Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom

by Ron Paul

  A majority vote may gain the politicians cover for what they do, but this vote has no moral authority to violate the right to life and liberty of any individual. This means that government, even with the consent of the governed via democratic vote, should not mold personal behavior, supervise economic transactions, or try to make the world a better place by using our armies to “make the world safe for democracy.”

  Caplan, Bryan. 2007. The Myth of the Rational Voter. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. 2001. Democracy: The God That Failed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

  Spooner, Lysander. [1972] 2008. Let’s Abolish Government. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute.

  DISCRIMINATION

  If we are going to stick to the dictionary definition of the term “discrimination,” there is nothing wrong with it at all. It means merely to choose this over that. We can speak of “discriminating tastes” and regard this as a compliment. At one time the word merely meant “the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment; to differentiate.”

  Choosing friends of good character is discrimination that we should all endorse. We all discriminate on whom we invite into our homes and whom we date and marry, go to church and generally socialize with. It’s a right we all cherish and we should understand exactly what it is. This is positive discrimination and should never be regulated by government.

  But it is a different matter when it comes to politics. Here is where the word “discrimination” indicates some sin against the civic religion. To be sure, banning blatant discrimination in all government programs makes perfect sense. Government programs are constructed for public access. But forcing people to integrate and avoid discrimination in all private transactions through affirmative action laws is a different matter. Forced integration in private affairs, instead of bringing people together, actually exacerbates the conflicts that many are trying to eliminate.

  Governments have notoriously written laws that segregated people whether by race, gender, or sexual orientation. This practice was common from the time of slavery until the policy was replaced with affirmative action and forced association in private affairs, thus substituting one set of violations of individual rights with another. Evidence is slim that the hostility between the various groups has been diminished with all the legislation of the past fifty years.

  Voluntary associations are better, are more authentic, and are longer lasting, than associations forced by legislation and imposed by bureaucrats. Martin Luther King, Jr., advised that a person’s character should be the only measure of a person’s worth and the color of one’s skin should be irrelevant. Yet quotas and affirmative action programs are based on certain groups qualifying for special privileges. Reversing the discrimination hasn’t brought people together. Resentment remains in many areas but not where character and talent are the tests of one’s ability. This is true in sports, entertainment, finance, politics, and in the professions.

  Even more appalling is the presumption that wherever blacks and whites and others associate freely and to their mutual benefit, and whenever a person makes accommodation for disability—and this is far more common than one would think from the media—it is due solely to government laws that have forced the issue. The idea here is that if people are left to their own devices, they will always and everywhere choose homogeneity in their social associations. I can’t imagine a stranger view of the human condition. To me it demonstrates that the supporters of antidiscrimination have an extremely low view of people and their choices.

  Getting ahead because of special privileges granted by government is the same as falling behind because of arbitrary penalties. Both violate the principles of individual rights and private property ownership. In a free society, individuals are allowed to be creeps and pick and choose all their associations. That is, they can discriminate even when the majority disapproves of their choices.

  Outright foolish discrimination in business and elsewhere can be quickly punished by social and economic disapproval; the iron fist of government is not required to force integration and thereby undermine the principles of liberty. The use of the economic boycott in the civil rights struggle was a powerful weapon and an appropriate one.

  Instead, the antidiscrimination fanatics want laws mandating rules for all associations insofar as race, age, gender, employment, sexual orientation, etc., are concerned. These laws never improve social relationships, even when the superficial goal of no “discrimination” is achieved. What is lost is freedom of choice. Property rights are rejected and resentment intensifies. Forced hiring practices have no place in a free society.

  On the other hand, I’ve often observed that the voluntary association approach, with no laws mandating integration, does not achieve integration in the churches. Almost all churchgoers attend segregated churches by pure choice. And even after decades of school integration by federal mandates, the vast majority of black and white children are still in segregated schools. In other words, when left to choice in areas of life not driven by commercial considerations, separation frequently seems to be the chosen preference. We can regret this but not deny that some homogeneous voluntary groupings are the result of choice. Some might also regret that some heterogeneous voluntary groupings are the result of choice. Such is life under liberty.

  If we could see only the individual and not groups of individuals, it wouldn’t matter whom people associated with as long as no force or prohibitions were imposed by government. This is the way all civilized people should think. Unfortunately, friction remains among the various groups because of the call for forced integration based on political priorities. This replaces the proper goal of seeking equal justice before the law and making skin color, age, sex, and sexual orientation irrelevant. Outlawing discrimination has made for a less free and less prosperous society without bringing the various groups closer together.

