The Progressive Monster

Though it didn’t get much press at the time, the Obama administration suffered a setback in February when a federal appeals court ruled that top secret documents could be admitted into evidence in the Al-Haramain v. Bush case. The Obama team had sought to prevent the admission of the documents, arguing the Bush/Cheney position that only the executive branch can determine who may or may not receive classified information, and that its decision is not subject to judicial review. The federal appeals court disagreed, and the plaintiffs’ counsel will be able to enter the classified documents into evidence.

Garnering slightly more attention was President Obama’s decision to “modify” his campaign pledge to remove all US forces from Iraq within sixteen months of his inauguration. Instead of a full withdrawal, President Obama now intends to reduce American forces by two-thirds within eighteen months. And instead of bringing the troops home, as many of Obama’s supporters no doubt misunderstood from his campaign rhetoric, the President merely intends to relocate them to Kabul so that he can escalate the conflict in Afghanistan.

On the economic front, President Obama has spent the past few months building upon the foundation laid by the Bush/Paulson brain trust. Despite howls of protest from hundreds of thousands of Tea Party participants, the Obama team seems determined to find out just how many zeroes it can add to the federal debt in its relentless push to transform the once-dynamic American economy into a moribund bureaucrat’s paradise.

So despite candidate Obama’s campaign-trail protestations against the Bush administration’s general disregard for civil liberties, its elective wars, and its reckless economic policies, it seems that President Obama rather enjoys the executive power the Bush administration worked so hard to expand. The more things “change,” the more they stay the same.

This isn’t surprising. After all, no one in government wants to diminish the power of any of the branches he hopes to control one day, least of all a Progressive like Barack Obama. The expansion of government power, particularly Executive power, has always been a key aspect of the Progressive movement. Ever since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Progressives have viewed government as the principal tool with which to mold society into a more regimented, and therefore more appealing, form.

Domestically, Progressives have implemented government programs ranging from the New Deal to the Great Society and beyond. Each of these programs have expanded the Federal government’s ability to implement various wealth redistribution schemes designed to override the outcomes that result from voluntary, free-market exchange.

Internationally, Progressives have relied on the coercive power of the American military to spread their agenda across the far reaches of the globe. Teddy Roosevelt was very much an imperialist, with a particular focus on the Philippines and Latin America. Woodrow Wilson took the US into World War I, ostensibly to make the world safe for democracy. America’s entry into the First World War helped set the stage for FDR to involve the US in the sequel a little more than twenty years later.

The common thread running through the Progressive agenda over the years has always been the idea that people can be forced to become better than the Progressives deem them to be. As Dr. Horrible says in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, “The world’s a mess, and I just need to rule it.” That’s basically the Progressive philosophy in a nutshell.

And the Progressive movement has been very successful at inserting itself into virtually all modern political thought. So successful, in fact, that key elements of the Progressive agenda can be found in the platforms of both of the major political parties. This may come as a surprise for those who use the term “Progressive” as a synonym for “Democrat,” but it is clear that the modern Republican Party has also adopted and internalized much of the Progressive worldview, though they may be loath to admit it. Despite the acrimony often exhibited by the two camps, both Republicans and Democrats clearly agree that all aspects of life require government control. The only points of contention revolve around which areas should be controlled most urgently, and the rate at which that control should be increased.

A brief historical comparison might help illustrate the pervasiveness of the Progressive ideology. Although many on the left like to compare Bush to Hitler, I think a more valid comparison is between the supposedly arch-conservative George W. Bush and Progressive paragon Woodrow Wilson. Both presidents greatly expanded the power of the federal government, with a particular emphasis on enlarging the scope of the Executive. Both presidents invoked religious language to justify involving the United States in foreign wars, purportedly to make the world “safe for democracy.” And both presidents engaged in wide-scale domestic surveillance and gross violations of civil liberties. These are all elements (or at least consequences) of the original Progressive agenda, and now we‘re all reaping what the Progressives have sown. The powers of the modern President are so far removed from what the Founders had envisioned that the office scarcely merits the term “President” anymore. “Dictator Pro-Temp” might be a better choice, since the President wields far more power today than Caesar ever dreamed of. This is precisely what the Progressive movement sought to achieve from the outset.

