Why Lockdown Libertarians are Wrong

Libertarians have been divided over whether governments should have locked down entire populations to stop the spread of Covid-19. Perhaps that split is not surprising - the libertarian movement has always been a broad church with a range of views from a religious-conservative right to an anarchist left. Most libertarians agree that some government is desirable but that its role should be limited to protecting the genuine rights of individual citizens. They also agree that rights don't exist at the discretion of governments, but rather the opposite - that governments exist at the behest of individuals, each of whom has their own inherent rights that can't be taken away. As Thomas Jefferson wrote so eloquently in the US Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

The last sentence is perhaps the most important - the only legitimate function of governments is to protect individual rights and governments should be limited to this function. In other words, we delegate to governments the powers to protect our rights and nothing more. This begs the question, what are the legitimate actions of government in protecting our rights? Almost everyone agrees that stopping the initiation of violence against us is a legitimate action of government, even if that requires the government to use violence in our defence. If someone is intent on murdering us, we accept that the government can use force to detain or, if necessary, even kill that person. But what about someone intent on infecting us with a deadly disease?

The case of Typhoid Mary in the United States was a classic legal case in the early 20th Century. Mary Mallon was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid, then a very deadly disease. Public health authorities asked her to self-isolate and she refused, continuing her work as a cook, infecting hundreds and causing the deaths of at least five people. Ultimately, she was forcibly detained for the remainder of her life. Few people today would dispute that the authorities were right to detain her - she was a real danger to the lives of people she came in contact with and she refused to voluntarily remove the deadly threat she presented to others.

Covid-19, like typhoid, can be spread by asymptomatic carriers of the disease. However, Covid-19 is far less deadly than typhoid, with a global case fatality rate (CFR) of 1-2% (which drops exponentially with age and is decreasing rapidly across all ages as vaccination rates increase). This compares with an untreated typhoid CFR of 10-20% (and even when treated with modern antibiotics, typhoid still has a similar CFR to Covid-19). Typhoid Mary's case was exceptional precisely because they locked her up, and even in her case that was a controversial decision at the time. With Covid-19, governments are locking up entire populations (at least to the equivalent level of house arrest).

I agree that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures and that threats to life not only justify but require governments to act to safeguard us. The alternative is anarchy and I am not an anarchist. I agree that someone who is infected with a deadly disease should be detained if necessary to protect everyone else. However, I do not accept that governments have the right to lockdown entire populations in response to Covid-19 for the following reasons:

1. Covid-19 is not a sufficient threat to justify such an indiscriminate response
2. Lockdowns are an ineffective public health response and there are alternatives
3. Lockdowns are a slippery slope that will be very hard to reverse.

I will address each of these reasons below.

We live in a time when the precautionary principle seems to apply to many public policy questions, whether it is climate change, natural disasters or public health. The problem with this principle of almost complete avoidance of risk is that the costs of mitigation are never considered and the alternatives often dismissed. Thus in New Zealand we have spent billions of dollars earthquake proofing buildings since the Christchurch quakes, when that money would almost certainly save more lives if it was spent on improving cancer treatment or building safe roads. The optimal risk management involves weighing the threat against the cost of mitigation and the alternatives. There are a number of considerations that have not been adequately considered in decisions on Covid-19 policy, including:

• the vast majority of people being locked down are not infectious
• Covid-19 does not represent a deadly risk to all but the most vulnerable in the population
• the economic, social and health impacts of lockdowns are huge
• there are alternatives to the wholesale abrogation of individual rights.

A more reasonable response would be to protect by isolation only those most vulnerable - the elderly and those with co-morbidities - and let the rest of the population go about its business. This is the approach taken in Sweden, Israel and a few other countries, which, although they have experienced far more deaths than New Zealand, have a lower Covid mortality than many countries with the most draconian lockdowns. It is also the approach recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration, which has been signed by thousands of epidemiologists and public health experts worldwide. The authors of the Declaration have pointed out that the costs of the lockdowns, even on people's health, almost certainly exceed the benefits in saving lives.

