The Future of Liberalism -- Part one

Wolfe writes: With respect to liberty, liberals want for the person what Thomas Jefferson wanted for his country: independence. Dependency, for liberals, cripples. Human beings have minds and bodies, and both, liberals believe, should be free to exercise their full capacities: minds, through open societies that allow everyone to develop their intellect, and bodies, through societies that guarantee sufficient economic security to individuals so that they are not dependent upon the arbitary will of others for the basic necessities of life. When we have no choice but to accept someone else's power over us, we fail to think for ourselves, are confined to conditions of existence resembling an endless struggle for survival, are unable to plan for the future, and cannot possess elementary human dignity. The autonomous life is therefore the best life. We have the potential, and are therefore responsible for realizing it, to be masters of our own destiny. This is why liberals insist on the importance of rights, including the right of people to practice their religion as they see fit, to speak for and assemble around causes in which they believe, and to possess a significant degree of control over their personal livlihood. Take away such individual rights--imagine a world in which religion (or irreligion) is coerced, freedom of speech curtailed, economic activity directed and controlled by the state, and no one allowed to organize and bargain collectively to improve their economic condition--and you have a political system that can only be called illiberal, whether it leans backward toward absolute monarchy or forward to the some alleged socialist utopia. 

This is a passage in the beginning of the book that's both smokescreen and a clue to what follows. The smokescreen is the defense of autonomy, liberty and rights against monarchy, socialist utopia and the illiberal nature of "economic activity directed and controlled by the state". The clue to Wolfe's view of the future lies in the "guarantee of sufficient economic security for individuals". This view maintains that individuals can better their station in life through society (political action), that inequality is not a natural, biological reality which if tampered with by government will harm society. As an aside, one has to wonder if Wolfe thinks the current economic activity directed and controlled by the state is indicative of an illiberal political system?

Despite all the support for liberty, Wolfe's future clearly considers liberty conditional and not all inclusive. All attempts to establish equality through government coercion and majority consent will restrict the liberty and autonomy of the minority who pay for the equality. But Wolfe believes the wealthy few have coerced and oppressed the majority, so I guess that makes things even. Rather than get into an argument whether the wealthy should be forced to pay their fair share, or forced to provide opportunity to those the state believes have been oppressed, to help achieve equality, I'd rather respond to the claim that the majority is oppressed by the wealthy few, or would be in a free market where there is a separation of state and economy.

I do believe that in the current political system where certain corporations are favored by government and given an advantage over their competition there is an unfair oppression which needs to be ended. Corporate welfare in all its ugly manifestations needs to end immediately -- and this needs to be done before we address the welfare state in general. Of course, Wolfe seems to believe that this is the result of bad government, one which doesn't believe in the transformative power of government and, therefore, cynically uses government power to regulate poorly and promote cronyism. "Good" government would apply state power more wisely to achieve more equitable outcomes. Since this "good" government hasn't been created yet, I'll leave that alone for now and consider what might happen in a free market with limited government which doesn't interfere with matters of equality except providing the opportunity to pursue ends without government favoritism blocking or enhancing that pursuit.

Regardless of how minorities were treated in the past, much progress has been made to provide opportunites for everyone in this country. What would stop, in a free market society, historically oppressed groups from organizing and bargaining collectively to improve their economic condition (we probably would be closer to this reality had the state not been involved in, ostensibly, establishing "equality")? Even in a system that has favored the status quo, good old boy, corporate/government enmeshment, lots of African/Americans and women have amassed huge fortunes. If a group of black men and women formed an association to use their wealth to back good business ideas and a combination of skills, they could make profits and promote equality faster than government welfare programs. If this association promoted education in the technology field among the young black men and women and started their own educational initiatives, investors would back great ideas from a black tech-wonder as soon as they would a white tech-wonder -- and hi-tech companies would give high paying jobs to highly skilled black men and women just as they do to white skilled workers -- there's a growing need for skilled workers and color will no longer matter -- plus, most of these companies have a liberal mindset.

The same goes with women. They can form alliances to build their own glass ceilings. If the white male power structure won't let them in, then create a female power structure to compete against them. In a free market with no corporate welfare and protection, the best ideas and the best companies will win.

If Wolfe truly believes it's illiberal for a political system to control and direct economic activity, then he ought to see the beauty in a free market where autonomous individuals can become captains of their own destiny and create equality through effort and achievement.

This was just an initial reaction, and a few thoughts about alternatives to increased state power -- over the next month, I'll post more here and there. I just wonder why the new mindset insists on state power to address equality. Freedom is about opening opportunites for everyone -- there's no need for the state to put some down to raise others. The welfare state has not worked, and I doubt Wolfe has ever visited the living results.

The power of innovation

We've come too far to turn back now. In spite of all the manipulations by government which make me at times want to move to an island and forget it all, I look past the MSM's portrayal of America's hot mess and the global crisis and I see the dynamic movement of creative people which will define the future and leave dullard statists wondering how it all passed them by. We've come too far. The future belongs to a new breed of geniuses and producers and artists and brain-workers and service providers and craftspeople, and, yes, laborers who have tools other generations couldn't imagine. It's always been that way, I suppose, except now we've reached a different level where changes will be mindblowing, quick and dramatic. The base for change is more complex and the accumulated knowledge is increasing like never before.

This buildup of technological knowledge and expertise is busting the seams of an old structure of power and control. I believe we're in a lull of doubt before an explosion of innovation which will render obsolete most of what we witness today from nation-states. We may be witnessing a dual movement of statist collapse and technological revolution, with the state delusionally writing the narrative as a government-led transformation. The silence regarding free enterprise's newest promise is deafening -- while the media covers and makes excuses for the latest tax-dodging government appointment and announces another government scheme to patch a hole in the dike.

The social scientist's bed-wetting concern over technology de-humanizing us all has failed to materialize as we cheerfully embrace innovations which move us further and further, cyber-wise and technology-wise, beyond the reach of a sluggish state. This last gasp of statism is making the best use it can of the economic lull in order to make a stand, but it's legs are as weak as its collective mind. State control of dying industries and daddy fat-cat banks is a desparate move to avoid the reality of failure.  The state defense of public education and the welfare state is a reactionary justification for its existence while potential change and innovative possibilities lie in wait -- and as the new breed of entrepreneurs wait for showtime, a nation absorbs the information flow which increases through growing channels. To many, the revelation of a state in conflict with its limitations and aspirations is an awakening to where we stand in history -- if the over-reaching state reveals itself to be the manipulative obstacle some of us know it to be, the rest will realize the emptiness of government's benevolent claims and the obstacles will be removed. We've come to far to allow a dying power structure to support dying industries and institutions at the expense of progress.

The state has done a grand job conflating government with America, but it's always been doomed to faliure, just as extreme failure keeps North Korea in darkness and, to a lesser degree of failure, keeps Europe in perpetual mediocrity and gradual decay. To the extent America has been different and more amenable to free enterprise and an open, free society, we've advanced a standard of living which no one 50 years ago could imagine, and we didn't come this far to tear it all down.

Power and control

We can spend the next 4 years bickering over policies, questioning the political parties and talking about horse races, wondering if the economics of the stimulus will cause a downward spiral or a temporary uptick, wrangling over alliances and comprises and bipartisanship statesmanship -- but until the underlying problem of control and power is addressed the problem of statism will continue to become more intractable.

I've never become a hardened cynic who assigns base motives to all who participate in the political realm, but it's clear that when government is freed from strict Constitiutional limits (and I would even say the Constitution itself needs to revisited and clarified) those in the political realm, consciously or unconsciously, tend to be driven by the intoxication of power and the need to control. The pomp and circumstance last night during Obama's speech was a display of state glory and power-hunger. These are paid government workers, some elected, some appointed, who's place in society should be subordinated to the private realm -- a respectable occupation in a limited government, but nothing close to the royal-like and inner sanctum-like atmosphere and environment that's been created. The self-importance was oozing from every pore.

The most important problem of our time is how to limit government and transform the idea of "state" to meet the needs and zeitgeist of the 21st century. There's a critical cognitive dissonance when considering the technological genius of free enterprise during our time and the antiquated notions of central planning and state control and power. We are becoming a nation divided by statists, plus those who are subsidized by the state -- corporations, special interest groups, unions, etc. -- and the brilliant individuals in our modern private realm, from small businesspeople, to scientists, to programmers, to entrepreneurs, to architects and engineers, to all the diverse producers of value.

The global economy is a harbinger of such great technological achievement it boggles the mind -- something as seemingly simple as Amazon's Kindle which gives us immediately access to books, information and knowledge is amazing when we stop to consider it now seems normal for such tools to be developed -- and the world moves on at a dizzying speed so that we fail to stop long enough to re-assess government and what the "state" means to us at this point in time. While the world grows and evolves in wonderful ways, the state also grows and evolves -- but the state is growing in power and control and no one seems to be paying attention. News of the technological advances gets buried beneath televised shows of government grandeur and 24 hour coverage of the state's every move, so  that government seems to be the mover and shaker making it all happen.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The state will only attempt to control, suck power from and waste what the private realms creates if it's not stopped from spreading its tenacles.

Within the libertarian perimeter

In the preface of his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick writes:

One view about how to write a philosophy book holds that an author should think through all the details of the view he presents, and its problems, polishing and refining his view to present to the world a finished, complete, and elegant whole. This is not my view. At any rate, I believe that there also is a place and a function in our ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leads, side connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on subjects other than the last words.

 Of course this is true of political liberalism works to a certain extent, especially as presented by Rawls, as related to evolving reasonable consensus. This open-ended search is as it should be, taking into account the convictions which also accompany the healthy doubt. The problem is the perimeter within which the ideas are considered and practiced. What creates a division is political liberalism's insistence on state coercion as the only method to deal with collective needs. As long as coercion is seen as the only method of dealing with collective needs, there's little chance of the two ideas finding significant common ground.

It would be helpful if political liberalism could justify coercion. The idea that not enough people would cooperate in the resolution of social problems and, therefore, coercion is necessary doesn't fly given the fact this accusation has never been proven and there's plenty of evidence to the contrary in the history of American charity and the existence of diverse associations aimed at tackling social problems.

As long as voluntary, private solutions aren't on the table the perimeter for discussion and possible  compromise exclude libertarian participation -- the only discussions will include those who believe coercion is necessary and the questions will revolve around how much coercion and what methods of coercion are appropriate.

So, as political scientists, academicians , politicians and citizens discuss possible solutions to society's most pressing collective problems, the perimeter must be widened to include the possibility of private, voluntary action in place of coercion, even if in the beginning voluntary action is tried on a limited, experimental basis.

I think most libertarians would be willing to compromise and concede to coercion on some troublesome aspects of collective needs, for the time being (as if they have choice), as long as statists concede that private, voluntary methods should be given a chance for the less troublesome areas. As I've stated repeatedly, opening up the area of education to private solutions would be a great start -- there is plenty of evidence that private initiatives in education are viable alternatives to public education. There could even be "libertarian" zones where the initiatives are voted for overwhelmingly by the citizens living in the zones as a means of experimentation with private, voluntary methods.

As long as all innovative ideas regarding transforming America to meet the challenges of the 21st century are limited within the perimeter of state coercion and central planning, innovation and America will suffer. Dismissing libertarian ideas regarding private, voluntary methods of dealing with collective needs as reactionary is ludricrous in light of the historical fact that libertarianism was partially tried for the first hundred or so years after the founding and the subsequent years were shackled by a mixed economy and a steady dose of government intervention. Even if you propose libertariansim was given a fair chance in the beginning and failed to produce a utopia, that's just as ludicrous when statism has never produced anything close to utopia and our present circumstances could be much more amenable to libertarian ideas than the beginning capital accumulation period with the growing pains of a new nation.

As a nation, regarding the beginning ups and downs of a growing nation, we gave up before the miracle could happen and shelved liberartianism for central control and government intervention, so the natural process of evolution was tinkered with by social engineers until it was tinkered out of existence, reduced to a historical footnote saying "good idea, but, unfortunately, complexity and fairness called for central planning". What a crock! Humorists, freedom advocates and social critics from the past who gave character to this nation such as Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson  and Mencken would suffer from apoplexy or a terminal fit of laughter at the notion complexity, public welfare and fairness have been placed under the care of politicians!

Let's open the discussion to cover all possibilities -- the state needs to loosen the grip and allow experimentation.

The thin advantage of statism

The ostensible justification for statism in the U.S. lies in the provision of public welfare and justice in a society which values care and welfare over rugged individualism and the common man over the connected rich. This can be understood when we consider how rugged individualism is associated with an antiquated idea of the wild west in a modern world where advancements in technology suggest a higher standard of living and a more comfortable existence which our sense of fairness tells us should be shared by all. It no longer makes any sense to expect the poor and middle class to be rugged, suck it up and achieve success when the power of wealth appears to be an oppressive force blocking the advancement of those who seemingly lack the means to overcome the inequalities on effort alone. Our sense of fairness tells us the rich should contribute to the welfare of the disadvantaged since there's such an excess of wealth concentrated among a relative few which creates obstacles not present to this degree during the forming of the nation when there was a much more level playing field and, thus, greater opportunity for advancement. 

