Kevin :
It must be said that you
not only write well, but are as thoughtful as anyone gets.
I enjoyed reading the
material in your book.
Now I finally "get" some
points that other libertarians simply
do not express
adequately. But there are some problems you may wish to
consider.
However, is the lack of
clarity on the part of other libertarians because of
shortcomings
of their skills as
writers or because you are developing a new kind of
philosophy
which may have
libertarian origins but is breaking new ground ? My best
guess
is the "new ground"
hypothesis.
Anyway, your analysis of
the early years of the American republic has some
problems. As a
suggestion, and admitting they were friends though it all,
you may want to think of
Jefferson and Madison as opponents. When Madison
succeeded Jefferson in
the White House there was a distinct break in policy.
This break traces to the
era of ratification of the Constitution, about which,
while Jefferson was a
supporter, it was not without serious misgivings.
As he saw it, the
Constitution should be jettisoned after a generation or
so,
when it had done its job and we would
all be ready for an early version of minarchy.
Madison was anything but
impressed with that idea, nor were most of the
other Founders --and for
good reason. The period when the Articles
of Confederation were in
effect was a mess. Minimal gvt, which is what
the Articles gave the new
nation, proved ineffective, inefficient, and
something that put the
nation at risk from our enemies.And that was
our best test of what we
now call libertarian ideas.
Essentially the issue is
this, we are at war. Not now and then, but permanently.
When there are no battles
what exists is a state of truce ; but
there is no such thing
as actual Peace --there
never is. Nor can there be, because of human nature.
We are a war-dependent
species. Which is not my theory, but that of
Steven Le Blanc in a 2003
book, Constant Battles. The subtitle says it
all :
The Myth of the
Peaceful, Noble Savage. And the evidence is
overwhelming,
human beings are
continually at war, somewhere, and soon enough, right
here,
wherever "here" happens
to be. We are psychologically predisposed to fight
and fight we will, it is
in our genes as an optimal conflict resolution method.
Madison learned just how
dangerous minarchist thinking can be. We almost
lost the War of 1812, it
was anything but the retrospective walk in the park
that popular history
pretends it was. We lost the great majority of actual
battles
and, at sea, with a
miniature fleet, we were outgunned by the British almost
constantly, with almost
no recourse.
The point is not that you
are somehow "wrong" about the social psychology
of politics. Actually,
your view is damned smart, perceptive, and I want to
start to work with it in
the future. Very worthwhile. No problem to see
all kinds of advantages
in it. So, as I become able to do some fresh thinking
and new research along
those lines I expect to do some shameless borrowing
from your approach. BUT
with a set of assumptions that are different than
yours, especially the
position that any political philosophy must presume
that we live in a
dangerous world. All the time.
Because of our power and
the moats that surround our nation, people often
take the view that
isolationism --whatever it is called-- is an option and
that
we actually have the
luxury of devising political systems that are predicated
on the
leave-me-alone-and-I'll-leave-you-alone hypothesis. But
this is an
impossibility. Our
situation, even when it is the opposite of obvious, is
no different than that of
any other nation, which is to say that to understand
this situation for what
it is, think of Israel. That nation simply has our
problems
at macro-scale, and very
obviously.
The only time we really
had to face this reality for what it is, at least so far,
was WWII. And to lesser
extent the continuation of the war when we faced
off against the Soviets
until 1989.
Well, now it is Islam,
and the problems, when you analyze them, are directly
related
to the "enemies problem,"
that is, to threats against us whether we want them or
not.
I sure hope you stick
around. For sure there is a lot to learn from you.
Maybe you feel this about
our group also.
Billy
==============================================
Hello Ernie:
I am for a radical deconstruction of central planning,
programs, practices,
and regulations not because I am a Libertarin Utopian but
because what we
have now is so bloated that it has sucked the life and
love out of
communities. I might even venture to say that I am using
libertarianism
because it is the philosophy that needs to be applied
today to unwind the
inevitible build-up that occurs over time in human
systems. Having worked
for 20 years in human services, perhaps the most
repressive and intransigent
of all, I think something serious needs to happen to get
back to efficiency
and neighborliness.
But I do believe in the theory of spontaneous order. So
in that sense I
take issue with some of the ideas in the article. When
people are freed
from psychological tyranny they naturally form cooperative
enclaves because
they have to.
