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The Political Spectrum Con
by Nelson Hultberg
August 1, 2005
One of the
most important issues in today's world entails a very exasperating
fallacy being implanted into the American mind in order to justify
the massive centralization of modern government. It is our academic
world's warping of the political spectrum. What the American people
are being taught as the political left, center, and right is a
severe distortion of the facts of reality. Unfortunately such a
distorted view is widely prevalent because most Americans have been
educated in our government controlled school system.
Crypto-authoritarians have now cloned themselves throughout our
universities; and one of their nefarious weapons is what I term the
"political spectrum con." The tragic result of their ideological
warping is that droves of bright college graduates are being sent
out into the world every year with a poisoned view as to the
requisites of Jeffersonian freedom and prosperity. They are thus
driven to approve ever-increasing taxation and regimentation so as
to relentlessly expand government power.
What Is
the Political Spectrum?
The idea
of a political spectrum, is one of the first concepts taught and
analyzed in poly-sci and economics courses in college. It is a
listing of the world's various political-economic systems on a
chart, placing each system on the chart toward the left, middle or
right, according to the basic type of government that system
upholds. It is a natural way to provide the over�all perspective
needed in judging the different political and economic forms that
exist, and thus a very important tool in teaching what the political
world is all about.
To
understand why the political spectrum that is taught today is so
perniciously false, we must first delve into a bit of Aristotelian
philosophy. The notion of a political spectrum with three poles of
left, right and center has come to us as a legacy from Aristotle's
idea that virtue consists of the "rational course" that lies between
two opposite and nat�ural extremes. This rational course he called
the Golden Mean. For example, as Aristotle tells us in his Ethics,
if a man is confronted with danger, he meets it in one of three
ways. He succumbs to the extreme of cowardice, or to the opposite
extreme of rashness; or he chooses the middle course of courage,
which is contrary to both. In like fashion, a man can choose
liberality, which is midway between the opposite extremes of
stinginess and extravagance, self-control between the
extremes of abstemiousness and drunkenness, and ambition
between sloth and greed. [1]
Aristotle's theory was based upon the fact that in most human
action, there is a wide range of intensity, all the way from too
little (defect), to too much (excess). In between such defect and
excess, there lies an appropriate mean which would be virtue, with
the two opposites of defect and excess being vices. In other words,
good is the wisdom of balance, and evil is when you stray away from
the Golden Mean toward one of the two extremes.
There are,
of course, many values of life (other than the ones Aristotle put
forth) that can also be placed upon a spectrum to determine a Golden
Mean. Human life entails a wide array of desires, actions, traits,
conditions and needs, numerous of which can be portrayed in terms of
a vice-virtue-vice relationship. Listed below are a few examples
that I have put together:
Thus,
midway between the defect of apathy and the excess of zealotry,
there lies the rational balance of concern. Between vulgarity
and prud�ery, there is the mean of decency. Between chaos and
regimentation, there is order. And between the extremes of
slavery and anarchy lies freedom.
I am quite
aware of the reservations held by some scholars as to the usefulness
of Aristotle's doctrine of the mean to meaningfully analyze life's
various phenomena. It is said that such a concept is "relative;" it
is a form of "circular reasoning;" and it avoids adherence to
principle in favor of the "middle-of-the-road." On the contrary,
every one of these claims is demonstrably false and I have written a
book, Reality's Golden Mean, that shows why. What I show in
the book is that the doctrine of the mean is fundamentally
misunderstood by its antagonists, which has led to its distortion in
our colleges, which has led to a warped and incongruous philosophy
among those who are attempting to defend the ramparts of freedom.
But the scope of this essay must be limited to a generic analysis of
the Aristotelian mean. Sometime next year, Reality's Golden Mean
should be out; and it will fully corroborate the efficacy of
Aristotle's doctrine in determining much of what is good and bad
about human life.
