government. My point here is to demonstrate that anarchic relationships are omnipresent.

Before beginning, I want to note that critics of market (or individualist) anarchism will point out that the market functions best with an impartial judicial system ruling on comprehensible law. I readily agree. Supporters of government also claim there needs to be a final body, such as the Supreme Court, which entails a supreme law that settles disputes once and for all. I don’t think it matters either way, especially since the political system does allow for disputes to continue in the legislative process even after the final court proceedings. I also don’t believe that a monopoly could provide an impartial judicial system or a comprehensible law. However, for the sake this discussion, I will concede all three points.

In Two Treatises on Civil Government John Locke said there are two things wanting in a “state of nature”: “established, settled, known law” and “a known and indifferent judge” (emphasis in original work). To clarify, my understanding is that a government functions as a third party that provides ultimate dispute settlement within a given territory. Again, for the sake of this discussion, I will concede that an “established, settled, known law” exists. So without an “indifferent judge” whose decisions are commanded, by force if necessary, anarchy exists. For the sake of this discussion, I will concede that there is always sufficient force to command a judge’s decision. So really, the question is if there is an “indifferent judge” or not. (I’ve written a little here and here why I believe a market-based legal system is more able to provide equitable justice.)

The first basic anarchic relationship is between government and its citizens. The second is among different governments. The third is between citizens and foreign governments. The fourth basic anarchic relationship is among citizens of different governments. (More elaborate anarchic relationships can be read about here.) With this understanding, it becomes abundantly clear that government cannot eliminate anarchy; it is ever-present. Government can only centralize and transform it, many times with devastating effects.

The first form of an anarchic relationship is between the United States federal government and American citizens, for example. There is no “indifferent judge” when the federal government comes into conflict with individuals or groups of individuals. In those cases, the federal government prohibits a third party from resolving the dispute. It is helpful that a different branch hears the case, but that branch is appointed by and subject to the pressures of another branch of government responsible for enforcing the court’s decisions. Supposedly, that is the purpose of the constitution’s checks and balances — to bind the federal government, yet the federal government is also responsible for interpreting and enforcing its own limitations. Politicians also act in a state of anarchy with each other. There is no external agency that enforces rules among them, and so they exist in a form of “political anarchy” as opposed to natural “market anarchy,” according to Alfred G. Cuzan, who said:

[I]n their relations among each other, they remain largely “lawless.” Nobody external to the group writes and enforces rules governing the relations among them. At most, the rulers are bound by flexible constraints imposed by a “constitution” which they, in any case, interpret and enforce among and upon themselves. … In short, society is always in anarchy. A government only abolishes anarchy among what are called “subjects” or “citizens,” but among those who rule, anarchy prevails.

Since governments get to decide conflicts, they are so inclined to create conflict and then rule in their own favor, expanding their authority.

To give some state governments credit, there have been calls throughout the years to nullify particularly outrageous federal legislation. But those states can only do so much because the federal government controls the currency and can hand out goodies to those states willing accept expansive federal powers. In the United States, the federal government’s dispute authority is not as centralized as, say, North Korea, where the final authority is given to a single person. In effect, Kim Jong-il has abolished anarchy is North Korea for everyone but himself.

In the second form of anarchic relationships, the federal government also exists in a state of anarchy with all other governments around the world. There is no mandatory final arbiter of disputes between Canada and the United States, for example. If the Canadian government is accused of price fixing, the disagreement is settled by the World Trade Organization, per their membership agreement. Both governments had a mutually agreed-upon dispute resolution process. The United Nations is the closest thing to a world government, but even its membership is voluntary. The United States government could even opt out and no longer be responsible to funding it or abide by UN resolutions within its territorial borders so long as the federal government did not threaten to aggress against other UN member governments. National governments voluntarily cooperate by honoring visas and legal documents (like marriage certificates and drivers licenses) and ratifying all sorts of treatises. So empirically, there is no need for a world government for other governments to peacefully coexist. But of course, nations do not always interact so peacefully.