This is Chapter Seven from my book, Discovering
Possibility.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Freedom
The Webster dictionary defines freedom as “being free” and
free, as "not
under the control or power of another.” As history proves
repeatedly,
freedom reflects the highest of all human aspirations.
Our Founders believed freedom was a natural right, meaning
that it was
guaranteed by God and was the basic condition under which
all men should be
allowed to live. The most basic belief, shared by most if
not all of the
founding fathers, was that men are entitled to be free and
in the absence of
legal safeguards, oppressive governments would enslave
them. Thus, the birth
of the United States was inextricably tied to the
Founders’ belief in man’s
right to be free and the vigilance with which the rule of
law must protect
that freedom.
All societies erect barriers to unchecked freedom. That
response is a
necessary and appropriate consequence of nurturing human
relationships and
building a society, as I indicated in my depiction of the
social contract
and ordered liberty in Chapter Two. Societies must account
for freedom and
responsibility in order to maintain communities.
In my field of family therapy, we believe the
drive toward human
relationship balances the drive for pure freedom, and
thus, human
organization seeks balance between these two fundamental
human desires.
People want and need three interdependent elements:
independence, structure,
and love. The question thus becomes, what is the optimal
balance between
pure freedom (anarchy) and social and psychological
constraints. The
psychological question thus supersedes the governance
question, as the
enlightenment philosophers well knew. They were pushing
civilization away
from religious and governmental repression, which had been
the norm for
centuries, and toward individual liberty, which made the
age of reason an
astoundingly liberal period in the history of the world.
The Founders believed we needed just enough restraint on
liberty to sustain
a central government but not too much restraint, so that
tyranny would
prevail. They were students of history who knew man’s
unchecked desire for
power usually destroyed individual freedom, the same
conclusion that Sigmund
Freud later drew when he postulated his famous theory of
libidinous
energy.[i] They also knew too much constraint on freedom
created repression,
in the same way that Freud knew too much superego created
psychological
repression. Therefore, they created a system that
attempted to balance
freedom and control (ID and superego).[ii]
Given their experience with the tyranny of the English
Crown, the Founders
were most concerned about vigilance against the inevitable
tyranny that
comes with unchecked power. Edmund Burke was perhaps the
most specific when
he wrote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men
to do nothing.” And, “There is no safety for honest men
except believing all
possible evil of evil men.”[iii]
Thus, the Founders envisioned a society that was
decentralized and barely
beyond anarchy, giving the maximum opportunity for
individual _expression_.
They understood that human beings seek structure, and
structure is part of
free choice, but because of the controlling instincts of
man and the
corruption that power often provokes, they needed
Constitutional protection
against the threat of others imposing structure upon them.
I believe their
hope for freedom in America also mirrors the best recipe
for human happiness
on an individual level and that is what gives the idea its
legitimacy.
I offer a blog for clients called Kevin’s Korner that
talks about ways to
find more happiness and productivity.[iv] This is a post
from that blog:
“The older I get the more I value freedom. It strikes me
that most of the
things that trouble people are connected to psychological
or relational
tyranny. That may sound like radical libertarian language
but if you think
about it, the happiest people we know are the freest. That
does not mean you
should jump on the next train to anarchy and dump all of
your moral and
social responsibilities. But it does mean that you have
the right to live
your life based primarily on your wants rather than your
shoulds. Living
this way allows one to choose his responsibilities and
relationships wisely
to the extent he can, and avoid being an emotional
pack-rat that comes from
the tyranny of the incorporation of other-imposed
requirements. Choose your
responsibilities wisely and live freer and happier.”
According to political theorist Hanna Fenichel Pitkin,
liberty implies a
system of rules, and a network of restraint and order,
while freedom has a
more general meaning, which ranges from an opposition to
slavery to the
absence of psychological or personal encumbrances.[v] In
today’s usage, the
words are used interchangeably even though a more precise
usage would
probably bring about a renewed preference for liberty.
Since I am focusing
on psychological and sociological effects, I am choosing
to use the more
general term, freedom, but I do not wish to be
disrespectful to the more
precise notion of liberty, which has a stronger
epistemological basis in
American identity. Liberty is man’s natural condition that
our Founders
believed was a universal right. Thus, the concept cannot
be trivialized in
the manner that the less specific word, freedom, often is
in common
discourse.
