The Purpose of Libertarianism Is To Promote Liberty
On this show, Ron Paul discusses the definition and meaning of libertarianism. At the foundation lies the non-aggression principle. Once a person strays from that principle, under the name of "libertarianism," the whole idea becomes muddled.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
On this show, Ron Paul discusses the definition and meaning of libertarianism. At the foundation lies the non-aggression principle. Once a person strays from that principle, under the name of "libertarianism," the whole idea becomes muddled.
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
We're going to talk about a very important subject today, something that I have spent a little bit of time on, and that is libertarianism.
What is it?
What is its purpose?
And where do we stand?
How's the revolution going on, going along?
And I think it can be very interesting because I think words are so important.
And I think back to the time I first went to Congress in 1976, the word wasn't used very much, you know, and people were sort of dumbfounded about some of my votes.
It didn't follow a consistent pattern.
Of course, we think we follow consistency right away.
But you came to work for me in what year?
2001.
2001.
And, of course, I interviewed.
I had to check you out.
Do you recall that interview and coming to work for me?
I do.
And, you know, I hadn't, to be honest, given a lot of thought about the philosophy.
I came because I was attracted to your foreign policy, and I knew that you were right in opposing the wars in Europe.
I was in Europe and came back.
But I remember the interview very well because you asked me, it kind of surprised me.
You said, well, is there any part of libertarianism or my policies that you have a problem with?
And I had to be honest, and I said, well, I have a little bit of trouble with the drug war issue because I've seen some good friends of mine whose lives have been ruined by drugs.
And I just don't know.
I'm a little uncomfortable.
And you just kind of smiled and said, oh, don't worry, you'll come around.
And I did.
And you did.
You know, I always felt good about that because there was obviously not a litmus test as much as somebody with an open mind, but had been introduced and knew something about it that is true.
But there were one or two over the many years of the many dozens of people that worked for me that didn't go away more libertarian than they came in.
It happens once in a while.
Some people that didn't come around to being really good on it, it was sort of the pragmatism of it.
Government's Role in Liberty00:15:31
Oh, Ron, you're not going to be a chairman of a committee real soon.
I need a little more action.
Although, and it wasn't philosophic.
Now, our friend Lawrence Vance had an article recently on libertarianism.
And it's always a challenge to precisely define something, but I think he gave us a start on how he looked at the term.
Yeah, and this is something that kind of inspired us to talk about a little bit.
I think it was a really interesting piece he wrote a couple of weeks ago, or a week or so ago, on Lou Rockwell's site.
But here's how he starts it, and this is, I think, what got us thinking about taking from where he started.
He said, because the most non-libertarian libertarian party ticket in history is vying for the presidency, it is imperative now more than ever that libertarianism, properly, rightly defined, be explained to the masses.
And he went on to just say that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory.
It is only a political theory insofar as it regulates how the government relates to the people.
Yes, and this comes up frequently in the campaign, in the presidential campaigns, would come up.
And there is morality involved, and the people ask about how does that affect your political ideas.
And the whole thing is, is one of the things that I disapprove of the most is a government that is called a theocracy.
And, you know, I don't believe we have a Christian government in that sense.
And, of course, there are other religions where it's very theocratic and they're very dogmatic, and I don't like that.
But it is a political doctrine.
It's more of a philosophy that allows people to make their own choices in their religious values, recognizing that they would be different.
And it really irons out the antagonism between the people who want a dogmatic religion that will enforce religious laws, and it's much more tolerant.
At the same time, well, that means, you know, should the people not care whether you have Christian values?
No, they can't if they're going to vote for me.
It doesn't take them very long to know what my values are and what my positions are.
And it's a reflection of my possibly my religious beliefs.
And of course, John Adams was explicit.
He said that what they're proposing in the Constitution can't work if you don't have a moral people.
So this is true.
You can have a libertarian document, and we had a fairly good libertarian document, at least a libertarian intent.
But he said that it really depends on people and what they believe in.
I mean, if all you had were gangsters, you know, running a town, you come in and you give them the document, okay, we've changed it.
It doesn't happen.
You have to have a basis.
So I think it's very important to realize that.
But the principles in the libertarian message is very clear.
There is a, I call it a moral principle.
It isn't preaching morality, but the moral principle, I think, and I frequently quote it, and it comes from Bastiat.
And Bastiat says that in a free society, a limited government, that if you and I can't do it because of personal behavior and we can't rob and steal and hurt people, governments shouldn't be allowed to do it either.
And that's where the challenge is.
Too many people on the other side, anybody who's not a libertarian, accepts to some degree the principle that the government is so important that they have to tell us what to do, and that's anti-libertarian.
Yeah.
And Vance goes on to explain, you know, really, strip to bearer, the essence of libertarianism is simply the non-aggression principle, the idea that you cannot, you know, initiate force against someone, and you can only use force in direct defense against someone who's initiated against you.
