The Political Spectrum Con
by Nelson Hultberg
August 1, 2005
One of the most important issues in today's world entails a very
exasperating fallacy being implanted into the American mind in order
to justify the massive centralization of modern government. It is
our academic world's warping of the political spectrum. What the
American people are being taught as the political left, center, and
right is a severe distortion of the facts of reality. Unfortunately
such a distorted view is widely prevalent because most Americans
have been educated in our government controlled school system.
Crypto-authoritarians have now cloned themselves throughout our
universities; and one of their nefarious weapons is what I term the "political
spectrum con." The tragic result of their ideological warping is
that droves of bright college graduates are being sent out into the
world every year with a poisoned view as to the requisites of Jeffersonian
freedom and prosperity. They are thus driven to approve ever-increasing
taxation and regimentation so as to relentlessly expand government
power.
What Is the Political Spectrum?
The idea of a political spectrum, is one of the first concepts taught
and analyzed in poly-sci and economics courses in college. It is
a listing of the world's various political-economic systems on a
chart, placing each system on the chart toward the left, middle or
right, according to the basic type of government that system upholds.
It is a natural way to provide the overall perspective needed in
judging the different political and economic forms that exist, and
thus a very important tool in teaching what the political world is
all about.
To understand why the political spectrum that is taught today is
so perniciously false, we must first delve into a bit of Aristotelian
philosophy. The notion of a political spectrum with three poles of
left, right and center has come to us as a legacy from Aristotle's
idea that virtue consists of the "rational course" that lies between
two opposite and natural extremes. This rational course he called
the Golden Mean. For example, as Aristotle tells us in his Ethics,
if a man is confronted with danger, he meets it in one of three ways.
He succumbs to the extreme of cowardice, or to the opposite extreme
of rashness; or he chooses the middle course of courage, which
is contrary to both. In like fashion, a man can choose liberality,
which is midway between the opposite extremes of stinginess and extravagance, self-control between
the extremes of abstemiousness and drunkenness, and ambition between
sloth and greed. [1]
Aristotle's theory was based upon the fact that in most human action,
there is a wide range of intensity, all the way from too little (defect),
to too much (excess). In between such defect and excess, there lies
an appropriate mean which would be virtue, with the two opposites
of defect and excess being vices. In other words, good is the wisdom
of balance, and evil is when you stray away from the Golden Mean
toward one of the two extremes.
There are, of course, many values of life (other than the ones Aristotle
put forth) that can also be placed upon a spectrum to determine a
Golden Mean. Human life entails a wide array of desires, actions,
traits, conditions and needs, numerous of which can be portrayed
in terms of a vice-virtue-vice relationship. Listed below are a few
examples that I have put together:
Thus, midway between the defect of apathy and the excess of zealotry,
there lies the rational balance of concern. Between vulgarity
and prudery, there is the mean of decency. Between chaos
and regimentation, there is order. And between the extremes
of slavery and anarchy lies freedom.
I am quite aware of the reservations held by some scholars as to
the usefulness of Aristotle's doctrine of the mean to meaningfully
analyze life's various phenomena. It is said that such a concept
is "relative;" it is a form of "circular reasoning;" and it avoids
adherence to principle in favor of the "middle-of-the-road." On the
contrary, every one of these claims is demonstrably false and I have
written a book, Reality's Golden Mean, that shows why. What
I show in the book is that the doctrine of the mean is fundamentally
misunderstood by its antagonists, which has led to its distortion
in our colleges, which has led to a warped and incongruous philosophy
among those who are attempting to defend the ramparts of freedom.
But the scope of this essay must be limited to a generic analysis
of the Aristotelian mean. Sometime next year, Reality's Golden
Mean should be out; and it will fully corroborate the efficacy
of Aristotle's doctrine in determining much of what is good and bad
about human life.