This psychological notion, that free people are happy
people is not without
real world evidence. If one looks around the world it is
readily apparent
that countries high on authoritarianism tend to be low on
happiness and
countries high on free choice tend to be high on
happiness.[vi] Furthermore,
there is significant research to suggest that happiness is
positively
correlated with work schedule flexibility and personal
control.[vii] People
that have control over what they do and when they do it
tend to be happier
than people who are on fixed schedules and with tight job
requirements. The
freedom to make one’s own work schedule is an important
happiness factor.
Communalism is not the opposite of freedom as some Radical
Libertarians
wrongly postulate. On the contrary, free people tend to
choose to put energy
into the relationships that matter to them and eschew
those that are
repressive. Forced charitible giving is frequently at odds
with happiness.
Free people also tend to be better neighbors because they
are unencumbered
by the resentment that often comes with forced
neighborliness. Psychological
freedom is thus, the antidote to an overactive Superego.
Free will allows us to live intentionally without
emotional baggage, or as I
like to label it, psychological tyranny. Psychological
tyranny is when we
allow things that haunt us from the past or fears about
the future to
disrupt our enjoyment of the present. Psychological
freedom is letting go of
those past or future tyrannies in order to experience the
present fully.
Psychological freedom produces the opportunity for
happiness. Consequently,
much of the work in psychotherapy is helping people learn
to let go of
psychological tyranny so they can make deliberate healthy
choices.
A fulfilled life is an intentional life. The happy person
is aware of his
interdependence with his community and the opportunities
it presents, adds
positive energy to it, but does not let himself become
entrapped by
tyrannical darkness. Darkness usually comes in the form of
narcissism,
dependency, or attempts to control. Happy people make
deliberate choices in
order to experience the full breadth of humanity without
getting engulfed by
tyranny. A freedom mindset enables one to do so.
Thus, the real goal of all western influenced
psychotherapies, in my
opinion, is to help people discover the freedom to act on
their own
intentions, which involves, first clarifying those
intentions and removing
the barriers to the free _expression_ thereof. Great
therapists have faith in
the power of individuals to decide what is best for them
when they are free
enough to act intentionally. The neurotic individual is
constrained by
controlling social introjects that overly inhibit free
will and
choice.[viii]
Our Founders may not have been psychoanalysts but they
understood this
phenomenon well. Indeed they were operating from the same
enlightened
principles that eventually gave birth to the Analytic
Movement that was
itself a reformation against social tyranny. Free people
can choose to act
in ways that bring them happiness and can thusly share
that happines in
their neighborliness with their families and their
communities. Forced
neighborliness, conversely, is akin to martyrdom and often
leads to
resentment because the controlled individual feels he is a
prisoner of
other-imposed expectations. Consequently in societies
where people are not
free to choose neighborliness we often find
pseudomutuality and despair. And
when we limit choice we create powerlessness.[ix]
It has been said that Americans are the most generous
people on earth, a
notion that is supported by the huge amounts of giving we
do after natural
disasters that occur around the world. But most of us do
not want our
government telling us how and when to give. We want to
make those choices
ourselves. We want to apply our free will to do good for
others. This is of
course a key distinction between Liberals and
Conservatives in the United
States. Liberals often advocate mandated giving in the
form of taxation for
the redistribution of wealth from those that have more to
those that have
less. Conservatives usually advocate for voluntary
charity. In today’s
parlance this difference of perspectives is often couched
in the social
justice vs. voluntary charitible giving debate.
In a command system, even if the command elements are
virtuous, free will is
subservient to collective authority, which is
authoritarian in nature. Man
is not free to give. He is compelled to give in a manner
that is reminiscent
of how his mommy expected him to share his toys with his
four-year old
playmate. He does it but has no choice in the matter and
derives pleasure
only from the knowledge that he has pleased his mommy and
thus will not be
punished or abandoned. He enjoys no existential freedom or
intrinsic
satisfaction until he can decide for himself from his own
volition whether
he wants to share or not. Voluntary charity, thus, in
contrast with coerced
redistribution of one’s resources, reflects an advanced
psychological and
moral stage of development.
If the importance of freedom is so intuitive and the
social science
supporting freedom so well articulated, why am I including
it in a book
written in 2010? Because not everyone agrees. Even after
our Founders risked
life and limb to fight for freedom and codified freedom
into every aspect of
our governance system there are still those that believe
freedom is the
enemy of fairness. They believe they must limit your
freedom in order to
create more fairness for other people, or for other
creatures, or for the
environment. They don’t understand that their attempts to
make the world
more fair, even if well-intentioned, often have the effect
of making the
world more controlled, more regulated, less creative, and
less enlightened.
