"Liberty is an Evil Which Government is Intended to Correct"

In the run-up to the American Civil War there were many bizarre and convoluted exercises in argumentation on both sides of the slavery debate.  The title quotation (1) is a statement by George Fitzhugh of Virginia, who advocated for socialism and asserted that not only blacks (certainly) but also whites should be enslaved.  Slavery was thought to be desirable because persons in that estate were spared the burdens of  independent thought.  It is akin to the parodic notion that there is no more secure environment than a prison cell.


What may be most remarkable about Fitzhugh's declaration is that it articulates precisely the manifesto of the modern statist, but without the indirection and guile of today's political classes.  In its bald clarity it nicely vindicates Hayek's thesis (2) that statism (central planning) and slavery (serfdom) are inevitably paired.

Individual autonomy -- liberty and attendant personal responsibility -- are always inversely proportional to the power of the state.  What is insidious is the lure of "goods" delivered by a still-solvent government that tempts us to strike a Faustian bargain to negotiate with the surrender of our liberty.

Utopian visions of equality and security for all persons, even (or perhaps, especially) if pursued with the best of good-faith intentions, inevitably lead the destruction of civil society and the rule of law, tyranny and the collapse of national prosperity and well-being.  But some pigs will be more equal than others; in the interlude between the implementation of absolute statism and its ultimate failure there will emerge a class of aristo-bureaucrats -- elitist true believers, living well and ever prepared to deploy whatever draconian measures required to maintain their privileged status.

Too many of us hear without listening or understanding the testimonial warnings of those who survived the communist regimes in the former USSR -- Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Siberia, Russia and the gulags.  More recently we hear from refugees (3) who witnessed the transition of oil-rich Venezuela, a once-stable and prosperous republic, to a failed, oppressive and dangerous state under the rule of the 'egalitarian' Hugo Chavez.

And so, when we look at the current metastasizing of American government, it may be well to ask ourselves how many of our politicians and government bureaucrats (4) are in agreement with George Fitzhugh. 

Note: I had tended to believe that socialism was largely the creation of the Bolsheviks, but its modern forms followed closely on the heels of the Industrial Revolution.


1.  Cited in A Patriot's History of the United States, Schweikart and Allen (p. 262)
2.  The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek
3.  Refugee and totalitarian state survivors are many (conspicuously, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Klaus), and they view political trends in the US with considerable alarm.  Established media apparently find no merit in their observations.
4.  I have come to believe that career bureaucrats are -- as vested proponents of big government -- a greater threat to liberty than elected officials.  They often embrace the statist agenda, and they are minimally accountable to the public will.  Elected officials come and go, but bureaucrats maintain their hold on the levers of power.