It is the
Aristotelian way of thinking then that has led to the concept of a
political spectrum. By listing the various ideological systems on a
left to right chart, one can find the two opposite extremes and then
determine a "mean" which would be the rational course that
lies between them. Here is where the danger arises, however. The
political spectrum chart has been distorted over the years by most
intellectuals throughout Europe and America in order to make their
political bias toward a massive centralized welfare state look
proper and virtuous. Such a distortion has taken several different
forms, but is usually accomplished by portraying fascism as a
"dictatorship of the right" and communism as a "dictatorship of the
left," and then establishing a false choice between them.
What
follows below is an example of the way in which the
political�-economic spectrum is conceived to be by the great
majority of Americans today:
With this
picture, students have gotten the idea that both ends of the
spectrum are dictatorships (communism on the left and fascism on the
right), and that the democratic welfare state of contemporary
Amer�ica is the only possible good, for it is the Golden Mean
between two opposite vices. In order to point out the fallacies
involved here, we must first define the terms being used. Webster's
New Collegiate Dictionary says the following (to which I have added
clarifying remarks in parentheses):
Communism -- a totalitarian
system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls
state owned means of production with the pro�fessed aim of
establishing a stateless society; a theory advocating the
elimination of private property. (The state holds power not only
over property, but over every aspect of life. In practice, communism
eventu�ally requires control over all human activities, for all of
life is interrelated. If the state is to control one aspect of life,
then it must control all aspects to be effective.)
Socialism -- a system or
condition of society in which the means of production are owned and
controlled by the state; a system of society or group living in
which there is no private property. (There are no dif�ferences
between socialism and communism, other than superficial ones that
are concocted theoretically. In practice, socialism means state
ownership and operation of the factors of production, which means
rigid control of human beings and all their activities in order to
be effective. Socialism and communism are one and the same.)
Welfarism -- a social system
based upon the assumption by a politi�cal state of primary
responsibility for the individual and social welfare of its
citizens. (Rather than owning and operating the factors of
production, the state merely regulates them and redistributes the
results of their productivity according to what is democratically
desired. It is a halfway house between communism which is state
ownership, and capitalism which is private ownership.)
Capitalism -- an economic
system characterized by private or corpor�ate ownership of capital
goods, by investments that are determined by pri�vate decision
rather than by state control. (The state is restricted to preserving
a free domestic order by punishing force and fraud. It is neither to
own nor operate the factors of production, nor to interfere in the
peaceful decisions of the marketplace, leaving it to be controlled
by the natural laws such as supply and demand that operate within
it.)
Fascism
-- a political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation and
race above the individual, and that stands for a centralized
autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of
opposition. (The state has power over every aspect of the economy to
plan and regulate its workings. Property is owned privately, but
controlled by the gov�erning authorities as to what it is to
produce, how and when it is to be disposed of, etc.)
The
Fallacies in Today's Teachings
With these
definitions in mind, let's now examine the fallacies and distortions
involved in the above political spectrum.
Fallacy
#1 -- Communism, socialism,
and fascism are different fundamental systems deserving separate
places on the spectrum. They obviously are not. They are all
variants of the same dictatorial philosophy (which is collec�tivism)
and belong together on the same side of the spectrum. Each one
advocates total state control and/or ownership of all property
through a centralized government and severe economic and social
regimentation. None of them recognize the concept of individual
rights. And they all declare that man exists to serve the state.
The excuse
for terming communism and fascism as opposite systems is that under
communism all property is owned by the state, where under fascism
the ownership of property is left nominally in the hands of
indi�viduals, but ruthlessly controlled by the state, which reserves
the right to expropriate the property at any time the owner doesn't
abide by state dictates. Since individual ownership without
individual control is a farce, fascism is in essence no different
from communism (or socialism). All three are systems whereby the
individual and his property are sub�jected to the absolute power of
the state.
Fallacy
#2 -- Anarchy needs no
mention. Observe that there is no representation in the above
spectrum for anarchy. There is a place for total government
(communism), but no place for the absence of government (anarchy).
Is not the absence of government the correct opposite of total
government? Would it not be a truer picture with "total government"
on one side and "no government" on the other side? If we are trying
to depict what the opposite extremes of vice are, and the virtue
that lies in between, then it's impossible to get any more opposite
or any more extreme than total government and no government. You
can't go any further left than communism, or any further right than
anarchy.