  The argument is sometimes made that because of past injury, racial or otherwise, even hundreds of years ago, privileges and special favors are fair compensation needed to make up for past injustices. The problem is, those who must pay are not themselves guilty parties, and making up for some earlier injustice merely discriminates against another group. This only exacerbates hostilities between groups and ends up working against the desired goal. Falsely and loudly accusing someone of racism or anti-Semitism if the person is not in agreement with reparations is the worst form of bigotry. Such hypocrisy has destroyed a lot of people’s reputations and lives and does great harm to any effort to bring people together voluntarily.

  If reparations are available, it’s hardly a surprise that the line of eager recipients grows quickly. Even those who don’t qualify under the rules get in line. Many times those demanding reparations were never personally injured. The result is that undeserving recipients demand financial benefits for something they did not suffer from people who had nothing to do with the injustice. It doesn’t sound very fair to me.

  Behavior quickly changes when government benefits are offered. The mere offer of financial giveaways to victims of hurricanes, for example, invites every manner of public corruption; it creates a moral hazard as well. Government financial programs also benefit financial and business interests the same way. It’s not only the welfare poor who line up for benefits, whether after a natural disaster or during a financial crisis. Government force, illegally and illogically used to stop all discrimination, results in a multiplicity of unintended consequences, altered behavior, and fraud.

  Epstein, Richard. 1995. Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws. Boston: Harvard University Press.

  Sowell, Thomas. 1995. Race and Culture. New York: Basic Books.

  EDUCATION

  It’s quite clear that there’s no constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in education, regardless of what the Supreme Court has claimed. Ideally, education in a free society would be the responsibility of the parents or the individual or l
ocal community, not the government. There is no constitutional prohibition for states or local communities to be involved in education, and up until the mid-twentieth century, education was the responsibility of the church, the family, and the local community.

  In the past sixty years especially, the federal government has become very much involved in financing and directing education at all levels. There is no evidence that quality of education has improved. There is evidence that more people go to college and that the cost has skyrocketed. At the grade school and high school levels, where local schools and parents have ever less control over the curriculum and administration of schools, there’s definitely been more violence, more drugs, and more dropouts associated with more centralized control.

  Competition is helpful in any endeavor. And this is true in education. The near monopoly control over the indoctrination of young people in our public school systems is counterbalanced by homeschooling, private schooling, and education readily available on the Internet. The regulations on starting a variety of alternatives to public schools are extremely tight and keep the market from operating as it might.

  The effort to provide more competition to the public school system has not solved the problem, though there are always a few who benefit from vouchers, tax credits, and charter schools. Too often these efforts are unfairly made available and do not eliminate the power of the state to control the curriculum. The best interim option for reform would be to give a tax credit for all educational expenses. Vouchers invite bureaucratic control of their usage and are unfairly distributed.

  The textbook argument is unsolvable in a government-run school. All social science books are biased toward different viewpoints. Science books are usually more objective and are not influenced by prejudiced bureaucrats. There’s no way a book on social or political science can be nondiscriminatory and offend no one. It’s equivalent to finding a religion satisfactory to all groups.

  In private schools or homeschools the issue is moot. The decisions are made by the parents and the school operators, secular or religious. Attendees come with the understanding of any particular bias.

  Problems associated with emphasis on history and politics in public schools will never be solved by electing a new group of book editors who remove one textbook and replace it with another. In the private system, prayers or Bible reading are not debatable issues, and no one’s rights are abused.

  Most people today accept the idea that the Department of Education is a legitimate federal institution. Not too many years ago, however, the Republican Party platform argued for getting rid of the Department of Education. This pretense was removed with the election of George W. Bush in the year 2000. With both Democratic and Republican support, he massively increased the Department of Education with the disastrous No Child Left Behind program. Now national control of all public schools is firmly a bipartisan effort. It doesn’t seem to matter that students, parents, administrators, and teachers generally disapprove of No Child Left Behind. Once an institution is hooked on federal financing, it’s virtually impossible to stop the bureaucratic regulations and mandates that routinely follow subsidies.

  The judiciary hasn’t helped matters either. Court rulings on discipline, decorum, and political correctness have intimidated many dedicated teachers and curtailed any creativity they might have. Lawsuits and threats stifle a good educational environment—something homeschoolers and private schoolers don’t have to worry about.

  The founders of this country were well educated, mostly by being homeschooled or taught in schools associated with a church. In early times in new settlements, the families would band together to hire a teacher to come and teach. Under those rather crude conditions—without palaces in which to teach—the children were taught the classics as well as foreign languages. Today, our children can get through eight or even twelve grades without even touching on these subjects.