It is the Aristotelian way of thinking then that has led to the
concept of a political spectrum. By listing the various ideological
systems on a left to right chart, one can find the two opposite extremes
and then determine a "mean" which would be the rational course that
lies between them. Here is where the danger arises, however. The
political spectrum chart has been distorted over the years by most
intellectuals throughout Europe and America in order to make their
political bias toward a massive centralized welfare state look proper
and virtuous. Such a distortion has taken several different forms,
but is usually accomplished by portraying fascism as a "dictatorship
of the right" and communism as a "dictatorship of the left," and
then establishing a false choice between them.
What follows below is an example of the way in which the political-economic
spectrum is conceived to be by the great majority of Americans today:
With this picture, students have gotten the idea that both ends
of the spectrum are dictatorships (communism on the left and fascism
on the right), and that the democratic welfare state of contemporary
America is the only possible good, for it is the Golden Mean between
two opposite vices. In order to point out the fallacies involved
here, we must first define the terms being used. Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary says the following (to which I have added clarifying remarks
in parentheses):
Communism -- a totalitarian system of government in which
a single authoritarian party controls state owned means of production
with the professed aim of establishing a stateless society; a theory
advocating the elimination of private property. (The state holds
power not only over property, but over every aspect of life. In practice,
communism eventually requires control over all human activities,
for all of life is interrelated. If the state is to control one aspect
of life, then it must control all aspects to be effective.)
Socialism -- a system or condition of society in which the
means of production are owned and controlled by the state; a system
of society or group living in which there is no private property.
(There are no differences between socialism and communism, other
than superficial ones that are concocted theoretically. In practice,
socialism means state ownership and operation of the factors of production,
which means rigid control of human beings and all their activities
in order to be effective. Socialism and communism are one and the
same.)
Welfarism -- a social system based upon the assumption by
a political state of primary responsibility for the individual and
social welfare of its citizens. (Rather than owning and operating
the factors of production, the state merely regulates them and redistributes
the results of their productivity according to what is democratically
desired. It is a halfway house between communism which is state ownership,
and capitalism which is private ownership.)
Capitalism -- an economic system characterized by private
or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are
determined by private decision rather than by state control. (The
state is restricted to preserving a free domestic order by punishing
force and fraud. It is neither to own nor operate the factors of
production, nor to interfere in the peaceful decisions of the marketplace,
leaving it to be controlled by the natural laws such as supply and
demand that operate within it.)
Fascism -- a political philosophy, movement or regime that
exalts nation and race above the individual, and that stands for
a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader,
severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression
of opposition. (The state has power over every aspect of the economy
to plan and regulate its workings. Property is owned privately, but
controlled by the governing authorities as to what it is to produce,
how and when it is to be disposed of, etc.)
The Fallacies in Today's Teachings
With these definitions in mind, let's now examine the fallacies
and distortions involved in the above political spectrum.
Fallacy #1 -- Communism, socialism, and fascism are different
fundamental systems deserving separate places on the spectrum.
They obviously are not. They are all variants of the same dictatorial
philosophy (which is collectivism) and belong together on the
same side of the spectrum. Each one advocates total state control
and/or ownership of all property through a centralized government
and severe economic and social regimentation. None of them recognize
the concept of individual rights. And they all declare that man
exists to serve the state.
The excuse for terming communism and fascism as opposite systems
is that under communism all property is owned by the state, where
under fascism the ownership of property is left nominally in the
hands of individuals, but ruthlessly controlled by the state, which
reserves the right to expropriate the property at any time the owner
doesn't abide by state dictates. Since individual ownership without
individual control is a farce, fascism is in essence no different
from communism (or socialism). All three are systems whereby the
individual and his property are subjected to the absolute power
of the state.
Fallacy #2 -- Anarchy needs no mention. Observe that
there is no representation in the above spectrum for anarchy. There
is a place for total government (communism), but no place for the
absence of government (anarchy). Is not the absence of government
the correct opposite of total government? Would it not be a truer
picture with "total government" on one side and "no government" on
the other side? If we are trying to depict what the opposite extremes
of vice are, and the virtue that lies in between, then it's impossible
to get any more opposite or any more extreme than total government
and no government. You can't go any further left than communism,
or any further right than anarchy.
Fallacy #3 -- Socialism is good so long as it is democratic.