Fallacy
#3 -- Socialism is good so
long as it is democratic. Democratic socialism is just another
form of dicta�torship. It is absolute rule by the "majority will"
instead of by one man or by several men on a planning board. The
individual has no clear cut rights, only conditional privileges,
which are granted and withdrawn according to the arbitrary dictates
of the collective. The majority may vote away as much of anyone's
wealth as it deems necessary or desirable. Property does not belong
to the individual. It belongs to society and is to be democratically
apportioned in whatever way the majority wishes. Since the
collective is the owner of all property, the collective naturally
becomes the sole employer, landlord, manager, banker, and teacher of
the individual. There can be no genuine freedom of choice, or
action, or thought, or desire under such a system.
Other
Forms of Fallacy
The above
distortion of the political spectrum is not the only form used.
There are others that are equally as crude in their confusion of the
truth, and thus just as damag�ing to capitalism and the concept of
freedom. In all the distortions, however, there invariably is one
common characteristic. They all endeavor to make welfarism (or some
variant of socialism) the middle ground, and capitalism one of the
extreme vices.
For
example, in The Evolution of Economic Society: An Introduction To
Economics, by Martin Gerhard Giesbrecht, the political-economic
spectrum is presented as follows: [2]
This is a
slightly altered picture of the more commonly held version just
discussed, for there is a gap in the middle. But that ol' devil
fascism is again portrayed on the far right, with capitalism
adjacent to it so as to convey its "potential evil" to an
unsuspecting populace. What possible conclusion could a young
student draw from this other than that all those on the political
right are at best borderline fascists, and that the only sane policy
is to steer a middle course of compromise between socialism and
capitalism -- i.e., welfare statism.
To declare
fascism to be a market economy and place it on the pol�itical right
is a severe perversion of logic. As Bruntz and Edgerton tell us in
Understanding Our Government:
"Under
Fascism and Communism, the individual counts as nothing except as he
furthers the interests of the State. Freedom to move from place to
place, to choose a job, or conduct a business are restricted or do
not exist. Every phase of political, economic, and personal activity
is regulated by the government. That is why it is called
totalitarian.
"Fascists
allow private enterprise because it is the most effective system in
the production of wealth in the interests of the nation. But it is
not FREE enterprise, for capital and labor alike are completely
controlled by the state." [3]
Fascism is
a command economy, and belongs on the political left where massive
centralized government resides. Adolph Hitler repeatedly termed his
system of government "national socialism" or the shortened term of
"nazism," knowing full well that it was every bit as collectivist as
communism. And Webster's Dictionary defines Nazi as: a member of a
German fascist party controlling Germany from 1933 to 1945 under
Adolf Hitler. Thus, fascism and socialism are merely variants of the
same system, which is collectivism. Declaring them to be opposites
is inexcusable.
Sadly,
however, this is the type of falsification that we have to endure in
today's school system. Whenever the facts of reality are being
distorted by authorities in charge of conveying truth to young
people, one needs to ask, "Cui bono?" Who benefits? In this
case, the beneficiaries are those who seek the regimentation of
Americans under a massive centralized government in Washington.
If one is
tempted to ask why "rational academics" would create such
distortions, the answer is that they do it subconsciously. Very few
openly identify such evasions to themselves. Their need is naturally
to smear the concept of capitalism (which means smearing the concept
of freedom) in the minds of the young in order to make their own
collectivist desires appear as proper, or as Aristotle would put it
-- the mean. In this way, they hope to establish the validity of a
massive welfare state as the true system for man. It is just one of
the many ex�amples of self-deception in which men of the mind
partake when attempting to promote a certain ideology they have come
to worship.
Add to
this the steady stream of misinterpretations, evasions, and lies
that have been handed down over the past 80 years concerning the
nature of capitalism and what took place during the 19th century,
and one begins to see quite clearly why the great bulk of
intel�lectuals in our academic community continue to push the
massive welfare state upon our youth as the ideal.
