Many individuals in favor of liberty simply retire from the social and political world into their own occupations and let the light slowly extinguish. Luckily, there are always the brave few who fight to keep the idea of liberty alive and well. They hold their candles up and fight the battle of ideas in order to make the world a better place, or, at the very least, attempt to make the world a better place. Undoubtedly, the world should be indebted to these individuals for keeping the hope alive, for these individuals are necessary to achieve any sort of liberty.

There is, however, another direction a libertarian can take. In the words of Murray Rothbard, “he can stay in the world, enjoying himself immensely at this spectacle of folly.” In other words, he can lampoon the society, which is turning its back upon the path it should be on. This is a cynical approach, but probably more important than is often realized. Rather than attempting to extend your flame, you mock the system and those who remain in the dark, while having fun doing it.

This was the path taken by the journalist H.L. Mencken. Many write Mencken off as merely a conservative, but as Henry Hazlitt pointed out, this is far from the truth. Mencken was a very principled libertarian. Behind the words he used to lampoon society’s follies, he consistently championed liberty and the dignity of the individual. His attacks upon the welfare state, censorship, prohibition, etc. were more than the grumblings of a crotchety cynic; they were a consistent defense of liberty through pointing out the errors of others.

Mencken used to refer to politics as a carnival of buncombe, which means unacceptable behavior. As he once said, “a good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.” And he took great enjoyment in this, as, “A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.” The whole process is a result of what the people want. To Mencken democracy meant the right of the majority to suppress or persecute a nonconformist minority. As he said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” This was the system we asked for and the results were what we deserved.

The world could do with another Mencken. Of course its crucial to have those who expound the importance of liberty, but it is also important to have someone point out the absurdity of our current ways. After all, at best another Mencken will influence others to fight for liberty, and at worst we can at least enjoy the show. For Mencken may only have been a journalist, but as Hazlitt pointed out, he knew what he was talking about.

Download Mencken: A Retrospect by Henry Hazlitt here.

Fresh from his victory in last week’s Kentucky Republican senatorial primary, Rand Paul found himself caught in a whirlwind when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act properly outlawed racial segregation at privately owned lunch counters. Speaking circuitously if not evasively, Mr. Paul finally said:

“[O]ne of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized. But that doesn’t mean we approve of it.”

“It’s a menace, environmental groups say — and a dark-comedy example of American excess.

“The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.” (Washington Post, Thursday)

Speechless.

FEE Timely Classic:
“Pride and the Nanny State” by Stephen Kinsella

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It seems the road to hell will be paved with “bipartisanship.”

FEE Timely Classic:
“Compromise, Principles, and Politics” by Gary Galles

Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, who chairs the committee considering impeachment, declared that Blagojevich created a “crisis of confidence” in state government. It is not unlike what a professor told me when former U.S. Rep. Tom Delay was indicted: He should go to jail because his actions “caused people to lose confidence in government.”

Indeed, as I see it, the real scandal lies not with Blagojevich’s taped statements, as awful as they are. Nor am I concerned that people have their “belief in government” shaken. No, the real scandal is the fact that this political hack is someone who was given life-and-death power over the lives of other people. Governors sign death warrants for execution, they make decrees that have the force of law, and generally have much control in how people live – and die.

Americans constantly run to the well of “good government,” hoping to draw up “dedicated public servants” who make decisions based upon “the common good.” Yet, the stuff that bubbles up from that well always is toxic, but that does not stop people from hoping that the next batch of political swill will have a sweeter taste.

No one runs for office on a platform of “bad government.” No one runs for office promising to enrich cronies and impoverish political enemies through the power of taxation and income distribution. Instead, political candidates promise to govern wisely and engage in behavior that will serve the “public interest.”

As we know, however, the devil is in the details. Government cannot “help” one constituency without harming another; there is no way to spread the “benefits” of government expenditures evenly. Thus, some who are taxed receive less value for their taxes than others, while others receive benefits that well exceed what they paid to the taxman.

Lest we think, however, that the essence of government is “providing services” that we cannot provide for ourselves, think again. As Fred McChesney of Northwestern University has written in his classic book Money for Nothing, government is best understood as a legal “protection racket” in which government agents extort money from people who understand that those agents can destroy or even kill them. People tend to think that such threats are limited to those involved in “organized crime,” but government is far more effective than any Mafiosi at extortion.

Take the government’s antitrust action against Microsoft a decade ago. It seems that Microsoft and most Silicon Valley high-technology firms were not sending the requisite political contributions eastward to Washington, D.C. The Washington Post even sniffed in one article that Microsoft did not even have a Washington office. How dare they not let us “wet our beaks”!

Billions of dollars later, the government was able to extract enough from Microsoft and other companies to get its message across: pay us, or we destroy you. Indeed, it was “Mission Accomplished;” Microsoft now has a new office building in Reston, Virginia, near the D.C. Beltway.

Americans were told that the rapacious monopolist Microsoft harmed consumers by making a free browser available to them (instead of consumers having to pay almost $100 for browsers made by Microsoft’s competitors). The government’s reasoning was fraudulent, a raw attempt at extortion.

The only difference between the government’s attempt to destroy Microsoft and Blagojevich’s comments was the overt crassness of the Illinois governor. No one in the Clinton Department of Justice was that tactless, but in substance, there was no difference in what the government did there and what Blagojevich did in trying to “sell” Illinois’ U.S. Senate seat.

Although Blagojevich’s alleged comments are awful, we must remember that we should not be shocked, SHOCKED to hear someone in that position speak like that. Perhaps we should be more shocked when someone in government actually does the right thing.