There are a couple of reasons why violence committed by governments have been so devastating. Mainly, it has to do with the imbalance of power between governments and citizens. That is the reason cited by many constitutionalists for their defense of the right to keep and bear arms, as recognized by the Second Amendment. Some of the greatest genocides in history have been perpetrated against an unarmed populace. If the theory holds, it would seem that the greater the imbalance of power the more deaths that have resulted, while greater peace would occur as a result of a more evened balance of power. In fact, the figures seem to say just that. In the past 100 years, 262 million people were killed by their own government. (I am using “own government” very loosely.) Approximately 35 million others were killed in combats with a foreign government. (It was unclear how many were civilians and how many were soldiers.) In a fourth form of anarchic relationships, foreign citizens are in state of anarchy with citizens of other nations. The largest foreign civilian murderer was Osama bin Laden, who allegedly orchestrated the death of 3500 people in part to demonstrate his grievances with the foreign military occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. Interestingly, nuclear-armed nations, which have nearly an equal capability for destruction, have never been in direct conflict. (That may be because the political leaders are in direct harm’s way.)

We can conclude that civilians face the greatest danger from their own government, where the balance of power is so astounding. Equally powerful governments are relatively peaceful toward one another. And civilians face the least danger from other civilians. To be fair, that could be because governments are in place to punish lawbreakers. That affect seems marginal, at best, because most people do not have reasonable access to a functioning judicial system for civil cases, nor do they have much confidence in police apprehending criminals who have victims.

According to the FBI, less than 20 percent of reported burglaries, property crime, theft, car theft, and arson are “cleared.” Keep in mind, that only includes reported crimes, and not all “cleared” cases result in conviction. Police can pin crimes on deceased or incarcerated suspects. Murders are cleared about 60 percent of the time, forcible rape about 40 percent of the time, aggravated assault about 55 percent of the time. Keep in mind, those figures include wrongful convictions based on faulty eye-witness testimony, unimpartial juries, fabricated evidence, and incompetent public defenders.

Citizens have no constitutional right to have their rights protected, which is allegedly the entire purpose of forming a government according to the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ….” The United States Supreme Court justices have ruled multiple times that federal, state, and local governments have no positive obligation to provide protection from “killers or madmen.” So if police do respond to a 911 call, it is solely out of the good will put upon by social pressures within the community or from commanders conforming to social pressures.

A second reason governments are capable of so much more violence is because those people supporting escalation do not have the full burden of paying for their military adventures, but can channel the benefits of their policies to themselves and their supporters. Basically, the costs can be socialized, and the benefits are privatized — like any other government program.

Successful Anarchism in Practice

The political process is a perfect example of how market anarchism can work even under the most crippling conditions. (I lifted this from Stefan Molyneux’s video “The Proof of Anarchy.”) It is fairly well known that political contributors and lobbyists are some of the biggest recipients of special treatment by the government. Year after year, the government increases in size and power. Pork-barrel spending and corporate bailouts are never ending. Upwards of 80 percent of Americans support greater restrictions on campaign finance contributions, so people have an innate sense that those in power are pretty rotten. Yet — even though politicians and political contributors cannot make written agreements, contributors can never have their agreements enforced by a functioning legal system, no one can be made aware of a politician’s broken agreement, the government will violently punish anyone who can be proven to have made such an agreement, and media reporters are paid good money to uncover such agreements — politicians are repeatedly re-elected about 90 percent of the time and lobbyists receive more and more handouts and exemptions from the law. Under the worst market conditions, lobbyist and politicians continue to work harmoniously. If lobbyists were able to publicize broken quid pro quo agreements or have them enforced by a legal system, then lobbyists would have an even greater effect. As it stands, politicians are not forced into compliance with their lobbyists; the only threat to the politician is that the lobbyist will support his or her opponent in the next election. You have the market process flourishing even in the face of significant obstacles.

Building Towards Liberty

As I’ve tried to demonstrate, government cannot totally eliminate anarchism. Cuzan said:

We have shown that anarchy, like matter, never disappears — it only changes form. Anarchy is either market anarchy or political anarchy. Pluralist, decentralized political anarchy is less violent than hierarchical political anarchy. Hence, we have reason to hypothesize that market anarchy could be less violent than political anarchy. Since market anarchy can be shown to outperform political anarchy in efficiency and equity in all other respects, why should we expect anything different now? Wouldn’t we be justified to expect that market anarchy produces less violence in the enforcement of property rights than political anarchy? After all, the market is the best economizer of all — wouldn’t it also economize on violence better than government does, too?

