WEBVTT NOTE How Empires Bamboozle the Bourgeoisie 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 The U.S. population has just passed an important demographic marker this year. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 It finally reached 300 million. 3 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.000 The reactions to the news were predictable. 4 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Many on the left celebrated the growing diversity of the population, 5 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:18.000 while many on the right came to the defense of a rising population 6 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:24.000 for fear that the news would be spun in favor of social policies with which they disagree. 7 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Environmentalists like Vicki Markham of the Center for the Environment and Population 8 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:33.840 regretted that people are wrecking havoc on the environment. 9 00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:36.560 If by wrecking havoc she means transforming it 10 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:38.920 to the good of the human population, 11 00:00:38.920 --> 00:00:42.960 this is a point that might be made about Adam and Eve. 12 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:45.480 But there were two considerations not addressed, 13 00:00:45.480 --> 00:00:47.880 and they're the most fundamental ones. 14 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:51.460 First, what kind of economy is necessary to support 15 00:00:51.460 --> 00:00:54.040 this level of population? 16 00:00:54.040 --> 00:00:58.040 After all, whether a rising population is good or bad 17 00:00:58.040 --> 00:01:03.040 Depends on the capacity of the economic structures to support the people's well-being. 18 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:11.040 Second, why should it be necessary for all those people to have to live under the same central government? 19 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:14.040 Let's address the first question. 20 00:01:14.040 --> 00:01:19.040 A population of 300 million is about 5% of the world's population today. 21 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:24.040 But it probably was the whole of the world's population a thousand years ago. 22 00:01:24.040 --> 00:01:36.040 The dramatic emergence of complex capital structures in the late Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution led to the most explosively large increases in human well-being ever recorded. 23 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:42.040 No Pharaoh or Caesar lived as well as the poor today in the United States. 24 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:52.040 The vital statistics tell a similar story, as each generation since the development of complex capital structures has lived better than the previous one. 25 00:01:52.040 --> 00:01:56.040 The free market is the most pro-life policy of all. 26 00:01:56.040 --> 00:02:02.040 If we could somehow transport the whole population of today back a millennium ago, 27 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:06.040 with the level of technology and capital present at that time, 28 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.040 what would be the results? 29 00:02:08.040 --> 00:02:11.040 Nothing short of mass starvation. 30 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:15.040 While it is true that people are a resource, even the ultimate resource, 31 00:02:15.040 --> 00:02:19.040 people still must be fed, clothed and housed. 32 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:27.040 This would not be possible with the present level of population with the existing state of economic development a thousand years ago. 33 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:33.040 Yet there are many people today who long for a system of economics that prevailed in the Middle Ages. 34 00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:40.040 On the left we have the Neo-Rossoians who imagine that modern technology has a hopelessly corrupting effect, 35 00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:47.040 while on the right some dream of a guild-dominated system of small craftsmen and home-based production. 36 00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:53.040 But these fantasies are not only unworkable. In reality, they are nothing short of lethal. 37 00:02:53.040 --> 00:02:58.040 Most of the world's population would die immediately if such a system were imposed. 38 00:02:58.040 --> 00:03:04.040 There is only one system that can support a national and world population on this scale. 39 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:11.040 And it's not socialism, it's not primitivism, it is only capitalism. 40 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:21.040 Whereover, no form of government can create wealth, so we need not credit the Constitution except to the extent that it has justified the curbing of government's reach. 41 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:27.040 Nor can we credit any political leader, so let's not hear about the glories of great presidents. 