Democratic socialism is just another form of dictatorship. It is
absolute rule by the "majority will" instead of by one man or by
several men on a planning board. The individual has no clear cut
rights, only conditional privileges, which are granted and withdrawn
according to the arbitrary dictates of the collective. The majority
may vote away as much of anyone's wealth as it deems necessary or
desirable. Property does not belong to the individual. It belongs
to society and is to be democratically apportioned in whatever way
the majority wishes. Since the collective is the owner of all property,
the collective naturally becomes the sole employer, landlord, manager,
banker, and teacher of the individual. There can be no genuine freedom
of choice, or action, or thought, or desire under such a system.
Other Forms of Fallacy
The above distortion of the political spectrum is not the only form
used. There are others that are equally as crude in their confusion
of the truth, and thus just as damaging to capitalism and the concept
of freedom. In all the distortions, however, there invariably is
one common characteristic. They all endeavor to make welfarism (or
some variant of socialism) the middle ground, and capitalism one
of the extreme vices.
For example, in The Evolution of Economic Society: An Introduction
To Economics, by Martin Gerhard Giesbrecht, the political-economic
spectrum is presented as follows: [2]
This is a slightly altered picture of the more commonly held version
just discussed, for there is a gap in the middle. But that ol' devil fascism is
again portrayed on the far right, with capitalism adjacent to it
so as to convey its "potential evil" to an unsuspecting populace.
What possible conclusion could a young student draw from this other
than that all those on the political right are at best borderline
fascists, and that the only sane policy is to steer a middle course
of compromise between socialism and capitalism -- i.e., welfare statism.
To declare fascism to be a market economy and place it on the political
right is a severe perversion of logic. As Bruntz and Edgerton tell
us in Understanding Our Government:
"Under Fascism and Communism, the individual counts as nothing except
as he furthers the interests of the State. Freedom to move from place
to place, to choose a job, or conduct a business are restricted or
do not exist. Every phase of political, economic, and personal activity
is regulated by the government. That is why it is called totalitarian.
"Fascists allow private enterprise because it is the most effective
system in the production of wealth in the interests of the nation.
But it is not FREE enterprise, for capital and labor alike are completely
controlled by the state." [3]
Fascism is a command economy, and belongs on the political left
where massive centralized government resides. Adolph Hitler repeatedly
termed his system of government "national socialism" or the shortened
term of "nazism," knowing full well that it was every bit as collectivist
as communism. And Webster's Dictionary defines Nazi as: a member
of a German fascist party controlling Germany from 1933 to 1945 under
Adolf Hitler. Thus, fascism and socialism are merely variants of
the same system, which is collectivism. Declaring them to be opposites
is inexcusable.
Sadly, however, this is the type of falsification that we have to
endure in today's school system. Whenever the facts of reality are
being distorted by authorities in charge of conveying truth to young
people, one needs to ask, "Cui bono?" Who benefits? In this
case, the beneficiaries are those who seek the regimentation of Americans
under a massive centralized government in Washington.
If one is tempted to ask why "rational academics" would create such
distortions, the answer is that they do it subconsciously. Very few
openly identify such evasions to themselves. Their need is naturally
to smear the concept of capitalism (which means smearing the concept
of freedom) in the minds of the young in order to make their own
collectivist desires appear as proper, or as Aristotle would put
it -- the mean. In this way, they hope to establish the validity
of a massive welfare state as the true system for man. It is just
one of the many examples of self-deception in which men of the mind
partake when attempting to promote a certain ideology they have come
to worship.
Add to this the steady stream of misinterpretations, evasions, and
lies that have been handed down over the past 80 years concerning
the nature of capitalism and what took place during the 19th century,
and one begins to see quite clearly why the great bulk of intellectuals
in our academic community continue to push the massive welfare state
upon our youth as the ideal.
