The Political Doctrine Of Statism By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
(2011-05-29 at 15:50:13 )

The Political Doctrine Of Statism By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The Patriot Act that was rammed through after the September 2001 attacks
was one of the more egregious blows against liberty in our lif etimes. It
shredded core rights and liberties that had been taken for granted for
centuries. Liberties are never lost all at once, but the Patriot Act, as
disgusting in its details as in its name and the rhetoric that surrounded
it, was for the United States the turning point, the law that best
exemplif ies a full-scale embrace of statism as a national ideology. It
is a law so severe, so outlandish, as to Cause People To Forget What It
Means To Be Free.

This is why I believe Ron Pauls book Liberty Def ined to be one of the
most important statements of our time. He def ines liberty clearly and
cleanly as f reedom from coercive interf erence from the state. That is
how the liberal tradition from Aquinas to Jeff erson to Rothbard
understood it, too, for there is no greater threat to liberty than the
state. Its powers must be crushed if we are to revisit what liberty means.

Ron goes further to apply the principle of liberty in many of the most
controversial areas of modern life. The purpose here is not to detail
some governing blueprint. What Ron seeks to do is much more important.
He Seeks To Fire Up The Human Imagination In Ways That Permit People
To Think Outside The Prevailing Statist Norms.

In 1945, Ludwig von Mises wrote a similar book called Omnipotent
Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. It is probably
the most blistering and thorough attack on National Socialism ever
written. He details the peculiar characteristics of Nazi-style statism
(its nationalism rooted in the worship of bloodlines). Just as
importantly - and very unusually for this genre of writing - Mises sought
to explain how Nazism is only a symptom of a larger problem, which is
Statism Itself. He regarded statism as a special doctrine that people c
ome to embrace often without entirely understanding its teaching and
claims. It emerges within a context of economic or security emergency.

There is always some great excuse for the trashing of the human f reedom
that built civilization as we know it. If the State cannot f ind one, it
is glad to invent one.

A population that is ideologically gullible or af raid for its security
can permit government to run roughshod over peoples rights and liberties,
and a government that gains such power never gives it back on its own.

Rights and liberties must be reclaimed by the people themselves, and the
spark that makes this happen is reversing the conditions that permitted
the rise of statism. The people must lose their gullibility through
ideological enlightenment, and they must lose their sense of f ear that
the world will f all apart if the tyrant is not in control.

Part of this process of enlightenment requires an understanding of what
was lost when we gave up liberty, and what can be gained by reclaiming
it. Mises book did not overlook this task, with a pithy description of
the traditional classical liberal vision:

In order to grasp the meaning of this liberal program we need to
imagine a world order in which liberalism is supreme. Either all the
states in it are liberal, or enough are so that when united they are able
to repulse an attack of militarist aggressors. In this liberal world, or
liberal part of the world, there is private property in the means of
production. The working of the market is not hampered by government
interference. There are no trade barriers; men can live and work where
they want. Frontiers are drawn on the maps but they do not hinder the
migrations of men and shipping of commodities. Natives do not enjoy
rights that are denied to aliens. Governments and their servants restrict
their activities to the protection of lif e, health, and property against
f raudulent or violent aggression. They do not discriminate against
foreigners. The courts are independent and eff ectively protect everybody
against the encroachments of off icialdom. Everyone is permitted to say,
to write, and to print what he likes. Education is not subject to
government interf erence. Governments are like night-watchmen whom the
citizens have entrusted with the task of handling the police power. The
men in off ice are regarded as mortal men, not as superhuman beings or as
paternal authorities who have the right and duty to hold the people in
Tutelage.

Governments do not have the power to dictate to the citizens what
language they must use in their daily speech or in what language they
must bring up and educate their children. Administrative organs and
tribunals are bound to use each mans language in dealing with him,
provided this language is spoken in the district by a reasonable number
of residents.

We could add to this beautiful list of traits of a liberal society.
There is no welfare state (and there was not before Bismarck and FDR).
There are no passports (and there were not before World War I). There
are no government identif ication cards (there were not before World War
II). People can use any currency they want to use (people could do so
before the Civil War). They can accumulate wealth and pass it on to their
children with the full knowledge and expectation that their childrens
children will benef it too (so it was before World War I). They can
innovate in the commercial marketplace without f ear of courts, lawsuits,
regulators, taxmen, and the customs house. They can negotiate all
contracts, associate or disassociate, and hire and f ire as they see f it.

They do not hear government propaganda piped into stores and other public
places. They do not even have to care about politics because the state is
so limited and nearly powerless that not even the worst of people can
change its essential functioning.

This is not a far-f lung dream. Mises explanation here is a composite of
how liberty has worked in various times and various places over the last
several hundred years. And he wrote this as a reminder of what people
have lost in surrendering their lives and the functioning of society
over to government power.

The point that Mises was making with his book was that it is not enough
to hate a particular regime; we must oppose the ideological underpinnings
of that regime and see what it has in common with the universal
experience of tyranny. Nor is it enough merely to oppose government. We
must also come to love liberty, to see and understand how it works even
though we live in times when liberty is ever less seen, and ever less
understood. This was the burden of his great book: to highlight Nazism
as a Particular application of the Broader Menace of Statism itself.

This is also the point of Ron Pauls Liberty Def ined. Yes, he opposes
government as we know it. Much more importantly and much more profoundly,
he understands the liberty that we do not know, and he strives to help
us to love it, dream of it, and work for its achievement.

It does not surprise me that Rons own son Rand Paul turns out to be the
only member of the U.S. Senate to dare to stand up to the Patriot Act and
call it what it is. He has staked his political career on his action to
stop its reauthorization. It is truly the case that if we can not see
what is wrong with the Patriot Act, we can not see what is wrong with any
despotism in the past or the present. If we can see what is wrong with
it, we have a good start on beginning to see what is Right About
Human Liberty.

May 26, 2011

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., former editorial assistant to Ludwig von
Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and
chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N.
Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.