One method capitalizing on the anarchic relationships formally denied to citizens is the practice of agorism, which emphasizes working within black and gray market industries as a way of building alternatives to government-imposed services. In that way, the government — a so-called necessary evil — will no longer be seen as necessary. In time, it will be seen for what it is, just evil.

(Image credit: Joe Gratz, with Creative Commons license)

Super activist John Bush, of Austin’s Texans for Accountable Government, posted a commentary on the prevailing notion that liberty could be achieved by seizing control of the Republican Party. I have less care for electoral politics than might Bush, but I think his critique is well founded and should be heeded by those participating in electoral politics, including myself to some degree.

Disclaimer: This note is not meant to devalue or discredit the work that has already been done by activists in the GOP. Any action in this liberty movement is much appreciated. It is also worth noting that everything in this note applies to those from the left attempting to use the Democratic Party as well. Myself and many others are merely trying to point out the damage that can be done to the movement if we adopt the “restore the GOP” strategy as our primary means of affecting change in this country.

1. We give up our leverage as the majority maker.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm“:

“There is a branch of game theory called coalition theory. It ponders questions like the following: if we have 3 groups, with 49, 49, and 2 ‘votes’ respectively, all seeking to win an election with 51 votes total, which of these 3 can be said to have the most ‘power’? And the answer is (drum roll): they all have equal power, because any one of them that wishes to win must make a deal with some other group.

“In this little theoretical truism lies a possible answer to the riddle of how a dedicated and united cadre might wedge and manipulate two bloated, corrupt ’superpowers’ like the Democratic and Republican parties. What is required isn’t a majority, but rather a minority substantial enough that both powers must continuously bargain with this third group to gain its temporary allegiance. Of course, the two superpowers could always come out in open alliance with each other once and for all — but that in itself would be a victory for the good guys with immense ramifications.

“The difficulties in launching and sustaining a viable third party are well documented; what is called for probably isn’t another political party. Indeed, such a thing would likely be undermined, as have the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and similar entities of the left, e.g. the Greens. But while a third party is probably untenable, it’s clearly suicide to remain in this abusive relationship with the Republicans.

“Why? Go back to coalition theory. By trying to ‘reform’ the Republican Party, our movement COMPLETELY SURRENDERS THE LEVERAGE IT HAS AGAINST THE TARGETS OF SAID REFORM. There is a shockingly naive assumption in all this, as the criminal elements in the GOP get away with political murder. It’s believed that somehow they will surrender their authority because they ‘need us.’ Some coalescing may indeed happen, but expecting those who run the GOP to just ‘come around’ to our way of thinking because they’re in the process of getting the crap kicked out of ‘em flies in the face of repeated experience. Most people in 1976 wouldn’t have given the GOP another shot at the presidency for 12 years at least; yet they were right back in the saddle in 1980, with a ‘revolution’ … of sorts.”

2. We will never be able to ignite the mass movement necessary to enact genuine change as we will always be plus-or-minus 50 percent of the voting postulation. We will always be trapped in a reactionary paradigm against the other half of the FALSE left-right paradigm.

Which leads to 3 ….

3. The party in power will inevitably waver on its principles if only to maintain its position as the dominant party.

From “A Disquisition on Government” by John C. Calhoun:

“A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers. Being the party in possession of the government, they will, from the same constitution of man which makes government necessary to protect society, be in favor of the powers granted by the constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them …. The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard them [the restrictions] as essential to their protection against the dominant party …. But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left them would be a strict construction of the constitution …. To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction …. It would be construction against construction — the one to contract and the other to enlarge the powers of the government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be, against the liberal construction of the major, when the one would have all the power of the government to carry its construction into effect and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing its construction? In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful. The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered …. The end of the contest would be the subversion of the constitution … the restrictions would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.”