The entire distortion is a subtle attempt to make advocates of
individualism and capitalism appear as extremists or fascists and
convince everyone that the ideal system is our present centralized
welfare state. This is certainly not a correct picture. The true
political spectrum that properly portrays reality according to Aristotle's
doctrine of the mean would be as follows:
The far left of the spectrum is the vice of total government
(whether it calls itself communism, socialism or fascism). The far
right is its exact opposite, the vice of no government. The middle
is the virtue of limited government (and its economic corollary of
capitalism), with welfarism a semi-capitalist, semi-socialist mixture,
and the anarcho-capitalism of the radical libertarians a semi-capitalist,
semi-anarchist mixture.
This then is the total political-economic spectrum. As stated, there
are numerous other variations of it being presented today, some totally
reversed to this, and some even in circles -- all of them though
very much in error. The whole notion of a political-economic spectrum
is senseless unless it is presented precisely along the lines of
Aristotle's Golden Mean idea. There have to be two opposite poles beyond
which one cannot go and then a virtuous middle, or it's simply
not a spectrum. It's then just an arbitrary display of various political-economic
systems with no rhyme or reason to it, and no capacity to judge any
of the systems as right or wrong, workable or non-workable.
A great deal of today's confusion on this issue can be attributed
to the political origin of the terms right and left. Historian Crane
Brinton tells us: "These terms grew up out of French parliamentary
practice early in the [19th] century, when the conservatives or monarchists
took to sitting in a group to the right of the presiding officer,
and the constitutionalists and radical reformers grouped themselves
on his left." [4]
If our present day views of the political spectrum did to some degree
evolve from the early 19th century custom in France of the conservatives
sitting to the right of the presiding officer in parliament and the
radicals aligning themselves to the left, then it is time we revised
our views. Such a conception is wholly arbitrary, for the two positions
can easily be reversed or reassembled to fit any whim. By using this
conception, we divest the terms right and left of any
real significance. Is it not more rational to conceive of the terms
as they have naturally evolved in America where, throughout the
20th century, the political left has advocated a larger and more
interventionist government, while the political right has advocated
a smaller and less intrusive government? Is not Aristotle closer
to the truth than "parliamentary seating arrangements" of the 19th
century?
The True Political Spectrum
Thus, there is no such thing as a "dictatorship of the right" as
so frequently declared by our intellectuals in the universities and
the media. ALL DICTATORSHIPS ARE OF THE LEFT! The farther we go to
the right on the spectrum, the less government we will have,
not more. The usage of such philosophically fraudulent terminology
as a "totalitarianism of the right" can only further confuse this
already snarled issue, by creating a phony association of capitalism
and fascism in the people's minds and causing them to fear all attempts
to move to the right on the political spectrum toward less government
and more freedom.
The fact that such confusions are created so frequently by those
of academic prowess is indicative of one of two factors: 1) the affliction
of intellectual error on their part, or 2) the perpetration of intellectual
deceit on their part. A much clearer and more realistic picture of
the spectrum would be its division into the following five basic
political philosophies:
1) Totalitarianism. This form of government is totally dictatorial,
whether it calls itself communist, fascist or socialist. The state
either controls or has the power to control every avenue of life
(political, economic, sociological and personal).
2) Welfarism. This is the form of government utilized in
all the Western democracies today where the state arbitrarily controls
the economy, attempting to assume the responsibility for the people's
welfare through expropriation and redistribution of personal wealth
and regulation of their business activities. Such a political system
is supposed to be the great middle way, or the "vital center." But
as we have seen, it is not really the true middle ground (or Golden
Mean) at all. It is an attempt to move closer to totalitarianism
on the far left, and partially utilize the milder tenets of socialism
and fascism so as to somehow form a caretaker state of half government
controls and half personal freedom. Since there are no specific constitutional
limits placed upon how much government intervention there is to
be, however, the caretaker state continues to move further leftward
and grow larger and larger each decade.
3) Constitutional Republicanism. This is the political-economic
system of strictly limited government and a free marketplace. It
does not leave the role of government up to the whims of the majority
will as our present day welfare state does. It declares in a written
Constitution what basic areas the government is going to be allowed
to function in, and then leaves all the rest up to the individual
through voluntary interaction and initiative.
