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The Libertarian Paradox

Published by Constitutional Conservati July 28, 2008 in Religion. 32 Comments

Is Libertarian philosophy Biblical? The contention generally arises from Libertarian Christians promoting prostitution and drugs (or other un-Godly actions), according to Libertarian philosophy. Does a Biblical motive exist for such a position? Or the contrary? The question is:

… which biblical imperatives justify that moral laws against sins (such as lying, adultery, and drug use) be automatically codified into secular laws in governments of men? For extra credit: why should sins such as drugs and prostitution be illegal, but sins such as lying, breaking the Sabbath and stumbling a brother not be punished by secular courts and police?

It’s going to take a bit to get to the answer as suitable groundwork must be laid. The question (and answer) isn’t actually the interesting part of this issue as it will turn out.

The Libertarian Problem
Libertarianism is liberal on foreign policy and social policy, while conservative fiscally. We’ll discuss motives in a bit, but for now just note Libertarians may not agree with the left’s motives, but they do agree on actions (legal drugs, and so on). On foreign policy, it’s because the Democrats aren’t far enough left which disturbs some Libertarians.

Libertarianism and Christianity — a combination rejected decades ago as it’s just not possible to justify promoting certain actions while ignoring others — Liberal social policy is anathema to Conservatives. But what is promote? Some argue doing nothing is not promotion, others argue doing nothing is. The reality is simple — if you’re a senator, and a bill comes across your desk about issue “x”, you are either supporting it or not by your vote. In the case of Libertarian morals, by actively opposing certain laws, they de-facto promote the activity.

It’s just not possible as a senator to be neutral. It’s either for or against. Just as some say “I don’t really want to think about Jesus, so I’m not saying no, I’m just neutral” — you must make a decision, either for or against. Avoiding the issue just means a decision will be made without your action, but that won’t remove your responsibility.

Obviously Libertarians disagree.

Nebo
The base nature of Libertarianism is self-contradicting. It’s not possible to state “Government can’t legislate morality”, just as “One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars (Titus 1:12 KJV)” is also self-contradicting. Morality is just right and wrong, good and bad. You can’t drive 90mph on the freeway because someone thought it’s bad — that’s a moral judgment. The only thing government can legislate is morality.

Thus, when a Libertarian states Government can’t legislate morality, they’re really promoting anarchy — if moral laws can’t be made, no laws can be made, as they’re all some idea of right and wrong.

It’s entertaining to watch the verbal twister played by Libertarians when this basic self-contradiction is pointed out. Most people (Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans and Democrats) at some point admit their position isn’t totally logical and consistent, but that’s the way they want it anyway. That’s honest.

But some worship knowledge and intellectualism — it’s their god. Ancient Babylon had their god of knowledge (Nebo) and it remains today in intellectual circles to those who worship logic, knowledge and intellectualism. It’s what Paul encountered in Athens in Acts 17 as the Greeks desired to argue about something new (what it was didn’t really matter). The idol may not exist anymore, but satan doesn’t change tactics much, he just adapts them to current times. Man is just as susceptible to the worship of Nebo today as in Babylon.

And that’s why some fight vigorously to defend an absurdity — they’re worshipers of Nebo, and a worse fate than hell is for them to admit their hallowed intellectualism and logic is really a house of cards, built on sand, as the tide comes in.

Motives, Actions, Results

COLIN: Prostitution and drugs are not libertarian ideals. But freedom is - which would include the freedom to chose both good and evil.

Let’s consider three concepts surrounding actions. You are motivated to do something, you act, and a certain result is obtained (pre-action, action, post-action).

Results (post-action) are God’s problem, so that’s all that needs to be said.

Motives and actions, however, are your responsibility (and under your control), and accountable to God. By allowing prostitution, your motive may be good (liberty), but your actions aren’t. And half right is totally wrong.

This repeatedly comes up by people equating motives and actions. They are different. If you have good intentions you can’t justify poor actions (gee, to solve world hunger, if we have enough abortions we’ll have less people, and the food can feed more). Good motive, poor action. (Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, for example, even though satire)

Similarly, you can have poor motives, but good actions. It doesn’t matter why a senator supports your law, as long as he votes for it — he could give his support due to a back room deal, but that has no effect on the inherit nature of the legislation as good or bad (that’s classic politics). Nobody cares in 20 years why a law was passed — we have to live with the action, not the motive; motive is irrelevant to politics (save that it causes action).

