Friday, May 08, 2009
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Celebrating Hayek
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Posted by:
Kevin Glass at
5:31 PM
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H/t David Boaz
Today is Friedrich August von Hayek's birthday. As one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, Hayek greatly influenced modern American conservative thought. We'll be acknowledging his work with a lengthy excerpt from his seminal work The Road to Serfdom in the upcoming issue of Townhall Magazine.
Too many on the political Left ignore Hayek's prescient warning against justifying increasing expansions of government power and increasing restrictions on individual liberty. The 1944 text is just as relevant of a read today as it was over sixty years ago.
To allay these suspicions and harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives - the craving for freedom - socialism began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom."
The subtle change in meaning to which the word "freedom" was subjected in order that this argument sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others.
Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power... Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelligentsia as the apparent heir of the [classical] liberal tradition: therefore it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism's leading to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable.
Subscribe to Townhall Magazine to read our full tribute to Hayek.
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Yes, what America has called "liberal" or "left" is a road to old European feudalism. I've read VonMises' book "Planned Chaos" some 5 yrs ago. That book and some others like it, shook my world. I saw how close we were to socialism. I no longer trusted current politics. It became difficult to know how to and who to talk to about politics. As a property owner and small business owner, I will someday be a target of some socialist government program, if government continues in this direction. Today? It's time to get religion. Today, we must cry out to God. We need His help. |
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I don't seek to impose my version of necessity and happiness upon you. Quite the opposite. I believe you should be responsible for your own definitions and fulfillment. I don't want to live for your sake, nor demand that you live for mine.
What a twisted and perverted mind you have to view liberty as an "imposition".
You are a sick fascist. Keep pushing, and one day the sheep will contest your existence. |
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sure does get tossed around alot at Conservatives here at TH by the same labeler. Do you suppose that his other three fingers are pointing back at him? Thought so. |
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you live in dream world with your distinction between civil society and its government. It's a nice antebellum conception, when there were 15 million souls in the country. we are obliged to draw from our store both old and new, to deal with the data as we find it, not as we would like it to be. and among those facts include the fact that starving people do not go into a corner and quietly die. Moreover, the consumerist culture spawned after WWII and given full expression by Boomer conservatism has led to an erosion of the private institutions that served our smallish republic back when.
also, in terms of the social contract theory, you are confused. it is precisely our right to defend our life and liberty and property that we cede, on the understanding that others will do the same, and that everyone's life, liberty, and property will be strengthened as a result, via orderly and representative government. that is hobbes meets locke.
your view is unprincipled because it invokes government AND it invokes individual responsibility without clear delineation between the two. you folks talk about limited government? it is more in line with our traditions and heritage to focus upon representative government. government waxes and wanes, just as public is in tension with private and democracy is in tension with capitalism. a balance is struck and that is "limited government." there is no overarching precepts, other than emotion, driving your conception of limited government. and, in fact, my view of limited government is based upon sounder precepts, as i want government to push back against entrenched private interests that put themselves above the nation. those interests will always be there--endowed with the coercive force of economic power--but it is good to have the people represented by a government that fights back, rather than bends over. |
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don't bark at me, retard. you don't know what you're talking about. property rights in the early days of the republic were designed to safeguard the liberty and dignity of labor. the labor theory of value, utilized by Adam Smith, conferred a moral imperative to the free-enterprise argument. your articulation of the proper role of government is a late 19th century opinion, not late 18th century.
and, yeah, i see the state as having a role in the life of the soul. how could it not? morality comes from civics, after all. unprincipled clowns like you really take the cake. you talk about "limited government," but basically, you want government (which is distinct from "the state," btw) only to the extent you're represented. when government is asserting your will, you're fine. when government isn't, you start invoking a heritage that never was, as though the founders concern about mob rule is somehow aligned with your mediocre and self-involved stupidities.
and you guys talking about wolves and lambs is shorthand for stupid. why don't you just put it on a sign? "i am an idiot. i think in cartoons."
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I'm amazed that we are all concerned about our loss of freedom when millions of children never get the opportunity to have the chance to experiance life in the USA!Unless Americans decide that we are a society that embraces life we will eventually lose all of our freedoms. Teach your children the value of life and educate them about our constitution. Remember that life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness are given to us by our Creator. Reject the lie of abortion and support life. |
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The Founding Fathers didn't all agree. I do believe they would agree that we have the kind of government they feared--and we're getting more of it: Both government and fear, I mean.
Of course, their whole goal is to create fear so the Sons of Liberty will sell their birthright for a big fat mess of caca.
"Let them eat crap," is the mantra of the Left. And indeed we will. |
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There are variations of the quote, the one I'm familiar with is, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
The Founders discussed the problems with democracy (mob rule = violence of faction) and its threats to liberty. Great reading!
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm |
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Sounds like you've confounded anarchy with limited government. There is no political freedom without economic freedom. There is no economic freedom without private property (of which, my body is my private property and so therefore so is the industry of my labor).
