Libertarianism – Anthony G. Flood

A perfect storm of converging crises

The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.

Four years ago, I stated my grounds and posed a question to a writer who thinks Christian Reconstruction or Theonomy meets the level of our times:

The argument . . . is over hermeneutics and confessional commitments that flow from one’s interpretation of Scripture. Do libertarians wish to have that conversation? That would be more than fine with me. I’ll need bullet-proof exegesis, however, to believe that Christians are charged, as Dominion theology teaches, with overthrowing Satan’s dominion of this world with its sex-trafficking, drug cartels, arms dealers, blood diamond trade, supervised as they are by pathological warlords; the totalitarian ethnostate of Communist China; radical Islam whose agents are sprinkled the world over; pandemics exploited by globalists and their medicrat tools; the virtually total loss of privacy at the hands of the Deep State, Big Pharma, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence; the trillions of dollars in unpayable debt and the hyperinflation that must follow central banking as the night the day—just to name some of the enormities that blight our planet.

In that post, I didn’t refer to this concatenation as a “perfect storm of crises,” but since then I’ve used this meteorological metaphor when considering our parlous estate.[1] It has come to mean any situation where a highly improbable concurrent of circumstances leads to an event of unusual magnitude or severity. I’d like to know where it falters, if it does.

The “event of unusual magnitude or severity” I refer to is the total collapse of the good of order—civilization, what’s left of it—on which any regular enjoyment of goods of consumption depends. Continue reading “A perfect storm of converging crises”

Who needs government? A response to Bill Vallicella’s comment on David Mamet

While composing a response to William “Bill” Vallicella’s recent posts on presuppositionalism (starting with “The Holocaust Argument for the Existence of God”), his Substack post, “Notes on David Mamet,” arrived in my inbox. In that post, Bill takes issue with what this distinguished playwright and self-described conservative said about government and taxes.

I will evaluate, not the dramatist’s claims, but Bill’s dismissal of them. Bill shows no awareness of, let alone respect for, the well-developed case that has been made for a philosophical position (with which non-philosopher Mamet loosely identified himself in an interview).

That is, I’m interested in whether Bill fairly represented, not Mamet, but the view that Bill, the self-described conservative, excoriates as “absurd.”

I stipulate that I’m ripping out of context (a context available to interested readers who take the link above) these sentences of his:

Conservatives . . . . are not anarchists because they accept the moral legitimacy of the State. Conservatives are law and order types, but there can be no law and order without a coercive state of [sic] apparatus that forces people to do what they are often uninclined to do. Conservatives believe in a strong national defense. They want the nation’s borders to be secure. All of this requires local, state, and Federal government. Conservatives are not libertarians because they understand that culture matters and that not every question is an economic one.

The last implication is, apparently, that for libertarians, either culture doesn’t matter, or every question is an economic one (or both). As someone who read and befriended Murray Rothbard 40 years ago, I never met a libertarian who held either belief. Whom did Bill have in mind?

The conservatives whom I’m sure Bill and I admire have cared a great deal about justice. Thoughtful conservatives, when confronted with argument and evidence that suggests that the way they go about establishing law and order, a strong national defense, and secure borders has offended justice—that is, that the policies they sincerely intended to secure those goods are unjust—don’t retort, “So what!” Rather, they examine the libertarian’s premises to see whether they’re (a) true or false and/or (b) linked validly or not in support of his conclusion. Bill neither did this nor pointed his readers to those who have.

Continue reading “Who needs government? A response to Bill Vallicella’s comment on David Mamet”

Aquinas’s proto-liberal concerns

The pleasant discovery of a series of posts by Professor Jonathan McIntosh on the site of the Libertarian Christian Institute (LCI) has occasioned my republishing today part of Chapter 10 of Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic (CCL). As that chapter originated as a post written about ten years ago, I’ve edited it, airbrushing references to the polemic. (Those interested in the latter should consult the book. I’ve modified the chapter in other ways.)

With erudition and nuance, Dr. McIntosh locates Thomas Aquinas on the political spectrum as a proto-liberal (my term, not McIntosh’s).