And, you know, the other basic principle starts off with is governments can't assume the role of protecting you or me from ourselves because all of a sudden, oh, and that gets even into theocracy.
Oh, we're going to protect you against yourself because if you're not a believer, that's a serious problem.
So governments can't do that.
Or if they want to tell you how to spend your money or what kind of social life you would have, and they cannot regulate your life completely to make you perfectly safe.
Some people think that the purpose of government is to make us safe.
And that isn't the case.
I think a libertarian society is much safer, you know, than any other kind because the other is built on authoritarianism with an iron fist, the iron might of government, and the antagonism and the failures of government.
But I think that type of system doesn't work.
And people, once again, is back to personal responsibility and self-reliance.
If you have your liberties, it creates the incentives that we've discovered early in our history that the system works so much better.
That if you have this self-reliance, that we're going to be a lot better off than assuming that somebody else knows what's best for us.
Yeah.
And you know, there's this ongoing debate, and it heats up and cools down over the years over thin versus thick libertarianism.
You know, when thin libertarianism is what we discuss, stripped bare, simply the non-aggression principle and these sorts of things.
But then you have thick libertarianism, which adds other things.
And it almost suggests a government role in doing things, like you said, regulating our behavior, making sure we're not racist, or making sure we don't discriminate.
And, you know, one of the big debates, and we started this because Vance was talking about the Libertarian Party ticket this year, and not to single anyone out, but I think the real issue with the thick libertarianism is when Gary Johnson said, yes, I would force that person to bake the cake for the homosexual couple, even though he didn't want to do it.
And that is, I think, the essence of thick libertarianism.
And I think that he also falls into the category of being a pragmatist.
People have to move that way.
Because some people say, well, I agree with this, but we've got to get here.
We can't look like we're overly rigid.
But the essence of all this is, you know, really freedom of choice, whether it's your spouse, your sexual friend, who your associates are, and what you do with your money.
It's choice.
And this is where a lot of people have some problems.
Because I think what's happened over the years in our country, in particular, over 100 years, I think our founders understood liberty to be one thing.
It was you, right to your life.
It came from our Creator.
And you had self-ownership, you work hard, and you own what you work for.
And they made their own choices.
But it was really based on freedom of choice.
It was based on property rights.
Property is so important in a libertarian society.
And agreements.
It doesn't work in the moral sense if two people pretend they're going to follow this nice constitution, but if people are dishonest and never follow their contracts or trick people into it, it doesn't work.
But I remember Leonard Reed so much because I quote him a lot because he sort of played a special role in libertarianism in the mid-part of the last century when he started the Foundation for Economic Education.
And how he described this was you can do anything peaceful.
And peaceful wasn't qualitative.
It wasn't peaceful in the sense that you go to Sunday school every week.
None of that.
Peaceful meant you would never commit aggression.
In a way, it's a beautiful philosophy.
It's not a philosophy of pacifism.
I think all the there are some libertarians that drift over to pacifism.
I've been accused of being a pacifist.
I'm not aggressive enough.
But no, I believe people have a right to defend themselves and defend our family and defend our homes.
But anything peaceful, even if we disagree with them, even if you read books that are terrible, you know, in this country, we sort of pride ourselves that we are not book burners.
And just think of what has been done in the name of religion, in the name of philosophy.
And yet we still don't go out and burn books, even though we're moving, unfortunately, into an age of political correctness, which it's a form of that.
That you can't say certain things, you can't have certain positions if you don't take a position.
Even today, if you take a position that sounds heretical about global warming, well, maybe we should study this for a while before we have a conclusive answer on global warming.
I mean, you can lose your job over that.
So we're drifting away from the tolerance that should be involved in libertarianism.
I think another area where your view of libertarianism can come into conflict with what you might call thick libertarians, whatever you call it, is in the area of foreign policy.
You've always been completely non-interventionist, strictly non-interventionist.
And you've come under fire from the libertarians, from some parts of libertarians, over that.
And if I understand, their view is like this.
I love liberty so much that I want to promote it overseas.
And so when you were hesitant, for example, to embrace the coup in Ukraine, you came under some really bad criticism.
Some even called you a Soviet commissar for not wanting to export libertarianism to Ukraine.
See, I didn't read that part.
You know, I would pass over all those kind of comments.
And I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yes, I mean, I even faced that during the debates.
I was part of the, you know, bin Laden, you know, because of the position of non-intervention.
We shouldn't be over there.
We shouldn't fight these wars and all that kind of stuff.
So, yes, they want to, I think people like that are, they're not very much ready for an intellectual discussion.
It's just a demagogue and paint a bad picture and call you names to try to dismiss it.
But I think the philosophy I found is very, very popular.