This “achievement” does not come without a price, however. Today, when the same government that they worked so hard to expand goes off to drop bombs on other countries, Progressives from the left express shock and outrage (unless the bomb-dropping is done for “humanitarian” reasons by a President with a “D” after his name). When the same government that Progressives worked so tirelessly to enlarge begins to spend unimaginably large sums of money in a panicked attempt to stave off the inevitable effects of all its previous ill-considered interventions in the economy, Progressives from the right take to the streets (unless the spending spree is initiated by a President with an “R” after his name).

Exhibiting all the hubris of Dr. Frankenstein, Progressives from both the left and the right have spent the better part of a century feeding a federal monster. And whenever the monster inevitably breaks loose, either to eat a few villagers in the course of elective wars or to enslave the villagers’ children with a crushing national debt, these same Progressives feign shock and horror - despite having been warned long ago about the dangers of playing God and creating such a monster. Yet no matter how much carnage the monster leaves in its wake, they still cling to the illusion that the problem is not with the size and the power of the monster itself, but only with the shortcomings of the monster’s temporary custodian.

The (Niche) Market for Liberty

A few weeks ago I had a lengthy discussion with a political campaign consultant. Although not a libertarian himself, he claimed to be broadly sympathetic to the libertarian philosophy, and was kind enough to offer me his services in my next campaign (should there be one).

Ours was the typical libertarian/non-libertarian political discussion. That is to say, it was a seemingly endless series of questions about the mechanics of a freer society. “How would poor kids be educated if we didn’t force people to pay for public schools?” “What about health care?” “What about immigration?” Yada, yada, freakin’ yada.

For the most part, he was receptive to my responses. Although not completely sold on the idea that individuals are quite capable of dealing with these issues without having a gun waved in their faces, he was at least willing to ponder the concepts being discussed. But being a political advisor, he kept returning to the question of how to get votes with these ideas, and he challenged me with the following hypothetical situation:

“Let’s say you’re at a candidate forum, and a woman stands up and says, ‘I’m a single mom, and I’ve got to get from my house in Arlington to my job in Dallas. I can’t afford a car, so how are you going to help me?’”

My initial response was, “Well, I’d tell her that the best way to improve transportation would be to strike down any subsidies or laws that protect inefficient city bus systems. This would allow for greater competition in the transit sector, which would lower costs and inc-”

At this point he interrupted, “She doesn’t care about any of that. She just wants to know how you’re going to get her to her minimum-wage job tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. for free.”

I replied, “Well, I can’t promise that. If I wanted to promise people something for nothing, I’d be running as a Republican or Democrat, not a Libertarian. What I can tell her is that the private sector is going to be far more responsive to her transportation needs than the Arlington city council will be, and that the best thing a politician can do is dismantle the regulatory barriers that are preventing the market from working as efficiently as it other-“

Again he interjected, “She doesn’t care! She just says, ‘You have to get me to work tomorrow!’ Now, what do you tell her?”

Exasperated, I said, “I don’t tell her anything. There are some people who simply can’t be reached, and at some point you just have to cut your losses and move on to those who are receptive to what you’re saying. After all, libertarian principles are not that hard to understand. Every individual owns himself. Using force against someone who has not first aggressed against you is wrong. If someone cannot or will not understand that, there’s only so much I can do.”

I think it’s time I started taking my own advice. Although I enjoy discussing political philosophy with a wide variety of people, there are a few cold, hard realities that I have to accept. The first is that the overwhelming majority of people simply don’t care about these broad, theoretical concepts one way or the other. They’re just going about their lives, trying to put food on the table and focusing on the things that do interest them. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself but it does probably mean that they’ll never think too deeply about political theory. They might be receptive to some libertarian ideas on a case-by-case basis, but that’s probably about as far as this group will go.

The second reality is that, of the remaining minority that is interested in deeper political thought, the bulk of these people will also be largely unreceptive to the freedom philosophy. If I remember correctly, it was Brian Doherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism, who once said that if a person doesn’t feel an initial sense of revulsion toward the coercive power underlying all government action, that person will never become a libertarian. He may be persuaded to accept the libertarian position on this issue or that issue, but he will never become an across-the-board, principled libertarian. Anecdotally, at least, I’ve found this to be true and I think it holds an important lesson for libertarians.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there are plenty of things that libertarians do wrong (more on that in a future post). But I think one of the first errors we commit is in believing that if we can just communicate the simple idea that “government is force” clearly enough and widely enough, that most people will feel that same visceral reaction against the use of coercion that we felt when we were first exposed to the concept. They’ll be struck by the liberty thunderbolt and will immediately begin looking for voluntary, rather than coercive, solutions to the problems of societal organization. After all, very few people point guns at their neighbors in the course of their daily interactions, so surely most people will be appalled once they finally understand that all government programs rely on force to achieve their stated objectives, right?