The entire
distortion is a subtle attempt to make advo�cates of individualism
and capitalism appear as extremists or fascists and
convince everyone that the ideal system is our present centralized
welfare state. This is certainly not a correct picture. The true
political spectrum that properly portrays reality according to
Aristotle's doctrine of the mean would be as follows:
The far
left of the spectrum is the vice of total government (whether
it calls itself communism, socialism or fascism). The far right is
its ex�act opposite, the vice of no government. The middle is the
virtue of limited government (and its economic corollary of
capitalism), with welfarism a semi-�capitalist, semi-socialist
mixture, and the anarcho-capitalism of the rad�ical libertarians a
semi-capitalist, semi-anarchist mixture.
This then
is the total political-economic spectrum. As stated, there are
numerous other variations of it being presented today, some totally
reversed to this, and some even in circles -- all of them though
very much in error. The whole notion of a political-economic
spectrum is senseless unless it is presented precisely along the
lines of Aristotle's Golden Mean idea. There have to be two
opposite poles be�yond which one cannot go and then a
virtuous middle, or it's simply not a spectrum. It's then just
an arbitrary display of various political�-economic systems with no
rhyme or reason to it, and no capacity to judge any of the systems
as right or wrong, workable or non-workable.
A great
deal of today's confusion on this issue can be attributed to the
political origin of the terms right and left. Historian Crane
Brinton tells us: "These terms grew up out of French parliamentary
practice early in the [19th] century, when the conservatives or
monarchists took to sitting in a group to the right of the presiding
officer, and the constitutional�ists and radical reformers grouped
themselves on his left." [4]
If our
present day views of the political spectrum did to some degree
evolve from the early 19th century custom in France of the
conservatives sitting to the right of the presiding officer in
parliament and the radi�cals aligning themselves to the left, then
it is time we revised our views. Such a conception is wholly
arbitrary, for the two positions can easily be reversed or
reassembled to fit any whim. By using this conception, we divest the
terms right and left of any real significance. Is it
not more rational to conceive of the terms as they have naturally
evolved in Amer�ica where, throughout the 20th century, the
political left has advocated a larger and more interventionist
government, while the political right has advocated a smaller and
less intrusive government? Is not Aristotle closer to the truth than
"parliamentary seating arrangements" of the 19th century?
The
True Political Spectrum
Thus,
there is no such thing as a "dictatorship of the right" as so
frequently declared by our intellectuals in the universities and the
media. ALL DICTATORSHIPS ARE OF THE LEFT! The farther we go to the
right on the spectrum, the less government we will have, not
more. The usage of such philosophically fraudulent
terminology as a "totalitarianism of the right" can only further
confuse this already snarled issue, by creating a phony association
of capitalism and fascism in the people's minds and causing them to
fear all attempts to move to the right on the poli�tical spectrum
toward less government and more freedom.
The fact
that such confusions are created so frequently by those of academic
prowess is indicative of one of two factors: 1) the affliction of
intellectual error on their part, or 2) the perpetration of
intellec�tual deceit on their part. A much clearer and more
realistic picture of the spectrum would be its division into the
following five basic political philosophies:
1)
Totalitarianism. This form of government is totally dictatorial,
whether it calls itself communist, fascist or socialist. The state
either controls or has the power to control every avenue of life
(political, economic, sociological and personal).
2)
Welfarism. This is the form of government utilized in all the
Western democracies today where the state arbitrarily controls the
economy, attempting to assume the responsibility for the people's
welfare through expropriation and redistribution of personal wealth
and regulation of their business activities. Such a political system
is supposed to be the great middle way, or the "vital center." But
as we have seen, it is not really the true middle ground (or Golden
Mean) at all. It is an attempt to move closer to totalitarianism on
the far left, and partially utilize the milder tenets of socialism
and fascism so as to somehow form a caretaker state of half
government controls and half personal freedom. Since there are no
specific constitutional limits placed upon how much govern�ment
intervention there is to be, however, the caretaker state continues
to move further leftward and grow larger and larger each decade.
3)
Constitutional Republicanism. This is the political-economic
system of strictly limited government and a free marketplace. It
does not leave the role of government up to the whims of the
majority will as our present day welfare state does. It declares in
a written Constitu�tion what basic areas the government is going to
be allowed to function in, and then leaves all the rest up to the
individual through voluntary interaction and initiative.
