Reflections on Liberty at Christmastime

Reflections on Liberty at Christmastime
by Jacob G. Hornberger, December 2000

ONE OF THE biggest differences between Christian statists and Christian libertarians concerns the role of the state in matters pertaining to morality. Christian statists believe that the state should be God’s partner who ensures, through fines and imprisonment, that people follow the correct moral path. Christian libertarians, on the other hand, believe that the state should protect the exercise of all choices, moral and immoral, so long as they do not involve the use of force or fraud against another person.

Both Christian statists and Christian libertarians agree that it is morally wrong to initiate force or fraud against another person. Thus, they oppose such acts as murder, rape, and theft, and they agree that the state should punish such misconduct.

The difference between Christian statists and Christian libertarians lies then in the realm of nonviolent and nonfraudulent choices. Statists, for example, believe that the state should coerce people into pursuing what might be considered to be a moral course of action, such as helping the poor. If a person resists the coercion — by refusing to pay his taxes, for example — statists believe that the state should prosecute and punish him. Statists also believe that the state should punish people who pursue what statists consider an immoral course of conduct that involves only peaceful action, such as drug abuse.

Libertarians, on the other hand, believe that people should be free to pursue either moral or immoral courses of action, again as long as the choices do not entail force or fraud against someone else. They want the state to punish only those who initiate force or fraud against others, such as murderers, rapists, thieves, and the like.

If you were to ask a Christian whether a person should help a person in need, the general answer, for both statists and libertarians, would be that yes, that would be the moral thing to do. Of course, each person would have a different interpretation of what “need” means and might very well arrive at a different conclusion as to whether help should be provided in each particular circumstance.

The importance of free will

Libertarians believe that these choices should ultimately be left to each individual to make on his own. Suppose someone is starving to death in the street. Should you help him out? Libertarians say that that choice is yours and yours alone. What if you choose not to help? Libertarians might condemn your choice from a moral standpoint but they would fight to protect your right to make it.

Suppose a gang approached and threatened to force you to help the starving person. Libertarians would stand against the gang’s attempt to coerce you into making the “right” choice. Again, what ultimately matters to the libertarian is that you have the right to choose, one way or the other.

For the Christian libertarian, there can be no other alternative. He believes that the very nature of free will, the great gift that God has bestowed upon man, entails the right to say no. God may want people to follow him and he may want people to love their neighbor, but free will entails the right to reject God and to reject one’s neighbor. It is the gift of free will that drives the Christian libertarian to protect the exercise of a choice that he himself might not make if he were faced with the same situation.

The Christian statist takes a very different view. He would agree that on a private basis, people should be free to decide whether to help the poor or not. But he also believes that the state should have the authority to intervene in the process and, in fact, should intervene to ensure that a person makes the “right” choices during a large portion of his life. In other words, the Christian statist would never say that the state should be responsible for all of a person’s moral choices, just a large percentage of them and that the state should have the authority to make these determinations.

This, of course, is one idea behind government’s providing welfare, public housing, food, and education to the poor in society. It’s also a driving force behind Social Security. Christian statists believe that since it is morally right that people help their parents and the poor, it is also morally right to force people to help them by means of state intervention.

The process works in the following manner. Christian statists proclaim that since the United States is predominantly a Christian nation, most people believe that it is morally correct that people share their money with the needy. Therefore, a political vote is taken in which a certain amount of money is taxed from everyone in society and then the state distributes the money to the poor.

Everyone, according to Christian statists, is thus acting in a Christian fashion — the voter, the legislator, the tax collector, and the welfare bureaucrat. Also the judges and the law-enforcement officers who stand ready to punish anyone who resists the process, for example by refusing to pay taxes. Even people who don’t vote or who oppose the entire process but whose money is taken from them anyway are considered moral, caring, and compassionate simply for being members of a society that has voted to set up a political structure to help the poor and the elderly. Everyone is acting in a Christian manner because the government is working in partnership with God to ensure that people are doing the right thing by helping people through the state’s tax-and-welfare system.

From the standpoint of the Christian libertarian, there are big problems with this entire process. First, there is the denigration of God’s sacred gift of free will. Under the statist paradigm, the individual’s right to say no is destroyed. Everyone’s choices are collectivized through the electoral process that sets up and then maintains a political system in which people are taxed to help the poor.

Doing good with other people’s money

There is also the moral problem involved in taking money from someone against his will in order to “do good” with it. And there is always the dangerous temptation to begin paying as much homage to the state as the Christian pays to God, if not more.

Under the libertarian paradigm, each person keeps his own money and makes his own choices to help the poor. Faced with a multitude of poor people, one person might give away everything he owns during the course of his lifetime. Another person might pick and choose according to the circumstances of each situation. A third might refuse to help anyone, preferring to keep everything he owns for himself.

Under the statist paradigm, all this is destroyed, at least to the extent that the state taxes each person. If the state confiscates 30 percent of a person’s income in order to give the money to the poor, then to that extent each person’s range of personal choices has been destroyed.

The statist would argue that since “society” votes to set up the entire system in the first place, the situation is, for all practical purposes, the same as if each person had made these decisions on a private basis. But is it? For one thing, some people don’t vote. Also, once the system of state coercion is set up, each person no longer is faced with a stream of daily choices. No longer must he struggle with his conscience as situations arise during the course of his life. “Should I help that person or not?” “What about that one — is he deserving or not?”

And what about the person who would prefer not to help the poor at all? The only response the statist has is, “He should want to help the poor and we’re helping him do so through the power of the state. We’re making him moral whether he wants to be or not.”

The irony is that by having the state become an equal partner with God, the statist could very well end up with a society whose level of conscience and consciousness diminishes. For as people’s range of choices is constantly diminished by coercion, the process of personal struggle that comes with individual choices is also diminished, causing the conscience to atrophy.

In other words, if people are being taxed by the state to the tune of 30 percent of their income so that the state can use the money to help the poor, over time the temptation might very well become, “Why should I donate any more of my money when I’m already helping the poor with 30 percent in the taxes I pay?”

Christmastime, of course, is a perfect time for Christians to reflect not only on the birth of Christ but also on the issue of moral judgments, liberty, and coercion. And some very important moral questions for every Christian to ponder are: (1) Should a Christian be supporting a system that forces people to do the “right” thing? (2) How can morality have any meaning when actions are the product of coercion rather than free and voluntary choice? (3) Who is behaving morally when the state helps the poor? (4) Is a state system of tax-and-welfare destructive of free will and, if so, should Christians be supporting it?

Perhaps it might be helpful to examine how Christ himself viewed the matter. Recall the story of the young rich man who approached Jesus and told him that he was following all the commandments and wanted to know whether there was anything else he could do to win eternal life. Jesus replied that the young man should sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. From the perspective of the young man, Jesus was asking too much and he walked away dejectedly.

What was Jesus’ reaction to the man’s rejection? While Jesus undoubtedly would have preferred a different answer, he respected the young man’s right to say no. Unlike Christian statists today, Jesus understood that that is the nature of free will — the right to say no. He knew that if a person doesn’t have the right to say no to God and to his neighbor, then the great gift of free will means nothing.

Equally important, unlike Christian statists today, Jesus didn’t summon state officials and demand that they take the man’s money and distribute it to the poor. Jesus knew that if he did that, that also would be denigrating and destroying God’s gift of free will.

In an era of economic prosperity, the obvious question is: Why should the American people dismantle such governmental programs as Social Security, welfare, education grants, and foreign aid? One answer, of course, is that through the dismantling of these types of governmental programs, people will be even more prosperous. But the more important answer is that it would be the Christian thing to do.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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