"Christianity and Libertarianism, some thoughts on human nature and the state
Despite superficial differences and incompatibilities on moral and philosophical issues, Christianity and libertarianism can be reconciled very easily on the most fundamental issue: how the two view human nature. Christianity focuses on the depravity of human nature, while libertarianism, being relegated primarily to the realm of politics, is founded on the belief that human beings will naturally be tempted to abuse power that they have been granted over their fellow men and women. In this sense, libertarianism is a subset of the Christian outlook on human nature. No true Christian can honestly claim that human nature pulls us toward the greater good rather than the greater evil, therefore from a scriptural point of view the libertarian outlook on political power is completely in line with the Bible’s teachings on the essence of human nature.
One of the things that popular tendencies that tends to mislead otherwise well-meaning Christians, judging from many of the misguided critiques of libertarian political theory that I have read, is the belief that the Bible prescribes a particular political order. Where Islam attempted to provide a foundation for all of society from worship to warfare, Christianity is a government of the spirit only. There have hitherto been three approaches to providing for a Christ-based political system, religiously-inspired Socialism, the oft amorphous ideology known as “conservatism” in America today and religious-informed libertarianism. All three are lacking, but the libertarian approach is the least lacking, and unfortunately for the utopians only the second coming will provide for a perfect system of government and society. Much has been written about why Socialism is a horrible system to organize society around, and much could be written about why conservatism is misguided, but the real issue here is why libertarianism is at least the less evil of the three.
In their misguided zeal to transform society, many conservative Christians make the mistake of assuming that the power of the state has a moralizing influence. All it takes is for one to reflect upon the cultural and spiritual devastation that has been unleashed upon the nations that succumbed to radical Socialism such as Russia and Germany to see how wrong this view of state power really is. Libertarianism is not, despite the almost libelous screeds written against it, opposed to state power in principle, but rather to giving the state any more power than it absolutely needs to function. The power of the state can easily corrupt those that wielded it, and as Christians we must all recognize that there are far more opportunities to be evil afforded to a police officer who crosses the line and becomes a criminal, than an ordinary street thug. Not only do they have the freedom to act as a criminal, but they have the power of the law enforcement apparatus and public trust to shield them from most of the scrutiny that would easily catch a normal criminal. The same applies to all areas of government from the military to the welfare offices as Social Security, for example, has had its share of problems as well.
The impact of most acts of evil will not be readily felt, though they have a corosive impact on everything around them. One of the many goals for the separation of powers between not only the branches of the government, but its agencies as well, was to limit the power wielded by any one group. Throughout history, evil men have always been attracted to positions in society that afforded them an unacceptable degree of power over their fellow man. One of the many reasons why our government has fallen on a moral level to such a new low in our history is that without the barriers that make protect the public by making government agents go the extra mile to do the job right, the standards of ethics are inherently and subtely lowered. When cops are given more lattitude to “get rough” with people rather than be restrained in their dealings with them, they will naturally tend to take that conduct a little farther each time. That is unfortunately human nature at work, and why the conduct of the state must be held to the highest scrutiny and standard possible, lest we encourage evil conduct and attract even more of the dregs of society to positions of power.
The libertarian distrust of most of the state powers wielded today is not without a historical precedent supporting it. Throughout the twentieth century, the classical liberal/libertarian critique was vindicated time and again by the failed social experiments in countries ranging from the Soviet Union and China to Western Europe. Despite what some may believe, many of the things that are being proposed today to fight the all but defunct War on Terror, have already been tried by many of the countries that we trade with now–and they all categorically failed. Every successful democratic society has always prohibited its law enforcement agencies from directly working with its intelligence agencies except when the latter need the assistance of the former to stop an intelligence or terrorist operation affecting their territory. The hallmark of every totalitarian state has been a hand-in-hand relationship between the cop and the spook, a relationship which is slowly forming between our own FBI and CIA. Imagine the power that is at the finger tips of a cop who can tap into the NSA and CIA’s advanced monitoring systems. They would be able to capture almost everything you say and track you by spy satellite, thus being able to find out virtually anything they want about you using systems originally designed to never be targetted against Americans. The infamous Total Information Awareness project, despite its technical flaws, would have given law enforcement the ability to get a list of virtually every single economic activity you have ever done and get ahold of most of your records held by any institution in this country, all with a wink and nod from law enforcement saying that they would police themselves.
The spectre of Big Brother never fails to be followed by inhumanity, and almost two hundred million people paid the price for humanity to learn that lesson in the 20th century alone. The great lesson of the 20th century was not that classical liberalism/libertarianism failed, but that it is the only political system capable of tempering the very worst aspects of human nature. While every liberal state has had its fair share of evil, which is to be expected, the evil of all of the liberal states throughout history pales in comparison to the evil of a single major Socialist state of the 20th century such as Nazi Germany, the USSR, Maoist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia or even Ba’athist Iraq. Whatever evils such as overindulgence in vice may be tolerated by a libertarian state, pale in comparison to the death camps, the cruelty and fear of the “knock in the middle of the night” that are par for the course with the alternative.
