There are two major obstacles to achieving a genuinely free society in our lifetime: one, a lack of understanding of the genuine principles of freedom, and two, a lack of faith in freedom.
The first obstacle involves principally nonlibertarians. The second obstacle involves everyone, including libertarians.
If someone were to conduct a survey among the American people today in which people were asked if they felt they lived in a free society, I would bet that the vast majority of Americans would respond yes. Sure, Americans complain about how the federal government operates, about the large amount of federal spending and debt, about regulatory mishaps, about the adverse results of various foreign interventions and wars, and about various other aspects of the welfare-warfare state system under which Americans live. But I believe that most Americans would willingly agree with singer Lee Greenwald’s refrain, “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.”
My favorite quote is by the German thinker Johann Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” That quote perfectly characterizes the plight of the American people. Americans honestly believe they are free, but it just ain’t so.
What is freedom?
The first thing we need to do is to define what a genuinely free society is. A free society is one in which everyone is free to engage in any activity he wants so long as he is not violating the rights of everyone else to do the same thing — that is, as long as he isn’t initiating force or fraud against others.
A free society entails the exercise of such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. It also entails the right to keep and bear arms. These three rights and others are enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
It also entails what is known as economic liberty. Freedom entails the right to engage in any economic enterprise without permission of the state. It entails the right to enter into economic exchanges with anyone in the world, without first securing permission of the government. It entails the right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and the right to decide what to do with it: save, invest, spend, donate, hoard, or squander it.
We do not live in a society that protects the exercise of economic liberty. We live in what is called a welfare state and a government-managed economy in which the state forces people to send their money to the government so that the government can give it to others. The government also regulates economic activity, such as with minimum-wage laws, and tightly controls trade with people in foreign countries. It also manages the monetary system, choosing paper money as a medium of exchange, whose value it has debased since its inception in the 1930s.
We also live under what is called a national-security state, one in which the national-security branch of the government wields omnipotent powers, such as assassination, torture, coups, and foreign interventions and wars. It is a system that is contrary to the limited-government system on which our nation was founded.
Libertarians hold that all of these aspects of America’s welfare-warfare state system violate the genuine principles of a free society. Nonlibertarians are falsely convinced that the welfare-warfare-state way of life has instead brought them freedom.
The first obstacle in achieving a free society is the lack of understanding among the American people as to what a genuinely free society entails. Now, granted, if Americans were to see what a free society entails, they might still conclude that they don’t really want to be free. They might want to continuing living under a welfare-warfare-state form of governmental system. But at least then they would be making a conscious decision rather than one based on a false reality.
A lack of faith in freedom
Since libertarians have an understanding of the importance of economic liberty, social liberty, and a limited-government republic, it is only libertarians who can lead America to freedom. But they can only do this by standing squarely for freedom and steadfastly making the case for freedom.
Many libertarians have given up on freedom and resigned themselves to making the case for welfare-warfare-state reform. What’s wrong with reform? Nothing, if all that one is looking for is an improved form of serfdom. Freedom entails identifying infringements on liberty and removing them. Reform entails leaving infringements on liberty in place and reforming or improving them.
Making the case for reform doesn’t cause people to think about the principles of freedom. Instead, it focuses people’s attention on how to reform the serfdom under which they live. In the process, the lack of freedom continues.
The only way to achieve a genuinely free society is by arriving at a critical mass of people who understand what freedom is and who are passionately committed to attaining it. In order to find the people who fall within that category, it is necessary to make the case for genuine freedom. Making the case for reform doesn’t do that.
Why have so many libertarians thrown in the towel and resigned themselves to making the case for reform rather than the case for liberty? The answer to that question leads us to the second principal obstacle for achieving freedom — the lack of faith that so many libertarians (and nonlibertarians) have in freedom.
Why is faith in freedom important for libertarians? Given that libertarians have achieved the breakthrough that enables them to see that we are not free, obviously it is only libertarians who can lead America to freedom. But if libertarians lack a faith in freedom, how can they possibly lead anyone to freedom? Why would nonlibertarians be attracted to a philosophy that its proponents have little or no faith in?
Let’s examine some real-life examples of this phenomenon.
Social Security and Medicare
Social Security and Medicare are the crown jewels of American socialism. These two welfare-state programs are based on the socialist principle of using the coercive force of government to take money from those who own it and give it to those who, the government claims, need it more. The system, proponents say, shows that Americans are good and caring.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Care and compassion come from the willing heart of the individual, not the coercive apparatus of the state. A free society entails everyone having the right to decide what to do with his own money.
Thus, freedom necessarily entails the immediate eradication of Social Security, Medicare, and all other socialist programs.
Many libertarians say that the system needs to be reformed, not abolished. Or they say that it must be gradually reduced over the next several years, perhaps even a generation. Or they call for “opt out” plans that entail letting young people “opt out” of the system but continue paying the taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare for those who choose to remain in the system. Or they propose a fascist type of plan that entails forcing people to invest in government-approved retirement accounts.
Why don’t these libertarians favor simply repealing these socialist programs? Because they have convinced themselves that freedom won’t work. They are convinced that freedom would mean that thousands of people would be dying in the streets.
America lived without Social Security, Medicare, and other socialist programs for more than a century. In fact, America’s system of economic liberty led not only to the greatest surge of economic prosperity but also to the greatest outpouring of voluntary charity that mankind has ever seen.