4. The party will shape the change agents more than the change agents will shape the party.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm”:

“This brings us to the very disturbing turn Paulism has taken: the invocation of that same ‘Reagan Revolution,’ the ‘Robertson takeover’ and the like, to ’sell’ Paulism to the GOP ‘conservatives.’ Groups like the Republican Liberty Caucus are even openly equating Ron Paul with Ron Reagan – with REAGAN, super neoconservative, warmongerer extraordinaire, the most profligate spender the nation had ever seen (until the record was broken by a certain successor), a man that sold out so-called conservative principles so profoundly, that Ron Paul himself quit the Republican Party in disgust and ran as the Presidential candidate for the LP in 1988!!!

“What a long, bitter history the movement for LIBERty has when it tries to be ‘conservative!’ And yet, because we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve nowhere else to go, we find ourselves chanting this mantra: ‘we really are conservatives, we are real conservatives, be a conservative like us.’ And always in this equation of the movement with ‘conservatism,’ ALWAYS, there is a softening of the anti-war, anti-empire stance. And so one wonders, vis a vis this GOP ‘takeover’ – who’s zoomin’ who, hmmm?
The signs are all around the paleocon ’surge.’ It isn’t only that Ron Paul is being equated with Reagan and Goldwater (can you hear that…? it’s the sound of Rothbard turning over in his grave). We have Bob Barr as the nominee for the LP – Barr, ex-CIA, who voted for the Iraq ‘War’ and the Patriot Act. And the rising star in the LP is Wayne Allen Root – note his initials, ‘WAR,’ and rest assured that ‘peace’ will never be his middle name. It seems the deeper we commit ourselves to this dysfunctional ‘conservative’ assertion, the more we are moved towards the ‘libertarianism’ of Neil Boortz – not the other way around.”

5. The hierarchical structure of the two major parties is easily susceptible to co-option, as only those at the top would need to be compromised in order to steer the party. This is evidenced by the current state of both parties.

Potential solution?

Remain a tight united libertarian cadre which works on single issue coalitions at a local and state level all the while applying the philosophy of liberty in a manner which will cause those of the statist persuasion to appreciate the consistency of libertarianism and question the hypocrisy of their collectivist mindset. Eventually the tight united cadre will grow as those beginning to appreciate liberty more and more will be picked off from the fringe of the parties.

All the while we must begin to build and create parallel institutions based on mutually beneficial voluntary associations so that we may offer an alternative to the people when the current system inevitably collapses. We must be prepared to offer an alternative as our enemies surely will be. [Editor's note: A few edits have been applied to Bush's note to conform to the punctuation style on this site.]

My take is that the Libertarian Party is largely a waste, save as a protest vote or an education tool. Participating in the primary elections of the major parties leverages the most impact from voting, which is still about as equivalent to a suggestion box on a slave plantation. Bush has said he is “beginning to explore the revolutionary possibilities associated with agorism, counter-economics, and the creation of parallel institutions which will rival and compete with the state.” I wholeheartedly agree; we should be spending our time agitating and organizing, not begging the state.

He is also beginning to take some heat from Ron Paul apologists (not all Paul supporters, including myself, are apologists) for questioning Paul’s support of welfare-warfare Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). For as beneficial as Paul is at spreading the message of liberty, it is just as important that liberty activist hold themselves accountable to at least the same standards by which they hold others. I believe attempts to confine or marginalize different opinions shows a lack of confidence is one’s own ideas. To paraphrase Zeitgeist: The Movie, take truth as the authority, not authority as the truth.

I admit, the video above cracked me up.

On a serious note, I feel sorry for the young man who posted it. The lessons he is learning now will likely be the foundation for his worldview and affect the relationships he has with others. He no doubt has empathy for others who are being bullied at school and wants more than anything for his harassment to stop. He might recognize that school attendance is made compulsory by government and to some degree by his family, so he sees no reasonable escape from his present circumstances. He even said that he has thought about committing suicide, so he must believe his options are severely constrained.

When he matures, he will very likely, if he has not already, carry the same mistaken notions forward with him into society, that there is no feasible means of avoiding morally corrupt people and that therefore an entity must exist that is powerful enough to defend against abusive people. The most readily available candidate for that power is government, so a strong centralized nanny government is key to safety.

According to Dr. Charles Whitfield’s heirachy of needs, safety is second only to survival. Comparatively, freedom ranks 19th.