42 00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:34.040 It is capitalism alone that has supported this level of population growth and keeps it contributing to the common good. 43 00:03:34.040 --> 00:03:47.040 And by naming capitalism as the benefactor of mankind, I also intend to include the many millions of entrepreneurs, workers, savers and investors who pushed forward economic growth. 44 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:52.040 Now, someone might quickly respond that the welfare state does its share of work. 45 00:03:52.040 --> 00:03:56.040 But keep in mind that the welfare state produces nothing. 46 00:03:56.040 --> 00:04:01.040 It lives off wealth already created, wealth taken by force. 47 00:04:01.040 --> 00:04:13.040 Redistribution of wealth does not create wealth. It only shuffles it around from its most economically suitable uses towards purposes that serve the needs of the political class. 48 00:04:13.040 --> 00:04:20.040 If any property is made to serve anything other than its first most suitable purpose, its value is reduced. 49 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:27.040 When it is channeled into purposes that serve the interests of the state, it is done at the cost of freedom as well. 50 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:37.040 And yet, in all the discussion of this landmark of population, I didn't hear a word about the critical question of how it is that all these people can be supportive. 51 00:04:37.040 --> 00:04:42.040 Indeed, the very source of wealth in society gets hardly any press at all. 52 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:51.040 People act as if a given level of prosperity is like the weather. It appears and disappears in a manner that is largely beyond human control. 53 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:56.040 This is precisely what good economic education seeks to correct. 54 00:04:56.040 --> 00:05:01.040 It must draw attention to both the question and the answer. 55 00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:06.040 This is what good economists have been doing since the 14th century and before. 56 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:11.040 And then, as now, the press that capitalism gets is usually of a negative nature. 57 00:05:11.040 --> 00:05:17.040 We hear about businessmen going to jail, about food manufacturers trying to poison our children, 58 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:22.040 about fraudulent and unlicensed professionals, about rapacity and greed. 59 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:33.040 Partly because of this propaganda, capitalism today is hamstrung, taxed, regulated, regimented, distorted and twisted in a hundred million ways. 60 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:43.040 And yet it remains the one and only source of wealth that serves to feed, clothe and house the growing multitudes of the American population. 61 00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:52.040 A hundred years ago, when the U.S. population passed the 100 million mark, there was much talk about many subjects concerning growth. 62 00:05:52.040 --> 00:05:59.040 But one subject was not raised, and this is the very subject that dominated the headlines this year, the environment. 63 00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:09.040 There seems to be some sort of consensus, one that is not open to dispute, that a growing population is a disaster for the environment. 64 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:15.040 Now, when speaking of this question of the environment, it's good to clarify our terms. 65 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:23.040 If by the environment, for example, we mean clean air, I can promise you there is no surer way to clean the air than air conditioning. 66 00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:27.040 And this is distinctly a product of the human population. 67 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:29.040 The same can be said of water. 68 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:36.040 A rising population engaged in the capitalist project of bottling water to sell is a great path to clean water. 69 00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:41.040 Nature, left to its own devices, is cruel and dirty. 70 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:44.040 But many people don't see it this way. 71 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:48.040 For them, the best environment is the one that is utterly uninhabited. 72 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:53.040 This dream provides a strangely perverse justification for socialist policies, 73 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:57.040 the end result of which is finally poverty and death. 74 00:06:57.040 --> 00:07:01.040 The New Scientist, for example, has published an article oddly titled, 75 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:05.040 Imagine Earth Without Humans. 76 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:09.040 Quote, humans are undoubtedly the most dominant species on the earth. 77 00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:10.040 The art of began. 