There is no doubt that if Social Security, Medicare, and other socialist programs were to be suddenly repealed today, everyone would be fine. The wealthy don’t need the help. Those in the middle would have to adjust, perhaps by returning to work or reducing expenditures. For those truly in need, there would be more than sufficient help from children, grandchildren, church groups, charitable foundations, friends, relatives, physicians, hospitals, and neighborhood groups.
Permit me one example from personal experience. I grew up in Laredo, Texas, one of the poorest cities in the United States. There was no Medicare or Medicaid. Every day, doctors’ offices were filled with people, many of whom could not pay. Nonetheless, there was never an instance where a doctor refused to treat a patient based on inability to pay. They did it out of a sense of moral obligation. That’s what happens in a free society.
Immigration
Let’s take another example — immigration. For our entire lives, we have lived under a socialist immigration system, one based on the core socialist principle of central planning. Under central planning, the government determines the total number of immigrants that will be permitted into the country, the number of immigrants allocated to each country, the qualifications necessary for entry, the number permitted to work (i.e. “green cards”), and other such things.
It simply cannot be done, at least not without what the famous free-market economist Ludwig von Mises called “planned chaos.” What better term to describe the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border for the last 80 years, at least? Immigration central planning is the cause of America’s decades-old, never-ending, ongoing immigration crisis.
The system comes with a massive police state along the border in order ensure that foreigners do not enter the country illegally or without “an invitation.” This system entails warrantless searches of farms and ranches within 100 miles of the border, highway checkpoints, roving Border Patrol checkpoints, boarding of Greyhound buses to check for people’s papers, and the criminalization of hiring, harboring, helping, or transporting immigrants who are here illegally. It is also a system that comes with death, suffering, humiliation, and abuse.
The solution is to eradicate the socialist cause of the problem. In the area of immigration, that means the immediate dismantling of the Border Patrol, the immigration service (ICE), and all restrictions on the freedom of goods, services, and people to cross political borders.
Economic liberty is the solution to the perpetual crisis, death, suffering, and police state that comes with socialism. I repeat what I have been saying for more than 30 years: Economic freedom is the only solution to the immigration morass caused by socialism.
Too many libertarians have lost faith in freedom. They have convinced themselves that freedom simply will not work, at least not in the area of immigration. What they fail to recognize is that the free market and the price system are the best and most efficient regulators of human activity. Think about the United States. It has the biggest open border area in history — open borders between the states. In the past few years, countless Californians have flooded into Austin, Texas. Do you see any chaos there? Oh, sure, people have had to adjust to the massive influx of people. But as more people have moved into Austin, the prices have risen, which has induced other people to live further away or even in another part of the country. What you don’t see is thousands of Californians at the Texas border clamoring to get into the state, like we see on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Another example: Every day, hundreds of thousands of people cross back and forth between Maryland and my state of Virginia. There are no border guards regulating the flow. No one is checking for terrorists, criminals, or people with Covid or other illnesses.
Libertarian proponents of immigration controls also point to the migrant crisis in American cities. What they forget is that the government prevents migrants from working without a “green card.” Thus, the state then feels the need to take care of the people they won’t permit to work. In a free market, everyone would be free to work, and the state wouldn’t need to be taking care of anyone.
Education
A third example: education. The genuinely free society is based on the separation of school and state — that is, the end of all government involvement in education, just as our ancestors did with religion. Thus, freedom necessarily means making the case for educational liberty.
All too many libertarians have thrown in the towel on this area of statism as well. They have convinced themselves that educational liberty simply will not work — that children would simply not be educated if the state did not maintain its coercive apparatus of mandatory schooling.
Thus, many libertarians have chosen to go down the road to reform with the advocacy of school vouchers, a reform program that leaves the public-school system intact but uses the coercive apparatus of the state to take money from people to whom it belongs in order to fund the education of children from other families.
Making the case for vouchers is totally different from making the case for educational liberty. Vouchers leaves the socialist educational system intact and purports to make it better through “choice” and “competition.” Educational liberty entails making the much more difficult case of ending all governmental involvement in education.
The drug war
A fourth example of this phenomenon involves the drug war. The government punishes people for ingesting substances that the government disapproves of. Genuine freedom entails the immediate repeal of all drug laws — that is, it involves the right of people to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful or destructive.
All too many libertarians have given up in this area as well and have settled for calling for reform, such as the repeal or reform of mandatory-minimum sentences or asset-forfeiture laws or the legalization of only marijuana and not the so-called hard drugs. They have convinced themselves that if drugs were legalized, most everyone in society would become drug addicts. Since many addicts would undoubtedly go on Medicaid to seek treatment for their addiction, some libertarians undoubtedly have concluded that we can’t end drug laws until we’ve ended Medicaid. Thus, like with Social Security, Medicare, immigration, and education, they continue supporting a program that brings with it perpetual crisis, chaos, death, suffering, and police-state coercion.
Achieving freedom
Libertarians are the only ones who can lead America to freedom because libertarians have a firm grip on reality when it comes to freedom. But leading America to freedom requires a faith in freedom. If libertarians are to lead America to freedom in our lifetime, it is necessary for libertarians to restore a faith in freedom in themselves.
This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue of Future of Freedom.