{"id":150,"date":"2004-01-31T21:03:52","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T02:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=150"},"modified":"2004-01-31T21:03:52","modified_gmt":"2004-02-01T02:03:52","slug":"keeping-freedom-alive-a-response-to-vodkapundit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Freedom Alive: a response to Vodkapundit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a trenchant essay he posted on the 30th of January, Vodkapundit<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.vodkapundit.com\/archives\/005115.php#005115'>fulminates<\/a><br \/>\nagainst people he calls &#8220;doctrinaire libertarians&#8221;.  While I sympathize in some<br \/>\nrespects &mdash; I too have been attacked for my pro-war position &mdash; I<br \/>\nthink there is some serious danger that Steve&#8217;s arguments are throwing out the<br \/>\nbaby along with the bathwater.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m an individualist anarchist.  In most peoples&#8217; books that would<br \/>\nqualify me as a &#8220;doctrinaire libertarian&#8221;.  I got reminded why<br \/>\nrecently by watching a Babylon 5 episode, the 4th-season one in which<br \/>\nSheridan is interrogated by an EarthGov psychologist who uses torture,<br \/>\nisolation, and drugs, to try and break him.  But more frightening than<br \/>\nthe torture is the ideology that comes out of the interrogator&#8217;s<br \/>\nmouth; the command that truth is fluid and must bend to power; the<br \/>\ndisingenuous disclaimers of any responsibility for the hell Sheridan<br \/>\nis being put through; and beneath it all like a constant drumbeat, the<br \/>\nseductive invitation that if Sheridan will just surrender his will to<br \/>\nthe State, his pain will end.<\/p>\n<p>The interrogator is never named. Like his prototypes in Nazi<br \/>\nGermany and Soviet Russia, he is a case study in the banality of evil<br \/>\n&mdash; the true face, the night face, the real face of the State.<br \/>\nAnd what is truly terrifying is that the interrogator is not a mere<br \/>\nthug but a man with a subtle and flexible mind.  There is an angle on<br \/>\nthe world from which all his lies and acts of coercion issue from a<br \/>\ncoherent moral position &mdash; but it is one that promises everyone<br \/>\nbut his masters hell on Earth, forever and ever, amen.<\/p>\n<p>In this episode J. Michael Straczynski gives us a fictional<br \/>\ndepiction of a type that is all too real.  Anyone who has read Arthur<br \/>\nKoestler&#8217;s <cite>Darkness at Noon<\/cite> or Aleksandr Solszhenitzyn&#8217;s<br \/>\n<cite>The Gulag Archipelago<\/cite> knows that if anything, JMS (who<br \/>\nclearly did his homework on the real-world techniques of brainwashing)<br \/>\n<em>understates<\/em> the soul-destroying depths to which the ideology<br \/>\nof statism can sink, trapping the interrogator and his victim in a<br \/>\nmachinery of coercion that will ultimately consume them both.<\/p>\n<p>The moral climax of that episode comes after Sheridan says &#8220;You<br \/>\nknow, it&#8217;s funny I was thinking about what you said. &#8216;The pre-eminent<br \/>\ntruth of our age is that you cannot fight the system.&#8217; But if, as you<br \/>\nsay, truth is fluid, that the truth is subjective, then maybe you can<br \/>\nfight the system &mdash; as long as one person refuses to be broken,<br \/>\nrefuses to bow down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But can you win?&#8221; the interrogator asks, almost gently.  Sheridan,<br \/>\nknowing it is likely to mean he will shortly die under torture, rasps<br \/>\nout the bedrock libertarian reply &#8220;Every&#8230;time I&#8230;say&#8230;<em>no<\/em>!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If I were the praying kind, I would be on my knees every day<br \/>\npraying that if there ever comes a moment when I must confront the<br \/>\nnight face of the State, I too will meet it with that kind of courage.<br \/>\nAnd that day may come.  Because the hell that spawns creatures like<br \/>\nthat nameless interrogator is what waits for all of us down the road<br \/>\nto serfdom that is paved with good intentions like &#8220;welfare&#8221; and<br \/>\n&#8220;protecting the children&#8221; and &#8220;saving the environment&#8221; and, yes,<br \/>\n&#8220;necessary war&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This is why I think we all ought to be grateful for &#8220;doctrinaire<br \/>\nlibertarians&#8221;, even the ones more doctrinaire than me.  It&#8217;s their job<br \/>\nto keep reminding all of us where that road leads.  And it frightens<br \/>\nwe when anyone replies to &#8220;War is the health of the state&#8221; by saying<br \/>\nfearfully &#8220;Let&#8217;s be blunt here, kids. When foreigners are rearranging<br \/>\nthe Manhattan skyline because, in part, our women drive cars, then<br \/>\ngoddamnit its <em>time<\/em> for a healthier state.&#8221;  Because it&#8217;s in<br \/>\nthe shadow cast by that kind of fear that creatures like the<br \/>\ninterrogator and his masters grow and flourish.<\/p>\n<p>Necessity, as wiser men than me have observed, is the credo of<br \/>\ntyrants and the excuse of slaves.  It disturbs me to hear anyone<br \/>\ntalking like a slave.