78 00:07:10.040 --> 00:07:16.040 In just a few thousand years, we've swallowed up more than a third of the planet's land for our cities, farmland and pastures. 79 00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:21.040 By some estimates, we now commandeer 40% of its productivity. 80 00:07:21.040 --> 00:07:24.040 And we're leaving quite a mess behind, says the new scientist. 81 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:32.040 Plot of prairies, raised forests, drained aquifers, nuclear waste, chemical pollution, invasive species, 82 00:07:32.040 --> 00:07:42.040 If they could, the other species we share the earth would would surely vote us off the planet. 83 00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:46.040 Now just suppose they got their wish, the article continues. 84 00:07:46.040 --> 00:07:53.040 Imagine that all the people on earth, all 6.5 billion of us and counting, could be spirited away tomorrow, 85 00:07:53.040 --> 00:07:57.040 transported to a re-education camp in a far-off galaxy. 86 00:07:57.040 --> 00:08:13.040 Left once more to its own devices, nature would begin to reclaim the planet, as fields and pastures reverted to prairies and forests, the air and water cleansed themselves of pollutants, and roads and cities crumbled back to dust. 87 00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:21.040 Of course, no article that seems to long for the end of humanity would be complete without a quotation from an expert scientist. 88 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:36.040 So here it is, quote, the sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to look a lot better, says John Orock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis in Santa Barbara, California. 89 00:08:36.040 --> 00:08:47.040 We can gather from this statement that there is at least one form of extinction that some environmentalists would not entirely regret. 90 00:08:47.040 --> 00:08:57.040 The irony is that the policies of the environmentalists have moved far beyond the early conservation movement that saw merit in the wonders of the Grand Canyon or the California Redwoods. 91 00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:06.040 It has become an all-encompassing political ideology that argues against the well-being of people and on behalf of anything non-human. 92 00:09:06.040 --> 00:09:14.040 In its reductio ad absurdum, it aspires to the extinction of the human race, and in its politics, it works to kill off the source of prosperity, 93 00:09:14.040 --> 00:09:24.040 The truth is that this country has entirely too much unused nature, as is obvious when you take a coast-to-coast flight. 94 00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:31.040 From a bird's eye view, this country is hardly overcrowded, a fact which is also underscored in detailed maps. 95 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:34.040 Indeed, most of the landmass of the United States is empty. 96 00:09:34.040 --> 00:09:41.040 Our population density is far lower than the rest of the world, especially that of Asia, Latin America and Europe. 97 00:09:41.040 --> 00:09:52.040 of the World, especially that of Asia, Latin America and Europe. And yet you can't make that kind of statement in American politics and expect any kind of assent. 98 00:09:52.040 --> 00:10:00.040 For example, the issue of immigration has become a hotbed. People are increasingly angry about all that they associate with immigration. 99 00:10:00.040 --> 00:10:09.040 But a consideration that sheds light on this issue is one that all the problems that we associate with immigration stem not from the presence of people, 100 00:10:09.040 --> 00:10:13.040 from the institutional arrangements in which people interact. 101 00:10:13.040 --> 00:10:19.040 Immigration of some types forces on the domestic population new requirements for public infrastructure. 102 00:10:19.040 --> 00:10:24.040 Schools must be built and funded. New public sector employees hired. 103 00:10:24.040 --> 00:10:29.040 The demands on the public purse grow. New immigrants can receive public assistance. 104 00:10:29.040 --> 00:10:36.040 They coalesce based on language and ethnicity and gain control of local governments through which they can coerce others. 105 00:10:36.040 --> 00:10:44.040 They have national voting interests, and their votes are up for grabs by parties representing special interests, which is to say both parties. 106 00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:50.040 Whereas people will suffer through incredible abuses when imposed by people who share their nationality, 107 00:10:50.040 --> 00:10:55.040 they will not tolerate the same from those whom they regard as aliens. 108 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:58.040 The result is social and political upheaval. 109 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:03.040 And what is the source? Not capitalism, not immigration as such. 110 00:11:03.040 --> 00:11:10.040 Rather, the core problem is the state, which enables some people to rob others on their own behalf. 111 00:11:10.040 --> 00:11:14.040 All other concerns are a distraction from this key issue. 112 00:11:14.040 --> 00:11:22.040 The best immigration reform is the one that would provide neither impediments towards work for anyone or subsidies of any sort. 113 00:11:22.040 --> 00:11:27.040 Eliminating the subsidies alone would help alleviate the resentment that comes with immigration. 