Libertarian Treatise of the Afternoon

One of my facebook friends posted a link to this article today and commented on how she really liked it and had never considered whether libertarianism was "Christian" or not. To be fair, she also welcomed debate on the issue, for which I gladly took her up on her offer.

My response:

I'm not going to address the Tea Party Movement part of this article (or Rand Paul for that matter), but I must say I got all of two sentences into bullet point one and had to stop to draft a response (although I did finish the entire thing - I just had to calm down for a minute first.)

First, Christianity, in my opinion, is in no way, shape, or form about the common good. Jesus spoke to individuals and healed individuals. Most evangelicals emphasize a "personal" relationship with God. Conflating "loving thy neighbor" with the "common good" is not only poor semantics, but poor theology. Now, the converse argument could be made that Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for the "common good." To this I would 100% agree. However, as individual Christians we are called to love God and love our neighbors. There is certainly room for doing things for the "common good," but more often than not through history doing any thing in the name of common good has only ended in abusive tyranny that has hurt, instead of helped, the common good. Because, who in all their infinite wisdom outside of God, actually knows what the "common good" is? There are some fundamental precepts that I could loosely agree to for this definition, but most of those could be met with a government about 1/100th of the size we have now. Including social programs.

As a fairly ardent libertarian, I align myself with that ideology (not the political party) largely due to my strong Christian beliefs and values. The author makes a critical error in that second sentence - saying that libertarianism heralds the triumph of individual rights "at the expense of others." This is simply not the case. Most libertarians have strong training - or at least a strong interest in - economics. Specifically, public choice theory. In a nutshell, this theory espouses that individuals can better judge what is best for themselves than anyone else and therefore should be allowed to pursue their own interests AS LONG AS those interests do not infringe upon the rights of other individuals. Where there is conflict, this is the proper place for the law to intercede. Libertarians do not claim that this type of life is Utopian (despite several popular libertarian "theorists" who espouse as much.) Instead, libertarianism is based on the fundamental assumption that humans are flawed, i.e. sinners. Yet, they take an almost Federalist position that instead of having one person exert force to control the sins of another, that we should be left to pursue our own interests (including sins/vices) as long as they do not demonstrably infringe on the rights of another. Essentially, "ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of men must be tied to the constitutional rights of the place... In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself," as noted in Federalist 51.

So, coming back to the original point, a libertarian point of view assumes that all people are flawed and that is better to suffer for your own foolish flaws - regardless of how detrimental they may be to you - than suffer from the flaws/sins - such as hubris - of another who can use force to impose their will on you. The negative components of this argument comprise 99% of the public discussion, however, this fails to address the positives which include improved freedom and the ability to truly make changes in your life and immediate community. In a Christian context, this allows not only more freedom for worship and association, but also greater freedom to use resources to help those in need (because obviously libertarians believe in paying minimal taxes since the people making the decision with individuals' money has not made it and therefore does not know the best way for it to be spent.) Will some choose to spend their extra money on things like big houses, fancy cars, and big screen TVs? Absolutely. Yet, even those "greedy, selfish, uncompassionate" people are still adding value to society through their actions because the products they buy allow people in poverty-stricken nations to have jobs and provide for their families. Ultimately, still making everyone better off even if not through direct charity. That being said, would there be a large contingent of us who would take that extra money and use it to help others instead of merely boosting our own material standing in the world? Yes. Because if you have the view of Christianity that I do - it is all about choice. God chose his Son. Jesus chose us. We choose to follow him. No one compels anyone to accept Christ because that is not the point. The government can try to compel us to do the right thing, but at the end of the day the legal code should be the very base level of our morality, not the epitome of it.* When you start compelling people to accept moral outcomes is when tyranny reigns - which I fundamentally believe to be evil. Therefore, freedom (in Christ and in society) can be used for ill or for good. I see examples of both every day of my life. However, it does mean that I want to take that freedom away from people. Even if I think they are stupid, immoral louts who do nothing to add value to society. I would rather have the opportunity to use my freedom for good, than to take the chance that someone who wants to use their freedom for ill is put into power over me (although I still think individually they have a right to act however they please.)

One of the best examples of a positive - and in my opinion Christian outcome - of a libertarian view deals with the drug trade and the continued subjugation of minorities in this country. If we were to legalize all drugs tomorrow, would there still be suffering? You bet. There would still be plenty of addicts - and maybe even some people who would try drugs simply because they are legal despite being educated on their adverse effects - but the drug trade would no longer keep inner city youth essentially imprisoned to a life of crime and violence because there would be no crime in selling or using these substances. I'm not sure if you've ever see the TV show The Wire, but they try a project in Baltimore in the show that they call "Hamsterdam." (They make it legal to sell drugs in a certain section of the abandoned projects as long as they stay in that area.) At first it's a bit of a disaster, but then the local churches come in to provide food, medical help, AIDS testing, and counseling. Now, I'm not saying this is a good or ideal situation. I'm ardently anti-drug use for everyone. However, addicts are going to use, why make it a crime that imprisons an entire society - and keeps our prisons filled with people who are largely only hurting themselves? Also, if it is legal to use, it severely lessens the affect of a parent's addiction on the future of a child. There are countless examples of this with the legalization of alcohol. There are many alcoholics that do many bad things, however, their children often can still get out their bad situation. Not all the time, but often through public schools and other resources - such as social services (which I still support despite my ideology.)

Now, are there plenty of Libertarians who are not Christian? Of course. Just as there are many Republicans and Democrats. However, when you want to consider a political ideology that is actually focused on justice and compassion, it is libertarianism not the other two that exist simply to impose their values on others and engage in political grandstanding to stroke their own egos. If you adhere to libertarianism you truly adhere to a code of equality - because everyone is responsible for his or her own actions (including helping others) and in that lies immense opportunities for the betterment of mankind as a whole.

*See Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address. A key passage:

"I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure."