Do You Really Want To Be A Republican Or A Democrat? By Michael S. Rozeff
(2011-01-01 at 09:30:12 )

Do You Really Want To Be a Republican or a Democrat? By Michael S. Rozeff

My main purpose is this. I want to suggest how most of us can get closer
to our hearts political and social desire. The exceptions are those
immoral persons who insist on lording it over other people against their
wills, i.e., the authoritarians of any stripe.

I present an imaginary scenario. It is not meant to be a detailed
photograph of a new reality. It is to suggest the concept to you as a
possible new reality.

I am following in the footsteps of Paul Emile de Puydt.

Suppose that local government remains as it is. Suppose that at the
beginning of the year, you sign up for your preferred national government.
You enroll yourself for one year. Next year you may make a different
choice.

To keep matters simple, suppose that you have three choices: Republican
(Red), Democrat (Blue), and Libertarian (Coral). But in the back of your
minds, understand that there can be more choices. There can be Green,
Red Lite, Blue Lite, Yellow, and so on.

If you choose Red, you agree to abide by Reds national government. If you
choose Blue or Coral, you agree to abide by their national governments,
respectively. You may choose Red and your neighbor may choose Coral. Each
of you decides to abide by your own selected national governments.

The meaning of national here is not that there is one nation, one society,
and one national government. It means only that there is a government
whose members live in many localities. Hereafter I will drop the term
national and just refer to government. The Reds, Blues, and Corals live
all over the place in crazy-quilt patterns. You may choose Coral and your
neighbor may choose Blue. That is the same kind of thing one finds if one
maps out the religions and churches that people sign onto.

I will not try to mimic perfectly the government preferences of existing
Reds, Blues, and Corals. I will merely suggest some of their preferred
policies in order to show how this system can work. Yes, there will be
many details and questions that any thoughtful person can raise. But I
am not trying to answer these in advance.

By consulting Republican platforms, Republican votes and the actions of
Republican administrations, we build up an idea of the Red government. I
suggest to you that those who sign on to Red government for themselves
can have most of it for themselves without forcing those who sign on for
Blue government into Red government. The same goes for the Blues (and
the Corals). They can get most of what they want without forcing others
into their government.

Consider health care. The Reds do not want government-run health care.
They want to maintain the existing system but with reforms. The Blues
want basic security in health care for everyone. Each of you who wishes
these two systems can have it without making the other belong to your
system. This is a crucial point. Nothing at all prevents a Red adherent
from subscribing and paying for and being regulated by the Red systems
rules, while at the same time a Blue subscribes to his system and lives
with it. There can be Red Medicare (or whatever) and Blue Medicare, just
as there are different insurance companies and hospitals and medical
plans. The Blues do not have to force the Reds into their system in order
to get what they want, anymore than they must force those who want to
patronize rock concerts into seeing the operas that they prefer. The
Corals, by the way, do not want government involved in health care, and
their government will not require any funds from them for that purpose.

Why should anyone be fighting with his neighbor over his neighbors choice
of health care system when this alternative is feasible? At present, no
one has a choice of national government. The government claims the right
to regulate health care. Therefore, everyone fights and tries to get his
own way. Everyone tries to make everyone else pay for what he gets.
Presented with a choice of government, the fighting can cease.
Each person can get what he wants.

Those who, given a choice, still insist on making everyone kowtow to his
system under one government are, in my opinion, advocating an evil thing.

They do not think it is evil, however. They think it is good to make
everyone do the same thing because the government tells them to. Their
reasoning usually comes down to some notion that "society" would fall
apart unless everyone is made to obey. They have some notion of a
collective or a unitary society or a single nation or one people, and
they place this notion above that of any individual person. To my way of
thinking, these ideas are all wrong.

It is not a good thing for the government to tell everyone what to do.
They abuse the power. They do not know what is right for everyone. They
prevent people from bettering themselves. Society will not fall apart.

In fact, the notion of one society is flawed. This notion of one
"society" is deeply ingrained among persons of most all political
persuasions. Even the Corals frequently use it without even realizing it.

I could pile up an enormous list of quotations that use this notion of
society. I have no doubt used it myself. It is a dangerous idea because
all people supposedly in one society are not united and uniform in their
social and political preferences. In that sense, society is a mythical
construction. It serves to support the idea of a single government for
that single society. That is what makes it so insidiously dangerous.
Finally, the idea that the collective is above the individual person is
wrong too. The collective invariably comes right back to an elite few
who speak for the group, and that is nothing more than government again
with all its attendant ills.

The fact of the matter is that any national government that purports to
speak and act for a unitary society is actually a small group of persons
who claim to be deputed to act on behalf of another group of
unidentifiable persons. Any claim of government to act on behalf of
everyone cannot be verified by any open and freely-made agreements. I
know of no government that is annually endorsed and chosen freely by
those who want to have it. All governments impose on those persons under
their rule. None are instruments that arise from consent. They all lack
the legitimacy of open consent by persons who voluntarily make known
their choices and agree to stick by them.

I will not belabor the point that government by choice is possible by
going through each and every one of the issues that divide people
politically and socially. I will merely mention some more of the issues
that do not require a monolithic (monopoly) national government: voting
rights, economy and job creation, energy independence, open government,
civil rights, abortion, retirement security, education, fair elections,
science and technology, drugs, and welfare.

For example, the Reds might sign on to a government that, among them,
enforces no abortions, while the Blues and Corals countenance abortions.
The Reds and Blues may enforce various economic rules, taxes, and
subsidies among their own but not other supporters in order to achieve
their versions of economic health and job creation. The Corals may
engage in laissez-faire. The Blues may foster teachers unions and
required education from age 3 onwards, while the Reds may foster
curricula that they favor.

Again, the crucial point here is that there are no reasons why each
group cannot choose what it prefers in these areas, and these are the
areas that the major political parties list on their web sites and
discuss in their platforms.

Defense is somewhat more difficult because what each government does may
affect persons choosing a different government. Nothing prevents the Reds
(or Blues) from raising armed forces from among themselves and stationing
these forces in foreign lands and entering foreign conflicts. If war
starts, their enemies might attack everyone, even those who did not
subscribe to that government. What is likely to happen, however, is that
since the Reds or any war-making government have to pay for their wars by
collecting money and soldiers from those who voluntarily subscribe to
that government and that policy, they will find their capacity to gather
resources and manpower for these wars to be far, far lower than under the
present system of monopoly government. When people have a choice about
fighting and paying for fighting because they must bear the costs, the
deaths, and the injuries, they are likely to make a far different choice
than when a government forcibly extracts their treasure and blood from
them, while stirring them up with propaganda and concocting international
incidents that lead to war.

Warfare will be a case of the "good" driving out the "bad" from the
market, at least to a greater extent than we get under the present
system.

Now I ask you, do you really want to be a Republican or a Democrat? Will
you willingly and voluntarily pay for the kinds of government they now
bring? Will you willingly submit your persons and property to their rules
and regulations, which you do when you choose a government? Or will you
seek out other choices in government?

I predict that given a choice, vast numbers of persons will not choose
anything remotely resembling the kind of government we have today. That
discrepancy between what we have and what we might have is a measure of
the unhappiness that existing government causes.

Paul Emile de Puydt recommended choice in government in 1860. This was on
the eve of the world going in exactly the opposite direction. Whatever
progress has been made since then has been due to liberty in free markets,
not to the monopoly governments that grew and grew and grew in size,
strength, and power, until they brought two world wars upon mankind along
with genocides, nuclear weapons, unending warfare, and vast economic
instabilities. The time has come to reverse directions, to stop thinking
in terms of single societies ruled by single governments that lack
legitimate consent. The time has come to start thinking in terms of
choice in government.

November 25, 2010

Michael S. Rozeff is a retired Professor of Finance living in East
Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on
American Empire.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.