Actions differ from motives. Politics concerns itself with actions and results (motives only because they cause action), God deals with actions and motives (and handles the results Himself). For the Christian, it’s important to consider both actions and motives. For the politician, only actions impact society.
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The Drug War and Everyday Economics

Published by Colin February 25, 2008 in Essays, Politics and Current Events. 17 Comments

There are some basic laws in economics that most people understand. If not intellectually, they definitely can grasp these laws intuitively as they interact with others in the marketplaces of idea, goods, services, politics and human relationship.

Everyday Economic Examples
For example, we may not think about it as much, but all of us who are married are monopolists. We have obtained a scarce resource - our spouse - and made a contract with them guaranteeing us exclusive use of their bodies (at least). Monogamy is a monopolistic concept. If another man engages in force to break this contract between my wife and I, or if my wife willingly violates this law with another man - many people would see me as justified in seeking justice over the broken contract.

We can understand the basics of supply and demand. Many people might notice that HDDVD players dropped in price quite a bit over this last month, almost half in some stores. People paying attention to the news on this know that Blue Ray has won the next gen format war and that HDDVD support is going to dwindle. It is no shock to them, then, that prices have gone down, as the demand for these goods is sloping downward in favor of the victor.

Rising prices is something that is understood in the same way, but the inherent emotionalism of people often clouds the interpretation. Nevertheless, there is still some basic part of everyone that can rationalize why Superbowl tickets can sell for over a thousand dollars. It does not take an MBA to know that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who would like to go to the Superbowl, but only about 70,000 seats. The demand far exceeds the supply - this is going to push the price up dramatically.

The Universality of Economics
Yet while people do generally understand the way the world works (for this reason, much of economics fits into a broader category of science and sociology called “natural law”) they fail to apply these principles universally. Professor Edwin W. Patterson said it thusly:

Principles of human conduct that are discoverable by “reason” from the basic inclinations of human nature, and that are absolute, immutable and of universal validity for all times and places. This is the basic conception of scholastic natural law … and most natural law philosophers.

While this explains our inherent understanding of monogamy or HDDVD prices, it does not explain why it is that we still pursue such economically infeasible and irrational projects such as universal health care, farm supports, wage and price controls and even the drug war.

Application to Drug Laws
Take the issue of the illegal drug trade. The United States and most countries with anti-drug laws are entirely focussed on fighting drug use by attempting to overwhelm economic law. It is US policy to go after the “supply side” of drugs - dealers, suppliers and importers.

But this policy is inherently flawed. For instance, we know that it is demand for a good or service which drives the market. A good can be either scarce or abundant, but until lots of people want it, no one does much to bring it to market. Oil was never a valuable substance until it became an instrumental element of energy creation and expenditure. Drugs are heavily demanded because of their addictive nature. A heroin addict is going to want the drug (or a valid substitute) whether it is $10 or $1,000 a hit.

This is why supply-side enforcement practices fail. Every time the coast guard, FBI, CIA or police manage to prevent or arrest a supplier of drugs, the result is an increased scarcity (with no decrease in demand). This is akin to a drought in California, with steady demand for oranges remaining. The price shoots up, encouraging farmers of other goods to switch to making oranges to satisfy the demand (and obtain higher profits). Drug busts do the same thing - people who were doing law-abiding professions now risk criminality to grow a few pot plants on the side to cash in on the high price. This criminalizes more and more of society, and perpetuates and expands the drug problem.

Victory in Surrender
The very fact that were “fighting” the drug war is causing us to lose. With every single “victory” - we are bringing about more drug use and encouraging more of the anti-social and criminal activity that accompanies a black market.

But the irrationality persists. It absolutely baffles some as to why people like myself, who do not use drugs (nor ever will), could support the decriminalization of all drugs. I have been called unchristian, I have been called an anarchist (with malevolent intent) and I have been even called ignorant or reckless for such a proposition. But the reality is that universal natural law is on my side - because I detest drug use and the crime that surrounds it, I see no other moral alternative but to support the only rational solution to the problem.

Until we admit that we cannot “fight gravity” (that is, overcome natural law by government laws) then we are just going to keep jumping up towards the sky in futility, wearing ourselves out. We will devote more and more resources, better used in much more productive pursuits, to an unwinnable war. We will drain the economy, encourage crime and strengthen the “enemy” until the economic backlash against us is so strong that it will knock us over.