History repeats itself and we need to learn this lesson
continuously, the
lesson that Thomas Paine knew when he made his famous
quote: “Those who
expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men,
undergo the fatigue
of supporting it. "[x]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Adrian Worsfold, Freudian Psychology in Brief,
accessed December 13,
2010; available at:
http://www.change.freeuk.com/learning/socthink/sfreud.html.
Libidinous
energy is a component of Drive Theory, which concludes
that humans are
motivated by aggressive and sexual “drives” (ID) to seek
power and
restrained by social conscience (Superego).
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Wikiquote Contributors, United States, “Edmund
Burke,” Wikiquote,
accessed December 13, 2010; available at:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke.
[iv] Kevin Kervick, Kevin’s Korner (blog) Available at:
http://kevinkervick.wordpress.com.
[v] Hannah Fenichel Pitkin, “Are Freedom and Liberty
Twins?” Political
Theory, 16, no. 4 (November, 1988) 523-552.
[vi] Ronald Inglehart, Robert Foa, Christopher Peterson,
and Christian
Welzel, “Development, Freedom, and Happiness: A Global
Perspective,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, no. 4 (1998):
264-285.
[vii] K. Christensen and B. Schneider, eds., Workplace
Flexibility:
Realigning 20th Century Jobs to 21st Century Workers
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2010): 274-308.
[viii] The Free Dictionary, accessed 12/14/10; available
at:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/introjects. Introjection
means to
incorporate characteristics of a person or object into
one’s own psyche
unconsciously.
[ix] Lyman Wynne et. al., “Pseudomutuality in the Family
Relations of
Schizophrenics,” Psychiatry, 21 (1958): 205- 220.
Pseudomutuality refers to
a dysfunctional family condition that is characterized by
false intimacy.
[x] Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, no. 4 (1777).
Chapter Eight - Personal Responsibility
If people believe they have some influence over how
regulations that affect
them are constructed, they tend to trust the structures.
If they see the
regulatory authority as separate from them, they resist
the control. I
believe this is where we are today. Most people today do
not believe the
government is an extension of their authority.
regards,
Kevin
Hi Billy,
On Nov 1, 2011, at 12:56 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> How Not to Argue for Limited Government and Lower
Taxes
> T. M. Scanlon
> This article is part of Libertarianism and Liberty, a
forum on arguments
> for libertarian policy conclusions.
>
> Libertarians embrace liberty as their fundamental
starting point. From
> this, they advocate a program of limited government
and lower taxes.
>
> But it’s not clear how they get from their starting
point to their policy
> conclusion.
Very nice analysis, though I'm a little fuzzy about his
conclusion.
I also realized a fundamental flaw in Libertarian
reasoning: the assumption
that humans are rational.
We aren't. The human brain isn't designed for rational
calculation. It is
designed for *heuristics* -- determining behavior by
matching patterns
against the environment.
In fact, this is the only kind of system that can deal
with the real
world -- in the mathematical sense. The world is real,
not rational --
continuous floating-point numbers, not discrete integers.
The only robust
way to cope with reality is to use some kind of fuzzy
logic --- which leads
to heuristics. Logic is one important heuristic, but
frankly of limited
validity, because it depends incredibly precisely on the
initial conditions,
and in complex systems the relation of outputs to inputs
is generally
chaotic not linear. The mapping between the analog real
world and the
digital rational world -- analog-to-digital -- is really
hard, and in fact
one of the most difficult problems in computation.
The requirement for rational thinking is the requirement
for perfect
information. Most libertarian utopias assume that
everyone has access to
sufficiently accurate information to decide for
themselves. But we don't.
All information is imperfect, our time and attention is
limited, and frankly
our brains (mine included) are too stupid to really make
effective decisions
about *most* things that matter to us. We *need* each
other to provide
abstractions and rules to simplify our lives to the point
of manageability.
This is not to entirely dis rationality or logic -- heck,
I make my living
off of computers and production systems designed for
maximum rationality.
But I never forget that they are the servants of human
beings, and that all
the interesting and difficult questions lie on the
*analog* side of the
equation.
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this rant, but it
struck me that
this myth of rationality runs deep in Western thought, and
I only now
realized that the emperor has no clothes -- or at most, a
headband.
DRB, Kevin -- as the Libertarian-leaning among us, what do
you think?
-- Ernie P.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog:
http://RadicalCentrism.org
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog:
http://RadicalCentrism.org