Wrong. Although I have no empirical data regarding this, it has been my experience that almost no one objects to using the government to achieve certain outcomes – even when they fully comprehend that by pursuing political “solutions” to perceived problems, they are merely outsourcing the pointing of the gun to people who happen to work in government. There are a few individuals within this group who are at least honest enough to say, “So what? As long as it’s my team pointing the gun, what’s the problem?” The less honest will engage in a long series of ex post facto rationalizations, attempting to obfuscate the obvious truth that their preferred method of social organization is nothing less than institutionalized violence, and that all their “noble” efforts to mold society according to their own personal preferences rely on nothing but large-scale plunder. The least honest within this group go one step further, painting their unwavering support for this institutionalized violence and large-scale plunder as virtue. This last subgroup will also relentlessly attack anyone who dares even to question the morality of the means employed to achieve their desired ends.

So it’s likely that the number of people who are both interested in and receptive to the expansion of individual liberty is very small. So small, in fact, that they may be little more than a rounding error when compared to the overall population. So be it. We libertarians are rabidly pro-free market, after all, and we may just have to accept the possibility that the market for liberty itself occupies a relatively small niche.

This is not to say that we should stop trying to increase our market share by arguing forcefully for our positions. After all, we’re selling a good product – one that would be very beneficial to society as a whole if taken in large doses. And it’s impossible to know ahead of time where we might find those few unique souls who “get it” – or would do if they were just given the chance. But as we all know, scarcity is a simple economic fact of life, and our time is a scarce resource. If someone can’t or won’t be reached for whatever reason, we have to be willing to move on to the next prospect. Life’s too short to argue with brick walls, particularly when there may be more rewarding exchanges somewhere down the line.

The Second Republic of Texas

Texas Governor Rick Perry shocked and outraged polite media society this Wednesday by daring to suggest that secession from the United States is always an option if Texans ever tire of being roundly ignored by those in Washington, D.C. Speaking to reporters in Austin after attending a Tea Party rally, Governor Perry said,

"Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot, to boot."

Texas Democrats were quick to condemn the governor. State Representative Jim Dunham characterized Perry’s comments as “anti-American,” stating that, with regard to secession, Perry “should have said 'That's silly'...He refused the opportunity to disavow it and I think that's very, very significant. Because what I read in the paper today is that the governor says secession is a possibility."

Evidently Democrats like Mr. Dunham believe that a sovereign political body like the former Republic of Texas has the right to join a political union, but does not have the right to leave that union should the relationship ever cease to be mutually advantageous. This is what I refer to as the “roach motel” theory of political union – you can check in, but you can’t check out.

That’s not to say that I think it would be a good idea for Texas to leave the Union. I don’t. After all, it’s not as if some great libertarian wave of freedom has spread across the Lone Star State. The current state constitution reads as if it had been written in Brussels, not Austin, and I don’t imagine that a constitution of the Second Republic of Texas would be much different. Indeed, I suspect that if Texas were to secede, the result would simply be a repetition of the same mistakes that brought the US federal government to this point, albeit in a smaller geographic area.

And from what little I’ve seen from the various secessionist movements active here in the state, I don’t get the feeling that they’re motivated by a burning desire to establish a great new bastion of individual liberty stretching from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Although they may be as frustrated with a wildly out-of-control federal government as I am, that looks to be where the similarities end - I certainly don’t share the raging anti-immigration sentiment that seems to fuel so many of these movements.

Besides, Rick Perry ain’t Thomas Jefferson. It's clear that his post-Tea Party secessionist bombshell and his recent attempts to resurrect the Ninth and Tenth Amendments by refusing federal “stimulus” money are little more than cheap political stunts designed to get to the right of Republican challenger Kay Bailey Hutchison before the upcoming primaries. Based on his record as state governor, Perry is just a run-of-the-mill, big-government Republican. As President of the Second Republic of Texas (assuming Chuck Norris had been declared ineligible for the office by virtue of having been born in Oklahoma), Perry would only replicate the same failed socialist policies of D.C. in Austin.

