 |
| Libertarianism, in its emphasis on moral autonomy - which says that each man can determine right and wrong for himself - actually undermines liberty, and leads to both the tyranny of the mob and the tyranny of the state. |
by Steve C. Halbrook
(from Appendix C of God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws)
Libertarianism, while having a
more developed platform than conservatism and liberalism,
nevertheless is also internally incoherent.
A perfect example is in how Joseph M. Hazlett II, in describing
libertarianism, contradicts the philosophy on its own grounds from one
paragraph to the next:
This freedom
from coercion is essential to man’s personal and economic well-being. Man has a natural right to life, liberty, and
property, just as Locke had stressed, and the libertarians utilize this as a
basis for their philosophy. Anything that
infringes upon these rights through coercion and or threat, whether it be a man
or a government, must be opposed on moral and political grounds.
The individual
is considered to be a rational creature.
In other words, each person through reason can decide their own morals,
their path in life, and how to optimize their liberty through rational and
voluntary decisions. Libertarians are therefore
laissez-faire in individual, religious, and economic matters.[1]
Hazlett says libertarianism is
based on the belief that man is free from coercion, having a “natural right to life, liberty, and
property.” Any threat to this “natural
right” must be morally opposed. Hence at
first it seems that libertarianism holds to an absolute, unchanging moral
law.
But in the next paragraph,
Hazlett turns around and says everyone should be free to decide morality for
themselves; religion should be “laissez-faire.”
Now it seems that morality is no longer absolute, but relative.
So libertarianism contradicts
itself by being simultaneously absolute and relativistic. On the one hand, it teaches moral absolutes:
that man has absolute moral rights to life, liberty, and property. In this case, man would have no right to decide his own morality, since moral absolutes cannot be
subjectively determined; man’s rights to life, liberty, and property are
absolute. On the other hand,
libertarianism teaches moral relativism: that man can subjectively decide
morals for himself. In this case,
though, man is not morally bound to recognize moral rights to life, liberty,
and property, and can in fact oppose
such rights.
Thus, libertarian moral rights
undermine libertarian freedom, and libertarian freedom undermines libertarian
moral rights. If morality is relative in
a libertarian sense, then society is not morally obligated to affirm a
libertarian philosophy. If morality is
absolute in a libertarian sense, then society is morally obligated to deny a
libertarian philosophy.
Besides libertarian moral rights
and libertarian relativism contradicting one another, the concept of “natural
rights” in a godless, libertarian universe is illogical. How are rights possible without God? Where
are these rights in nature? Can we touch them, taste them, see them,
smell them, or hear them? Does an
impersonal, amoral universe care about rights?
And, while libertarianism is an anti-statist
philosophy, its emphasis on man’s moral autonomy undermines its opposition to
statism. State policy reflects the
decisions of individuals who make up
the state.
Therefore, when civil rulers hold
to the libertarian view of man’s moral autonomy, the state itself becomes morally autonomous. And when the state is morally autonomous, it
neither answers to God, nor the people.
Rulers are neither guided nor constrained by any moral absolute to keep
them from oppressing the people. Every
law is based on whatever best resonates with whatever libertarian moral path
the rulers have chosen. Libertarianism’s
end result is tyranny.
No comments:
Post a Comment