Finally, there is the slippery slope issue. Already public health authorities concerned about influenza and climate change policy advocates are pushing for lockdowns to be adopted to mitigate those risks. You may think it is unlikely that the public would accept such responses to those issues, but eighteen months ago no one thought the citizens of Western countries would accept the Covid-19 lockdowns. It has always been much easier to give up freedoms than to reestablish them and we forget that the liberal, rights-based order is a rare phenomenon in human history that sits on a fragile foundations. We can and do regress, as the people of China and Russia are discovering to their cost today, and dictatorial governments always have sound reasons to justify their policies.

Rights-based freedoms should not be given up cheaply and in my view preventing Covid-19 amongst the general population does not justify the cost, particularly as the CFR trends towards zero. What is done is done but we need to ensure we are not captured by the sunk cost fallacy and continue the lockdowns for fear of losing the benefits. We need to evaluate our Covid policies objectively from this point on. Australia has shown the way in determinedly coming out of lockdown and I hope the Ardern Government has the courage to do the same.

In the meantime, libertarians need to rediscover their principles.

The Mass Customisation of Politics

Business in the social media age is all about mass customisation. Industries such as telecommunications, banking and transportation have figured out that the key to success is to have economies of scale while allowing individuals to have products and services that are tailored to their needs. The commercial behemoths of old that insisted on one-size-fits-all have fallen by the wayside as new businesses exploit flexible manufacturing and service delivery models to accomodate individual consumers' needs.

Politics in the 21st Century is the same. Voters are increasingly unwilling to be boxed into traditional political definitions - left, right, socialist, nationalist. etc. Ironically, this is happening at a time when political labels such as 'extreme', 'Fascist' and 'Nazi' are being bandied about with increasing abandon and usually without justification. 

Many people, myself included, have a political philosophy that does not sit comfortably with most established party manifestos. We are a little bit left, a little bit right, and a whole lot completely outside the spectrum. This is not the same as being purely pragmatic - we have a philosophy that is well thought-out and articulated and are prepared to vote to maximise its realisation. We have little in common with the David Camerons and John Keys of this world who don't believe in anything much and who are willing to do whatever it takes to stitch together a coalition to keep them in power. We may vote for the lesser of evils but it doesn't mean we will accept the bland and uncommitted.

So how do we achieve mass customisation in politics when many countries seem to be locked into a traditional left-of-centre/right-of-centre, two-party paradigm? Partly it is achieved through breaking down the paradigm, and we have seen this with the rise of third parties in many Western countries. The other way it can be achieved is through localisation of politics.

Politics in many countries in recent decades has been characterised by greater centralisation. The European Community is the most obvious example and in the United States we have seen the growth of the federal government at the expense of the state or local government. The problem with this is that it means greater homogenisation and less opportunity for people like me, whose views don't fall into the traditional political buckets, to have our views represented. Localisation of political decisions means we can enjoy, at least at a local level, a more flexible set of policy setttings, and if we are not happy with the decisions of our local government, we can seek out somewhere more compatible with our political views.

It was the intention of America's founding fathers. particularly Jefferson and Hamilton, that the US Republic would be a place where different communities could experiment with different political and social settings, subject only to the universal rights enshrined in the Constitution. America today has become a highly centralised bureaucracy with the Federal Government interfering in every area of Americans lives from health care to what children eat in their school lunches. The complete dominance of US politics by the two major parties means that people who don't fall into the traditional Democrat and Republican camps have no real alternative, except that last year they chose a rebel Republican in Donald Trump to be president. Trump's support came from the disaffected middle and working classes, who rejected the big statism and identity politics of the Democrats and the social conservatism and crony capitalism of the Republicans, and is therefore understandable in terms of the mass customisation paradigm. Brexit was similarly a rejection of the traditional political choices.