Its primary underlying principles are: The individual is to rule
and sustain his own life. Any government laws and services that need
to be enacted must always be implemented within the constraints of federalism,
which means first on the local level, then on the state level, and
then on the federal level. And all such laws must be objective.
In other words, the law must be close to the people that it concerns,
and it must not be used as a provider of special privileges --
e.g., corporation subsidies, price controls, monopolistic protection
for unions, welfare services, affirmative action programs, non-uniform
tax rates, etc. Government is to be limited in its scope to the three
basic functions necessary for the preservation of domestic order
(military defense, police forces and courts of law) and the performance
of those few public services that cannot be functionally handled
through the marketplace (such as city streets, fire departments,
communicable disease control, etc.).
Anything that can be handled privately should be handled privately.
No government has the right to coerce people into producing services
that they could perform on their own, but choose not to. In this
way freedom of choice is preserved, efficiency is maintained, men
remain their own rulers, and pay for the values of life in direct
proportion to their usage of them. This is the standard defining
principle of government that guided Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and
the rest of the Founding Fathers in their formation of the Republic.
It has remained down to the modern day the undergirding support for
all champions of liberty and domestic order.
For example, most of today's constitutionalists and free-market
advocates would feel comfortable with the following Statement of
Principles by the American Conservative Union in 1964: "We remark
the inherent tendency of government to tyranny. The prudent commonwealth
will therefore labor tirelessly, by means agreeable to its peculiar
genius and traditions, to limit and disperse the power of government.
No task should be confided to a higher authority that can be performed
at a subsidiary level; and whatever the people can do for themselves
should not be confided to government at all." [5]
4) Anarcho-Capitalism. This is the political system advocated
by the followers of Murray N. Rothbard (For a New Liberty)
and Bruce L. Benson (The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the
State). It declares the Constitution to be invalid, and all organized
state functions to be immoral. According to these theorists, all
functions of the state should be abolished -- not only the tyrannical
functions such as redistribution of income and social engineering,
but also the protective functions such as the military, police
and courts of law. They insist that everything should be privatized and
provided by the marketplace. Thus, anarcho-capitalists do not really
want to eliminate the "protective" government functions; they
just want to change them from state provided to privately provided
institutions.
They purposely term themselves "anarcho-capitalists" so as to distinguish
themselves from total anarchy. The basic premise of the Rothbardians
is that if left alone in the absence of a mandatory state apparatus,
men would form their own necessary armies and police forces privately via
the profit motive, and by so doing, would avoid the chaotic Hobbesian
war of all against all that pure anarchy would be.
Rothbardians will dispute it, but in an anarcho-capitalist society,
all mega-corporations would inevitably develop their own armies and
police forces. So also would the AFL-CIO, the Mafia, the NAACP, the
Catholic Church, and Donald Trump. Any person, group, business, labor
union, or religious sect could and would form their own private defense
agencies to protect their interests and their constituents, all according
to their concept of what is right.
I think it is fair to say that less government is certainly needed
in the modern world, but the anarchist libertarians go far beyond
the pale. In trying to link capitalism to a privatized military, police, and
court system, they diminish the credibility of free enterprise
in the eyes of all rational intellects. Unthinkingly they lend strength
to the collectivist claim that capitalism is the "rule of the jungle." This
is no way to launch a freedom movement to challenge the tyranny of
modern statism.
This writer sees in such a political philosophy the same impossible
utopianism that devoured the far left socialists of the early 20th
century. At that time, the collectivist theme was: "As soon as the
Utopia is realized, the State will wither away." Today, anarcho-capitalists
sing the opposite tune: "As soon as the State withers away, the Utopia
will be realized." Both proclamations fail to grasp the true nature
of human beings and the necessary essentials for a society of law.
Both are attempts to convert an evil into a workable ideal through
the evasion of reality.
5) Anarchism. This is a pre-civilizational "anti-social system" where
there are no organized state institutions (voluntary or otherwise),
no legal framework, no army for defense, no police forces, and no
courts of law -- just the rule of the jungle in the nomadic manner
of our Cro-Magnon period of history. In such a society, anything
would go if you were strong enough or brutal enough, or if you had
a large enough clan of marauders and were willing to live outside
the communal bonds that motivate most human beings.
