By D.C. McAllister
Tuesday, November 07, 2017
It’s always deliciously entertaining when someone in the
mainstream media puts her ignorance on full display, just as MSNBC
correspondent Joy Reid did with this tweet:
My first reaction was to do some ‘splaining to Reid about
the actual definition of classical liberalism, and I’ll certainly do that, but
there’s a greater lesson here than good old-fashioned schooling. Those of us
who truly value freedom—the very essence of classical liberalism and the
opposite of New Deal economics—need to take back language the Left has stolen
and corrupted.
Words express ideas, and communicating ideas to change
minds is essential to maintaining a free republic. When society is in decline,
we bring about social change through debate and clash of ideas, not clash of
arms. That’s the hope of every classical liberal.
Because of this, using words to formulate ideas is vital.
If we allow those who are anti-freedom to define themselves with a word that at
its very core is the opposite, then we have allowed language to corrupt minds.
People begin to think social policies that are essentially anti-freedom are
actually promoting freedom because they’re created and propagated by
“liberals.” Anyone who opposes them must, therefore, be anti-freedom.
“Liberalism” today is erroneously equated with liberty,
progress in human development, freedom from oppression, and tolerance. Nothing
could be further from the truth, and at the core liberals know it, which is why
they refuse to refer to capitalism—the economic cornerstone of classical
liberalism—as a liberal system, even though it is the essence of true
liberalism.
This is why it’s so important to correct Reid when she
twists the meaning of the term “classical liberal.” Classical liberalism does
not embrace New Deal economics—quite the contrary. It’s a philosophy of freedom
that values individual liberty, material welfare for all (but through free
markets not government intervention), rational thought, and capitalism. The New
Deal marked a pivotal change in American government and economic life that
fostered precisely the opposite, inaugurating major wealth redistribution
through Social Security and other welfare programs, consolidating federal power
at the expense of state and local power particularly through expanding the
administrative state, and introducing unprecedented government meddling in
private economic transactions.
Classical
Liberalism’s Cornerstone Is Property Rights
Private property is foundational to classical liberalism,
not redistribution of property, which is the darling of modern liberalism.
Classical liberals “maintain that the only workable system of human cooperation
in a society based on the division of labor is private ownership of the means of production,” writes economist
Ludwig von Mises, one of the most pre-eminent classical liberal scholars.
“They contend that socialism as a completely
comprehensive system encompassing all the means of production is unworkable and
that the application of the socialist principle to a part of the means of
production [New Deal economics], though not, of course, impossible, leads to a
reduction in the productivity of labor, so that, far from creating greater
wealth, it must, on the contrary, have the effect of diminishing wealth.”
Classical liberals value material wealth and want
everyone to have an opportunity to attain it without government getting in the
way, not because they are selfish or materialistic, but because they know that
it is much more difficult for people to grow as human beings and find happiness
when they’re struggling to survive amid poverty.
Capitalism is the most effective system to make this
possible. The more production through free markets, the greater the benefit for
individuals and society. Production accelerates when people know they will
benefit from their own labor—when their property rights are secure. When people
are free, productivity increases. This benefits the individual and society.
Interventionist policies, socialism, and communism reject freedom through
private property, taking from the people who produce to give to people who have
not, and therefore productivity decreases under these schemes.
Equality Before
the Law, Not Through Redistribution
Unlike today’s so-called “liberals,” classical liberals
accept the inequality of wealth and income that comes from private ownership as
the means of production. When people are free to produce according to their
individual abilities and talents, the outcomes won’t be the same because people
have unequal abilities and talents.
The only equality classical liberals recognize is
equality before the law, without which society can’t thrive. They reject any
government efforts to try to equalize society through interventionist programs.
Liberals today often try to discredit those who hold to
this view by accusing them of opposing all government action, as if they’re
anarchists living according to the harsh dictates of social Darwinism. This is
a lie. Classical liberals value government, but unlike socialists and
government interventionists, they simply prefer to keep the state in its proper
sphere and not have it violate personal freedoms and rights.
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs,
confuses the distinction between government and society,” another foundational
classical liberal, Frederic Bastiat, wrote in “The Law.” “As a result of this,
every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists
conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state
education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We
object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at
all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against
equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of
not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
They Support
Government as Umpire, Not Nanny
Some like to paint classical liberals as heartless, cold
capitalists who don’t care about society and are only concerned about
individual accumulation of wealth. This simply isn’t true. Classical liberals
recognize that people are not islands unto themselves, living in isolation with
no moral rules to follow.
We are members of a society, and as such we need to
consider our actions, not only as they affect us as individuals, but also how
they affect those around us. “For the life of the individual in society is
possible only by virtue of social cooperation, and every individual would be
most seriously harmed if the social organization of life and of production were
to break down,” Mises writes.
This is why government is important to the classical
liberal. Government does not exist to provide for people, redistribute wealth,
or use force to equalize society and materially improve the lives of its
members. Government’s purpose is to require people to abide by the rules of
society, so society is not dismantled through the violation of personal rights.
When society breaks down, the individual is harmed.
“The [classical] liberal understands quite clearly that
without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and
that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure
peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice
of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members,”
Mises writes.
That state must be able to compel a person who does not
respect the freedom and rights of others to obey the rules of society. “This is
the function that the [classical] liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the
protection of property, liberty, and peace.”
Classical Liberals
Tolerate Different Views
Classical liberals also believe that essential to living
in a peaceful society is the exercise of tolerance. This doesn’t mean classical
liberals approve of every view or doctrine—unlike liberals, classical liberals
don’t equate tolerance and approval, which must be attained through force. They
tolerate that which they disapprove, because “only tolerance can create and
preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into
the barbarism and penury of centuries long past.”
As you can see, classical liberalism is nothing like the
“liberalism” of today, which has little tolerance for opposing views. It seeks
to shut down free speech instead of tolerating it or answering it with an
actual argument. It uses emotion instead of reason. It seeks to bring about
change through force and intimidation, and manipulates ideas instead of
engaging them. Its philosophy is one of tyranny, not freedom.
What we need today is a resurgence of classical
liberalism in name and substance, but to do that, classical liberals need to
win in the arena of ideas. Unfortunately, debate is silenced in conflict.
Rationality—a cornerstone of classical liberal thought—has given way to
delusion, which is spreading through our society like a disease with no cure,
because, as Sigmund Freud said, delusion is based on fantasies, “resistant to
attack by logic and reality.”
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