I am, of course, borrowing for my blog-post title the name of a book by the venerable Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
A recent interview with Barrack Obama concerning his new book highlights a contemporary puzzle:
“Q: If readers are to come away from The Audacity of Hope with one action item (a New Year’s Resolution for 2007, perhaps?), what should it be?
A: Get involved in an issue that you’re passionate about. It almost doesn’t matter what it is–improving the school system, developing strategies to wean ourselves off foreign oil, expanding health care for kids. We give too much of our power away, to the professional politicians, to the lobbyists, to cynicism. And our democracy suffers as a result.” (emphasis mine)
I see a couple of options for interpreting Mr. Obama here. Perhaps it is the case that we should have full trust in democracy as a system that works — that is, when we put things to the populace to work out within a state apparatus, and if everything goes well, justice will tend to prevail and citizens’ needs will largely be taken care of.
My problem with Mr. Obama’s approach is twofold. First, his audacity of hope is for a system where everyone may try their darndest to control the lives of everyone else. The key is for everyone to at least have their say, so that they can at least have the honor of participating (even if nothing that they say changes policy). Therefore, it makes sense to give a general exhortation toward doing something, even if this entails everyone doing all kinds of contrary things, including vying for laws to control one another’s lives. The big idea is to let the marketplace of democratic power sort out the good from the bad.
Secondly, there happens to be one position that Obama can’t encourage, and that is the activist that does their work by doing nothing. The one intolerable disposition is that of the man or woman who cares not what their neighbor does, either in their personal life or in their business. If all that you ask is that you be left alone to your devices in the same way that you will tolerate the existence and rights of others, it is impossible to get involved in precisely the way that Obama thinks is necessary for the healthy survival and flourishing of political economy.
On a side note, some libertarian thinkers such as Professor Roderick Long have argued that democracy implies self-rule, and self-rule implies a libertarian / anarcho-capitalist society, if it is taken seriously. Therefore, working towards democracy is, in principle, not opposed to the goal of liberty. At first glance, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he is in this camp — seeking a transfer of power from lobbyists and professional politicians to ‘the people.’ Nevertheless, beneath the notion that it should be up to the people to decide things lurks the dreadful corollary that ‘the people’ should have the power to decide what they plus everyone else should do.
This is why other philosophers of liberty, such as Dr. Hoppe, are through with the idea of democracy altogether.