Where Rothbard's Anarcho-Capitalists Go Wrong
One of the important reasons for the basic libertarian antagonism
towards the welfare state lies in the fact that welfarism is an attempt
to philosophically compromise freedom with totalitarianism (i.e.,
merge what is politically "the good" with what is politically "the
evil"). It is an attempt to combine legal and illegal methods in
the same society, which is not only immoral but also impractical,
for such a compromise system will eventually evolve into some variant
of the very evil with which it is trying to compromise. As Ayn Rand
declared throughout her works, there can be no middle ground between
the two fundamental philosophical opposites of slavery and freedom.
This is her famous "either-or principle." Either we are a free society,
or a slave society, but we can't be both.
This all libertarians agree upon, or they're not libertarians. But
such a basic premise works the other way also. Just as it is impossible
to compromise the FREEDOM of a Constitutional Republic with the slavery
of socialism on the far left, to establish a workable welfare statism,
so it is also impossible to compromise the ORDER of a Constitutional
Republic with the chaos of anarchy on the far right, to establish
a workable non-government society.
For example, of all the various life values that I outlined previously,
there are four that when placed on the spectrum show distinctly the
desirability of a strictly limited government system, as compared
to the two extremes of "total government" and "no government." Each
of the three primary forms of government organization lead to the
specific values listed below:
If Aristotle were alive today, he would be telling Murray Rothbard's
anarcho-capitalists that in all four of the above triads of value,
the mean will always evolve under limited government, while either
a "defect" or an "excess" will evolve under the two opposite extremes
of total government and no government. That is to say, a no government
society will ultimately produce an excess of freedom and individuality,
and a defect of order and growth. This is the way much of human life
is constructed -- on a spectrum between opposite vices.
In any attempted compromise between virtue and vice, all you end
up doing is eventually establishing the vice you are trying to compromise
with -- total regimentation and uniformity if it's a leftward compromise,
and total chaos and perversity if it's a rightward compromise. The
anarcho-capitalists fail to see this, that they are just as distinctly
a threat to the ideal of individual freedom as the welfare statists,
only from the opposite side of the spectrum. The welfare statists
threaten individual freedom from the left with too much government,
while anarcho-capitalists threaten from the right with not enough government.
Both experiments will end in tyranny and disillusionment, one from
stifling bureaucracy and the other from the unchecked terror of brute
mentalities.
Misapplying the "Either-Or Principle"
Rothbardians, thus, fail to fully apply the "either-or principle," i.e.,
to the political right as well as to the political left; and as a
result they attempt a compromise between opposite values of good
and evil. But this is not their only error. They misconstrue the
either-or principle in another more serious way.
The either-or principle has made anarchist libertarians think in
terms of good and evil being a TWO-POLED spectrum, and that one must
then choose between one of the two extremes. With such a conception
of good and evil, one must inevitably choose anarchy in order to
remain logically consistent, for anarchy is the opposite extreme
to totalitarianism. Since totalitarianism is obviously an evil, anarchy
must be the good. Thus, anarcho-capitalists maintain that striking
a mean between the two is an indefensible compromise, i.e., trying
to play the middle-of-the-road.
The error in such thinking is that the concept of good and evil
is seldom a two-poled spectrum. It is more often a three-poled spectrum,
as Aristotle demonstrated twenty-four hundred years ago. The ideal
(or good) lies in the middle of the spectrum, with the evil being
the two opposite extremes beyond which one cannot go.
What the anarchist theoreticians miss is that such a three-poled
concept of good and evil does not invalidate the "either-or principle" on
fundamental values. Remember it states that there can be no compromise
between two OPPOSITE fundamental values, i.e., between good and evil
values. This means there can be no compromise between the Golden
Mean (which is the good) and either of the extremes (which are the
evils). Thus, there can be no compromise between a limited government
and totalitarianism, and there can be no compromise between a
limited government and anarchism. To strike a mean between totalitarianism
and anarchism, is not compromising between good and evil because
both of these extremes are evils.