Those who insist on seeing today's politics in terms of past dichotomies will continue to be surprised and bewildered by voters' choices. I think that the rejection of tradition political boundaries it is a very positive development but it needs to be accompanied by a decentralisation of political power if voters are to have genuine choices.

Toppling Statues

I am in two minds over the issue of the removal of Confederate statues. The Confederacy was founded on the preservation of the evil that was slavery and that is reason enough not to honour it in any way, but on the other hand the destruction of historical statues smacks more than a little of the historical revisionism of 1984.

The toppled statue of a Confederate soldier in North Carolina

The problem is, where do we draw the line? It is a slippery slope and we are already hearing calls to remove statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners. Some people are even saying statues of Martin Luther King should be removed because he opposed gay rights. And as someone more reasonably pointed out, where are the protests against the statue of the murderous Lenin in a Seattle park?

I think we should distinguish between the political leaders of the evil systems of the past and those who served their nation in good conscience. I do not have a problem with the statue of Erwin Rommel in Heidenheim in Germany because I think he was the closest thing to an honourable military man in the Nazi regime (and he did try to rid his country of Hitler), and for similar reasons I think statues of General Robert E Lee should remain standing. However, just as I would find a statue of any Nazi political leader offensive (fortunately none exist to the best of my knowledge), I think statues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his close political cohorts should come down.

Independence Day celebrates individual rights

Today is Independence Day, the day on which Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies in America from Great Britain. One thing that is often forgotten is that the American Revolution was a rebellion of Englishmen against their government. They were a remarkable group those revolutionaries, risking their lives by committing treason against the Crown. They were intellectuals like Thomas Jefferson, polymaths like Benjamin Franklin and pragmatists like James Madison. Some, like John Adams, came reluctantly to the cause, while others like George Washington were enthusiastic revolutionaries. What they had in common was a belief that

individuals that are sovereign and that moral governments can only rule with the consent of the governed.

Those brave founders signed a declaration that enunciated a philosophy that was radical for the times. It wasn't completely original - other Englishmen like John Locke and Thomas Paine (who went to America to join the revolution) had already expressed similar sentiments - but it went against the the predominant philosophy that had endured since Aristotle and Socrates - that individuals are sacrificial lambs to the greater good. They turned this prevailing wisdom on its head and said that human beings have inherent rights including the right to pursue their own interests (described in the Declaration as 'the pursuit of happiness') and that these rights cannot be subordinated to anyone's view of the collective good.

The Declaration also stated that governments exist only to protect the rights of individuals. This is, in my view, perhaps the most under-appreciated principle contained in that powerful document. It means there cannot be conflict between the actions of a moral government and the rights of the individual. How can that be true, you ask? Surely part of the role of government is to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of its citizens?

The answer to this dilemma is that there is no conflict between the objectively-determined rights of individuals. Conflict arises because of subjective claims that are not genuine rights (such as 'the right to a job'). The rights that the Declaration refers to are by definition universal and they impose no obligation on anyone other than to respect the same rights in everyone else. There is no conflict between a government that regards its role as solely to protect rights by this definition and the rights of the individual because they are one and the same thing*. This suggests that many, if not most, of the actions of the United States Government today are immoral and inconsistent with the Declaration (and the US is certainly not unique in this regard).

There are many who claim that the Declaration and the US Constitution are anachronistic. I think, on the contrary, both documents were incredibly farsighted. It is not these documents that are the problem today but successive governments abrogation of them.

* I have expanded on this subject before here.

It Can't Possibly Come Down to a Bush-Clinton Fight, Can It?