Its
primary underlying principles are: The individual is to rule and
sustain his own life. Any government laws and services that need to
be enacted must always be implemented within the constraints of
federalism, which means first on the local level, then on the
state level, and then on the federal level. And all such laws must
be objective.
In other
words, the law must be close to the people that it concerns, and it
must not be used as a provider of special privileges -- e.g.,
corporation subsidies, price controls, monopolistic protection for
unions, welfare services, affirmative action programs, non-uniform
tax rates, etc. Government is to be limited in its scope to the
three basic functions necessary for the preservation of domestic
order (military defense, police forces and courts of law) and the
performance of those few public services that cannot be functionally
handled through the marketplace (such as city streets, fire
departments, communicable disease control, etc.).
Anything
that can be handled privately should be handled privately. No
government has the right to coerce people into produc�ing services
that they could perform on their own, but choose not to. In this way
freedom of choice is preserved, effi�ciency is maintained, men
remain their own rulers, and pay for the values of life in direct
proportion to their usage of them. This is the standard defining
principle of government that guided Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and
the rest of the Founding Fathers in their formation of the Republic.
It has remained down to the modern day the undergirding support for
all champions of liberty and domestic order.
For
example, most of today's constitutionalists and free-market
advocates would feel comfortable with the following Statement of
Principles by the American Conservative Union in 1964: "We remark
the inherent tendency of government to tyranny. The prudent
commonwealth will therefore labor tire�lessly, by means agreeable to
its peculiar genius and traditions, to limit and disperse the power
of government. No task should be confided to a higher authority that
can be performed at a subsidiary level; and whatever the people
can do for themselves should not be confided to government at all."
[5]
4)
Anarcho-Capitalism. This is the political system advocated by
the followers of Murray N. Rothbard (For a New Liberty) and
Bruce L. Benson (The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State).
It declares the Constitution to be invalid, and all organized state
functions to be immoral. According to these theorists, all functions
of the state should be abolished -- not only the tyrannical
functions such as redistribution of income and social engineering,
but also the protective functions such as the military,
police and courts of law. They insist that everything should be
privatized and provided by the marketplace. Thus,
anarcho-�capitalists do not really want to eliminate the
"protective" government functions; they just want to change them
from state provided to privately provided institutions.
They
purposely term themselves "anarcho�-capitalists" so as to
distinguish themselves from total anarchy. The basic premise of the
Rothbardians is that if left alone in the absence of a mandatory
state apparatus, men would form their own necessary armies and
police forces privately via the profit motive, and by so
doing, would avoid the chaotic Hobbesian war of all against all that
pure anarchy would be.
Rothbardians will dispute it, but in an anarcho-capitalist society,
all mega-corporations would inevitably develop their own armies and
police forces. So also would the AFL-CIO, the Mafia, the NAACP, the
Catholic Church, and Donald Trump. Any person, group, business,
labor union, or religious sect could and would form their own
private defense agencies to protect their interests and their
constituents, all according to their concept of what is
right.
I think it
is fair to say that less government is certainly needed in the
modern world, but the anarchist libertarians go far beyond the pale.
In trying to link capitalism to a privatized military,
police, and court system, they diminish the credibility
of free enterprise in the eyes of all rational intellects.
Unthinkingly they lend strength to the collectivist claim that
capitalism is the "rule of the jungle." This is no way to launch a
freedom movement to challenge the tyranny of modern statism.
This
writer sees in such a political philosophy the same impossible
utopianism that devoured the far left socialists of the early 20th
century. At that time, the collectivist theme was: "As soon as the
Utopia is realized, the State will wither away." Today,
anarcho�-capitalists sing the opposite tune: "As soon as the State
withers away, the Utopia will be realized." Both proclamations fail
to grasp the true nature of human beings and the necessary
essentials for a society of law. Both are attempts to convert an
evil into a workable ideal through the evasion of reality.
