The Political Centrist

Chapter 4: Why the Big “Isms” Fail

64 Chapter 4 why the big “Isms” fail PolITICAl CenTrIsm AvoIds The gravitational pull of each of the other three dominant strains of political thought in the United States today—progressive or left liberalism, the various forms of conservatism, and libertarianism. In Part II, I spell out our differences with liberals, conservatives, and libertarians on particular issues, but in this chapter I explore our deeper political and philosophical agreements and disagreements with each. What’s Wrong with Libertarianism? I begin with libertarianism because it is the most consistently radical and individualistic form of liberalism. Libertarians are right about so much, and wrong about so much as well. They frequently begin from sound premises, and then reason their way to untenable conclusions. Personally, if I had to choose between living in either a purely libertarian state or a purely socialist state, even a socialist state such as modern Sweden that operates along democratic lines, I’d happily take my chances in a libertarian society. Like libertarians, centrists do not believe that it is the function of government to take care of its citizens. But unlike libertarians, we do believe government has an important role to play in caring for the most vulnerable members of society and in establishing the ground rules for a decent and well-functioning society for the rest of us. Libertarians are right to be concerned about the growth of government, particularly the federal government. Within just a few short decades Americans will face catastrophic shortfalls in funding for social service benefits—Social Security, Medicaid , Medicare, and any new programs such as universal health care (see Chapter 6). It is not that we centrists are opposed in principle to government’s providing these services, but we recognize that the resources just won’t be there within a quarter century or so. More generally, libertarians are right to distrust big, centralized government—its wastefulness, its callousness, and, yes, the way government power potentially limits liberty and undermines individual initiative. Where liberalism was originally a limited-government philosophy, not an antigovernment philosophy, modern liberals have strangely and sadly lost this distrust of state power. In fact, modern liberals sometimes seem to distrust everything—corporations, churches, schools, even individuals—but big government. Earlier liberals and their modern libertarian descendants understood that corporations, private groups, and other organizations within civil society can become limited bastions of private power, but they insisted that the individual was protected from private oppression, in part, by pluralism and competition—by the fact that a well-functioning society has many different groups which will compete for the allegiance of members, stockholders, Why the Big “Isms” Fail 65 employees, and so on. Contemporary libertarians believe, with some legitimacy, that the greatest threat to liberty is an expanding government with a monopoly on state power. Their answer: limit government, protect a basic skein of fundamental rights, and the rest will work itself out. In this respect, libertarians are the true heirs of the classical liberal tradition. They just take its lessons a little too far. Libertarians instinctively distrust the state and the politicians who would direct it. “If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts,” wrote Murray Rothbard, one of the most uncompromising of libertarians, “simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will fall into place.”1 Taxation is theft, pure and simple. Capital punishment is murder. Restraints on trade are unjustifiable restrictions on individual freedom. Libertarians think of the state as a person and, for every official act of state, ask: Would it be morally permissible for an individual to do what the state is doing? If the answer is no, then how, they will inquire, can it be right for the state to do it? Libertarians are particularly dubious of the primary wielders of state power, the professional politicians. Whether or not one agrees with Lord Acton that power inevitably corrupts , there is certainly a greater propensity for corruption when power is wielded by those who have made it their life’s mission to gain power. “The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power,” declared Frank H. Knight, “is on the level of probability that an extremely tenderhearted person would get the job of whipping master in a slave plantation.”2 Libertarians are right to stress the problems associated with the overcentralization of power, but they also systematically overlook the benefits that...