That is the root concern liberty activists must address, I believe. We can tell people all about how government is our greatest abuser (and they might agree), but any call to weaken or abolish nanny government — a so-called necessary evil — is interpreted as a greater threat to their safety. The devil that we know is better than the devil we don’t know, as the saying goes. What we have to communicate is that life offers much more opportunity than was available to them as a child. You are not trapped in abusive relationships. You are free of them the moment you want to be. You don’t have to associate with people who have a history of hurting people. Therefore, it is not necessary for a nanny government to watch over us and “keep ‘protecting’ you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that,” as Lysander Spooner said.

They wouldn’t be left abandoned to the biggest bully on the block, which incidentally now is the case. Natural law ensures that those bullies would cut their own throats first. The market demand for security would eliminate the remaining stray bullies, and individual compassion would care for the less fortunate. So I don’t resent statists (those who believe individuals exist to serve the well-being of the state); I offer them my sympathy for their burden: believing evil to be “necessary.”

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online said that “very serious, committed, consistent libertarians are very rare in America (and really, really rare everywhere else). They don’t come close to constituting a major voting block. I respect folks who seriously believe in liberty-maximization in all spheres of life, but that is not a power-brokering constituency in American politics and never will be” (emphasis added).

This is the same point I made in a post earlier this month. Committed libertarians have not made any progress electorally because they are not willing to scratch enough backs, and if they were willing to scratch enough backs they wouldn’t be committed libertarians any longer. It is not simply a small-government versus a big-government mentality. It’s electoral libertarians or constitutionalists versus a multitude of warhawks, rent seekers, and stripes of big-government conservative and liberal social reformers who are more than willing to trade favors. Those are entrenched groups, and they find that big government suites their needs.

Before those groups came to power, Ludwig von Mises published Human Action, the most complete case for classical liberalism, and Socialism, which described the calculation problem of centralized economic planning. Leonard Read opened the Foundation of Economic Education, aiding the early careers of F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt. Ayn Rand championed the heroic nature of the individual. Their support for electoral politics was understandable given government’s popularity in the 1940s and 50s; but they failed to stop government growth when government was much less intrusive and when it was a tiny fraction of its current size. All the things that have happened since — the trillion dollar-per-year empire, the instillation of dictatorial client states in South America and the Middle East and the subsequent “blowback,” the hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians killed by American forces, and the authoritarian law enforcement tactic leveled against American civilians — happened despite their work. Those tragedies and many more happened anyways.

The fear is that liberty would be in full-scale retreat and that greater atrocities would have taken place had libertarians not participated in electoral politics. There’s a case to be made there, but it is speculation. What isn’t speculation is that government spending as a part of the economy is at an all-time high, and everyone expects it to stay on the current trajectory indefinitely. Most Americans still support pre-emptive war and torture for anyone the government labels a terrorist. In Michael Cloud’s book Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion, he cares to use the Weight Watchers Test to gauge the promises by politicians of reducing the size of government, referring to the famous diet plan in which participants meet regularly to weigh themselves in front of other members. He said:

The Weight Watchers Test of government lets us know where we are, which direction we’re moving … and how fast we’re going.

The Weight Watchers Test of government frees us from sleight-of-mouth and political illusions.

It offers us the facts, the truth:

Are we moving toward bigger and bigger Big Government … or getting closer and closer to individual liberty, personal responsibility, and small government?

According to the Weight Watchers Test, libertarians have failed and failed more miserably than anyone else I know. (I include myself in that criticism.) The government has grown from arguably the freest non-colonial government in all of history to the most dangerous existing threat to humanity (considering the military arsenal at a president’s disposal and their predecessor’s historical willingness to use it). A limited government has the perverse tendency of growing immensely since lifting many regulations and securing relative stability makes it possible to generate astounding amounts of wealth, allowing the government parasite to grow largely discretely until the point where the parasite of government becomes so entrenched that government and the market almost appear co-dependent and inseparable.

There are three possible reasons why I think libertarianism has lost political ground. First, we could be wrong, and libertarians fail to understand the scope and circumstances to which coercion should play in human interaction to promote prosperity. Philosophically, I think libertarians (those who support the maximum attainable role of individual liberty) are right. Human beings are the most prosperous, yet fragile, animals on earth. So I don’t think humans have progressed because of our extraordinary physical traits. It is because of the human mind and its reasoning ability. So it seems that the negation of the reasoning mind by initiating force is detrimental to the fruits of human progress. I appreciate Ayn Rand’s comment that “All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.”