As ill-advised as secession under the current circumstances may be, to argue that the mere idea of secession as a political option should be taken off the table entirely, as Representative Dunham implied, strikes me as equally ill-advised. The threat of secession is a check on government overreach, and one that is consistent with the principle of peaceful association, as well as with the somewhat murkier notion of government by consent of the governed. Surely if the government’s legitimacy rests on the consent of the governed, that implies that the governed may withdraw that consent at some point. To suggest otherwise would be to utterly destroy the few existing remnants of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

As usual, the furor over Governor Perry’s comments about secession misses the point entirely. Of course it’s just a political stunt by a Republican governor up for re-election. And no, I don’t want to associate with many of the groups actively pushing for Texas to secede from the US. But to suggest that secession can never be a viable political option is to deny the freedom of association that lies at the heart of representative government. And if, as Mr. Dunham appears to believe, secession is never a legitimate option for any group of people, no matter how unsatisfied they may be with their current political arrangement, then surely both the American Revolution of 1776 and the Texas Revolution of 1836 were illegitimate. For what were these revolts if not acts of secession? What does Mr. Dunham think the American Declaration of Independence was, exactly? It was a secessionist manifesto, as was the Texas Declaration of Independence.

So although now is probably not the best time for Texans to consider actually seceding, one would be mistaken to scoff at the idea or to dismiss it outright. After all, it’s not as if it couldn’t be done. The Second Republic of Texas would be the world’s thirteenth largest economy, with a number of important resources, including a large, well-educated workforce, natural gas, oil, vast stretches of farm and ranch land, major international airports, beaches, plenty of guns, and Lyle Lovett. What else would we really need?

Easter Eggs and Property Rights

Apropos of the season, the Dallas Morning News recently ran an article describing city planners’ attempts to minimize the carnage normally associated with their annual Easter egg hunts. The article’s description of the event reads like a scene out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, with everyone from toddlers to overzealous parents pitted in a Hobbesian war of all against all as they scour the Dallas Arboretum for well-hidden marshmallowy treats.

"The people charged like wild animals," Karen Casteel of Carrollton said of one of the egg hunts she attended some years ago at The Dallas Arboretum with her daughter. "She's crying and a lot of little kids are crying. The parents are hoarding the eggs. I'm telling you it was crazy."

Planners say they add new rules every year to try and keep the fields from becoming big mosh pits. They separate out the toddlers from the bigger children. They ask parents to stay off the field. They restrict the number of participants. They order thousands of extra eggs. They post caution tape to keep nonparticipants off the field. They hold the hunts for older children in different areas than the hunts for the babies and toddlers.

But apparently they still can't always keep the bad eggs off the field.

"We try desperately to not have parents on the field with children. For us, it creates a dangerous situation. Kids get knocked over. Kids whose parents obey the rules have a chance of getting run over," said Morgan.

It’s a frightening scene, and we can but hope that the rain forecast for this weekend will help keep this year’s Easter egg body count down to a bare minimum.

As I read the article, it struck me that the Easter egg hunt offers us a great lesson in the importance of property rights. My children are still quite young, and so far all of our Easter egg hunts have been held in our own backyard with just the family and maybe a few close friends. The kids all know each other, and they’ve always enjoyed the activity. So far no one has been hospitalized (knock on wood).

Contrast our idyllic little back-yard family gathering with the carnage of the large-scale public Easter egg hunts. Continuing from the Dallas Morning News article,

She added that the biggest prize offered by Bedford is an Easter basket, and there are 10,000 eggs for about 500 participants. "But you'd think there was gold out there. We're at a loss," she said.

In-your-face egg gathering is not a new phenomenon. The Arboretum had a meltdown back in the late '90s, when thousands of candy-hungry children showed up and some older kids began gathering eggs before their event officially started.

"Lo and behold, those who are more aggressive don't wait for the whistle," said president Mary Brinegar.

Those who understand basic property rights, of course, are not surprised by the Bedford experience. It’s a perfectly predictable illustration of the tragedy of the commons. When resources are either unowned or owned “in common,” the incentive is to take as much as one can, as soon as one can, before someone else does the same.

