For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

In the mid-1990s, with the Republicans in full control of Congress, Gingrich's Contract with America in full swing, and a batch of new, reform-minded members of the U.S. House, I thought we might see some real change in Washington.  Maybe we will finally see smaller government that Reagan used to talk about. No such luck.  In the middle of some budget debates where the two major parties argued over who could spend more taxpayer money, I received a solicitation to join the Libertarian Party.  I was already familiar with libertarianism, but finally decided to capitalize the L.

For someone who is a big l or a little l libertarian, it gets difficult to find sources of right thinking.  So much of the media and commentary leans hard left or hard right.  Both left and right have elements of libertarian thinking, but neither provide an intellectual core for the libertarian to cling to.  Murray Rothbard gives us that core.

Starting with a libertarian take on the American Revolution, Rothbard gives a reasoned defense of libertarian thought.  The most fundamental idea is the right to self ownership.  Every person has a right to his or her own body and the right to the fruits of his or her labor.  To the extent that the state makes demands on people against their will, involuntary servitude emerges.

Rothbard applies these ideas to several area of policy.  I was with him at almost every point, until he came to the passage on abortion:

What human has the right to remain, unbidden, as an unwanted parasite within some other human being's body? This is the nub of the issue: the absolute right of every person, and hence every woman, to the ownership of her own body. What the mother is doing in an abortion is causing an unwanted entity within her body to be ejected from it: If the fetus dies, this does not rebut the point that no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body.

I don't know how the absurdity of this can be missed by Rothbard and others.  Consider this: you come home to find that a helpless child has been deposited in your living room.  You have the right to eject the child from your home, but do you have the right to kill it?  I think not.  I point this out because so many libertarians are vehemently pro-choice, and use this type of argument, but in my view it conflicts with the greater idea of self sovereignty.

This passage aside, Rothbard brilliantly defends and applies the ideas of liberty.  He cogently rebuts those who say that courts, roads, defense, etc. must always be the realm of the state.  He provides a framework for market responses to environmental and social issues.  (On the environment, for instance, he points out that the biggest polluters are government bodies who stifle market responses to environmental concerns.)  There are places where his anecdotes and data are dated--the book was originally published in 1973--but the principles have not grown stale.  This will continue to be a resource for me as I consider and reconsider my own thinking in matters political.

The Mises Institute has provided the full text online (here), either on the web site or as a PDF file.  You may also download the mp3 version or purchase the actual book or CDs with the mp3 file.  I downloaded the whole book as a series of podcasts on itunes.  And of course you can buy it from amazon.com.