Second, libertarians may have failed due to a lack of effort. For this, I refer to the Ron Paul’s presidential campaign of 2008. In one day in November of 2007, his supporters raised over $4.3 million. A month later, supporters exhausted over $6 million in a single day, a record for the largest fundraiser in the history of politics. Libertarians are unlikely to ever find someone as honest and distinguished as Paul. He got more media attention than any ideological libertarian before, yet he rarely garnered more than 10 percent in Republican primaries despite the thousands of YouTube videos and millions of dollars invested. Even if Paul ran again, I’m doubtful that level of enthusiasm could be reproduced.

Third, maybe libertarians have tried the wrong strategy of clinging to government strictures to achieve intellectual inroads. Instead of trying to liberate the entire country, we could try to focus on something of which we have some control — ourselves and our personal relationships.

A belief in the maximum role of individual liberty is inherently an individualist philosophy. That means taking responsibility for our own liberty, just as we take responsibility for our own welfare — instead of giving that power to middlemen, the politicians. We can “be the change,” as Ghandi said, and lead by example to thwart the arbitrary controls others seek to impose on us. In that way, our ideals, cascading individual by individual, will eventually be reflected in the institution of government to the point where it is commonly accepted that government is no longer necessary. I don’t have to wait for the whole country to shift before I take responsibility for my own life and enjoy the benefits of living by honest, consistent principles. It can be achieved by taking peaceful direct action through education, outreach, and agorism.

What if Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand, and Hazlitt had worked outside the system 50 years ago? Imagine how much further liberty would have advanced. That too is speculation, but we’ve seen that electoral politics isn’t a path to salvation either.

Collectivists hold that individuals are subordinate to a group and have value only so far as they serve the demands of that group. Examples are racism, sexism, nationalism, statism, and altruism — second-hand ideologies of guilt and the gun. Because collectivism runs so contrary to the individual autonomy of human beings, collectivists snarl at sincere ambition and genuine loyalty. They can be more rancid at times, like recently when I was having an e-mail discussion with a constitutional scholar. He knows more about constitutional theory that I could ever hope or care to learn. He has an entire framework for the purported necessity of an institution known as government (or the state), a political entity which maintains an individually nonconsensual territorial monopoly.

His particular justification is the social contract (compact) theory, an ex post facto excuse for a dominant majority to subjugate the will of a minority while simultaneously attempting to evade their own psychological trauma for doing so. There are many versions of the social contract, some larger in scope than others, but his happens to be quite limited. He believes a social contract obliges adults to defend the rights of others in the community and to deliberate in an assembly to make legitimate changes to the government.

We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. — Hillary Clinton

This is all well and good, but I didn’t understand how a social contract could be established or what happens to those who disagree that a social contract had been established. As it turns out, individuals agreeing to pool their resources to defend against threats to their liberty (or rights) are forming a social contract. In doing so, a society is innately created, and as children become adults, they inherit this social contract and further these obligations of protection and deliberation onto their children, and so on and so on. Already, we can see the circular argument in this theory. Liberty and rights are a function of living in a society; societies cannot be formed for the protection of liberty since the concept of liberty is meaningless and has no value before joining a society. (For someone concerned about protecting liberties, forming a government is doubly confusing since governments are the greatest violators of liberty to have ever existed.) Ludwig von Mises said, “Society is division of labor and combination of labor.” The protection of liberty is not the purpose of society, but it is a fortunate consequence. Instead, the purpose of joining or maintaining a society is to form a division of labor, making the efficient protection from criminals one of the society’s many byproducts. Society is a mental pursuit, first. It is an attempt by individuals to quell some easiness about their existence, to improve the material conditions they experience. Some individuals in a society may make an explicit loyalty oath among themselves to defend each other from criminals, to educate the young, or to share their food in common, but those are not a necessary condition for a society to be created. In theory, a group of self-sufficient families who otherwise never interacted could form a self-defense compact, but they would get none of the benefits of a society. If an obligation of protection were a necessary component of forming a society, then it could equally be stated that there is an obligation to feed, to house, and to care for, and to educate the less fortunate, neccessitating an intrusive government that redistributes income. While I agree that it is moral to lend assistance to those who are deserving, I also agree with Lysander Spooner that those are acts “which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them.”