5)
Anarchism. This is a pre-civilizational "anti-social system"
where there are no organized state institutions (voluntary or
otherwise), no legal framework, no army for defense, no police
forces, and no courts of law -- just the rule of the jungle in the
nomadic manner of our Cro-Magnon period of history. In such a
society, anything would go if you were strong enough or brutal
enough, or if you had a large enough clan of marauders and were
willing to live outside the communal bonds that motivate most human
beings.
Where
Rothbard's Anarcho-Capitalists Go Wrong
One of the
important reasons for the basic libertarian antagonism towards the
welfare state lies in the fact that welfarism is an attempt to
philoso�phically compromise freedom with totalitarianism (i.e.,
merge what is politically "the good" with what is politically "the
evil"). It is an attempt to combine legal and illegal methods in the
same society, which is not only immoral but also impractical, for
such a compromise system will eventually evolve into some variant of
the very evil with which it is try�ing to compromise. As Ayn Rand
declared throughout her works, there can be no middle ground between
the two fundamental philosophical opposites of slavery and freedom.
This is her famous "either-or principle." Either we are a free
society, or a slave society, but we can't be both.
This all
libertarians agree upon, or they're not libertarians. But such a
basic premise works the other way also. Just as it is impossible to
compromise the FREEDOM of a Constitutional Republic with the slavery
of socialism on the far left, to establish a workable welfare
statism, so it is also impossible to compromise the ORDER of a
Constitutional Republic with the chaos of anarchy on the far right,
to establish a workable non-government society.
For
example, of all the various life values that I outlined previously,
there are four that when placed on the spectrum show distinctly the
desirability of a strictly limited government system, as compared to
the two extremes of "total government" and "no government." Each of
the three primary forms of government organization lead to the
specific values listed below:
If
Aristotle were alive today, he would be telling Murray Rothbard's
anarcho-capital�ists that in all four of the above triads of value,
the mean will always evolve under limited government, while either a
"defect" or an "excess" will evolve under the two opposite extremes
of total government and no government. That is to say, a no
government society will ultimately produce an excess of freedom and
individuality, and a defect of order and growth. This is the way
much of human life is constructed -- on a spectrum between opposite
vices.
In any
attempted compromise between virtue and vice, all you end up doing
is eventually establishing the vice you are trying to compromise
with -- total regimentation and uniformity if it's a leftward
compromise, and total chaos and perversity if it's a rightward
compromise. The anarcho-�capitalists fail to see this, that they are
just as distinctly a threat to the ideal of individual freedom as
the welfare statists, only from the opposite side of the spectrum.
The welfare statists threaten individual freedom from the left with
too much government, while anarcho-capitalists threaten from
the right with not enough government. Both experiments will
end in tyranny and disillusionment, one from stifling bureaucracy
and the other from the unchecked terror of brute mentalities.
Misapplying the "Either-Or Principle"
Rothbardians, thus, fail to fully apply the "either-or principle,"
i.e., to the political right as well as to the political left; and
as a result they attempt a compromise between opposite values of
good and evil. But this is not their only error. They misconstrue
the either-or principle in another more serious way.
The
either-or principle has made anarchist libertarians think in terms
of good and evil being a TWO-POLED spectrum, and that one must then
choose between one of the two extremes. With such a conception of
good and evil, one must inevitably choose anarchy in order to remain
logically consistent, for anarchy is the opposite extreme to
totalitarianism. Since totalitarianism is obviously an evil, anarchy
must be the good. Thus, anarcho-capitalists maintain that striking a
mean between the two is an indefensible compromise, i.e., trying to
play the middle-of-the-road.
The error
in such thinking is that the concept of good and evil is seldom a
two-poled spectrum. It is more often a three-poled spectrum, as
Aristotle demonstrated twenty-four hundred years ago. The ideal (or
good) lies in the middle of the spectrum, with the evil being the
two opposite extremes beyond which one cannot go.
What the
anarchist theoreticians miss is that such a three-poled concept of
good and evil does not invalidate the "either-or principle" on
fundamental values. Remember it states that there can be no
compromise between two OPPOSITE fundamental values, i.e., between
good and evil values. This means there can be no compromise be�tween
the Golden Mean (which is the good) and either of the extremes
(which are the evils). Thus, there can be no compromise between a
limited government and totalitarianism, and there can be no
compromise between a limited government and anarchism. To strike a
mean between totalitarianism and anarchism, is not compromising
between good and evil because both of these extremes are evils.