The dance of the seven veils has begun. No, I'm not talking about Salome's performance for Herod Antipas, I'm referring to the drawn-out unveiling of candidacies for next year's US presidential elections. On the red side, we have confirmed candidacy announcements from Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio; and euphemistic 'exploratory committee' announcements from Jeb Bush and neophyte former doctor Ben Carson. Jeb Bush is the frontrunner in the early polls. On the blue side, we have...well, Hillary Clinton. If you're anything like me, and take an interest in US politics, you're probably already groaning, "No, no, no, it can't possibly be coming down to a Bush-Clinton fight, can it? Hasn't this country of more than 300 million people got two decent presidential candidates who don't belong to one or other of these two families?"

I think it is unseemly in a democracy to be ruled by political dynasties. It's unseemly because it demonstrates democracy is not working. It is the sort of thing that happens in countries that are democratic in name only, countries like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The frequency with which dynasties have arisen, even in democracies are that are worthy of the name, can only be down to two factors - either the name recognition is, in itself, sufficient reason to attract voters to the candidate, or there is some form of favouritism or nepotism built into the political system. If it just comes down to name recognition, that suggests the voters are too shallow to consider real political issues. If it is favouritism, that means the voters don't really get a choice between the best candidates. Either way, it indicates democracy is not working.

Now, it may surprise you to learn I'm not a doctrinaire democrat. I believe, like Winston Churchill, that democracy is the least bad system for selecting our political leaders, and like Thomas Jefferson, I believe democracy only works effectively when it is tightly constrained. The unconstrained will of the majority is nothing but mob rule and the tendency towards this must be tempered with strong constitutional checks and balanced with strong protection for individual rights. One of the important constitutional checks in most Western nations is regular, fair and openly contested elections. The growth of political dynasties suggests that the 'fair' and 'open' criteria are not being met.

The United States desperately needs fresh political blood. That great nation is, I believe, on a path towards mediocrity. It is the most heavily indebted nation in absolute terms and has the biggest government expenditure deficit. Even in relative terms it is one of the most heavily indebted nations in the world. Unlike similarly indebted countries like Greece, the United States gets away with it because its dollar is the world's reserve currency, which means the value of its currency is inflated by demand for it as a unit of exchange. This suppresses the effect of all that debt on other economic indicators like interest rates and inflation and that means the US Government can continue to fund those deficits by borrowing and printing (electronically) more and more money to pay its debts. But sooner or later reality will catch up with America and that comparison with Greece will start to look a whole lot more real. At that point, or hopefully before it gets to that stage, Americans should hope they have better political leaders than the current crop.

And I really don't think they will be wanting a president named Bush or Clinton.

On Innovation

Two articles in the Wall Street Journal this week have got me thinking about the subject of innovation, or the lack of it, in Western economies today. The first was this article in the Wall Street Journal quoting molecular geneticist Jan Vigj in his book The American Technological Challenge who said that the number of inventions in America has dropped markedly since 1970 [and hat tip to Mark Steyn who said a similar thing in his book America Alone]. The second article was this one about Uber, the Internet-based taxi booking service that is challenging regulators and established taxi companies in 100 cities and 36 countries around the world.

To understand why the West is not innovating, we need to go back to the Renaissance to appreciate why the West has been so economically successful in the first place. Economic historian Niall Ferguson has identified six 'killer apps' that he believes underly the enormous growth of Western economies over the past 500 years, viz. political and economic competition, the scientific revolution, the rule of law, modern medicine, education and the work ethic. Ferguson expounds on his theory in his book, Civilization, and goes on to say that the erosion of these achievements is responsible for the decline of the West in recent decades relative to emerging economies such as China, which have increasingly adopted these values.

In my view Ferguson's six killer apps can be further reduced to just three things - individual rights, capitalism and the rule of law. In other words, the classical liberal values that became entrenched in the political and economic systems of Britain and the Netherlands in the 17th Century through the writings of John Locke, and that were picked by in the 18th Century in America by the likes of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

The innovative human mind is like a packet of dried seeds - without the right soil, water and sunshine, they will either remain inert or any shoots that do sprout will soon wither and die. The environmental conditions in which the human mind flourishes are the freedom to live and work as one chooses (subject only to the right of others to do the same), the freedom to enjoy the fruits of one's labour, and the protection of laws that guarantee these freedoms for all people. These are the classical liberal values mentioned above that we have so abrogated in the West today. It is little surprise, therefore, that we are losing our innovative edge.