Another justification, I was told, was that the majority support the social contract, yet the vast majority of people are not legislators. By what right may legislators make laws if they are so greatly outnumbered? Supposedly, these legislators are chosen by the people in the society — who have reached a certain age, have not committed one of the several thousand vague laws or regulations, have filled out paperwork correctly within a certain number of days before the election, have citizenship approval of the government, and have attended the polling station on a certain day within an allotted number of hours every two years. In 2008, only 31 percent of United States citizens chose who would be in control of the government’s thermonuclear warheads, and most polls give Congress a job approval rating of less than 30 percent. Worse still, government regulators — the ones who interpret and enforce the laws to their own liking — never stand for election. Setting aside the immorality of majoritarianism, it is impossible to prove the intent of those supporters. It is possible that the support of anyone who chooses to remain within a territory was contingent on preserving some liberties or being made a slave. If my only options are to live in a neighborhood prone to terrorism or a neighborhood prone to vandalism, I could probably live with some random vandalism. That decision is not an approval of vandalism as much as it is an objection to being killed. In a stateless society, there exists an additional option, to form your own community or not participate, just as individuals can provide their own services, which ensures that the market has the possibility of satisfying the smallest minority of one.

I don’t know of anyone who believes that the majority will should be followed all the time, so there must exist a higher standard. Others believe that the will of the majority may be fallible but nevertheless should be given priority. Can the will of the majority be accurately determined by the political process? Voters are never given the choice of none of the above, so it is impossible to determine if a candidate won an election because he or she was the true favorite or if he or she was the “lesser evil” who actually stood a chance of winning. Determining the will of the majority is preposterous, but perhaps this centralized bureaucracy with no financial incentive to provide timely, efficient service had a crystal ball in its possession that could read the mind of every resident. It would still be necessary to prove that the will of the majority had not been tampered with by bribes or propaganda from the government. Nothing could be less true. Those in the government give one another special favors; they bailout failing companies, stymie competitors, offer discounted credit, and give preferential treatment to politically connected laborers. That is what they do. Government-approved education is compulsory during a child’s most formative years. In 2008, H. Walter Croskey, a California appeals court judge, in essence made homeschooling illegal in the state, saying that “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”

Well, maybe the government’s crystall ball can see past the theft and propoganda of the government. Even still, a social contract, since it is not material, in no way makes clear that the agreement is perpetually binding on everyone except those who intentionally opt out. Implicit contracts are unenforceable because the terms of the agreement are not objective, so any enforcement is capricious. If someone is obliged to defend the rights of others in the society, how many times, to what extent, and by what means? Who knows. For this reason, individuals ought not enforce implicit contracts; and individuals acting in concert under the guise of a government have not moral claim to enforce them either.

If nothing else, the social contract is a self-defeating idea because it violates the premise of its own existence, the protection of liberty, since a coercive majority may impose the social contract on a minority. (There are also the tiny discrepancies that no government has ever been established this way and that United State Supreme Court justices have ruled since 1855 and subsequently that agents of the government do not have an obligation to protect residents from “killers or madmen.”)

When I confronted the scholar with some of these seeming contradictions in the social contract theory, he said that if I knew of a mortal threat to the community, “[Y]ou had better respond and do your part, or I will hang your ass.” At that point, I knew there was no purpose in continuing the discussion. Once a person resolutely accepts evil and proudly brandishes it (at your throat no less), rational discussion ceases.

He continued that the social contract exists to serve “the group” as a whole since it “may not be rational for the individual member.”

How many things that are good for you, that you will benefit from, need to be imposed on you … with force? — Brett Veinotte

Contemplating the risk and reward of negating the peaceful will of another human being for the sake of the collective is moral cannibalism, giving man the same status as a sacrificial animal. Insofar as force is applied, the only tool available for human beings to progress and flourish — his reasoning mind — is lost.