From Free Life, Issue 26, December 1996
ISSN: 0260 5112

America - land of the brave, home of the free. Well, in theory anyway. Millions have emigrated to Jefferson's Republic in the hope of finding and enjoying individual liberty to a degree not possessed by citizens in any other country. What is clear, however, is that the liberty of the individual has been severely curtailed and violated at various points of U.S. history, and the situation is getting worse.

That is the conclusion of two books penned over the last three years by American authors both possessed of libertarian views. Both books are a mine of information about the various infringements to liberty in the US. Personally, I prefer the Bovard book for its more serious treatment of the issues but the McWilliams one (it is a large book) is also well worth buying and adding to the libertarian bookshelf. The latter book contains some serious drawbacks to which I will come and the Bovard work is also imperfect, however.

What is clear is that Americans, or at least a certain class of Americans, are suffering from a number of obsessions and fears, manifesting themselves in what I would describe as "everyone is a victim" mentality. Self-responsibility, a healthy scepticism, a respect for differences of view and lifestyle, respect for property rights, have been under sustained attack. Increasingly, the law is not seen as the clear framework protecting liberty but a capricious beast trying to catch out the unwary. It is said of the tax code that 90% of Americans unwittingly file their tax returns incorrectly and therefore place themselves at the mercy of the law. The state of the law in the US. is now so frightening because of the sheer scale and complexity of government intrusions. One literally cannot tell whether an action is illegal or not in many circumstances. Employers often don't know whether they have violated some obscure environmental law or equal opportunity directive, even with the advice of lawyers. Ah yes, lawyers. America has a surfeit of them precisely because of the depth and breadth of unnecessary laws.

The U.S. has a vast number of government organisations known by acronyms: FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), FDA, (Food and Drugs Administration), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development); EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). All of these agencies, without exception, have been responsible for monstrous acts which have only been curbed, in part, by admirably sensible judges overturning their decisions in the courts. However, the power of the judiciary to rein in these bodies has also been eroded. One of the worst offenders in making daft, liberty-cutting rulings is the Supreme Court.

In fact, reading these books, particularly the Bovard one, made me bloody angry, something which is rare for this writer long accustomed to the stupidity of government after many years working as a journalist. There are stories of DEA officials busting down people's doors without warrants because someone might have a few ounces of cannabis inside; IRS officials retroactively imposing complex tax laws on small businesses, bankrupting them and then refusing to pay damages or make an apology when required; cases of environmental officials seizing a farm because a duck has flown by and therefore turned the farm into a "wetland"; equal opportunity legislation imposing crippling costs on firms forced to take on the "right" number of whatever minority has attracted the interest of congressmen, and so on. The list, as they say, is endless. And of course there is the recent notorious case of the Waco massacre in Texas which, more than any event in recent US. history, has prompted serious questions about government agencies running out of control.

Mr Bovard's book is basically a list, a catalogue of government infamy. It is not a theoretical book and assumes the reader already has a libertarian philosophy that will be suitably outraged by the contents inside. As such, it is not the best book for converting the collectivist reader, although I imagine it could shock the neutral reader into acceptance of a libertarian point of view. I would recommend non-libertarian readers read someone like David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Nozick or Rand before reading Mr Bovard, simply because Mr Bovard does not really offer a theoretical underpinning. Mr Bovard is not an anarcho-capitalist and makes passing references to the need to have a government, and as such, misses the anarchist argument that all government, by its very nature, is a beast prone to run amok. He does not really sketch out what he believes is the right amount of government to have or what the "right" limits should be. This is a weakness.

The McWilliams book is also a bit weak on the theoretical side. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is argued for in a rough kind of way, but I can't imagine any hard-line nanny-staters being overwhelmed.

The best thing about Mr McWilliams' work, apart from an irreverent sense of humour, is the sheer weight of evidence he adduces in support of his claim that so-called consensual crimes are both immoral and a chronic waste of time and money. On drugs, for example, he demonstrates how much wealth would be gained and how much taxpayers' money would be saved by legalising drugs. Most tellingly of all, Mr McWilliams gives an example of the full horror of a drugs bust, the experience of going through the courts, the loss of income, home, reputation and normal life involved. Most chillingly, he makes it clear how a nasty-minded neighbour or a jilted lover can make life hell for an innocent person simply by claiming to a police officer that a person is cultivating drugs or keeping them in a home.

He is particularly good on attempts made, often successfully, to outlaw certain types of consensual sexual relations, such as prostitution. At the rear of the book is a guide to how many consensual acts are banned, and in what states of the U.S. Judging by the list, the best place for libertarians to live is Las Vegas.

Another key thesis in Mr McWilliams' book, which he argues for quite persuasively, is that much authoritarian legislation in American life has a religious underpinning - specifically, a puritanical, Protestant Christian one. Much of the book rests on a claim that the Christian faith has been twisted by the Jerry Falwell's, Pat Robertson's and the like to justify State coercion. Religion is a far more potent force in American life than it is here so Mr McWilliams' point is persuasive. Mr McWilliams is a religious man himself and claims to show, in a long and sometimes tedious section of the book, that Christianity in fact should justify tolerance. If only that were always true.

However, his attack and defence of Christianity is both a strength and a serious weakness. He gives no mention of the non-religious defences of liberty, which can be seen in its most developed form in the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand and her followers, who have sought to give a rational foundation to a liberal society. Of course, Mr McWilliams is writing for a US audience but some treatment of non-religious defences of freedom would have been welcome. Sometimes his jokiness is a bit tiresome, particularly his treatment of the Cold War, where he claims much of the threat posed by the former Soviet Union was an invention designed to justify coercive legislation, spying and arms spending. Frankly, his treatment of this subject is downright naive. The threat posed by the Soviets from 1945 to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1990 was serious, sustained and well worth defeating.

He also tries to boost the case for legalising certain activities by saying how much government could be doing instead to tackle other problems, like the environment and "overpopulation". Oh dear. We get the usual litany of statistics on smoking (rightly described by Chris Tame and others as junk science), rainforest destruction (unlikely to impress that admirable debunker of eco-myths, Julian L. Simon) and poverty (Charles Murray would not be impressed). It is a blot on a fairly good copybook. The trouble is, Mr McWilliams tries too hard to avoid being characterised as "right wing" so he makes such points to lure collectivists over to his point of view. To be fair, Mr McWilliams does not attack the right to carry guns, which many "politically correct" liberals try to do. He also makes a good point about the importance of property rights in a pluralist society, a point often missed by conventional "right wing" defenders of free enterprise.

On a less sour note, one delightful feature of the book is that there is an excellent, often hilarious quotation from a famous or not-so-famous figure on every page, relating to liberty and the abuses thereof. P.J. O' Rourke, H.L. Mencken, Herbert Spencer, Ronald Reagan, Mae West (of course!), Dorothy Parker, Henry Thoreau - they are all there, gems of wisdom to treasure.

Tom Burroughs