One must always keep in mind the difference between the "mean" and
the "middle-of-the-road." The former is the establishment of the
good; the latter is an attempt to establish a halfway point between
the good and one of the extremes. Welfarism is a middle-of-the-road
position on the spectrum and so is anarcho-capitalism, for they
attempt to combine aspects of both the mean and the extreme (i.e.,
compromise the good with the evil).
So anarcho-capitalists are making a very profound error when they
claim that to espouse the doctrine of the mean is to abandon adherence
to principle in favor of the "middle-or-the-road." On the contrary,
it is they, the anarcho-capitalists, who have assumed a middle-of-the-road
position -- i.e., a compromise between the political good and the
political evil.
Murray Rothbard did not understand Aristotle's doctrine of the mean
and its profound implications for a free society. The Founding Fathers
did understand it, at least implicitly, and as a consequence, they
established a limited constitutional government as the ideal for
free men. They understood that the extremes were evil, and thus must
be avoided. Rothbard's failure to grasp this has led his followers
into a futile attempt to enshrine a modified anarchism as
some sort of ideal society. The pied piper has led the children off
into the forest, and they are now lost. Sadly the libertarian movement
is lost too until it can come to understand Aristotelian wisdom again.
There are several other errors that anarchists make (e.g., they
subscribe to Rand's flawed "non-aggression principle"), but such
errors are beyond the scope of this essay. My forthcoming book, Reality's
Golden Mean, contains a 57-page chapter with a much deeper analysis
of the anarcho-libertarian approach that exposes all the fundamental
flaws upon which Murray Rothbard and Bruce Benson have erected their
radical thesis. (To read a review of the book, click
here.)
What I demonstrate in the book is that the doctrine of the mean
is a natural law instilled into reality that can be used theoretically
to establish what the "universal political good" is for man. The
law of the mean is to the intellectual realm what the law of gravity
is to the physical realm. It is a fixed, philosophical North Star
that can be used to direct our lives and our societies toward the
ideal. Our modern academics and media pundits are totally confused
as to the mean's applicability and universality in our lives. When
properly understood, the doctrine of the mean demonstrates convincingly
that the true political ideal is what the Founding Fathers attempted
to establish -- a system of limited government based upon OBJECTIVE
LAW, i.e., equal rights under the law.
It is only at the center of the spectrum (the mean) that objective
law can be found, and it is only a limited Constitutional Republic
that can achieve this mean. All other systems to the authoritarian
left or to the anarchistic right are based, to some degree or another,
on ARBITRARY LAW out of which come eventually tyranny and
chaos. The fundamental values of civilization -- freedom, order,
and justice -- cannot exist without a system of objective law; and
objective law cannot exist if a country strays away from the "vital
center" of the spectrum, i.e., the Golden Mean.
Ignoring Half of Reality
To understand how thoroughly corrupt and irrational our modern day
academics and media pundits are on this issue of the political spectrum,
we now need to investigate how they "ignore the right half of reality." Below
is another view of the correct spectrum whereby the mean is republicanism midway
between the opposite extremes of statism and anarchism.
On the statist left, there are two categories -- the extreme
of totalitarianism and its modified version of authoritarianism (i.e.,
the welfare state), which is what all the Western political systems
of the world have become. On the anarchist right, there are
two categories -- the extreme of total anarchy and its modified version
of anarcho-capitalism, which is what many of today's libertarians
espouse. In the center lies the mean of a Constitutional Republic,
which the Founding Fathers espoused. These fundamental categories
represent the entirety of political reality.
Observe, however, how the above depiction of political reality is
distorted to serve the advocates of statism and their goals. The
primary categories of republicanism and anarchism are basically ignored
in all orthodox portrayals of the political spectrum. Our professors
in the colleges and our talking heads in the media promote a spectrum
that entails only positions within the category of statism on
the left. The entire right side of the spectrum, one-half to
two-thirds of reality, is simply ignored.