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with you in conceding that the state is at this time the<br \/>\nonly way we have to answer the terrorist threat.  The world in which<br \/>\nOsama bin Laden would be killed by troops hired by a consortium of<br \/>\ncrime- and disaster-insurance companies rather than a government does<br \/>\nnot yet exist.<\/p>\n<p>But having conceded the present necessity of state action makes it<br \/>\n<em>more<\/em> necessary, not less, that we listen to the most<br \/>\ncontrary, ornery, anti-statist libertarians we have, and to hold<br \/>\nharder than ever to our intentions for a libertarian future.  Otherwise<br \/>\nwe risk becoming too comfortable with that concession, and letting the<br \/>\nstatists seduce us further down that road to serfdom.<\/p>\n<p>Does this mean we can&#8217;t slam the LP for its attribution of the 9\/11<br \/>\nattacks to American foreign policy?  No, you&#8217;re right; that position<br \/>\nis not just wrong, it bespeaks a lack of moral seriousness and a kind<br \/>\nof blinkered parochialism that cannot actually see anything outside<br \/>\nof U.S. politics as having causal force.<\/p>\n<p>But there is a big difference between observing that the LP is<br \/>\ncontingently wrong about the liberation of Iraq (true) and suggesting<br \/>\nthat our only course is to abandon our longer-term commitment to the<br \/>\nabolition of drastic shrinking of the state (false).  Beware of<br \/>\nthrowing out that baby with the bathwater.  John Ashcroft is not yet a<br \/>\ngreater threat to liberty than Osama bin Laden &mdash; but that day<br \/>\nmay come yet.  Only libertarian thoughts, libertarian words,<br \/>\nlibertarian deeds, and a principled libertarian opposition to the<br \/>\narrogance and seductions of power will prevent it.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: Gary Farber <a href=\"http:\/\/amygdalagf.blogspot.com\/2004_02_01_amygdalagf_archive.html#107567816290438373\">thinks<\/a> I&#8217;m making the same error I slammed John Perry<br \/>\nBarlow for recently.  But there is a large difference. Barlow<br \/>\nwas being specifically paranoid about a short-term threat which he ties to<br \/>\nspecific people he thinks are evil and has (at the very least) grossly<br \/>\noverestimated. I have a longer-term concern about structural tendencies<br \/>\nthat are built into the nature of government, and which don&#8217;t require<br \/>\nspecific evil people running things to take us to some very nasty places.<\/p>\n<p>Or, to put it another way, Barlow has what is essentially a devil theory;<br \/>\nBush, or Cheney, or Ashcroft or someone like them is evil and wants to put us<br \/>\nin camps next year.  This is silly.  I, on the other hand, don&#8217;t think it<br \/>\nmuch matters for the long term whether &#8220;good&#8221; or &#8220;evil&#8221; people are running<br \/>\nthe government; the <em>premises<\/em> and the <em>process<\/em> of government,<br \/>\nand the collectivist ethos that underlies them, have a momentum of their own<br \/>\nthat grinds away at our liberty regardless.  The founders of the U.S.<br \/>\nunderstood this tendency and erected the Bill Of Rights as a firewall against<br \/>\nit.  The fact that in many jurisdictions U.S. law now suppresses &#8220;hate speech&#8221; and<br \/>\nbans the possession of firearms demonstrates their failure.<\/p>\n<p>The erosion of liberty which I fear is a far more gradual process than<br \/>\nthe sudden collapse into totalitarianism that Barlow envisions.  But it<br \/>\nis also more difficult to resist and counter.  Because the end stages,<br \/>\nwhere <em>only<\/em> evil people can adapt themselves to politics, are<br \/>\nprobably many decades away, few people can summon the concern and the<br \/>\nwill to say &#8220;Stop now, before it&#8217;s too late!&#8221;.  There is always some<br \/>\nshort-term reason that seems good to accept the state&#8217;s poisonous candy<br \/>\n&#8212; the new entitlement program, the next round of farm- or steel-mill<br \/>\nsubsidies, the airport metal detectors to make us &#8220;safe&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Many (though not all) of the people who can summon that will are<br \/>\nlibertarians. Which is yet another good reason to listen to them carefully,<br \/>\neven when they&#8217;re more doctrinaire than me.<\/p>\n<p>(Exercise for the reader: Let&#8217;s stipulate that littering laws may not lead to 1984,<br \/>\nbut can you defend the proposition that laws banning speeech and weapons don&#8217;t? Discuss<br \/>\nhistorical examples such as Nazi Germany and Tokugawa-period Japan.  Be specific.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a trenchant essay he posted on the 30th of January, Vodkapundit fulminates against people he calls &#8220;doctrinaire libertarians&#8221;. While I sympathize in some respects &mdash; I too have been attacked for my pro-war position &mdash; I think there is some serious danger that Steve&#8217;s arguments are throwing out the baby along with the bathwater.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=150\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Keeping Freedom Alive: a response to Vodkapundit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}