LIBERTARIANISM: THE FORGOTTEN TRADITION OF CHRISTIANITY AND
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC
by Michael Schrader
(Written in 1998, and
excerpted from his unpublished book, The Evolution of an Editorialist)
I
am a libertarian. I believe in individual
liberty and freedom of personal choice in how each one of us chooses to live
his or her own life.
Libertarianism
is not a novelty. It has a very long
and proud tradition. True
libertarianism, however, is very difficult, as it requires the opening of your
mind to the realization that just because you would not make certain choices
does not necessarily mean that no one else will, either. In short, what I may deem to be offensive my
neighbor may deem to be acceptable, and what I may deem to be acceptable my
neighbor may deem to be offensive. True
libertarianism, then, is an acceptance that this contradiction can exist, that
we are not our neighbor’s keepers.
Thomas Jefferson, for example, was a
libertarian. An examination of
Jefferson reveals a man who treasured his liberty and distrusted
government. Jefferson’s ideal society
was one in which each citizen (despite his libertarianism, Jefferson shared the
view that women and Blacks were inferior and thus not deserving of the rights
and privileges of citizenship) was free to pursue his own interests without the
interference of the government or other men.
Jefferson and his fellow Virginian, James Madison, were strict
constructionists--that is, they believed that the functions of the government were
only those functions allowed by the Constitution, which were those functions
that involved the common good. In the
view of many of the Republicans of his era (the Jeffersonians, who, ironically,
later evolved into the Democrats), these functions consisted of taking care of
matters of national security (war and peace), trade, and commerce.
Libertarianism was at the heart of
one of the issues resulting in the Civil War--slavery. To the slave holders, the government had no
right to legislate morality, in this case, abolition. It was up to each person to choose whether or not to own slaves;
it was none of the government’s business.
Slaves were property, and the emancipation of the slaves by the
government was nothing less than the confiscation of property by the
government, a violation of one’s liberty, one’s right to own property. To the northern abolitionists, denial of
freedom and liberty to the slaves was not only a impediment to the slaves’
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it was also an
abridgment of the “common good” (the protection of which is the function of
government, according to libertarians) through the forced subjugation of a
sizable percentage of the population.
Libertarianism’s roots, however, are
much deeper than the American Republic.
Jesus was libertarian.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is shown as a person who holds no
prejudices, a person who was more comfortable in the company of tax collectors
and prostitutes than in the company of the religious elite, the Pharisees. Jesus taught his disciples that those who
are pretentious and self-righteous and “morally superior” and quick to judge
his fellow man will not share in the Kingdom of God. (Isn’t it rather ironic that the Pharisees of Jesus’ time are
eerily similar to the Moral Majority of ours?)
Rather, only those who are humble and non-judgmental and who will help
their fellow man without prejudice will be received into the heavenly kingdom. This is the basis of libertarian
philosophy--do not judge, and help all of your fellow men (and women) without
conditions.
Jesus also tells us that life is not
fair, that there will always be rich and always be poor. But, He tells us that we must use whatever
talents and gifts God gave us to the best of our ability, and not worry about
whether or not our neighbor received more.
In short, we must only be concerned with utilizing what we have been
given.
Jesus tells us that it is not easy
to be His disciple, that to truly be His disciple may result in death, and that
we are free to choose whether or not we want to be His disciple. The important thing is that we are free to
choose--we do not have to. When Jesus
sent the Apostles out, he told them that if a town would not accept them, to
shake that town’s dust off of their feet and to move on to the next one. In short, if they did not choose to believe,
do not force the issue; move on. It is
up to each individual to choose whether or not to believe, and if an individual
chooses not to believe, it is not our place as humans to tell them they have
to. It is between each individual and
God. However, with the choice comes
consequences. If and individual chooses
to believe, he will (according to Christian theology) have everlasting life; if
not, then he won’t. But, it is an
individual’s decision to make. This
concept, the freedom to choose, is fundamental to libertarianism.