The exception over the past decade or two has been in the realm of information technology and the Internet. Often compared to the 'Wild West', the on-line world has remained lightly regulated with few barriers to entry or innovation. On-line businesses like Uber are able to innovate precisely because they sit outside the highly-regulated traditional markets they are challenging. In the West we have in effect two parallel operating environments - the traditional political and economic environments in which innovators face huge regulatory hurdles in getting their products and services to market, and the on-line environment in which heavy-handed government involvement has been largely absent until now.

The United States provides the starkest example of this dichotomy. Traditional 'bricks and mortar' markets such as banking, manufacturing, transportation and medicine are subject to overbearing bureaucratic control and as a result American companies in these sectors are struggling to maintain their global leadership. Most economic growth in the United States in the last couple of decades has come from lightly-regulated 'digital' sectors such as software, entertainment and on-line services. But this is starting the change. The desire of Western governments to heavily regulate even the on-line world is starting to choke innovation in these sectors.

Western governments, including that in my own country, New Zealand, like to think the answer is more government. They like to think they can pick winners and encourage innovation through government investment and subsidies to certain industries. But history shows us that governments are poor gamblers when it comes to innovation. The clearest example of this in recent years is government investment in so-called 'green' businesses such as solar panel manufacturers. In the United States and Europe in particular, such investments have been disastrous.

Governments have a role to play in providing the fertile environment for innovation, i.e. in maintaining the institutions that uphold the classical liberal values that are responsible for Western political and economic success, but the most important thing they can do to encourage innovation is simply to get out of the way.

Michelle Obama's Pathetic Hashtag Photo Won't Help Kidnap Victims

My teenaged daughter has been invited to attend a protest march against the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The name Boko Haram means 'non-Muslim teaching is evil' and the group believes that Islam forbids the education of women entirely, which is why it targets girls in Nigerian state schools as kidnap victims (although the group's willingness to sell the girls into slavery suggests a more mercenary motive).

The protest will take place at Parliament Buildings in Wellington and has been organised by fellow pupils at her inner city girls school. To her credit, my daughter has decided not to join the protest, not because she doesn't care about the fate of the kidnapped girls - on the contrary, she is very upset by the matter - but because she realises the futility of protesting in New Zealand about the actions of terrorists half the world away. What these protestors want to achieve is unclear, unlike the aims of the kidnappers.

But as futile as the actions of these protestors are, they don't compare to the pathetic frivolousness of Michelle Obama's hashtag photo opportunity shown below. The US president's wife insults the victims of this horrible religious violence precisely because she is one of the few people in the world who has the ability to influence the outcome of this event.

There are only a handful of countries capable of rendering assistance to the kidnap victims. The United States, obviously, is one of these, but don't hold your breath waiting for President Obama to act. The President has shown himself to be a moral weakling where foreign policy is concerned. In Benghazi, he wasn't willing even to go to the aid of his own consular officials when the embassy there was attacked by an Al Qaeda militia on September 11, 2012. His so-called 'red-line' on the use of chemical weapons in Syria has counted for nothing, and his bluster on Ukraine is rightly treated as irrelevant by Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.

The first United States president to take his country to war against an external enemy was Thomas Jefferson, and the enemy in that case was Islamic pirates on the Barbary Coast who were kidnapping and enslaving American sailors. There is much that Jefferson would not admire today about the republic he helped establish but I think the thing he would least admire is the current president's lack of moral courage on matters of foreign policy. President Obama should be guided by the example of America's third president and take the fight to these Islamic extremists, wherever they are hiding, and his wife should drop the social media frivolity and urge her husband to grow a backbone.