This lack of clearly defined property rights naturally leads to conflict, as everyone engages in a mad dash to fill their own baskets. Kids get knocked over, staff members get overrun by savage little candy junkies, parents engage in fisticuffs, and the very fabric of society is rent asunder so that little Susie doesn’t have to go home empty-handed and teary-eyed.

Granted, there’s a limit to how far one can stretch the analogy. The whole point of having an Easter egg hunt is the thrill the kids get from the hunt itself. If all the eggs were individually labeled with a particular child’s name to ensure they were picked up only by their rightful child owner, you’d have the lamest Easter egg hunt ever. It would, however, help reduce conflict. The kids would be far less likely to trample each other to get the eggs, and if they did, the clear title to each egg would enable you to quickly determine which child was the aggressor and which was the victim.

And that, in an eggshell, is the importance of property rights. It may be possible to have relative peace and harmony in the absence of clearly defined property rights in a small tribal society (like that of the Smith household). But this requires a fairly significant degree of interpersonal cohesion based on bonds of family or friendship. In a larger, more complex society (represented by the public Easter egg hunts), those bonds simply do not exist, and the lack of properly defined and enforced property rights inevitably leads to conflict and much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This is why libertarians spend so much time focusing on and defending property rights. It’s not (just) because we’re selfish and don’t want anyone touching our stuff. It’s because we understand the crucial role property rights play in any harmonious and peaceful society – which is precisely the kind of society we’d like to help create.

Happy Easter, everyone. Let’s be careful out there.

The Busybody Tax

This week the federal government raised the tax on cigarettes by 259%, from $0.39 to $1.01 a pack. The money raised by the tax will allegedly go to fund children’s healthcare programs. No doubt they’ll put the money in a lock box, just as they did with our Social Security “contributions.” CNN’s Roland Martin couldn’t be happier about the tax increase. He doesn’t like smoking. Smoking is bad for you. So as far as he’s concerned, the higher the tax the better. Explaining his position in a recent editorial, Martin states, “I don't want poor, middle or rich folks smoking. I just think it's disgusting.”

I’ve never met Roland Martin, of course, but from what I’ve seen on TV he looks like the kind of guy who might enjoy the occasional Twinkie (not that I'm one to cast stones). Personally, I don’t like Twinkies. They’re bad for you. I don’t want poor, middle or rich folks eating Twinkies. I just think they’re disgusting. Does that give me the right to help myself to some arbitrary percentage of Roland Martin’s Twinkie budget? What if I promise to put (some of) the money I take from Roland to good use? Maybe I could use the money to fund an anti-obesity program for cable news network talking heads. Would that make it right?

In other news this week, the Texas House of Representatives has moved to impose a tax on strip clubs. Referred to locally as the “pole tax,” the bill will take 10% of the admission fees charged by “gentleman’s clubs” and send that money to the state, rather than to the people who actually earned it. The new tax would take the place of the tax that was imposed last session, which levied a $5 per person fee on patrons of the burlesque arts. The adult industry supports the new bill, but that’s probably just because they realize that club owners can simply reduce their entrance fees or stop charging at the door altogether – an idea that apparently eluded our state representatives when they crafted the bill. The revenue from the stripper tax is supposed to fund health care for the poor and sexual assault services.

Although the federal tobacco tax and the state strip club tax are otherwise unrelated, they do have one thing in common – they both enjoy broad support from people with a knack for rationalizing stealing from others simply because those others happen to be engaged in activities of which they disapprove.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Tony’s doing something that just rubs Bob the wrong way. Bob could simply choose not to associate with Tony, but that would mean that Bob couldn’t push Tony around, and it wouldn’t do much to line Bob’s pockets either. So instead, Bob decides to take some of Tony’s money (and then not associate with Tony). Of course, Bob can’t be too honest about his motives. After all, no one wants to admit to being both a thief and a busybody. So Bob targets those who don’t get much sympathy from the general public, like smokers or guys who frequent strip clubs, and then Bob magnanimously offers to spend their money on a politically correct yet wildly unconstitutional cause, usually involving health care.

Although he may not realize it or even care, Bob is playing with fire. Once the precedent is set that it’s alright to use taxation merely as a punishment for engaging in unpopular yet legal activities, he may find out that there are people in the world who disapprove of some of his favorite activities, too. What defense will he have once he become's the taxman's next target? None.

But as long as they promise to fund health care…