One must
always keep in mind the difference between the "mean" and the
"middle-of-the-road." The former is the establishment of the good;
the latter is an attempt to establish a halfway point between the
good and one of the extremes. Welfarism is a middle-of-the-road
posi�tion on the spectrum and so is anarcho-capitalism, for they
attempt to combine aspects of both the mean and the extreme (i.e.,
compromise the good with the evil).
So
anarcho-capitalists are making a very profound error when they claim
that to espouse the doctrine of the mean is to abandon adherence to
principle in favor of the "middle-or-the-road." On the contrary, it
is they, the anarcho-capitalists, who have assumed a
middle-of-the-road position -- i.e., a compromise between the
political good and the political evil.
Murray
Rothbard did not understand Aristotle's doctrine of the mean and its
profound implications for a free society. The Founding Fathers did
understand it, at least implicitly, and as a consequence, they
established a limited constitutional government as the ideal for
free men. They understood that the extremes were evil, and thus must
be avoided. Rothbard's failure to grasp this has led his followers
into a futile attempt to enshrine a modified anarchism as
some sort of ideal society. The pied piper has led the children off
into the forest, and they are now lost. Sadly the libertarian
movement is lost too until it can come to understand Aristotelian
wisdom again.
There are
several other errors that anarchists make (e.g., they subscribe to
Rand's flawed "non-aggression principle"), but such errors are
beyond the scope of this essay. My forthcoming book, Reality's
Golden Mean, contains a 57-page chapter with a much deeper
analysis of the anarcho-libertarian approach that exposes all the
fundamental flaws upon which Murray Rothbard and Bruce Benson have
erected their radical thesis. (To read a review of the book,
click here.)
What I
demonstrate in the book is that the doctrine of the mean is a
natural law instilled into reality that can be used theoretically to
establish what the "universal political good" is for man. The law of
the mean is to the intellectual realm what the law of gravity is to
the physical realm. It is a fixed, philosophical North Star that can
be used to direct our lives and our societies toward the ideal. Our
modern academics and media pundits are totally confused as to the
mean's applicability and universality in our lives. When properly
understood, the doctrine of the mean demonstrates convincingly that
the true political ideal is what the Founding Fathers attempted to
establish -- a system of limited government based upon OBJECTIVE
LAW, i.e., equal rights under the law.
It is only
at the center of the spectrum (the mean) that objective law can be
found, and it is only a limited Constitutional Republic that can
achieve this mean. All other systems to the authoritarian left or to
the anarchistic right are based, to some degree or another, on
ARBITRARY LAW out of which come eventually tyranny and chaos. The
fundamental values of civilization -- freedom, order, and justice --
cannot exist without a system of objective law; and objective law
cannot exist if a country strays away from the "vital center" of the
spectrum, i.e., the Golden Mean.
Ignoring Half of Reality
To
understand how thoroughly corrupt and irrational our modern day
academics and media pundits are on this issue of the political
spectrum, we now need to investigate how they "ignore the right half
of reality." Below is another view of the correct spectrum whereby
the mean is republicanism midway between the opposite
extremes of statism and anarchism.
On the
statist left, there are two categories -- the extreme of
totalitarianism and its modified version of authoritarianism (i.e.,
the welfare state), which is what all the Western political systems
of the world have become. On the anarchist right, there are
two categories -- the extreme of total anarchy and its modified
version of anarcho-capitalism, which is what many of today's
libertarians espouse. In the center lies the mean of a
Constitutional Republic, which the Founding Fathers espoused. These
fundamental categories represent the entirety of political reality.
Observe,
however, how the above depiction of political reality is distorted
to serve the advocates of statism and their goals. The primary
categories of republicanism and anarchism are basically ignored in
all orthodox portrayals of the political spectrum. Our professors in
the colleges and our talking heads in the media promote a spectrum
that entails only positions within the category of statism on the
left. The entire right side of the spectrum, one-half to
two-thirds of reality, is simply ignored.