Taking up the cudgels again in 2014 in defence of individual rights

I have had a very relaxing start to the year, partaking of some great weather, wonderful sights, delicious food and fine wines in some of New Zealand's most beautiful holiday spots. The relaxation was undoubtedly enhanced by confining my holiday reading to some excellent books (Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Bill Bryson's One Summer stand out) and consuming as little of the execrable mainstream media as possible. But it is time to return to the challenges that will face us in 2014.

In New Zealand, the Government led by John Key seems to be determined to pursue a political agenda that is as secretive, and frankly as corrupt, as ever. Key and his coalition of right-of-centre hypocrites and and racial determinists will continue to expand the power of the state and debase the rights of some New Zealanders in order to retain power.

Late in 2013 it the Key Government introduced a bill to enable the nefarious US FATCA regime, which I have blogged on before. FATCA treats any New Zealander with the misfortune of being born in the United States, or even born here to American parents, as "United States taxpayers that are resident in New Zealand." The Government acknowledges that the proposed law explicitly overrides the Privacy Act, Human Rights Act and New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. To what purpose does it treat some New Zealanders as non-citizens? It is to enforce a US taxation regime that is one-sided, unique in the world and inconsistent with OECD model taxation agreements. This analysis on the New Zealand legislation from the Isaac Brock Society sets out the issues in more detail.

Another nefarious piece of legislation the Key Government introduced in late 2013 is the Treaty of Waitangi settlement bill that gives redress to the Ngati Toa tribe for alleged wrongs committed against the tribe by the Crown in the early 19th Century. These Maori grievance settlements have become more and more outrageous over time, establishing two classes of citizenship in New Zealand - a privileged Maori tribal citizenship and lesser rights for the rest of us - but this one really takes the cake. Ngati Toa was the tribe of chief Te Rauparaha who committed what can only be described as genocide against other Maori tribes in his violent rampage through the North Island and top of the South Island in the 1820s and 1830s. British forces intervened against Te Rauparaha and his nephew Te Rangihaeata in the late 1830s and 1840s, stopping their horrific attacks against other Maori tribes and European settlers. Giving compensation to Ngati Toa today for the actions of British forces is like giving compensation to Bosnian Serbs for what happened at Srebrenica in the 1990s. Former Maori Treaty claim researcher John Robinson provides background and opinion on this claim in this article.

In the United States the Obamacare legislation is being shown up for the disaster some people always knew it would be, with even former supporters shocked to discover the huge cost increases that it is imposing and President Obama being exposed as having lied through his teeth when he said Americans would be able to keep their existing healthcare plan. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said the legislation would "change the relationship between the government and the individual in a profound way." He meant that socialised medicine makes citizens dependent on the state in a way that Americans have traditionally not been, and he is being proved right.

On the positive side in America, President Obama has said he will rein back the extent of spying on citizens and foreign leaders that were exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Many commentators have said the president's pledge does not go far enough and have expressed scepticism about whether there will be any meaningful change. Obama has pursued more prosecutions under the Espionage Act than all other presidents combined, so people are right to be cynical about his intentions.

So as much as I enjoyed my holiday and have been slow to take up the cudgels again in defence of freedom, I am mindful of Thomas Jefferson's (or Edmund Burke's similar) saying, "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

As Shakespeare said, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..."

National Socialists are Socialists

This week a UK "crime commissioner" (I understand that this is a civilian who oversees the police, not someone who commissions crime) named Dr Rachel Frosh was forced to resign for equating Socialists with National Socialists after an outcry from people on the political left.  Her posting on Twitter can be seen here.

The reaction to this is wrong on so many levels.  

Firstly, it is incredibly hypocritical.  How often do you read and hear comments from the political left-wing comparing the beliefs of their political opposites with Nazism?  What is good for the goose is surely OK for the gander.

Secondly, it is not offensive to equate one political philosophy with another.  Frosh did not say any individual was a Nazi; she didn't even equate a political party with Nazism (unlike the original post that hers was in response to, which said the British National Party members were Nazis).

