Limits of Interventionism

By questioning some of the unconstitutional meddling of the federal government in modern American society, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act, Rand Paul has performed a useful service for the liberal media elitists who love to empower our elected officials. Outlets like the New York Times have helped to illuminate their blind love for the authoritarian state, despite the limits of the US constitution.

Many Americans are sputtering mad, believing that government has let them down in abetting a ruinous recession, bailing out bankers and spending wildly. Rand Paul is just one part of the remedy they have in mind. His views and those of other Tea Party candidates are reminders of the truth that there is no such thing as "enlightened government".

In a handful of remarkably candid interviews since winning Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary this week, Mr. Paul made it clear that not only he does understand the nature of racial progress in this country, he sees interventionist policy of government itself as racist.

As a longtime libertarian, he espouses the view that personal freedom should supersede all government intervention. Neighborhood associations should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, he has written, and private businesses ought to be able to refuse service to anyone they wish. Under this philosophy, the punishment for a lunch counter that refuses to seat black customers would be public shunning, not a court order.

It is a theory of liberty with roots in America’s creation, and the succeeding centuries have yet to give it a chance to show how effective it can be. Even if "promoting a civil society" was somehow spelled out as a constitutional goal (and it isn't), the arrogance of the Times' editors to think that they know what that means is astonishing. The views of a few people empowered by government to discriminate meant generations of less freedom for large groups of others, since the government could now routinely overstep its boundaries and play favorites.

It was only government power that instituted and maintained slavery and enacted Jim Crow, neither of which would have been in place in a purely free society. It was government that brought on and extended the Depression and created the union/EEOC counterculture in the workplace, all through the best of intentions.

Republicans in Washington have foolishly distanced themselves from Dr. Paul’s remarks, afraid that voters will be as ignorant as the Times' editorial staff. But as they properly continue to fight the new health care law and oppose greater financial regulation, claiming the federal government is overstepping its bounds, they should notice that the distance is closing. Maybe the next step is to call out all of the unconstitutional laws as part of the Republican platform. Maybe then the liberal media will understand?

The Liberal Mind

At various times, I have wondered why anyone would ever be a liberal. (To be fair I wonder a bit more about the neo-cons too but that is a different topic.) So I thought I would put my thoughts down here.

So why are there liberals? Well I have come upon an answer that satisfies my curiosity. The liberal mind is one that puts ideals before principles and utility. The specific ideals vary somewhat, but generally they are based on the ideal of nobility of man. Some specific policy goals based on this idealism include: No one should ever go hungry. Everyone should get health care and education. The elderly should all be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone should have the chance to own a home. The poor deserve welfare. and so on

Now don't get me wrong, as ideals go, these are worthy. I fully endorse any private, charitable enterprise that seeks to fulfill in part one of these goals. And there are many great charities out there.

But where government attempts to step in and meet some of these goals, there are several issues that are given short shrift. The biggest of these is based on principle. In order to effect mandates, government uses force or its threat to attempt to ensure compliance. The principle violated here is the libertarian principle of non-aggression, or prohibition on the initiation of force. It is a wonderful principle because it does not fight human nature. No one likes to be told what to do after all. And any public policy that must resort to compulsion is doomed to fail, at least some of the time. It will require more resources and provide more chance for government initiated acts of injustice.

So we have a choice. We can put ideals before principles and accept the use of compulsion for things like collecting taxes, with the idea that government can somehow be trusted to adjudicate how to spend those taxes. Or we can work toward our ideal voluntarily as guided by principle. The choice seems obvious to me.