When libertarians object to things such as regulations of cable tv content, it is not necessarily saying that we agree with the content, but that rather that we see the bigger picture. The one behavior that the government never fails to exhibit is a desire for self-aggrandizement, which is clearly the biblical sin of pride writ large in this case. Most popular media is offensive to Christian sensibilities and there is little that we can safely do about that other than to vote with our dollars. It is dellusional for American Christians to believe that Jesus’ admonitions that the world will hate the Bible’s message cannot come to pass in America. We put our confidence in the state to do the right thing at our own peril, and most likely we will end up like Sweden, where a pastor was arrested for speaking out against homosexuality using verses from the Bible. When the government is given the power to punish people for speech that is deemed dirty and obscene, it will naturally come to the conclusion that much of the Bible is dirty and offensive. And why not? The Bible is full of references to genocide, incest, random violence and admonitions that many segments of society’s behaviors are unacceptable, homosexuals being the most obvious example. The immediate feel-good feedback that we get from banning pornography must be weighed against the general powers that our government then has to begin declaring other things sexually obscene. The slope is inherently slippery because it is greased with the evil inborn through original sin.
Often even the most innocuous tools for good will be turned evil by man and that is a reality that Christians must come to grips with. We live in a fallen world where we will always be the minority and thus we must recognize that anything we allow the state to do will be done most of the time by those not redeemed by Christ. Therefore we must recognize the fact that most of the people who will enforce the laws that we set up will be non-Christians and if we have them enforce biblical morality they will do so as non-Christians. We have the freedom to avoid most of the problems of vice, regardless of type, by choosing to not partake of it. We can avoid pornography by turning off our TVs and not buying it online. The same applies for all other vices. Unfortunately, what constitutes a vice varies from person to person, even among Christians, and thus the drafting and enforcement of these laws will vary greatly as well. It is the nature of those attracted to the power of the state to want more power, and from the ability to regulate one small area that may be legitimately regulated will naturally come the suspicion that more areas should be regulated.
The key stumbling block that conservative Christians will have to overcome to understand why libertarianism is compatible with a Christian worldview is to understand the difference between legislating morality and legislating virtue. Libertarians are in favor of the former, but not the latter because basic morality such as laws against murder, rape, incest and theft are matter of public protection. Where we part ways from our conservative counterparts is that we recognize the fact that any action that harms oneself, when freely undertaken in a sound mental state, is not an action which produces a victim. Virtue is not the same thing as basic morality, it is going above and beyond what is expected of you. There is no basic morality issue that prevents non-Christians from fornicating for example, but as Christians we are not called to the lowest common denominator of morality in our lives, but rather we are called to virtue. It is not possible to legislate the full spectrum of Christian morality without legislating virtue, and invariably we will be left with one of two types of government: a theocracy or a cold, secular state with a totalitarian agenda. Then if we legislate as Christians, and not as ordinary citizens seeking basic public order, we pick and choose what morality to enforce based on our own pleasures and not a rational approach. It is ultimately a losing proposition.
If there is one thing that we cannot remind ourselves enough of as Christians involved in politics in any way, it is that a Christian and a non-Christian will generally not be motivated by the same core values nor have the same justifications for our ideas and approaches. A Christian is motivated to not steal from their neighbor because of the calling of God to His morality, which society would at least grudgingly call virtue because our motivation is much higher than mere rational self-interest. The inner justification of the average non-Christian for stealing is a form of rational self-interest. If you disregard your neighbor’s rights, then how can you be surprised when your neighbor retaliates in a similar fashion? This is why the libertarian approach is ultimately the one that provides for a system that accomodates Christians and non-Christians alike. It provides for a system that forces people to respect each others’ rights as human beings while denying them the chance to use the state to deny them that respect. It doesn’t force them to live righteously, but it doesn’t give them the chance to justify their own depravity either because the libertarian approach provides those who are the targets of evil acts with many opportunities to right the wrongs that have been to them in a consistent manner. One obvious example is that libertarians oppose the application of excessive force laws to private citizens defending their property against theft. By taking this position, libertarians allow private citizens to take an active part in keeping society safe and relatively moral rather than giving the sole responsibility for that to the police who tend to fail miserably when they have a monopoly on that.
One thing that conservative Christians are just going to have to accept is that efforts to enforce virtue by the state will always be spotty in their success. The upside to accepting this is that we can we be safe, knowing that the odds of our government encouraging evil will be much less than if we make the enforcement of morals its top priority. Conservative Christians frequently make the mistake of assuming that the bloodthirsty totalitarian states of the 20th century were amoral and interest only in power. They were not only not amoral, but they were guided by a perverted sense of morality and vision for society. For the Communists the moral order they sought was righting the wrongs that the capitalists had allegedly unleashed upon the proletariate and for the National Socialists it was lifting up the poor aryans who were the historical victims of the Jewish people according to their revisionist history. They turned fighting class warfare into a virtue and mandated it through their laws. We can see from the history of that misbegotten century the dangers of having a state which has such a domineering regulatory power over human conduct and nature. Societies change in their alignment with God, and it was only natural that theocratic Czarist Russia with its legally mandated calls to virtue became the repressive Soviet Union as Christianity’s influence faded away in Russia. As American Christianity suffers the same fate, we Christians must ask ourselves whether we want to learn anything from history, or doom our children to live in the United Socialist States of America."
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