Thirdly, the comparison is correct.  National Socialists were, first and foremost, Socialists.  Hitler was at pains to point out, as the quote in Frosh's posting states, "We are Socialists."  Why else would he have called his party the National Socialist Workers Party?  Nazis believed they represented the workers against the oppression, just like all other Socialists.  Nazis made scapegoats of those they saw as oppressors (the Jews mainly) just like other Socialists (who scapegoat capitalists and the bourgeoisie).

The most important common factor is that both regular Socialists and National Socialists believe the individual must be subjugated to the interests of the collective.  They differ only in their definition of the collective - Nazis believe the important collective is the race and the state, Socialists the proletariat.  Once you accept that the interests of the individual can be sacrificed for that of the collective, however you choose to define it, you legitimize any act against any individual that stands in the way of collective. Socialists and National Socialists agree on the principle, just not the definition of the collective's interests and the means to pursue them.  They both believe that a political elite should define those interests.

This issue raises the question of the popular terms used to define political beliefs in the world today.  "Left wing" and "right wing" are not different ends of a political spectrum.  Nazism and Socialism occupy the same philosophical territory.  The other end of the spectrum is not some other variation of these philosophies, it is the belief that the rights of the individual are paramount and the only moral basis for political action is to protect those rights.  This is the philosophy that has found expression down through the ages via Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and has found its fullest expression in the writings of Ayn Rand.

The Coming Fight for Freedom

Since the 2012 US election I have seen a great deal of pessimism amongst bloggers and commentators about the prospects for individual freedom in the Western world. It seems that the re-election of Barack Obama and the left-wing political victories in France, Greece and other countries are seen as the turning of the tide against classical liberalism in favour of state control and the abrogation of individual rights.

I agree with these commentators that there is little prospect of rational, classical liberal governments being elected in New Zealand or other Western nations over the next few years. Voters have made their choice clear – they want to continue deluding themselves that the welfare pot is forever full and that government interference in every aspect of society and the economy will always guarantee them a better life.

It is clear that it will take something more than a prolonged global economic downturn and the increasing erosion of individual liberties for voters around the world to get the message. No one seriously believes that the economic policies of most Western governments are sustainable beyond another few years and the signs are that severe social disruption is becoming more common in most Western nations the longer the global economic downturn continues.

The end game is now starting to be played out and unfortunately it is not going to be possible for anyone to opt out, any more than it was possible to opt out of the same philosophical fight in the 1930s and 40s. Political demarcations are becoming more pronounced and positions more entrenched. You would have to be a very optimistic person with little sense of history to look at the current situation around the world and believe that it is not going to result in a great deal of bloodshed.  If you think I am being crazy, then ask yourself why the US Department of Homeland Security (whose sole responsibility is domestic security) has recently purchased more than 1.2 billion sniper bullets. Clearly, I am not the only one who is anticipating a significant outbreak of violence in the West.

However, I disagree that the prospects for freedom are all bleak. History teaches us that greater freedom prevails over the long term. I believe that current events are unfolding so quickly that the collapse of the West and the real fight against tyranny are more imminent than most realise. I am sure that in 1940 few people thought they would see the defeat of Fascism in their lifetimes and in the 1980s few Russians would have believed they would see the end of Communism.

Thomas Jefferson said, "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants". Freedom is not lost unless we are not prepared to fight for it.

The Right to Bear Arms

I've read much in the last few days about the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms and how this should be limited in view of the terrible events at Newtown, Connecticut.  I am as appalled as anyone about the shooting of teachers and schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School (see the post below) but I think much of the comment about gun control in the US is poorly informed.  It is important to understand why Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms when considering whether and how to further restrict their ownership and use.

The right to bear arms is contained within the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. The words, in the final version ratified by the States and authenticated by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, are as follows:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The amendment made it into the Bill of Rights along with the right to freedom of speech and religion (the 1st Amendment), protection from unreasonable search and seizure (4th) and due process under the law (5th).  Why it is there amongst other unquestionably moral rights is an interesting story.

