The Reactionary UtopianAbout twenty years ago a very intelligent man, whom
I'll call Robert (he's actually a sort of composite of
several men), told me he was an anarchist. He didn't
believe in any government, period.
At the time I considered myself a conservative, with
libertarian leanings. Much as I respected Robert, I
believed in limited government under the U.S.
Constitution -- but none at all? That was taking a good
idea too far, I thought.
Notice the illogic of my reaction. I was thinking of
a philosophy as a matter of personal taste, as if you
could draw an arbitrary line and stop there. "Would you
prefer a little bit of government, a moderate amount, or
a lot of it?"
After a while (years, actually) it sank in that
Robert wasn't just telling me what =quantity= of
government he'd prefer. He was saying that the whole idea
of it was wrong in principle -- no matter whether it was
democratic, Communist, monarchist, Christian, or
something else. He would agree that some are worse than
others, but he insisted that all were wrong. Any
government is a monopoly of organized force, inherently
unjustifiable; and once accepted, it's bound to get out
of control sooner or later.
This notion is hard for Americans to grasp, let
alone assent to. After all, we have what looks like a
solid rationale for government in our Declaration of
Independence, plus a practical plan for keeping it within
due limits in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. True,
American government has become a staggering tangle of
laws, powers, regulations, and taxes, with recurrent
wars, public debt, debased money, and countless other
evils, but couldn't this be cured by returning to the
Constitution?
That's what I used to think. Besides, what would we
replace the government with? Who would protect us from
violent crime and foreign enemies? Who would coin the
money? Who would pave the streets and fix the potholes?
Others would ask who would feed the destitute, care for
the sick and elderly, protect minorities, and cope with
myriad other crises, emergencies, and easily imaginable
disasters -- most of which, by the way, didn't use to be
thought of as responsibilities of government. Everyone
has a horrible fantasy that makes the actual horror seem
(to him) worth putting up with.
Read the label on a can of soup, and think how many
laws and regulations the vendor has to comply with. The
rationale for these is that the public has to be
protected -- from what? Unhealthy ingredients of some
sort, I suppose. But would we really be in any peril if
there were no government enforcing these costly
restrictions? Would it be in the seller's
interest to poison his customers, even if there were no
legal penalty for doing so? How often did that happen
before all these laws were imposed? Roadside fruit stands
are still unregulated. Are these dangers to the
purchaser?
The other day I was ticketed, and my car briefly
impounded, when a policeman noticed that I was driving
with a cracked windshield. My car had passed the required
safety inspection and had the required sticker before
some vandal had thrown rocks at it, so I thought I was
legal. I wasn't hurting or threatening anyone; I posed no
danger I could see. The cop was as polite as a man with a
pistol can be, but as he ordered the car towed away I
asked him quietly, "Just who are you protecting from me?"
The answer was a vague mumble about "the public."
Later I joked to friends that I'd been "carjacked."
An armed man had seized my car, I explained. Of course he
had a badge, a uniform, and some sort of "law" on his
side, so I, not he, was the criminal. Heaven help me if
I'd tried to defend my property. Self-defense would have
been an even more serious offense. By submitting to
force, I confined the evil to a mere nuisance. This time.
"Carjacking" or "impoundment"? We now have two
vocabularies for wrongs, depending on whether private
persons or government agents commit them. This is the
difference between "mass murder"and "national defense."
Between "extortion" and "taxation." Between
"counterfeiting" and "inflation." And so on. Other
examples will occur to the astute reader.
Do you smell a fault? No wonder Frederic Bastiat
described government as "organized plunder."
Yet for most of my life, I believed that social
order depended on government. That is, I believed that
freedom depended on force, and ultimately that a great
good depended on a great evil. I'm afraid most people
believe such things, and accept armed men in uniforms as
their benefactors.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright (c) 2006 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate,
www.griffnews.com. This column may not be published in
print or Internet publications without express permission
of Griffin Internet Syndicate. You may forward it to
interested individuals if you use this entire page,
including the following disclaimer:
"SOBRAN'S and Joe Sobran's columns are available
by subscription. For details and samples, see
http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml, write
PR@griffnews.com, or call 800-513-5053."