Jesus also takes a libertarian
viewpoint when it comes to Mosaic law and Jewish customs. When asked which of the Ten Commandments was
the greatest, He replied that none of them were, as there are two commandments
that supersede all the rest: love your
neighbor as yourself, and love God with your whole body, heart, soul, and mind. He intentionally did not specify how to go
about loving our neighbor and God--we as individuals must decide for ourselves
how to go about enacting these two Great Commandments. In short, we have the freedom to choose how
we live our lives (love of God) as long as we don’t hurt others (love of
neighbor). In other words, we have the
freedom to make up our own decisions about our own lives as long as those
decisions are made within the context of the “common good,” which is
libertarianism.
Despite the fact that libertarianism
is endemic to the Jesus tradition, it is not endemic to Christian
philosophy. How can this be, as Jesus
is Christ? Simple. Christian philosophy as we know it is based
on the Pauline tradition, that is, it is based on the teachings of Paul, which
are basically one man’s, Paul’s, interpretations of the teachings of
Jesus. Paul’s works constitute the bulk
of all books of the New Testament (including Acts, as Acts is basically a book
about Paul). Unlike Jesus, Paul was not
a libertarian; he did not buy into the philosophy that each individual should
be free to choose how to do God’s work.
Instead, Paul’s approach was heavy-handed and autocratic--if you did not
do things the way that Paul believed, then you were wrong and deserving of
chastisement, as Paul “knew” the true way to the Lord. It was either Paul’s way or the highway.
This should not be taken as an
attempt to discredit Paul, because it is not.
Paul was a great evangelist, who did more to promulgate Christianity
than any other person in the Christian era.
I admire Paul enough to have taken his name as my “Christian” name at
confirmation. (In the Roman Catholic
Church, one is considered an adult, and thus a full member of the Church, when
one is confirmed. Upon being confirmed,
a person adopts a Christian name, a tradition dating back to the early church
and the “confirmation” of Saul as Paul.
By adopting a new name, a person is giving up his old life and beginning
a new life with a new identity as a Christian.
Islam has a similar tradition, which is why Cassius Clay became Mohammed
Ali upon his conversion.) However, as
Paul was not divine, but human, I have accepted some of his flaws, and in
particular, his “in-you-face” style of preaching. Unfortunately, it was Paul’s “my way or the highway” conformist
philosophy that later became the justification for wars, murders, and horrible
cruelties, most notably the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Northern
Ireland conflict, and the atrocities in the Balkans. The most tragic manifestation of the Pauline conformist policy
was the wholesale persecution of “Old Believers” in Russia during the reign of
Alexei Romanov resulting from a disagreement on whether the Sign of the Cross
should be made with two fingers or three.
Libertarianism, then, is the
forgotten tradition of Christianity, as well as the forgotten tradition of the
American Republic. Yet, there is a
tendency to mislabel libertarianism. To
many, libertarianism is an outgrowth of the flower power and free love
movements of the 1960s. How can a
philosophy that was espoused by Jesus himself have its genesis in some fringe
movement in the United States in the 1960s?
It can’t, and it is insulting to Americans and Christians everywhere to
say that it does, as libertarianism, i.e. individual free choice, was a
foundation for both our religion (making the argument that, since the
overwhelming majority of Americans are Christian, then our country is
Christian) and our government.
A
second fallacy regarding libertarianism is that libertarianism and anarchism
are interchangeable. Libertarians are
not anarchists. Libertarians believe
that individuals rights are superseded when they negatively impact the “common
good.” From a libertarian viewpoint,
government is necessary to protect the common good. Libertarians believe that individuals are free to basically do
whatever they want unless it affects somebody else. Under this view, if a women, for example wants to do drugs, and
it will not impact anyone else, then that is her right to destroy her own body,
and there is nothing that the government should be able to do to stop her
self-destruction. However, if she harms
another, then the government has the right to intervene on behalf of the
“common good”, in this case the good of the other. In other words, individual rights end when they interfere with
another’s individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Anarchists believe that government
should not exist, period. Under the
anarchist philosophy, there is no such thing as the common good, so every
individual has the right to do whatever he or she wants, regardless of the
impact on another. If you want to
steal, no one should be able to tell you you can’t, except the people from whom
you are stealing, and if they are too weak to stop you, that’s their
problem. Anarchism is an extreme form
of Darwinism--anything goes, and only the strongest will survive. In short, under the anarchist philosophy,
the social order will be determined by a convoluted form of natural selection,
as the selection will not only be determined by physical attributes, but
technological attributes as well.
