Of Optima, Antipodes, And Asymptotes

"Trust us. We know what's best. We're here to help." -- Motto of the Totalitarian Party (fictional).

I generally find Sean Hannity annoying. He shouts continuously, repeatedly misuses the word principles, and is entirely too willing to make exceptions to his supposed ideal of "limited government" to suit his own preferences. Even so, from time to time he does capture an idea and express it properly. Yesterday during his afternoon radio show was such a time.

I don't remember his exact phrasing, but here's my paraphrase:

Left-liberalism can be expressed in two words:
"TRUST US!"

That's not a new insight, of course. I've been saying it for more than twenty years, and I'm sure I wasn't the first. But it's a perfect encapsulation of what the left-liberal demands from the people he seeks to rule. Its relevance to the current bumper crop of federal scandals could hardly be clearer.

A certain low comedy beautifully expresses just how bad a mistake we've made:

"You ****ed up. You trusted us."

We trusted them...and now we get to sift through the shards and ashes of a once-mighty Republic, in the hope that there's something we can still save.

Well, as it happens, there is.

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"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it!" -- George Bernard Shaw

The message of the freedom-lover has always been the exact opposite of that of the left-liberal:

"DON'T TRUST THEM!"

"Them" being (of course) anyone and everyone who promises you security, comfort, prosperity, medical care, a safety net, free movie tickets, or anything else in exchange for power over you. Once they've got the power they seek, they tend to forget the promises they made. Not that that matters in practical terms; their promises were unfulfillable anyway. And as for power over you, they come back over and over for just...a little...more...

Surely we've had enough examples of this progression by now. Surely the Gentle Readers of Liberty's Torch don't need yet another repetition of that novena. But we must be in a tiny minority; else why would the majority keep trusting them?

There are many reasons, not the least of which is that the typical freedom advocate is all too willing to make exceptions for particular purposes. More often than not, he's trying to reassure someone who doesn't really agree with him that it's "safe" to "allow" the rest of us to do as we please, kinda/sorta, more-or-less. Safety net? Oh, sure. Laws against "vice?" Okay, if the majority insists. Protective tariffs? Farm subsidies? Public libraries? Public education? The list of exceptions demanded of us can seem to go on forever...and we have a terrible tendency to wave a dismissive hand and mutter "all right."

And there's nothing to be done about it, for a simple, terrible, yet irrefutable reason:

Most people, including most Americans, don't really want to be free.

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"That's why it's called a revolution....A revolution gets its name by always coming back around in your face." -- William Stranix (played by Tommy Lee Jones) in Under Siege

Jonah Goldberg seems to get better with every column:

It's true, no ideal libertarian state has ever existed outside a table for one. And no such state will ever exist. But here's an important caveat: No ideal state of any other kind will be created either. America's great, but it ain't perfect. Sweden's social democracy is all right, but if it were perfect, I suspect fewer cars would be on fire over there.

Ideals are called ideals for a reason: They're ideals. They're goals, aspirations, abstract straight rules we use as measuring sticks against the crooked timber of humanity....

It's a little bizarre how the left has always conflated statism with modernity and progress. The idea that rulers -- be they chieftains, kings, priests, politburos or wonkish bureaucrats -- are enlightened or smart enough to tell others how to live is older than the written word. And the idea that someone stronger, with better weapons, has the right to take what is yours predates man's discovery of fire by millennia. And yet, we're always told that the latest rationalization for increased state power is the "wave of the future."

That phrase, "the wave of the future," became famous thanks to a 1940 essay by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She argued that the time of liberal democratic capitalism was drawing to a close and the smart money was on statism of one flavor or another -- fascism, communism, socialism, etc. What was lost on her, and millions of others, was that this wasn't progress toward the new, but regression to the past. These "waves of the future" were simply gussied-up tribalisms, anachronisms made gaudy with the trappings of modernity, like a gibbon in a spacesuit.

The only truly new political idea in the last couple thousand years is this libertarian idea, broadly understood. The revolution wrought by John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers is the only real revolution going. And it's still unfolding.

Goldberg's grasp of the situation is far better than most, albeit incomplete. Yes, the revolution for human freedom is still rolling, but there are other revolutions in motion too, including Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "wave of the future:" the unending drive, by persons who lust for power above all other things, for unopposable control of all human action. It is in the nature of Man that neither of these revolutions will ever triumph completely or permanently over the other.

We won't attain perfect freedom, ever. We'll always have persons among us who demand exceptions for this or that "problem." We'll always have persons among us shouting about "crises" that demand that some strong man take command...just "for the duration," of course. And we'll always allow for some of that; it's easier than perpetuating an interminable, unwinnable argument. For as long as Man remains Man, freedom lovers' yearnings for the universal abjuration and permanent downfall of the State can never be fulfilled.

But we can draw closer. We can become freer. What we can't do, now or ever, is cement any particular degree of human freedom permanently into place. The counter-revolution toward totalitarianism will keep "coming back around in your face." There will be periods, such as the one we suffer today, when the freedom revolution is badly beleaguered, "on the ropes" in the overwhelming majority of cases. But the totalitarians cannot snuff it out completely. No more than we can they cement their gains into place. That, too, is in the nature of Man.

There will never be a completely free society. Neither will there ever be a completely regimented society, in which one or a few dictate absolutely to all others exactly what they must and must not do. These two strains of human desire will last as long as Mankind itself.

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"Freedom: That which you demand for yourself but would deny to others." -- Thomas Szasz.

Freedom and Tyranny are abstractions capable of many interpretations and gradations. Each of us supposes he knows what he means by it. Few of us agree completely on the meanings, even when posed in the simplest terms. Many a person who claims to stand for "freedom" wants a long list of "buts" appended to the word.

For the freedom lover, the optimum is the complete absence of indemnified coercion from human life. He does as he pleases with that which is rightfully his. No one can invade his prerogatives without suffering just redress. It should be plain that that optimum, however closely we might approach it, cannot be completely attained.

For the power-luster, the optimum is that all human action is subject to his personal rule and permission. No one may do anything without his approval, or without first having done what he has commanded. That, too, is an unattainable position, if only because no one who has attained great power can do so without engendering rivals and enemies.

These antipodal conceptions will writhe and wrestle with one another until our kind is no more. Each will wax in its turn, rising asymptotically toward its ideal, as the other wanes toward annihilation. Yet neither can be forever extinguished. For that very reason, even in the darkest hour, there will always be a hope of light.

Their hour is upon us.
But ours will return.
Be not afraid.