There hasn't been a comparable adjustment among the politically powerful to offer alternatives to statism in which private solutions to social concerns could be accepted as viable, and the Republican facade of being small-government oriented succeeded only in becoming associated with powerful corporations in an alliance which made the power elite appear more formidable and the common man and woman more oppressed. In reality, the government/corporation enmeshment involving both parties has made the above ideas regarding oppression more complicated and, to a large degree, true.

The libertarian alternatives to statism have been marginalized as unrealistic utopian schemes concerned more with rugged individualism and making money than welfare for the disadvantaged or safety nets for the middle class. This is unfortunate because rugged individualism was likely never what it was hyped up to be -- surely the early settlers and the later workers and industrialists who built the nation were involved in co-operation, teamwork, alliances, associations and other forms of doing good for others, because it was ultimately good for the individual doing good.

Reducing libertarianism to a cartoon version is helpful for statists justifying expansion of the state but it doesn't do justice to the diverse ideas which characterize libertarian thought. So, now that statism is showing signs of ballooning to intolerable levels of control, it's reasonable to reconsider libertarian ideas as they address welfare, safety nets and other social concerns which the state has arrogated to its control. One obvious area, as I've written about before, is education -- there's no reason to continue with public education seeing as how private solutions could even provide superior education to the poor. The truth is that libertarian thought has provided good altervative solutions to practically all social problems under state control.

So, I ask again, why do intelligent people continue insisting statism is the answer? We're forced to consider power as the only reasonable explanation. The state has gained power and it wants to increase power -- and why wouldn't statists want to hold onto power? The assignation of beneficience to statist motives is beyond gullible, it's delusional. A mature and realistic analysis of statism will always reveal a desire among statists to maintain position, prestige, control, connections and financial advantage -- a monopolistic position which protects the state from competition. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely - how did our nation forget this? Not all have forgotten, it's just that many enjoy the gifts of power, the favortism for special interests -- the old "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" -- and many others are just now awakening to the problems of statism.

This is the advantage the state, and those subsidized by the state, have attained, but it's a thin advantage and vulnerable to public awareness at a level of mass reactions and rebellion. To all the libertarians who are now hooking their wagons to the statist star -- make sure it's not a falling star. Whatever the orginal liberal intent to provide public welfare and human rights, the statist bent has grown to pure power and control, cynically using the public's fear to support the state's existence. As Jan Narveson points out, the nation-state-centeredness of modern liberals has turned them into conservatives.

A true liberal, progressive view, if words had meaning anymore, would call for creative, innovative solutions which are dynamic and effective. Government attempts to address social problems have made the problems worse, which provides more evidence that control, power and special interest favortism are the main concerns. The statist coalition of all those in power and all those subsidized by power has bastardized liberalism and created another form of nationalistic conservatism -- one distinguished only by the right of a woman to choose abortion, gay rights, resistance to religious-right influence and global warming concerns, among a few others, which even moderate Republicans have gone along with for the most part -- the liberals differ mainly from conservatives on social issues. On major economic issues, the only difference between conservatives and liberals is how much to spend and the direction of the spending and which special interest to protect -- the nation-state-centeredness is the same and it's centered around, of all things, government. It would be something different if the nation-centeredness emphasized freedom from tryanny, capitalism, equal opportunity, success, great art, free speech, associations, pluralism, diversity, co-operation, spontaneous order, property rights, value of life, peace, free trade and pursuit of happiness. We could peacefully share these wonders of society with the world if the world found them attractive.

Government positions are positions of power and the most power-hungry, unscrupulous and incompetent have been attracted to government service. Whatever attractive virtues liberalism, or conservatism for that matter, possessed have been defiled by power-mongers in government. It's no longer about virtues and principles, it's about power and control. In the private/free realm, it might be possible for liberals, libertarians and conservatives to work together and apply the best ideas among them to social problems so that all in society have a better chance at success. If providing private solutions to social problems could be considered an investment wth palpable returns, voluntary co-operation could find solutions and we'd all be better off, but as long as the emphasis is on government action, there is little chance of anything being done efficiently and intelligently in a nonpartisan fashion which honestly deals with the problems.

Our hope lies in taking advantage of alliances outside government, limiting government and then voluntarily making things happen through free market principles.