Libertarian Answers to Conservative Challenges

Tibor Machan teaches at Chapman University and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His book Classical Individualism was published by Routledge in 1998.

As free-market champions make increased headway in the political-cultural arena, conservatives and neo-conservatives have been taking more and more potshots at them. William Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard have been especially keen on denigrating the libertarian idea of a government with properly circumscribed powers and scope. Among the many charges lodged against that idea, the following seem most common: (1) Limited government is not inspiring. (2) Libertarianism provides no basis for patriotism. (3) Libertarianism provides no basis for a national leader.

Inspiring Government

The first allegation states that limited government is not sufficiently inspiring to rally the support of its citizens. Conservatives say that a government looked upon with suspicion-thought of as "a necessary evil"-has little chance of surviving, let alone flourishing. Even the ordinary operations of government, they observe, require a modicum of respect from the citizenry. And in times of crisis, government must command devotion as well as respect.

Now, let it be admitted that, in the heat of debate, libertarians sometimes say things which do not bear close scrutiny. Thus, libertarians have at times made the claim that government is a necessary evil, and, in fact, that theme recurs in the writings of the American Founders. But others in the libertarian tradition have advocated a strictly limited government without any suggestion that government, properly understood, is a true "evil." John Locke, for example, assigned government an honorable role, even while insisting that none of its powers should involve the violation of basic, individual rights.

Libertarians, then, can have a positive idea of the state, though it will always be a demanding one. As the Declaration of Independence declares, it is to secure the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. And what are those just powers? Only the powers needed to secure the rights in question-no more, no less. The task of the state is in that sense akin to the task of a police officer: to apply the force required to protect the citizenry, while avoiding the use of unnecessary force. It is a tall order and a delicate one. And those governments that succeed in fulfilling the task are certainly entitled to respect and devotion.

For consider the moral virtues such a government would have to embody: vigilance, valor, honor, and, most of all, integrity. Those are values people admire greatly when embodied in the soldier, the policeman, and the judge. Suppose legislators and administrators embodied such virtues as well. Would not they too earn the respect of the people, as statesmen once did? Certainly, they would earn more respect than they do by seeking power at all cost, legislating in disregard of principles and the Constitution, meddling in all our concerns, and paying off contributors and constituents with subsidies and privileges. If those who love liberty are today uninspired by government, it is not because their view of government is too limited but because existing government has become degenerate.

Libertarian Patriotism

Recently, conservatives and neo-conservatives have come up with another taunt against libertarians: What basis does their philosophy offer for patriotism? Again, libertarians have sometimes provided the Right with ammunition.

Consider the following incident. In 1987, Kris Kristofferson starred in a very bad miniseries called "Amerika," which concerned the Russian takeover of the United States. Four years later, when speaking to a Republican Leadership Program Retreat, Cato president Ed Crane cited the miniseries in some amusing but profound remarks.

At one point Kristofferson steps out of character and is about to say something intelligent. He's attempting to arouse the dispirited masses (not to mention the television audience), and he says, America is not the land. America is not the flag. America is...' And suddenly he has my attention, America is what, Kris? Here's what he says: 'America is not the land. America is not the flag. America is the people.' ... What Kristofferson should have said is that America is not the land; America is not the flag; America is an idea. And the idea is a fairly simple one. It's the idea of human liberty.

Now, that sounds good-until one realizes that ideas have no homeland. Walter Berns, the conservative constitutional scholar, has come at the same point another way, in an article entitled "On Patriotism" (The Public Interest, Spring 1997): "There is, of course, nothing peculiarly American about those [the Declaration's] principles. On the contrary, they are abstract and universal principles of political right, a product of political theory; any people might subscribe to them, and Jefferson himself expected that, in the course of time, every other people would do so. 'All eyes are open, or opening, to the rights of man,' he said on the eve of the Declaration's fiftieth anniversary. This has not happened, but were it to happen, America would lose its distinctiveness, and, along with it, any claim on the affections of its people."

Surely, that is not true. Surely, it is too abstract. For it is not just the principles of liberty that inspire American patriotism, but the ways in which those principles have shaped the country's history and culture, including the attitudes of, yes, the American people. For instance, in dealing with others, most Americans have a certain casual confidence, a relaxed manner of social intercourse, and an uncomplicated individualism. And Americans like that about their countrymen. In that sense, there is after all something to the remark that "the people" inspire our love of country.

Of course, libertarianism has not yet been put into practice in enough places to offer us a true database of cultural anthropology. Yet a bit of imagination would suggest that love of country within a libertarian framework amounts to a combination of reverence for certain basic principles of freedom and an attachment to a set of shared beliefs, attitudes, and practices that either embody those principles or (at the least) are compatible with them.

National Leadership

The last trendy charge of conservatives, a charge usually associated with "TR Republicans," is that libertarianism has no conception of a national leader, as opposed to a top executive-branch functionary. Of course, if Theodore Roosevelt is their model, one can only say, "Thank God libertarianism excludes such a leader." A free country has no need for a leader who sets about running the country according to his own idea of the good life. Quite the contrary, a free nation's leader should remind citizens how noble it is to set one's own goals. Perhaps that is why generals have typically made bad presidents.

Still, a country does need a leader, at base because it needs someone to serve as the final guarantor of national security (although other symbolic roles accrue to such a leader). Were America suddenly attacked by nuclear missiles, the president would and should have it within his prerogative to launch a retaliatory strike, even if that would bring utter destruction to the United States. It would and should be within his prerogative, despite Congress's power to declare war and despite the Supreme Court's power to declare presidential acts unconstitutional. The president alone is and should be vested with the ultimate power to act on behalf of the nation, when necessary. Locke, in particular, spends much ink on spelling out how such prerogative is part and parcel of the executive branch of government, even while it must be held accountable once the emergency has passed in which it may be exercised.

As a result of this fundamental leadership role, the president also takes on the roles of serving as the symbol of our national values and the voice of our national sentiments.

It is true that within libertarian political philosophy, given how much emphasis is placed on simply showing that there is merit to its basic principles, these special areas of concern have yet to be fully developed. Still, if the influence of the American experience is any reliable clue, there should be no great difficulty in envisioning a robust sense of patriotism and citizenship loyalty, as well as a basic respect, even devotion, to its nature and administration. Few individuals in human political history have inspired as much diligent study and resulting respect as the Founders of the American Republic, especially by those who have experienced the devastating impact of tyranny. An idea of government that stands as history's greatest bulwark against such tyranny is anything but dispirited. Conservatives in America, of all places, should not be tempted to think so.