As I talked to many, many young people over this last decade, one thing that I found is that when it was explained and I had time to do it, that they never walked away, even though I described there were problems, serious problems, economic and these wars going on, they always went away with tremendous optimism.
And it was almost like, well, I think he's explained this right, but there's really an answer out there.
We don't have it that way, and it's found with a beautiful answer.
It's not found with, I know what's good for you, and I'm going to set these rules here.
This is what you're going to do, and this is what you're going to do.
And the other thing that they were very receptive to about the libertarian message, that it's not divisive.
It brings people together.
And I would describe, you know, your church and your lifestyle could be different than mine, but we don't challenge it.
We should bring people together, even if they don't have a church.
And that, once again, is that it avoids that personal morality.
It's just a standard to allow people to make their own choices with the one rule, the non-aggressive principle, everything peaceful.
And people should come together.
And that is the reason I was always pleased at our rallies that the audience was pretty diverse.
Their dress code and everything else, their songs that they sung, everything was very diverse.
And I thought that was very good.
But that's what libertarianism should be about, to bring people together.
And along with this, the other thing that always annoyed me and a problem we still have is we still see, and the media contributes to this a whole lot, that we see people in groups.
And we've done this for centuries.
We did it at the beginning of our history.
One reason they sort of patched the Constitution together was dealing with the point of slavery.
And they say, well, we'll have to compromise this.
Well, endlessly we have seen, you know, we had Jim Crow laws and those sort of things.
But now it's almost reversed because once they got, groups got punished, now certain groups get privileges.
And it's not just the minorities and the inner city and the poor people.
It's the very wealthy in the military industrial complex.
the principle of entitlement instead of fairness and looking at individuals.
I don't like it when they would come and say, well, what do you think about gay rights?
Well, I don't even believe in gay rights.
I believe in rights for all individuals to run their life as they choose, don't hurt anybody, and it becomes irrelevant.
Well, what about gay marriage?
Well, I personally don't endorse that.
You know, that's not part of my thing, but I'll tell you what, there shouldn't be a law against it.
Why should the government be involved?
Let the people decide.
And it's so much easier if we let people make these choices.
And that's why I think people come together and defend liberty.
And liberty will only succeed when we come together with a coalition, not compromise.
You know, endlessly, we're supposed to compromise and bring together.
I'll give up some of my firm beliefs on property ownership and somebody else will give up their firm beliefs on social management.
And I think that's where we've been.
It's all compromise.
Everybody sells out.
And inevitably, on every compromise, you lose a little bit of liberty.
So if you have one where we've worked with them, progressives who might be right on the drug war, they might be right on civil liberties, other civil liberties, they might be right on a war issue, and work together.
And there's no reason why we can't work together on these issues.
I think that's one reason why libertarianism can spread because I don't, as firm as I am on my beliefs, I don't believe for a minute that, you know, if I could just run one more time, I'm going to have a libertarian society and we can all be happy.
It's not going to happen that way.
But I don't believe you can promote libertarianism unless somebody, the people in libertarianism, including the Libertarian Party, don't have a firm handle on an ideal.
You say, well, the other ones, they're always in the middle of compromise.
No, they're very, very rigid.
They're rigid with this notion that they want management, you know, to tell people what to do because it's just, it's always an argument about management.
End of an Era00:01:50
How am I going to manage the economy?
What's the Feds going to do?
How do we tell them what to do?
Or what country should we invade next year?
You know, that sort of thing.
So I think that's why I think libertarianism is the philosophy, which is, you know, in some sense a relatively new philosophy put together, although the goal of being free in your own person is very natural, and that's probably been around for a long time.
You know, you kind of remember, it reminded me of how we had a little bit easy in your office.
I shouldn't probably reveal this, but while the other offices were agonizing about these compromises and how do I give up a little of this, we just simply look at what they wanted you to vote on and we applied the principle to it and it was awfully easy for us.
Yeah, I've heard it said that they had to go and look at a list.
Which groups support this bill and which groups oppose that bill, which was irrelevant.
What is the position for liberty?
That's what we were concerned about.
That's what I continue to be concerned about.
And I think a lot more people are thinking in those terms now than ever.
But a lot of people now are realizing that the current situation, whether it's foreign policy, monetary policy, the runaway welfare state, it's all precarious right now.
It's all coming to an end.
It's going to come unglued.
And therefore, that's why the message of liberty is so important and so powerful.
But there's reasons to be optimistic.
Ideas cannot be stopped by armies.
They spread, and that is what's happening.
The time has come.
There's nothing else left out there.
They've tried fascism.
They've tried communism.
They've tried all of these philosophies, and they have failed.
And the one that we have today is coming to an end, so it gives us a tremendous opportunity to promote the cause of liberty through the libertarian message.