Despotism, Tyranny and the Urge for Individual Liberty

Despotism, Tyranny and the Urge for Individual Liberty by The Elephant's Child

November 16, 2011, 5:19 pm
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Europe, Freedom, Statism, The United States | Tags: Paternalism and Despotism, Professor Paul A. Rahe, The Attack on Individual Liberty

Paul A, Rahe is Professor of History and Political Science at Hillsdale College. There’s a little bit of the tyrant in all of us, he says. Republicans talk a lot about individual liberty, but when they are elected to Congress, they do get the urge to tell other people what to do.

Democrats rarely speak of individual liberty — they mention freedom now and then, but are much more inclined towards paternalism. Once you get the ‘right’ schools on your resume and the ‘right’ job, you feel more entitled to control everyone else.

American exceptionalism is rooted in the concept of individual liberty. Our Constitution begins “We the people” and grants only limited powers to the government. What the government gets to do and say, what they can control is limited by the people of the United States who are in charge.  Our Constitution is alone among the constitutions of the world in this important way. Other constitutions tell the people what they should do.

Paternalism — all those things that bureaucrats do for our own good — means giving up bits of our individual liberty. Some bits of our liberty we give up willingly and pay taxes for —police and fire protection, national defense, and some bits are done so poorly that we are beginning to question having surrendered, like education. The millions of home-schoolers have taken that bit back.

Unlike other countries, we spread gradually across a vast continent, establishing local government as we went, and not much of it. Nearly 400 years of individual liberty have made this nation not just different, but exceptional. How extremely odd that we should have a president who does not grasp that simple fact, and whose entire administration is intent on instituting more and more control.

Professor Rahe’s latest book is Soft Despotism: Democracy’s Drift

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