For
example, we are presented over and over again on all the TV talk
shows with representatives supposedly from the "left" and from the
"right," and often from someone who attempts to carve out a "middle
ground." This makes it appear as if the presenter is unbiased,
attempting to present all sides, searching for the truth. But all
three of these representatives (let's say for example, Ted Kennedy
for the left, Rudy Giuliani for the middle ground, and Newt Gingrich
for the right) subscribe to the concept of a highly centralized
mega-state running the lives of Americans from Washington. All three
advocate the violation of individual rights in order to convey group
privileges. All three shy away from any allegiance to the original
vision of America as a Republic of States -- instead maintaining
that America is a "mass democracy." All three support a progressive
income tax and substantial redistribution of wealth. All three are
philosophical statists despite their harmonious paeans to the
Constitution and the Founding Fathers.
Observe
also that all strict constitutionalists and libertarians are omitted
from debates in the media with their ideas either suppressed or
caricatured in academic circles. (Unfortunately Rothbard's
utopianism lends credence to the statist caricature of
libertarianism.) As a result, the media and our schools are able to
present a totally false picture of political reality because their
left-center-right portrayal of politics is nothing but a division of
the category of statism into meaningless sub-categories of
liberals, moderates, and conservatives. The category of anarchism
is totally ignored, while the category of republicanism is
seldom acknowledged, and then only to smear it as "out there in the
fever swamps of right-wing extremism" where fascists, terrorists,
wacko militia groups, and the KKK reside.
In this
way, the statist establishment can convey to an unsuspecting
populace that our only basic choice is between three different
versions of statism rather than between statism, republicanism, and
anarchism. Who wins in this kind of contest? Only the statist
mentalities who wish for larger and larger government. If the reader
has ever wondered why government grows relentlessly more mastodonic
every decade, it is because the American people during the past 80
years have been taught that such largesse is our only choice.
We have
shrunk our view of political reality down to one category -- STATISM
-- and have declared the political spectrum to be solely within
its parameters. We should, therefore, not be surprised when the
citizens of America vote in lockstep for more and more government
programs every year, or when our young people usher forth from their
educational years ignorant of the great philosophical issues that
ignited the American revolution.
It is a
horrifying indictment upon the distortion of our times and our minds
when we condemn those who are preaching ideological adherence to the
Golden Mean as "fanatical" and "extreme." But that is precisely what
the welfare state authoritarians of today are doing when they
proclaim all those on the "far political right" to be wild eyed
extremists. Actually it is the welfare state authoritarians who are
the extremists. It is they who are relentlessly pushing America out
toward the left end of the spectrum and the "regimentation"
of total government. And in like manner, Rothbard's anarchist
libertarians are trying to push America out toward the right end
of the spectrum and the "chaos" of no government. It is we, the
laissez-faire capitalists, the advocates of a strict constitutional
government, who are solidly rooted in the center of reality firmly
fixed upon truth and the ideal.
In
conclusion, a Constitutional Republic (and its economic corollary of
capitalism), operating within the constraints of federalism, is the
true VITAL CENTER if the "entirety of reality" is taken into
consideration. The fact that our establishment intellectuals and
media pundits today choose to blot out a great chunk of reality in
their explanations is indicative of a society that has lost its
crucial philosophical moorings. In such a society, freedom and
sanity are headed for extinction.
Notes
1. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by Martin Ostwald (New York:
Liberal Arts Press, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1962), Book II, Chapters 7 &
8.
2. Martin Gerhard
Giesbrecht, The Evolution of Economic Society: An Introduction To
Economics (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1972), p. 179.
3. George G. Bruntz and
Ronald B. Edgerton, Understanding Our Government (Boston:
Ginn and Company, 1971), p. 17.
4. Crane Brinton,
Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963), p. 354.
5. Cited by Frank S.
Meyer in Left, Right and Center: Essays on Liberalism and
Conservatism in the United States, Robert A. Goldwin, ed.
(Chicago: Rand McNally& Co., 1965), p. 9. Emphasis added.
[This
article is excerpted from my forthcoming book, Reality's Golden
Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative Values.]
To read a review of the book,
CLICK HERE.
� 2005
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