These anti-libertarian sentiments [of Thomas’s, just enumerated by McIntosh] notwithstanding, there are yet many other respects in which Aquinas’s political thought is not only consistent with libertarianism, but arguably provide the latter with an ideal and even necessary, moral and metaphysical framework.

McIntosh’s aim is

to sketch at least the outlines of a distinctly Thomistic, natural law libertarianism, one that coherently combines Aquinas’s account of law’s place within the social and moral dimension of human nature, with libertarianism’s more considered and consistent ethic of law’s inherently coercive nature.

McIntosh is a kindred spirit whose work I’m happy to advertise. (Visit his blogs The Natural Law Libertarian and The Flame Imperishable.) His admiration for Thomas is great, but does not inhibit his criticism. Aquinas’s thought on the subject of liberty is, as I shall show in my own way, a mixed bag, but one whose contents every lover of liberty and reason is better off for having explored.

McIntosh’s series is entitled “The Libertarian Aquinas: Aquinas and Libertarianism,” and here are links to Part I, Part II, and Part III. (At least another installment is on the way.) I welcome any criticism of my effort he may see fit to give.

I’m taking this opportunity to thank again LCI’s Chief Executive Officer Doug Stuart for interviewing me about Christ, Capital & Liberty in late 2019 and making our discussion available on their site since last March.

Note: The “Austrians” referred to in today’s post are writers who subscribe to the Austrian School of Economics (ASE), whose “dean” was Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995). “Anarcho-Catholics” are Roman Catholics who find a “profound philosophical commonality” between the ASE and Catholic teaching (but not “Catholic Social Teaching”). I would include among them James A. Sadowsky, S.J. (1923-2012), Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), Thomas E. Woods, and Gerard N. Casey, although none of them uses (or used) that term to describe his political philosophy. I have defended that compatibility; as a dispensationalist, however, I no longer use the descriptor for myself.

Continue reading “Aquinas’s proto-liberal concerns”

Dominion Theology: Salvation or Snare for Liberty?

The following review of Robert Grözinger, Why Libertarianism Needs Christianity to Succeed (Kindle eBook, April 7, 2020) was published on Amazon today.—AGF

Only in this post, not in the Amazon review or anywhere else it was published, I clarified my statement of Scripture’s status as divinely inspired (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos). The writings, not the human authors as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, are “God-breathed.” —AGF, February 19, 2024

This provocative essay derives from a talk given to the Libertarian Alliance in London late last summer. German economist and translator Robert Grözinger (Jesus, der Kapitalist: Das christliche Herz der Marktwirtschaft, Munich, 2012) argues that libertarianism, which traditionally prides itself on its alleged independence from philosophical frameworks, cannot succeed without one that gives meaning to liberty-seeking itself. Arguments for, say, the superiority of free to hampered markets don’t compensate libertarianism for its lack of an adequate framework of meaning or worldview. Libertarians should identify theirs and persuade others on its terms if they want libertarianism to be more than an intellectual hobby. For if libertarianism’s attitude toward ultimate-meaning frameworks remains as laissez-faire as its politics, its attractiveness will remain limited. Grözinger believes Christianity best meets that need.

Grözinger believes that most people—regular folks, not nerds who read themselves into and out of ideologies—are not libertarian for this reason: they seek meaning as much as (if not more than) economic well-being. Intellectual conviction that in a libertarian society everyone will be, on the whole, materially better off than in any alternative arrangement is not enough to seal the deal. For the masses, liberty may be a great good, especially when they’re deprived of it, but not necessarily life’s chief good around which all others revolve. If one wishes to attain and retain other great goods, the libertarian argues, one cannot neglect liberty. Liberty doesn’t defend itself, so people must learn to make it an object of thought and protection. Grözinger amplifies this insight: theoretically self-conscious defenders of liberty must, no less self-consciously, ground their defense in a worldview that embraces many values, not just one.

In his short book Grözinger packs in enough topics to fill an interdisciplinary graduate seminar in politics and religion; I’ll have to pass over how he draws upon Jordan Peterson, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Friedrich Hayek and focus on the writer who answers Grözinger’s question to his satisfaction: Reformed historian and theonomist Gary North. Of the several scholars whose work Grözinger draws upon, North is the only one who’s also a professing Christian—and one with whom many (if not most) other Christians disagree. Continue reading “Dominion Theology: Salvation or Snare for Liberty?”