Another key distinction between
libertarians and anarchists is in their world view. Libertarians believe in the inherent goodness of people, that
people will rise to the occasion and “do the right thing” without being coerced
into doing so. Anarchists have the
opposite worldview -- people are inherently bad. Under this worldview, it is necessary to act preemptively before
someone else does. For example, it is
okay to steal, because if you don’t, someone else will, because all people are
inherently thieves.
Libertarianism begets freedom;
anarchism begets totalitarianism. In a
truly free society, individuals are trusted to do what is right, as people are
inherently good and will strive to be good.
In a totalitarianism society, since people are inherently bad, they
cannot be trusted with any responsibility or freedom of choice, and must be
subjugated through oppressive legislation and force. To do any less than total and absolute subjugation would result
in anarchy.
Because
I view government with a healthy dose of skepticism, I have been mislabeled as
an anarchist. I am not. I don’t want to eliminate government, I want
to change it, to remove the unnecessary burdens that have been placed on us
with respect to how we live our individual lives. Thus, I am a libertarian.
I have been a libertarian all of my
life but did not realize it until recently.
When my daughter was five years old, I had a conference with her teacher
at the time. When her teacher began explaining to me how she responded to
various tasks and situations, I realized then and there that the teacher was
talking about me, except a younger feminine version. You see my daughter is very libertarian, although she does not
realize it. After all, what does a kid
know about political philosophy?. My
daughter has just about the same independence, manifested in a desire to come
to her own conclusions, as I do, and, as my desire to think for myself is a
manifestation of what I know to be libertarianism, then hers is, too. Except, being a child, she does not know
what libertarianism is, nor does she care, either. Come to think of it, when I was her age, I also did not know or
care that my desire to think for myself was something called libertarianism;
all I knew was that I took it as an insult to my intelligence if I was not
given the opportunity. In my case, it seems, even after thirty some-odd years,
some things never change.
I have felt compelled to explain
libertarianism to make it known that my libertarian roots have a deep and proud
tradition, and that the libertarian philosophy is not just some
“flash-in-the-pan” philosophy of the day espoused by only some lunatic
fringe. I am one who believes that the
best way to understand where is person is coming from, what motivates a person
to do or say what that person does and says, is to understand that person’s
life philosophy. Thus, one must know my
life philosophy to fully understand and appreciate my writings. I never ask that everybody agree with me;
all I ever ask is that everybody try to understand my point of view, what makes
me tick. Hopefully, knowing my
underlying life philosophy will enable others to understand my point of
view--they may not agree with it, but at least they will understand it.
The problem with libertarianism is
that unless there is a concerted effort to understand the traditions and
principles of libertarians, there is a tendency to portray libertarians as
non-conformists who cannot get along with anybody and have difficulty dealing
with authority. Libertarians are only
portrayed as such in those societies that value conformity above all else. Societies like Nazi Germany, where those who
did not join the cause were persecuted.
Societies like Soviet Russia, where people were treated like
interchangeable cogs in the machinery of state.
Unfree and authoritarian societies
have great difficulties with libertarian ideals because libertarianism
encourages free thought and individuality, which in turn encourages freedom. A populace that has the ability to think for
itself is not as likely to be duped by a strongman as one that does not have
such an ability. A truly libertarian
society, then, is truly free.
This is the ideal I have followed
throughout my life. So, while it may
seem like I am taking both sides of an issue, I am not. I do not take “sides”, per se, because
taking sides implies that someone is right and someone is wrong, and, as long
as the action in question does not affect more than one person, then rightness
is in the mind of the one doing the action.
An important caveat here--when actions do affect others, I do take
“sides”, as there is only one morally correct action; in other words, when the
rights of others are violated, the offensive action’s rightness is not open to
debate, as it violates the absolute morality of “love your neighbor.”
I
am proud to be a libertarian. I am
proud to be a Christian. I am proud to
embrace the principals of tolerance and individual choice cherished in both libertarian
philosophy and the Gospels. It is from
this context, then, from whence I am.