In
many years of lecturing at Mises University, Judge Napolitano has given
the same—terrifying—ending to his introductory speech. Not until the
horrors of this year did it dawn on me that perhaps his point has its
basis in reality.
The dear judge often mentions, almost like a joke, the libido dominandi—the
desire to dominate, or the will to power, harking back to Augustine of
Hippo’s centuries-old writing. We find similar notions in Friedrich
Hayek's "Why the Worst Get on Top" chapter in The Road to Serfdom and most certainly in the eerily relevant writing of Robert Higgs.
The memorable ending in Napolitano’s lecture is:
I expect that I will die, faithful to my first
principles…in my bed, surrounded by people that love me. Some of you may
die, faithful to first principles, in a government prison. And some of
you may die, faithful to first principles, in a government town square
to the sound of a government trumpet blaring.
The few times I’ve been fortunate enough to hear him speak those
words live, they always struck me as a little exaggerated. Even though
the room fell dead quiet, I felt sick to my stomach, and had goosebumps
all over my skin, it couldn’t possibly get that bad, could it?
The madness of 2020 has had me reconsider.
The Control of Others’ Lives
Wanting to rule over others is, to some extent, innate. Perhaps it follows from our misplaced sense of superiority (e.g., the Lake Wobegon effect) or from a hubristic pretense of knowledge, or perhaps from an inability to see the full range of value that others provide: I know better how things should be done; if only I were in charge, the world would be better.
What's clear is that in anno 2020, the ever-present lust for
domination experienced a perfect storm—a storm that let them unleash
their controls to lecture us and commandeer us hither and thither, to
centrally plan a health campaign, and to direct anyone and everyone as
to what they were allowed to do. What's so terrifying about this isn't
that the desire to rule others exists—it always did—but that the forces
that usually keep it at bay somehow just gave up.
In the early days of the pandemic, those of us who make our living crafting words were fighting over libertarianism: “There are no libertarians in a pandemic,”
they said. Perhaps, we politely responded, like everyone else a bit
afraid of what we then didn’t know. But surely, there are no statists coming out of one either: “beneficial” regulations
that disrupted production and distribution of stuff suddenly high in
demand were lifted, centralized control botched things left and right.
With obvious failure of this magnitude, we couldn’t possibly want
government commanding us around and regulating our affairs?
In hindsight, that dispute seems quaint—and we forgot the core of it. Now, people from Paul Krugman to Tyler Cowen
seems to think that libertarians rule the world and that everything
that has gone wrong is libertarians’ fault. In the race to centrally
plan everything from production decisions to who gets to leave their
house wearing what, every other concern—except, naturally, Black Lives
Matter—was thrown overboard.
Libertarianism isn’t an ideology about what's the better outcome,
however defined. It’s not about how "we" fix a medical problem, or how
best to mitigate disasters like pandemics. It's not even about how to
distribute the breathtaking surplus that our highly productive economies
create. It's about who gets to make decisions about what. It’s
not about how we best minimize pandemic threats, not how we best
optimize some imagined private or social welfare function, not how we
best ensure long and healthy lives.
Whoever owns something decides. If you—the owner and manager of your body—want to put harmful drugs in it, be my guest. That's none of my business.
If you wish to carry crystals that protect against evil, or against
pink elephants lurking in the shadows, knock yourself out. If you wish
to dress up in phony gear that staves off invisible microbes, have fun.
But you do not have the right to mandate that others follow suit. You do not, like Cowen recently did, have the high ground to say "actually, [freedom] just doesn't seem worth it." He, as David Henderson
chastized him for it, "seems to be substituting his own values for
those of others"—the cardinal sin for anyone who pays lip service to
liberty.
And he wasn’t the only one. Succumbing to the temptation of
commandeering others about, "libertarians" on both sides of the Atlantic
started invoking externalities and public goods to justify one patently
unjust and invasive policy after another. Sam Bowman, a self-described neoliberal and formerly of the Adam Smith Institute, is, like Cowen, just the most vocal of the casualties.
But public health is not a public good, as Michel Accad described recently in response to the Great Barrington Declaration. Nor is it of anyone else’s concern:
An individual’s life and health are particular goods, not
common goods. It is an obvious metaphysical truth that my health and my
life can only be mine and are not shared in common with anyone, and
certainly not with the political community at large. At its heart,
"public health" is an oxymoron, since "the public," as an abstraction,
has no health to speak of. Only individuals are healthy or not.
Lockdowns as pandemic-fighting policy are this perfect domineering
strategy: if the infection rates go down, success; you win and can
invoke the same policy of control next time there’s some alleged
disaster looming. If the infection rates remain the same, or go up, you
clamp down harder—success again. What would the world have to look like
for you to concede? What would have to happen for you to say “Actually,
stripping away our population's freedoms and dignities don't seem to help us in reducing the infections”?
There is no circumstance under which lockdowners accept that their
pandemic policy does not work, or more importantly, runs against liberty
or basic human dignity.
Krugman and True Liberalism
Interestingly enough, Krugman almost
got it right. Lambasting libertarians for everything that's wrong in
pandemic America—yes, it’s exactly as nutty as it sounds—he writes:
Many things should be matters of individual choice. The
government has no business dictating your cultural tastes, your faith or
what you decide to do with other consenting adults.
We used to think that liberals wanted to liberate the people
from government constraints, a fundamental hands-off approach. American
liberals long since forgot this insight: it's no longer about leaving people alone,
it's about correcting their thought crimes before they manifest
themselves in the world. Still, the liberals of today pay lip service to
this notion before they pivot 180 degrees—and start listing activities
that it is now the government’s business to decide: what you wear in
public; where you go; what you think; what you trade, with whom, and
where; ensuring that you don't unknowingly spread germs around.
The pandemic brought out the worst in people and revealed clearly
what was always simmering under the surface: an innate desire to
dominate others. To put them in their place, to shove nonsensical ideas
down their throats, to dress them up in paltry gear, to ridicule and
attack those who deviate from the One True Government Faith. The
pandemic showed who truly supported and respected the values that others
may hold—and who would rather give in to the temptation of power, who
would override the faulty actions among our inferior plebs.
“Freedom lies in the human heart,” said Judge Napolitano, “but it
must do more than just lie there.” Remember that when you are stripped
of liberties in the name of everyone else’s well-being.
