Letters to LR (Apr. 1981)

Paying back the government

In “Bringing in the Sheep” [LR, September 1980], his otherwise fine review of two books, David Boaz states: “Contracts with criminals are not valid, so those who have borrowed money from the government are under no moral obligation to pay it back.” Despite having become a slogan in certain libertarian circles, the statement is at best sloppy, at worst dangerous to the libertarian cause. Lest the comment be misused to create a stampede in search of criminals with whom to form non-obligatory contracts, an analysis of the statement’s flaws is imperative....

Keeping stolen property instead of restoring it to its rightful owner is just as immoral as stealing it; therefore, the borrower of governmental funds is as much a criminal as the government which stole them. The base of the truism, “Contracts with criminals are not valid,” is that criminality is not valid. Thus, in Mr. Boaz’s example, both borrower and lender are outside of morality. The contract they have has no moral base and is not within the realm of validity. Yet Mr. Boaz’s respectable abhorrence of governmental theft (which he apparently considers the greater crime in his example) prompts him to defend through implication the “lesser criminal,” the borrower. His phrase “under no moral obligation to pay it back,” and the surrounding arguments, imply that morality lies in not paying it back; and this implication allows an invalid entity, a criminal, an invalid justification. Since there is no morality in crime, I submit that this issue can not end with this result....

...If a criminal extracts a contract from an individual while holding a gun to his head, the individual is later under no moral obligation to uphold his part of the bargain. Only in similar circumstances does one party to a criminal contract absolutely have no obligation.

Certain libertarians have contracted for governmental student loans prior to understanding the libertarian principles involved. Because the former contract resulted in 1) a benefit which was used, 2) a voluntary obligation to repay, and 3) funds which were stolen, such libertarians now face the dichotomy of making non-libertarian actions compatible with libertarian principles—a task not so simple as Mr. Boaz implies.

“It was a contract with a criminal and therefore not valid” does not supersede the more personal libertarian principle that we are responsible for our actions, including responsibility for past actions with which we no longer agree. Yet flaws of history are not often correctable. A resolution to prevent their occurring again is often our only recourse.

The libertarian holding a student loan does not have a perfect possibility for solving his moral dilemma. He may opt to repay the loan, assuming that student loans predicated upon theft do exist and repayment of his at least replenishes the fund hopefully so the dollar amount will not be stolen again. Yet his repayment becomes a statistic which the government will use to defend its loan theft/redistribution. He may opt to return in some fashion the dollar amount to the citizenry (or some portion thereof) from which it was stolen. Yet there is no way to trace the specific funds he used to their rightful owners, and individuals have no more right to seize and redistribute than does a government. He may decide to keep the money and devote his funds and energy to advancing philosophic principles and fighting socialism as a form of “repaying” the debt.

Any of the above may be appropriate for libertarians in such quandary, but not one is perfectly moral (because there is no morality in crime). Whatever principled solution the individual in question may devise concerning his governmental loan, he must decide never again to participate voluntarily in the process of governmental theft of funds if he is to keep his honor intact.

In summary, libertarians must never forget that they stand for freedom of choice unhampered by force or fraud. Governmental student loans are criminal because they deal in stolen funds. The only valid libertarian stand on the issue is to demand that such future criminal acts be stopped. Such loans of the past provide no base upon which the libertarian cause can take any stand. That issue is a legitimate issue only with those libertarian individuals who are in the unfortunate circumstance of being a party to such criminal contract. They are compelled to work out principled solutions, individually, and to direct their future conduct toward avoidance of participation in criminal acts.

MICHAEL McCASEY Shelby, NJ

A “special animus”?

I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on the validity of the criticisms of Israel by Bill Birmingham and Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad. [LR, June and December 1980] Nor does the fact that they criticize Israel make them anti-Jewish. But even if, for the sake of argument, I accept their claims, I consider them anti-Jewish for singling out the only Jewish controlled country in the world for its human rights violations. If Israeli Arabs have been deprived of their rights, Jews in Arab countries have generally been made to feel so unwelcome that they felt fortunate to be allowed to emigrate. If Israel is far from a libertarian ideal, the countries lending moral and material support to the P.L.O. are still further from this ideal. Theoretically there is a distinction between being anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist but to those who run the anti-Israel boycott and who make anti-Israeli speeches at the U.N., the distinction is elusive.

DAVID KAHN New York, NY

Another LP triumph

I know you all [“STATE and Local Races: Mostly Runs and Hits” by Chris Hocker, LR, January 1981] are going to find this hard to believe, but the best Libertarian result in a 3-way race outside Alaska last November was in, of all places, York County, South Carolina, where Charles Blackwell got 22½ percent of the vote, coming in ahead of the Republican, for county council.

Some of our other candidates did pretty well, too: Tom Campbell got 12½ percent running for Congress, and (Ms.) Lee Bowie got 13 percent for state assembly….

JOHN HARLLEE, Secretary South Carolina Libertarian Party Florence, SC

Kudos

Kudos to John Shepherd! [LR, January 1981] Best book review I have ever read. If only his paragraph on Howard Ruff’s and Kirkpatrick Sale’s homes could be must reading (through voluntary choices, of course) for all radical leftists, and those on the radical right, ours would truly be a better world.

That paragraph gave me the best laugh and good feeling that I have had in memory. Maybe yet there truly is hope.

KEN PRAZAK Brookfield, IL

IN “THE FREEWOMAN” [LR, January 1981], Sharon Presley speaks of editors as often being unappreciated. Therefore, I shall say nothing about her stimulating piece and instead thank you for having accepted and printed the article—it made my day!

The illustration by Victoria Varga was quite good—is there nothing she can’t do? And I enjoyed the layout and graphics, particularly, of the “Oh God” spread—designed by Melanie Price.

CHRISTINE DORFFI Santa Barbara, CA

Coalition?

The Review of Kirkpatrick Sale’s Human Scale by John Shepherd (LR, January 1981) disappointed me as an environmentalist with libertarian tendencies. My disappointment came not from Shepherd’s description of Sale’s contribution but, rather, from an unsupported statement he made in his evaluation.

Shepherd wrote, “The alternative to the self-correcting free market is the steady-state economy which Sale embraces, warts and all. Doesn’t he understand that to maintain the steady-state economy he would need a police state?” From the way he said this, I must assume that this relationship between a steady-state economy and a police state is common knowledge. If it is, it is based upon a self-evident reality that I fail to see.

The obscurity may stem from misconceptions concerning the nature of a steady-state economy or from the past actions of socialists promoting their ideology by jumping on the environmentalist’s bandwagon. In the interests of survival and in the absence of a libertarian commitment to an ecologically sound society, desperation may force environmentalists to embrace coercion.

But I believe that a police state is neither necessary nor sufficient for a steady-state economy. The alternative to a self-correcting free market is a command economy similar to the Soviet Union. The economy of the Soviet Union is certainly not a steady-state. Moreover, a command economy requires centralization and homogenous taste in order to facilitate economic planning. The steady-state economy depends on decentralization and a diversity of tastes.

It seems clear to me that our present society is neither libertarian nor ecologically sound. If an ecologically sound and libertarian society is possible, perhaps a powerful coalition between environmentalists and libertarians could form for the difficult transition years ahead. I hope that The Libertarian Review and its readers will address this issue in depth.

GARY C. CHILSON Lansing, MI