In 1789 when the Bill of Rights was being written, the United States was a brand new country that had only recently defeated the British in the War of Independence and adopted the US Constitution.  There were concerns that the Federal government would become too powerful and abrogate the rights of the States and the people, in the same way as the British Crown and Parliament had done before the Revolution.  Congress was divided between the Federalists, who believed that there should be a strong federal government, and the Republicans, who believed in a small federal government that was effectively subservient to the States.

The United States did not have a standing army until 1789.  The Continental Army that was led to victory in the War of Independence by George Washington comprised the militias of the thirteen states and was disbanded upon the final defeat of the British at Yorktown except for a small general staff of no more than a few hundred soldiers.

By the time the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 there had been both external and internal challenges to the unity of the United States.  The risk of renewed war with Great Britain and with revolutionary France, plus the internal Whisky Rebellion and Northwest Indian War, meant many in Congress supported the idea of a strong, standing Federal army.  But in order to garner the supermajority of States needed to pass the Constitutional amendments, those promoting the idea had to offer the States something in return.  That something was the right to bear arms.  The 2nd Amendment was the right demanded by the States to ensure the Federal Government would not be able to use its armed forces to tread upon their rights.  Of course one could say the assurance did not work - after all, the American Civil War was primarily about that same issue: whether the Federal Government had the right to over ride the States on the important issue of slavery.  And in that case it was a very good thing that the Federal Government won.

Today the issue of Federal vs States rights is more salient than ever.  Washington DC and the state capitols are arguing over many important issues - drug enforcement, immigration, health care, etc.  The Federal Government has taken upon itself more and more power, including in recent years the power to torture and kill people without any form of judicial process.  Many Americans think their government has well-overstepped the constraints that the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison intended to impose upon it and in view of this, it is understandable that they would be reluctant to give up the right to bear arms.

Seen in this light, the Second Amendment becomes something more noble and reasonable than merely the right of Americans to defend their person and home against criminals (although that, too, is hardly an ignoble right in my opinion).

All of the above doesn't change the fact that American civilians kill far more of their fellow citizens with firearms than any other country on Earth.  I agree that America needs to debate the issue but I don't think stricter firearms control alone will do much to address the problem (after all, New Zealand has some of the strictest firearms ownership laws in the world and we have had our share of mass killings).  If President Obama wants to introduce tougher gun laws, perhaps he should start talking in the same conversation about limiting the unbridled power of his Government - then more Americans might be more receptive to greater gun control.

The Berlin Wall - Lest We Forget

It has been fifty years this month since the German Democratic Republic erected the Berlin Wall.

The Wall was the physical embodiment of the Socialist belief that common good trumps individual good. It was built to preserve the Socialist regime of the GDR by physically imprisoning its population, who up until then were leaving for West Germany in increasing numbers. The Communist form of Socialism that was practised in the Soviet block, and that is still adhered to a greater or lesser extent in China, Cuba and North Korea, is the natural extension of all Socialist regimes. Socialists believe they know what is best for all of us and that individuals should not be trusted to make their own decisions about how they live and work. Ultimately this belief must lead to the use of violence by the state to restrain individuals where their individual choices conflict with those of the rulers of the state.

The only alternative to the building of Berlin Walls is a society based on the paramouncy of individual rights. In such a society the only legitimate role of the state is to prevent the initiation of violence by one individual or group against another. In such a society the state rules only by consent of the individual. In such a society, governments and laws are subservient to the rights of the individual, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, such a society doesn't exist in the world today. In all countries there is an on-going battle between those who adhere to the Socialist philosophy that 'might is right' and those who believe that individuals are best able to make their own decisions about how to live their lives.

The Berlin Wall is a fading reminder that, as Wendell Phillips (not Jefferson, as commonly thought) said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."