  But everybody passes—no single child is left behind. Instead, they are all left behind in large groups. Washington, DC, the only city that Congress has jurisdiction over, has one of the most expensive, most violent, most crime- and drug-ridden school systems in the country. And the only complaint Congress gets from District of Columbia teachers and administrators is that they need more money.

  The current system has driven many state school systems into bankruptcy. Extravagance in building ornate physical structures while neglecting quality education has added greatly to the debt burden of local and state budgets. This is all in addition to the contribution of the huge sums of money eaten up by the federal bureaucracy and the Department of Education, which contributes to the national debt.

  The NEA (National Education Association), one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country, not only successfully agitates for structural and bureaucratic excesses, it is responsible for teacher salaries and retirement benefits that far exceed those of the private sector. The future obligation to pay all the retirement and health benefits will require a constant inflow of revenues.

  Many pension funds are not solvent. With an economy that is likely to remain weak for a long time, assuring that the retired teachers will receive their benefits is questionable. This will probably prompt federal assistance in time. When the conditions in the large cities and states present a major crisis, I’m certain the federal government will bail them out with printing press money. The only question then will be the value of the dollars they receive.

  Even with the mess we have created with our schools, we are not on the verge of undoing our public school system or wisely reforming it. There is no serious effort to deal with the problem of vastly inefficient, underperforming schools. In reality, the whole system may self-destruct by both poor performance and runaway costs. The grandiose structures built by so many government-run schools resulted from the huge subsidies from the federal government financed by debt and outrageous taxes.

  It’s a huge problem to deal with under today’s circumstances. The majority of the American people assume the public school system is a “sacred” institution. We have been told that our “free” public school education made America what it is today. Soon they will be forced to quit making that claim. Eliminating federal controls someday may be achievable.

  If government schools were maintained by local control, the problem of monopoly control of education for the entire school-age population would be greatly reduced. The “owners” of the school could be the local school boards, which could set curriculum and discipline standards and taxes. This solution is not perfect, but it is vastly better than a Washington-based economic czar using the educational system for propaganda, perpetuating the falsehoods of the state and the so-called benefits of a powerful central government. Thank goodness for the Internet, Amazon, and the thirst for truth that no government is big enough to silence.

  Burleigh, Anne Husted. 1979. Education in a Free Society. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

  Rothbard, Murray N. 1999. Education: Free and Compulsory. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute.

  West, E. G. 1994. Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

  EMPIRE

  The majority of Americans, most likely, do not believe we are an empire. They believe we are a free people and enjoy the benefits of living in a democratic republic. Most people do not read the international news. Even wars are only interesting to people at the very outset. But most Americans lose interest after a few weeks.

  As a result, most people remain blissfully unaware of the activities of the American global empire. This really came home to me on 9/11, when most Americans expressed shock and amazement that anyone would have a reason to deliver a message to the United States in the form of a bloody and destructive attack. Most people asked what we ever did to incite such a thing. George Bush explained that these crazy people must have “hated us for our freedoms.”

  Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, to say the least. There are lots of people who hate us for invading their countries
, supporting dictatorships, starving people through sanctions, and maintaining an unprecedented military empire of global reach. Truly, the United States is an empire by any definition, and quite possibly the most aggressive, extended, and expansionist in the history of the world. Do we really find it shocking that some people in the world don’t like this? Would we, as American citizens, like it if some superpower were doing this to us?

  The transition from a republican form of government to an authoritarian empire is most often insidious. Yet history has recorded quite a precipitous shift that dated the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of its empire. The date is etched in history when Julius Caesar boldly marched with his legions and crossed the Rubicon. The rules were clear. A proconsul in charge of a province outside of Rome was not permitted to enter Rome with his troops. The Rubicon, a twenty-nine-kilometer river running east and west in northern Italy, was the line that separated the militarily run provinces and the Roman Republic. It was a small river but a mighty barrier; it provided a symbolic wall of defense against any internal military threat by an ambitious Roman general.

  But Julius Caesar successfully crossed the Rubicon with his legions and defeated Pompey’s effort to defend the Republic. Caesar quickly secured Asia Minor and within three years the Senate appointed him dictator for life, which was the final blow to the Roman Republic.

  Cicero failed to save the Republic, but he left a great legacy in his effort and influenced generations to come—including the Founders of our own republic. Though the crossing of the Rubicon is considered the seminal event in the fall of the Roman Republic, militarism had already been in place outside of Rome itself. The destruction of the Republic came as a consequence of the growth and expansion of Roman military power throughout the Mediterranean region.