Government in THIS country is in place to protect private property. Everything else that our government is currently engaged is extraneous, unConstitutional, and destructive (ie. forcing banks to make bad loans, providing retirement benefits to all over 65, bailing out corporations,...).
And btw, one of your heros, Mussolini, claimed to be the first to declare that Italy had "advanced" to the point that made statism inevitable. Modern fascists use the term "economies of scale".
The fascists in Germany made similar arguments. Their word for it is "gesellschaft".
Seig Heil, Statist. |
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"when the government fears the people, there is freedom, but when the people fear the government, freedom can not exist.."
Franklin?, Jefferson? not sure, but it was 'well said'...
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"similarly, the "freedom from necessity," while not in the initial enlightenment charter, became an issue as men industrialized and urbanized "
Quick, call Guinness. They must notified that there is a new world record for "wrongness".
In feudal times there was no "freedom from necessity". A serf's life was one of continuous necessity: obey your lord or face the whip, or the gallows. The necessity wasn't one imposed by nature but a brutal necessity of obedience imposed by men upon other men.
It was the Industrial Revolution that freed men from that necessity, the necessity of obedience to a master. It freed them from the backbreaking daylong work that they endured for no one's gain but their lord's. It freed them from disease and early death. If freed them from poverty and abuse.
What it didn't free men was the desire to enchain other men and live off of their effort.
The feudal lords, whose power was destroyed by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, readied a counter revolution, one that would restore serfdom and the "rightful" order of society with them on top. They called it "planning". Hayek recognized this and his book showing how centralized planning must necessarily bring back serfdom was enormously influential.
The spontaneous order of the market far outperforms the "Planned Chaos" of the centralized economies. All people, not just the wealthy benefit from the market extraordinary ability to produce efficiently.
"Planned Chaos" was the name of a short book by Ludwig von Mises that summarized his earlier work "Socialism" which had utterly demolished the dreams of every central economic planner that read it.
The choice isn't between freedom and prosperity. The choice is between the prosperity of freedom and the poverty of serfdom. |
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"Coercion vs. Chaos" That we should have neither is the whole point of the Constitution: That we would institute just enough government to ensure a civil society, but not so much that it impinges on our God-given rights.
If Nature and Nature's God gives to each individual the right to life, liberty and property, then he also gives to each individual the authority to protect one's life, liberty and property.
Unable to protect our rights all by ourselves, we authorize a government to protect our rights in our behalf. But (listen up) we cannot authorize a government to act in our behalf in areas where the individual doesn't have the right to act.
A policeman is authorized to protect my life and property, but since I do not have the right to steal from my neighbor, even to feed the hungry, government doesn't have the right to coerce money from me to feed the hungry.
The hungry have the right to life in the sense that someone should not murder them. They do not have the right to stay alive by stealing from others--or have the goverment steal on their behalf.
Should the hungry then die in a free society? Yes. Unless citizens feed them of their own free will. A civil society has the duty to care for those unable to care for themselves. But keep the federal government out of it; it's not their legitimate role. Let it be done by churches and private institutions.
A government who places taxpayers in virtual involuntary servitude to pay for the generational welfare of people in West Va., not only violates the Constitution, but screws everything up when it oversteps its bounds.
Harry Reid wants open borders for hotel maids in Vegas. If government kept to its lawful mandate, the illegals would be stopped at the border and people from West Va. would find jobs in Las Vegas. |
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Well said. Ironically, across the way, are posts under the title "I think we had quite enough capitalism." And I assume Howard Dean et al would add: We've had quite enough freedom.
The Left are like the militant Muslims: We've had quite enough freedom, thank you. Look at what people do with their freedom. Such people are dangerous. We need to stop the exercise of free will and coerce "holiness."
The Left lives to coerce obedience to their idiotic ideology at gun point. Get ready for death or dhimmitude. They are serious. |
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..but the argument above is shades and degrees, not the bright lines of principle. for instance, the "political freedom" Hayek mentions was not absolute. there would still be coercion, still be men exercising their will over others. else there is anarchy. some dreamy types may think that society can organize itself from the bottom-up, but those of us who have lived in this old world for awhile recognize the limits of "spontaneous order."
similarly, the "freedom from necessity," while not in the initial enlightenment charter, became an issue as men industrialized and urbanized and the close presence of human beings with unmet physiological needs posed a challenge to the "political freedom" of those who could take care of themselves. moreover, as the division of labor and specialization became an entrenched part of the social order, so did family vulnerability to factors outside its control.
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indeed. And Marxism and it's many morphs is as much an enslaving, freedom robbing LIE today as ever it was. Yet, a resilient lie. Just when it appears dead, it comes back as GASP climate secularism, junkyard socialism, Left-Democrat Partei-ism, Fair-Equal-Level Playing Field-ism.
A Changeless-Ever Changing & Adapting LIE.
Love what Ol'Ben Franklin said about the difference between Equal(read Fair) and Liberty:
"Equal is 2-wolves and a lamb sitting down to dinner. Liberty is the lamb coming fully armed and ready to contest the meal."
True then. True now. |
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