Libertarian antidotes in cool, calm
discussions
Three volumes don't overheat in their passion for
individual liberty.
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WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A
LIBERTARIAN
A Personal Interpretation
By Charles Murray
Broadway Books. 178 pp. $20 |
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LIBERTARIANISM
A Primer
By David Boaz
Free Press. 314 pp. $23 |
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THE LIBERTARIAN
READER
Classic & Contemporary Writings From Lao-Tzu to Milton
Friedman
Edited by David Boaz
Free Press. 458 pp. $27.50 |
Reviewed by Frank Wilson, an Inquirer copy
editor.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, February 2, 1997 - Section Q: pages 1, 10
For those who think this
nation's political discourse has lately grown toxic, libertarianism --
as presented in three new books -- may be just the kind of soothing
antidote they need.
Conspicuously absent from these books is any overheated
rhetoric.
In its place are coolheaded, often eloquent suggestions for
alternative ways to approaching matters of polity.
Charles Murray's What
It Means to Be a Libertarian and David Boaz's Libertarianism:
A Primer complement each other nicely.
Murray calls himself "a lower-case libertarian," to
distinguish himself from "Libertarians with a capital
l" -- such as Boaz -- whose "logic of individual
liberty . . . is purer and more uncompromising" than Murray's own.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy based on a passionate
belief in individual freedom and espousing the strictest limitations on
government. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, libertarians hold that, "The
less government we have, the better . . . "
But they are not to be confused with anti-government fanatics.
They don't believe in blowing up federal buildings or forcing their will
on anybody.
Nor are all libertarians members of the Libertarian Party, which
fields candidates for public office.
While Boaz would go further than Murray in dismantling the works
and pomps of the modern state, their differences are only of degree, and
the degree of difference is in most cases not so great.
Boaz -- the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a
libertarian think tank -- discusses in far greater detail the principles
of libertarianism, but Murray -- a fellow of the American Enterprise
Institute who is best known these days as coauthor of the controversial
The
Bell Curve in 1994 -- offers the more precise strategy for
implementing those principles in today's political environment.
The two principal intellectual forebears of libertarianism are
John Locke (1632-1704), with his notion that governments are compacts
arrived at for the securing of individual rights, and Adam Smith
(1723-1790), with his doctrine of a "spontaneous order"
brought about by the "invisible hand" of the marketplace.
Indeed, the first principle of libertarianism is self-ownership,
and the reason libertarians place such emphasis on property rights is
that all human action involves the use of property. For the
libertarian, all rights are property rights. "A theory of privacy
rooted in property rights," Boaz observes, "wouldn't have
needed penumbras and emanations" to find that a woman has the right
to terminate a pregnancy.
The libertarian position on abortion, in fact, illustrates the
libertarian stance overall: A consistent libertarian (and most
libertarians are nothing if not consistent) -- even one who regarded
abortion as wrong -- would not advocate making it a crime. Nor would a
libertarian who finds abortion morally acceptable advocate public
funding for it. Not surprisingly, Boaz not only approves of separation
of church and state, but he further advocates separation of state from
family, school and art.
So the aims of latter-day libertarians are the same as their Whig
predecessors two centuries ago: the repeal of laws.
Murray's most intriguing suggestion is that Congress pass a
resolution permitting businesses to "opt out of the regulatory
system," at all levels, including state and local. The only
proviso would be that those taking advantage of the option prominently
advertise that they are unregulated. Businesses that did not opt out
could proudly advertise that they were in full compliance with
government regulations.
"In a world where both regulated and unregulated goods are
available, everyone may capture the advantages of the regulation, real
or imagined, by choosing to buy the regulated product," Murray
writes. "The self-proclaimed consumer advocates of the world may
live just as securely in that world as they do in the one that exists
now. They may continue to buy government-regulated products and
services. They may also write angry articles, declaim on television,
and take out advertisements in newspapers warning the public when they
discern a danger. . . . [But they] will not have the right to use the
government to force everyone else to share their particular level of
risk aversion."
For libertarians, the term society is strictly an
abstraction designating interaction among individuals. Individuals are
the reality. Critics of libertarianism, Marxists especially, have used
this emphasis on the individual to argue that libertarianism in practice
leads to atomization and alienation. Libertarians counter that
individuals are social by nature, that it is in their self-interest to
cooperate. Boaz puts it this way:
"Critics of libertarianism say, `You want to abolish
essential government programs and put nothing in their place.' But the
absence of coercive government programs is most decidedly not nothing.
It's a growing economy, the individual initiative and creativity of
millions of people, and thousands of associations set up to achieve
common purposes. What kind of social analysis is it that looks at a
complex society like the United States and sees `nothing' except what
government does?"
Nevertheless, precisely because libertarians do not seek
political solutions to social problems, they often find themselves at a
disadvantage in political debate for the simple reason that they have
nothing to propose. Environmental enthusiasts are unlikely to be
persuaded by what Murray and Boaz have to say, not because the
principles they enunciate are unsound (they aren't) or because they do
not discuss matters in enough detail (which to some extent is true) but
because it has become environmental orthodoxy that, as Murray puts it,
"apocalypse is upon us unless the government steps in."
To counter, as Murray does, that "strict property rights,
extended rather than limited, offer our best hope of protecting
the environment," is to invite shunning by the environmentally
pure.
Murray underscores his lower-case libertarianism by actually
proposing a large federal expenditure -- a $3,000 unrestricted tuition
voucher for each child attending elementary and secondary school. He
estimates the program's total cost at $150 billion annually. This is
not a proposal that Boaz, who favors a sharp reduction in taxation,
would be likely to support. (Murray envisions a much larger federal
government than Boaz does, one that "absorbs the same percentage of
the gross national product as it did during Franklin Roosevelt's first
two terms").
But such is the way among libertarians. One of the most
appealing things about libertarianism is that it is not a monolithic
system. It encompasses a wide variety of views, as becomes apparent
from the anthology of libertarian writings Boaz has compiled in The
Libertarian Reader. These essays and excerpts share an
uncommon lucidity, which is something else that distinguishes
libertarianism from Marxists and other statists with their obscurantist
rhetoric.
Interestingly, neither Murray nor Boaz has much to say about what
is likely to become the wedge issue for libertarians in the coming
months: judicial nullification of voting results. After all, if judges
can cancel the vote, we're no longer living in a democracy. Boaz
deplores certain U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding contract law and
the right to privacy, but neither he nor Murray goes so far as former
Judge Robert Bork does in suggesting a constitutional amendment to place
constraints on judicial review.
These books deserve to be read, not because they are going to
persuade anyone to change long-held views, but because they offer
well-written and soundly reasoned presentations of views deserving of
consideration, views with a long and honorable intellectual pedigree.
Boaz titles his opening chapter "The Coming Libertarian
Age." If such an age does indeed come, it will be precisely
because contemporary libertarianism really is different from modern
liberalism and conservatism. Moreover, if public dissatisfaction with
government continues to grow, both major political parties are likely to
be weighed in the balance and found wanting.
