One general principle I have for life is that if I see something I believe ought to be done undone, I do it. It is easy to complain, criticize, and express anger. It is easy to criticize Congress for being dysfunctional, self-serving, a seller of policy for campaign contributions, and filled with crazy and/or awful people, for all of these things are true. But this is of no use unless one steps forward to offer an alternative.1
The events of 1/6/2021, the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump and the successful murder of Charlie Kirk, the rising tide of threats and violence against elected officials and election workers, and the confrontations between ICE and state governments show a very ominous trend. Every federal election is presented by major-party partisans as having apocalyptic consequences, of being an Armageddon. They are all too correct: the DC government’s power only grows from year to year at the people’s expense, and this power is easily used by one major party against those who voted for the other, whether in terms of disaster relief, anti-discrimination law, supposed infrastructure spending, ICE’s actions, or manipulation of the media. Proposals have grown steadily louder to break the deadlock by locking in one party’s power, whether by packing the Supreme Court, adding many low-population states dominated by one major party to control the Senate, restricting voting, or drastically expanding or curtailing citizenship. This seems likely to end in an escalating spiral of semi-Constitutional power grabs, or one major party succeeding in changing the rules to lock itself into power at the national level. That would mean the end of meaningful self-government, de jure or de facto breakup of the United States, or civil war. Any of these outcomes would be very harmful; civil war would be utterly catastrophic, likely resulting in economic collapse, tens of millions of deaths, and no clear winner.
My proposed alternative is to reduce the stakes of federal elections by taking that power back from DC and returning it to the states, local communities, and (most importantly) individual citizens. The United States can survive as a union for common defense and free trade if we stop trying to use the federal government to do social engineering on each other. Americans who dislike the policies of their own state will be free to migrate to others better aligned with their values, and competition between states for productive residents will naturally encourage good policies. This means, for Congress, cutting taxes, cutting spending, eliminating regulations on what should properly be considered intrastate commerce, ending use of taxpayer money to manipulate local policy, and returning such government functions as are necessary (for which local taxpayers are actually willing to pay) to the states. However, the federal government would continue to protect the human rights of every American from state action, upholding the principle in the 14th Amendment that localized oppression is still oppression.2
My broader vision is to uphold the basic classically liberal ideals core to the identity and founding vision of the USA: rule of law, equality before the law, private property, personal responsibility, and the freedom to act in any way which does not infringe on the rights of others to do the same. Though the Founders frequently failed to act in accordance with these ideals, their vision gave later generations the power to make them reality. These ideas produced a level of peace, personal safety, and prosperity unimaginable to the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, whose lives as peasants were filled with brutal struggle to survive ubiquitous disease, famine, violence including war, and exploitation by rulers. Their lives were characterized by long hours of tedious work just to feed and clothe themselves.
The Industrial Revolution was made possible by classical liberal ideals put in practice, here and in Britain. It was the only historical event to improve substantially the life of the average person, freeing men from lives of backbreaking agricultural labor, women from hour after hour spent with distaff and spindle, and children from the need to work as soon as physically able. This is of course a result of technological advance, but technological advance does not happen of its own accord. Patronage, and more recently governmental, funding of basic research can yield important discoveries. But the profit motive is necessary to produce practical applications of those discoveries that actually satisfy the needs and wants of the people, because doing so is how profit is obtained: the greater the opportunity for profit, the greater the incentive to innovate.3
Beginning with high taxes imposed in the name of fighting World War I, and other interference with the market that naturally bred further regulation, the federal government expanded its scope from protecting the rights of all Americans, to trying to use experts and government agencies to control the entire economy. This dramatically intensified in the 1930s, prolonging the Great Depression; establishing a culture of dependence on government and acceptance of broad manipulation of the economy from Washington; and encouraging pork-barrel spending, patronage politics, and other corruption. By WWII, the Supreme Court was ruling that growing wheat on one’s own land for one’s own use was “interstate commerce” subject to arbitrary restrictions by Congress. In the 1960s, the so-called Great Society encouraged irresponsibility; subsidized failure; created unsustainable entitlement spending; and devastated American communities by creating generations of people with no incentive, thus no willingness, and thus no ability to work. The more recent rise in grants to state governments, local governments, and nonprofits has eliminated both incentives and ability for local taxpayers to vote down spending that is not cost-effective or actually harmful.
I am emphatically not saying that the late 19th century or the 1920s were my desired end state or a “libertarian paradise”: female, non-white, non-Christian (or Catholic), and LGBTQ Americans were commonly excluded, by law, custom, and illegal violence, from full enjoyment of liberty and its benefits. It would, however, be a good summary of my objectives to say that I want everyone to have at least as much freedom as a white Protestant man had in 1870s America. Every human has the ability to benefit from liberty.
As the above suggests, this is mostly not for deontologist reasons. Though I respect the principled stances of others within my party, I do not consider the existence of very expansive natural rights reasonable historically, politically, or theologically. Rather, I support individual liberty due to consequentialist reasoning: overall, it maximizes human flourishing. In the past, the difficulty of central control of military power in societies with such traditions often led to their conquest by more autocratic powers, but with America’s natural defenses and nuclear deterrent, this is a negligible risk in the modern world. Across modern societies, and throughout history, the greater the economic and personal freedom in a polity, the more wealthy and comfortable its inhabitants are.
As a final thought, these words from Astral Codex Ten discussing some candidates for Governor of California in 2022, which perhaps describe me better than I might wish.
…America…met their expectations in some ways, and didn’t quite measure up in others. And they thought “Wait a second, I’m in a democracy…it’s my job to fix this!” And so they bought their flag pin and their red-white-and-blue striped tie, subscribed to web hosting for $3.99/month, painted “[NAME] for Governor” on their beat-up old truck, and went off to the crusade.
These people see homeless encampments all around them and think “Wait, what if we just built a bunch of new cities for the homeless people to go to?” Or “how much would it cost to get all of them those $10,000 tiny houses you sometimes see advertised on Facebook?” Or “What if we built eight-story parking structures they could live in?” Probably there are good reasons we don’t do any of those things. But even thinking of them demonstrates a spirit of looking at the world, realizing it doesn’t make sense, and groping for solutions. Probably none of these particular ideas will end homelessness. But they sure beat the usual attitude of “eh, if there were some solution, some important person would have thought of it already, I’ll assume it’s either been taken care of or never will be, avert my eyes, and go about my life.”
These are people who the system hasn’t beaten down. They think for themselves, they stand up for what they believe in, they take risks. Most of the time their thoughts are insane, and the things they believe in are ridiculous. Still, whatever their negative qualities, they seem, in some important sense, to be free. They seem human…
…They’re a live canary singing happily in the coal mine, demonstrating that something good still exists in American culture. Some people are still hopeful, entrepreneurial, free-thinking, and invested in democracy.
These people are our Strategic Optimism Reserve, and I am glad to have them.
- “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”―President Theodore Roosevelt ↩︎ - As I have put it to those who fetishize decentralization, I don’t care whether it’s the President of the United States or the town dogcatcher telling me what to do with my person and my property, and sending people with guns to force me to comply. I care that I’m being told what to do with my person and property and people with guns are forcing me to comply. ↩︎
- The so-called Gilded Age was a time of unprecedented improvement in standards of living for most people, made possible by the profit motive. Child labor was not a choice between factory labor and the relatively carefree childhoods and adolescence of the last hundred years in industrialized countries, but a choice between factory labor and subsistence farm labor no less time-consuming, physically demanding, and often dangerous. ↩︎