For example, we are presented over and over again on all the TV
talk shows with representatives supposedly from the "left" and from
the "right," and often from someone who attempts to carve out a "middle
ground." This makes it appear as if the presenter is unbiased, attempting
to present all sides, searching for the truth. But all three of these
representatives (let's say for example, Ted Kennedy for the left,
Rudy Giuliani for the middle ground, and Newt Gingrich for the right)
subscribe to the concept of a highly centralized mega-state running
the lives of Americans from Washington. All three advocate the violation
of individual rights in order to convey group privileges. All three
shy away from any allegiance to the original vision of America as
a Republic of States -- instead maintaining that America is a "mass
democracy." All three support a progressive income tax and substantial
redistribution of wealth. All three are philosophical statists despite
their harmonious paeans to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.
Observe also that all strict constitutionalists and libertarians
are omitted from debates in the media with their ideas either suppressed
or caricatured in academic circles. (Unfortunately Rothbard's utopianism
lends credence to the statist caricature of libertarianism.) As a
result, the media and our schools are able to present a totally false
picture of political reality because their left-center-right portrayal
of politics is nothing but a division of the category of statism into
meaningless sub-categories of liberals, moderates, and conservatives.
The category of anarchism is totally ignored, while the category
of republicanism is seldom acknowledged, and then only to
smear it as "out there in the fever swamps of right-wing extremism" where
fascists, terrorists, wacko militia groups, and the KKK reside.
In this way, the statist establishment can convey to an unsuspecting
populace that our only basic choice is between three different versions
of statism rather than between statism, republicanism, and anarchism.
Who wins in this kind of contest? Only the statist mentalities who
wish for larger and larger government. If the reader has ever wondered
why government grows relentlessly more mastodonic every decade, it
is because the American people during the past 80 years have been
taught that such largesse is our only choice.
We have shrunk our view of political reality down to one category
-- STATISM -- and have declared the political spectrum to be solely
within its parameters. We should, therefore, not be surprised
when the citizens of America vote in lockstep for more and more government
programs every year, or when our young people usher forth from their
educational years ignorant of the great philosophical issues that
ignited the American revolution.
It is a horrifying indictment upon the distortion of our times and
our minds when we condemn those who are preaching ideological adherence
to the Golden Mean as "fanatical" and "extreme." But that is precisely
what the welfare state authoritarians of today are doing when they
proclaim all those on the "far political right" to be wild eyed extremists.
Actually it is the welfare state authoritarians who are the extremists.
It is they who are relentlessly pushing America out toward the left
end of the spectrum and the "regimentation" of total government.
And in like manner, Rothbard's anarchist libertarians are trying
to push America out toward the right end of the spectrum and
the "chaos" of no government. It is we, the laissez-faire capitalists,
the advocates of a strict constitutional government, who are solidly
rooted in the center of reality firmly fixed upon truth and the ideal.
In conclusion, a Constitutional Republic (and its economic corollary
of capitalism), operating within the constraints of federalism, is
the true VITAL CENTER if the "entirety of reality" is taken into
consideration. The fact that our establishment intellectuals and
media pundits today choose to blot out a great chunk of reality in
their explanations is indicative of a society that has lost its crucial
philosophical moorings. In such a society, freedom and sanity are
headed for extinction.
Notes
1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Translated
by Martin Ostwald (New York: Liberal Arts Press, Bobbs-Merrill Co.,
1962), Book II, Chapters 7 & 8.
2. Martin Gerhard Giesbrecht, The Evolution of Economic
Society: An Introduction To Economics (San Francisco: W.H.
Freeman & Co., 1972), p. 179.
3. George G. Bruntz and Ronald B. Edgerton, Understanding
Our Government (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1971), p. 17.
4. Crane Brinton, Ideas and Men: The Story of Western
Thought (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963), p. 354.
5. Cited by Frank S. Meyer in Left, Right and Center:
Essays on Liberalism and Conservatism in the United States,
Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally& Co., 1965),
p. 9. Emphasis added.
[This article is excerpted from my forthcoming book, Reality's
Golden Mean: The Case for Libertarian Politics and Conservative
Values.] To read a review of the book, CLICK
HERE.
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