“Christ, Capital & Liberty”: the Libertarian Christian Institute interview

I interrupt my apologetics series to promote the 50-minute interview that Doug Stuart (Libertarian Christian Institute) conducted about my Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic last December 30th and posted a couple of days ago. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. We cover the conduct of Christian controversy, eudaimonism (good life-seeking), the pioneering libertarian Christian scholar James Sadowsky, SJ, and many other topics ignored in the book against which mine polemizes. I’m grateful to Doug for the opportunity he gave me to elaborate and highlight. I hope you’ll give me your comments. Here’s the link.

Christ, Capital, & Liberty, with Anthony Flood

Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic

Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic is out today in paperback; xx + 331 pages, 42 chapters, four appendices. A Kindle edition is in the works. The following paragraphs should answer basic questions like, “What’s this about?”

From my Introduction:

From March 8, 2011 to September 10, 2012, nineteen months in all, I blogged my criticism of The Church and the Libertarian, Christopher A. Ferrara’s slanderous and ignorant attack on the Austrian School of Economics. He argued that no faithful Catholic could be a sincere libertarian of the ASE persuasion. One day I had promised Mr. Ferrara that if he published a book to that effect, I’d answer it. Across almost ninety posts I fulfilled that promise, and this book reincarnates them.

After a year and a half, however, I decided that life was too short to sacrifice other projects on the altar of this polemic. The issues were (and are) important, and I found researching and writing about them congenial, but I could no longer sustain the effort. . . .

This book is the record of an effort in pro-market apologetics (in the classic sense of “defense against intellectual attack”). All interference in market exchange, not only outright state control of the “means of production,” but also violent robbery, involves a degree of “socialization” of the costs of acquiring a good or service. To impose costs on individuals who have not chosen to bear them, be they contemporaries or later generations, is to “socialize” those costs. Calculating these (usually hidden) costs falls to the economist. “Socialism” and “communism” are but frank labels for the systematic, territory-wide state interference with the market exchanges of individuals. That is, it differs in degree, not of kind, from the predations of garden-variety gangsters.

From Gerard Casey’s Foreword:

Anthony Flood’s Christ, Capital and Liberty: A Polemic is a spirited and detailed defence of the fundamental compatibility of Catholicism and Austro-Libertarianism. . . .

Flood is critical not only of Ferrara’s conclusion, but also of the argumentative methods that Ferrara employs. “Several thorough readings,” writes Flood, “have convinced me that it is such a bad book, morally as well as stylistically, that it arguably ought to be ignored rather than critically reviewed. Its tone is continuously inflammatory, its arrangement of material lopsided . . . and his use of sources tendentious. The last-mentioned trait includes either unawareness or evasion of evidence relevant to his topic but inconvenient to his purpose.” Flood is especially critical of Ferrara’s epistemically uncharitable failure to employ responsible internal criticism of his opponents’ positions and also of his inadequate grasp of various historical controversies. . . .

Tony’s book will be of interest to many people, but perhaps especially (but not only) to those who are Catholic and who are also attracted to the intellectual coherence of Austro-Libertarianism, but are concerned that the two systems of thought may be irreconcilable. Polemical writing is not everybody’s favourite form of reading, but the multiple, mostly short, chapters of Christ, Capital and Liberty provide so many insights, engage the perspectives of so many thinkers and attack the central topic of the compatibility of Catholicism and Austro-Libertarianism from so many angles that no reader can fail to achieve a greater insight into the matter after reading it than he had before he began.

Gerard N. Casey MA, LLM, PhD, DLitt.
Professor Emeritus, University College Dublin
Associated Scholar, The Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama
Fellow, Mises UK

And finally, at least for this post, the table of contents:

Part One: Setting the Table

Chapter 1 A Question of Tone

Chapter 2 In Few Things, Charity?

Chapter 3 A Question of Competency

Chapter 4 Sound Bites, Panic Buttons, Scare Quotes

Chapter 5 An Inconvenient Jesuit

Chapter 6 An Overview of an Overview

Chapter 7 Demonize and Delete the Austrians

Chapter 8 Value-Laden and Value-Free

Chapter 9 Adventures in Meta-Ethics

Chapter 10 Aquinas’s Proto-Liberal Concerns

Chapter 11 An Inconvenient Anarcho-Catholic

Chapter 12 Doctorates, “Dummies,” and Defamation

Chapter 13 On Not Seeing the Forest for the Woods

Part Two: Main Course

Chapter 14 Capitalism: a Post-Christian Structure?

