toward peace
and freedom:

the libertarian challenge
around the world

david boaz

(Originally published by Laissez Faire Books)
(First published on TDO January 4, 2000)

The Twentieth Century has been the century of the state, from Hitler and Stalin to the totalitarian states behind the Iron Curtain, from dictatorships across Africa to the bureaucratic states of the United States and Western Europe.

But today socialism has failed. The Soviet model is everywhere abhorred. Third World countries are privatizing state industries and freeing up markets. Practicing capitalism, the Pacific Rim countries have moved from poverty to world economic leadership in a generation. The countries of the Soviet empire, and even those still ruled by Communist parties, are introducing political, economic, and legal reforms-though not fast enough for their people, who are increasingly impatient to join the modern world. The simple and timeless principles of the American revolution-limited government, free markets, and individual liberty-turn out to be even more powerful in today's world of instant communication and global markets than Jefferson or Madison could have imagined.

Resurgence of libertarian ideas


In the United States, the bureaucratic leviathan is threatened by a resurgence of the libertarian ideas upon which the country was founded. We are witnessing a breakdown of all the cherished beliefs of the welfare-warfare state. In the 1960s a revolt against cultural conformity led to the extension of the promises of the Declaration of Independence to further guarantee civil rights, civil liberties, and personal freedom. And in subsequent years we have begun, by fits and starts, to roll back the state's control over our economic lives, through deregulation, tax reduction, and now even challenges to such cornerstones of the paternalistic state as Social Security and monopoly education.

These changes have two principal roots. One is the growing recognition by people around the world of the tyranny and inefficiency inherent in state planning. The other is the growth of a political movement rooted in ideas, particularly the ideas of libertarianism.

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his own life in any he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's absolute right to life, liberty, and property-rights that people have naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force-actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
    -Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

Most people habitually believe in and live by this code of ethics. Libertarians believe this code should be applied consistently, specifically in actions by governments as well as by individuals. Governments should exist to protect rights, to protect us from others who might use force against us. When governments use force against people who have not violated the rights of others, then governments themselves become rights violators. Thus libertarians condemn such government actions as taxation, censorship, the draft, price controls, and regulation of our personal and economic lives.

Libertarians see freedom as the necessary condition for creativity, innovation, and progress. State control of our lives leads not only to tyranny but to economic and cultural stagnation.

Libertarianism-originally known as (classical) liberalism-arose in the eighteenth century, as thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith challenged the old system of monarchy and mercantilism. A growing middle class demanded political and economic rights. Libertarians like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson led a revolution and set up the world's first society based on the natural rights of man. In the nineteenth century libertarian ideas swept through much of Europe.

In the twentieth century the ancien regime-in modern guises-staged a comeback. Statists of the right and left extended the power of the state in most countries of the world. But today statism is again on the defensive. After Hitler, Stalin, and Hiroshima demonstrated the awesome power of the modern state, a small band of scholars began reviving the ideas of classical liberalism and the American Revolution. Libertarian scholars have won the National book Award and several Nobel Prizes in economics, while the trickle of libertarian books has become a torrent.

Fulfilling the Promise


Libertarian organizations around the world advance the cause of individual rights with increasing success. In the United States libertarians call for reductions in taxes and government spending, free trade, deregulation, competition in education, liberation of the poor from the corporate welfare state, and an end to censorship, government spying on Americans, and intrusions into our personal lives. In the Third World libertarians press for Bills of Rights, free markets, and an end to superpower meddling in their affairs. And in Communist and ex-communist countries libertarians work for the rule of law and the rights of individuals and groups to own and control their own lives and property, which are the necessary foundation for civil society and political freedom.

Across the world, libertarians seek to fulfill the promise of the American Revolution, to extend the Declaration of Independence's guarantee of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to everyone. Libertarians want to restrict government in order to liberate individuals and bring about an open, humane, and prosperous society.

The people of the world have waited long enough to be free.