A Biblical Case Against Drug Prohibition and Anti-Prostitution Laws

Published by Colin February 13, 2008 in Religion and Politics. 14 Comments

Author’s Note: This article arose from a discussion following last Friday’s set of links. It was buried in the comments of that piece and is being brought out separately for consideration as part of its own case. For clarity and consistency, there have been some changes and additions to the original post.

Because there is no specific (or implied) biblical mandates for how we are to address the secular legality of drugs and prostitution (some would stop me here and cite certain commandments, but I will deal with those later). Indeed, there is very little political philosophy in the bible at all - we must use a different approach. One legitimate way to determine biblicality then, is to draw logical conclusions from the fundamental nature of God revealed in scripture. There may also be related or implied passages that can then be applied with the knowledge of God’s character. To start, let’s explore the fundamental nature of God, as it relates to these issues.

God Unilaterally Grants, Respects and Supports Free-will through Allowing Choice
God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, but he left the tree in the garden (Genesis 2:9). He left the choice available to them (and they chose poorly). God gave his law to the people and allowed them to chose if they would follow him (Joshua 24:14-15) - he did not make them robots which unconditionally loved him. Jesus died for all mankind and God desires that all men be saved (2 Peter 3:9), but he doesn’t force them into heaven. He does not force them to repent and believe. He educates, he explains the consequences, he unabashedly reveals his desire that men would turn from sin (and drugs and prostitution are sins, morally evil in the sight of God) but yet he does not whisk the drugs and lust away as he well could.

God holds absolute respect for the order he gave the world, and the freedom he gave man. He demonstrates his love by declaring, in frank terms, the consequences for evil that man will bring upon himself if he continues to chose poorly. God’s respect of freewill is based on education, love and choice not on fear and control (2 Timothy 1:7).

Each individual man is responsible for his own sins. Fathers aren’t punished for their son’s sins. God will not destroy the righteous with the wicked. A sin that anyone commits, from lies, murder, drug-use, lust, fornication, etc… is soley accountable to the man who did it. No one else is punished (Ezekiel 18:20).

Real Change Only Comes Through Conversion
The only way a man can make morally good choices is through conversion, otherwise he is darkness (Ephesians 5:8). It is not compliance with God’s law, in and of itself, which converts a man. God’s law is an educational tool, not a list of requirements. Obedience to the law is totally unable to produce actual inward change (conversion). Conversion takes place by education about the law (Psalm 19:7).

The law reveals that man is sinful and requires a supernatural change (Romans 3:20). Through understanding the purpose of the law, he is empowered to seek Gods power to convert his soul and make wise, morally good choices. But God still does not remove the choices, reminding the man whenever he choses evil, that he must depend on God for goodness, not on his own willpower. Were God to remove choice after conversion, man would consider God’s work a one-time-only solution, and not a consistent change in lifestyle for the rest of his life. The converted man now despises sin and is convicted when he sins - the unconverted man has no ability to gauge sin, and has only the inward inclination to continue in sin, without a real desire to change. Sin is not effectively addressed without conversion. Christians have no other solution or alternative to see man actually turn from sin.

Prohibitions on drugs and prostitution are a tremendous detriment to conversion, which is the called work of the church. By forcing the right choice (by removing wrong choices), we disable a man to chose correctly. It is required of a man to humble himself and chose to follow God - this is the responsibility associated with free-will (Micah 6:8). In order to turn from sin, there must be sin to turn from - otherwise it’s a false choice. God is smart enough not to do this, are Christians smart enough to obey God?

Christians Must Emulate God
As Christians (”Christ-like”, “little Christs”) it is our job to emulate God (Ephesians 5:1) not to do things our way, and violate his order. That means we must never (because God does not ever) violate free-will. He has given us no permission to do so and will not because he himself does not violate his own order.

We see that God will act on behalf of innocents to protect them from violations of their free-will by others. And, not surprisingly in perfect consistency, man is given jurisdiction to protect against violations of the above (Gen 9:6), not to violate God’s order and infringe these things. There was, at least, some Christian foundation to our country, as these principles were enshrined in the declaration of Independence. Namely, that

…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

How Should the Christian Deal With All Sin?
To determine what the Christian should do, we must determine what God does. God will punish sin in the day of judgment. His “punishment” though, is interesting because it is a punishment of ultimate permission. That is, God submits his desire that all would be saved to the principle of free-will, and allows man an eternity of total absence from God and all things pertaining to his nature (love, joy, goodness, hope, light, etc…). God’s punishment is not a negative punishment, but a positive one. It affirms man’s freewill rather than deny it (Galatians 6:7).

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