Chapter 15 Conflating Science and Ethics

Chapter 16 Disparaging Imaginary Constructions as Illusions

Chapter 17 “Statism” versus “Greed”

Chapter 18 Confusion or Calumny?

Chapter 19 The Kevin Carson (Side-)Show

Chapter 20 What Do We Mean by “The Free Market”?

Chapter 21 If I Had a Hammer: Hayek on Tool-Ownership

Chapter 22 Rothbard on Enclosure

Chapter 23 The Hammonds, T. S. Ashton, and Emily Litella

Chapter 24 Grand Theft Monastery

Chapter 25 Dismissive of the New, Evasive of the Old

Chapter 26 Lie, Rinse, Repeat

Chapter 27 Sudha Shenoy on Enclosures

Chapter 28 The Gnat of Enclosure, the Camel of Slavery

Chapter 29 Lock(e), Stock, and Jesuit

Chapter 30 Slavery, Real and Bogus

Chapter 31 If This Is Infallibility . . . .

Part Three: Dessert and Leftovers

Chapter 32 Save Money, Live Better, Just Do It

Chapter 33 Corporations as “Psychopaths”

Chapter 34 Enclosing Debate

Chapter 35 Rothbard Shaves Ferrara’s Quasi-Marxist “Beard”

Chapter 36 Shall We Prefer Government by Naked Coercion?

Chapter 37 Slavery for the Corporation?

Chapter 38 The Corporation as “Sociopath”

Chapter 39 Railroading the Free Market

Chapter 40 (Fan)Fanning the Embers of Fascism

Chapter 41 Scrooge on Externalization

Chapter 42 Ferrara’s Reserve of False Notes

Appendices

Appendix A Murray Rothbard on Abortion

Appendix B A Profound Philosophical Commonality

Appendix C Lord Acton: Libertarian Hero

Appendix D Is Anarchy a Cause of War?

Lew Rockwell and the Story of the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Soon my autobiographical vignette of Murray Rothbard will join those of Herbert Aptheker, Sidney Hook, Bernard Lonergan, and Eric Voegelin. In preparation for that post I’m sharing, with the author’s permission, a recent letter from Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. the Founder and Chairman of the Mises Institute. It’s a fundraising letter, one to which I hope you’ll respond. But it’s more than that: it’s his personal story of Mises, Murray, and the Institute, one he must have told a thousand times, but never more vividly and concisely. Let’s listen to Lew. — AGF

November 13, 2018

Dear Friend,

When I met Ludwig von Mises, he was exactly as I had imagined him: kind, brilliant, dignified, beautifully mannered and dressed, a gentleman from what Murray Rothbard called “an older and better world.” Image result for the ludwig von mises institute His wife, Margit, had been an actress, and she had great beauty, intelligence, and presence as well.

Image result for margrit von mises

A genius, Mises was the greatest economist of the 20th century, and a hero in his courageous battles with Marxists, National Socialists, and Keynesians. Never did he put his own career ahead of teaching the truth, which he did in brilliant book after brilliant book. As a result, he never had the professorships and honors that were his due. Forced to flee the Nazi occupiers, he found American Keynesians a hostile bunch as well. So his career was stunted, but not his spirit, and not the legacy and example he left to all who cherish freedom. Image result for last knight of liberalism

Murray Rothbard I had the privilege of knowing well. He was funny, charming, and a genius, too. Like his mentor Mises, Murray suffered in his career for his integrity and truth-telling, which he also displayed in brilliant book after brilliant book. Even billionaire oligarchs couldn’t stop him. A model scholar, teacher, and polymath, he seemed, like Mises, to know everything.

Murray once told me he never heard Mises express any self-pity for his treatment, but only good will and determination. I never heard Murray express such feelings either. He was the happy warrior of Austrian economics and liberty. Continue reading “Lew Rockwell and the Story of the Ludwig von Mises Institute”