Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto by Matt Kibbe Page A
Authors: Matt Kibbe
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of innocents.
David Brooks, the resident “conservative” at the New York Times, doesn’t even try to hide his disdain for the new generation of legislators who have come to Washington committed to changing the rules of the game:
Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going in more as a media protest person. And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being—they just want to obstruct. 1
Harry Reid went so far as to call us “anarchists,” simply because we oppose funding an expensive federal health-care takeover that the president himself has arbitrarily repealed or delayed in part some twenty times so far. 2 The senator most responsible for drafting the legislation, Democrat Max Baucus, called it “a huge train wreck coming down” in April 2013. 3 But now we are the “anarchists” for insisting that the government not fund, with borrowed money, something that no one in D.C. seems to think will actually work. They are acting like desperate addicts, aren’t they?
How do we get from here to there, to more freedom and prosperity? How do we get from where we are today—with ever more encroaching government control, unimaginable fiscal liabilities, and so few in Washington, D.C., willing to do what needs to be done—to the point where the federal government is back to its limited and proper role?
Public choice economists might tell us that it’s impossible, that governments naturally, inexorably, march forward—like the White Walkers descending on Westeros in Game of Thrones —expanding to the point where they choke off productive initiative, and great nations die. Think Rome, and the tragic devolution from a republic to an autocratic empire, and then to the dustbin of history.
How can we reverse course and make sure that America doesn’t go down that fateful path of no return? To me, this is the most interesting strategic question that constitutional conservatives and small- l libertarians—moms and dads who just want a better life for their kids—have to answer.
The solution will never be a quixotic fix of more “revenue” or another top-down reorganization of your life by some faceless bureaucrat who knows nothing of you and your family and doesn’t much care. We need a better, more compelling freedom agenda. The burden on us will always be far higher to explain how freedom works.
We understand our principles. We get freedom. We know that simple rules of personal conduct—Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff—create tremendous upward potential for all of us, and that opportunity for all creates peaceful cooperation. Even though the insiders tell us the opposite, we know that open societies actually spread the wealth, and that closed, top-down systems lock in the spoils of the Haves at the expense of generations of Have-Nots. We understand the ethos of liberty that is ingrained in every one of us makes America an exceptional place.
So what, exactly, should we do to restore liberty?
This chapter lays out a twelve-step policy agenda: positive, innovative ideas that would improve people’s lives by letting them be free, by spending less of your hard-earned money on someone else’s favors, by letting you choose, by treating us all equally under the laws of the land.
Radical stuff, I know.
1. C OMPLY WITH THE L AWS Y OU P ASS
As Steve Forbes likes to say, the planners in Washington should have to eat their “own cooking.” This seems like such common sense, but you won’t be surprised to learn just how controversial this idea is behind the closed doors where congressional staffers and career bureaucrats congregate. Do as I say, they prefer, not as I
David Brooks, the resident “conservative” at the New York Times, doesn’t even try to hide his disdain for the new generation of legislators who have come to Washington committed to changing the rules of the game:
Ted Cruz, the senator from Canada through Texas, is basically not a legislator in the normal sense, doesn’t have an idea that he’s going to Congress to create coalitions, make alliances, and he is going to pass a lot of legislation. He’s going in more as a media protest person. And a lot of the House Republicans are in the same mode. They’re not normal members of Congress. They’re not legislators. They want to stop things. And so they’re just being—they just want to obstruct. 1
Harry Reid went so far as to call us “anarchists,” simply because we oppose funding an expensive federal health-care takeover that the president himself has arbitrarily repealed or delayed in part some twenty times so far. 2 The senator most responsible for drafting the legislation, Democrat Max Baucus, called it “a huge train wreck coming down” in April 2013. 3 But now we are the “anarchists” for insisting that the government not fund, with borrowed money, something that no one in D.C. seems to think will actually work. They are acting like desperate addicts, aren’t they?
How do we get from here to there, to more freedom and prosperity? How do we get from where we are today—with ever more encroaching government control, unimaginable fiscal liabilities, and so few in Washington, D.C., willing to do what needs to be done—to the point where the federal government is back to its limited and proper role?
Public choice economists might tell us that it’s impossible, that governments naturally, inexorably, march forward—like the White Walkers descending on Westeros in Game of Thrones —expanding to the point where they choke off productive initiative, and great nations die. Think Rome, and the tragic devolution from a republic to an autocratic empire, and then to the dustbin of history.
How can we reverse course and make sure that America doesn’t go down that fateful path of no return? To me, this is the most interesting strategic question that constitutional conservatives and small- l libertarians—moms and dads who just want a better life for their kids—have to answer.
The solution will never be a quixotic fix of more “revenue” or another top-down reorganization of your life by some faceless bureaucrat who knows nothing of you and your family and doesn’t much care. We need a better, more compelling freedom agenda. The burden on us will always be far higher to explain how freedom works.
We understand our principles. We get freedom. We know that simple rules of personal conduct—Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff—create tremendous upward potential for all of us, and that opportunity for all creates peaceful cooperation. Even though the insiders tell us the opposite, we know that open societies actually spread the wealth, and that closed, top-down systems lock in the spoils of the Haves at the expense of generations of Have-Nots. We understand the ethos of liberty that is ingrained in every one of us makes America an exceptional place.
So what, exactly, should we do to restore liberty?
This chapter lays out a twelve-step policy agenda: positive, innovative ideas that would improve people’s lives by letting them be free, by spending less of your hard-earned money on someone else’s favors, by letting you choose, by treating us all equally under the laws of the land.
Radical stuff, I know.
1. C OMPLY WITH THE L AWS Y OU P ASS
As Steve Forbes likes to say, the planners in Washington should have to eat their “own cooking.” This seems like such common sense, but you won’t be surprised to learn just how controversial this idea is behind the closed doors where congressional staffers and career bureaucrats congregate. Do as I say, they prefer, not as I
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