114 00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:32.040 It would also stop the subsidies that cause people to immigrate for the wrong reasons. 115 00:11:32.040 --> 00:11:48.040 In any case, it is pointless and dangerous to pursue the method of using government power to round up illegals and throw them out, a power that is used to the detriment of commercial freedom, when the law still encourages demographic upheaval through subsidies and special rights. 116 00:11:48.040 --> 00:11:58.040 Let us recall that the federal government has no incentive to stabilize and control immigration in any sense that would be beneficial to American citizens. 117 00:11:58.040 --> 00:12:03.040 Whatever the government does, it ends up conspiring against private property owners. 118 00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:09.040 In areas of Arizona, where private lands bump up against the border, for example, 119 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:14.040 the government actually restricts the ability of landowners to control trespassing. 120 00:12:14.040 --> 00:12:20.040 Let us ask a fundamental question. Can there be such a thing as overpopulation? 121 00:12:20.040 --> 00:12:25.040 The left seems to say that population growth is always a problem. 122 00:12:25.040 --> 00:12:30.040 The right seems to believe there can be no such thing as overpopulation. 123 00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:34.040 The libertarian Austrian view is a third position entirely. 124 00:12:34.040 --> 00:12:41.040 It argues that every population is optimal provided it reflects the free choices of individuals within a society 125 00:12:41.040 --> 00:12:48.040 in which production and exchange, the means of support for all people, is also permitted to reflect the choices of those people. 126 00:12:48.040 --> 00:12:53.040 A capitalistic society leaves the issue of population to the people. 127 00:12:53.040 --> 00:13:01.040 Under socialism, says Mises, there can be no toleration towards a laissez-faire population policy. 128 00:13:01.040 --> 00:13:09.040 Indeed, writes Mises, quote, without coercive regulation of the growth of population, a socialist community is inconceivable. 129 00:13:09.040 --> 00:13:17.040 A socialist community must be in a position to prevent the size of the population from mounting above or falling below certain definite limits. 130 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:24.040 It must attempt to maintain the population always at that optimal number, which allows the maximum production per head. 131 00:13:24.040 --> 00:13:31.040 It is certain that even if a socialist community may bring free love, it can in no way bring free birth. 132 00:13:31.040 --> 00:13:36.040 Population only becomes a problem when government enters the picture. 133 00:13:36.040 --> 00:13:40.040 Here is where we need to address the second question with which I began. 134 00:13:40.040 --> 00:13:46.040 Why should these 300 million people be forced to live under the same central government? 135 00:13:46.040 --> 00:13:56.040 The independent Greek cities, out of which came Western civilization, had populations of 15,000 or so, quite a bit smaller than Auburn, Alabama. 136 00:13:56.040 --> 00:14:04.040 If we followed the Greek model, we'd not have one central government, but fully 20,000 small communities, each with political autonomy. 137 00:14:04.040 --> 00:14:14.040 They would compete for citizens and capital, those that taxed and regulated their citizens and property would lose, and those who let people alone would gain. 138 00:14:14.040 --> 00:14:24.040 They would be economically unviable on their own, and so they would be driven to permit free trade, not only between the cities, but also with the rest of the world. 139 00:14:24.040 --> 00:14:36.040 This would not lead to isolationism, but rather the very opposite, a heightened economic and cultural internationalism, even as the structures of government would be close to home and easier to control. 140 00:14:36.040 --> 00:14:42.040 And as the politically independent Greeks were all still Greeks, we would all still be Americans. 141 00:14:42.040 --> 00:14:50.040 But the forces of competition would work to improve the governments under which we live and bring them more in line with the old liberal ideal. 142 00:14:50.040 --> 00:14:59.040 Now, if raising the idea of breaking the U.S. into 20,000 city-states sounds completely crazy to you, I look at it this way. 143 00:14:59.040 --> 00:15:05.040 If the new scientists can talk about how healthy the world would be if 6 billion people were zapped away by aliens, 144 00:15:05.040 --> 00:15:16.040 I can talk about the far more realistic and responsible vision of turning 50 United States into 20,000 free and disunited cities. 145 00:15:16.040 --> 00:15:24.040 Moreover, we should reflect on the reality that self-governing communities were precisely the experience of colonial America. 146 00:15:24.040 --> 00:15:30.040 The colonies traded with each other and with the rest of the world, to the extent the British left them. 147 00:15:30.040 --> 00:15:34.040 Citizens moved to locations based on the relative liberality of the laws. 148 00:15:34.040 --> 00:15:47.040 Our colonial ancestors were widely read. They learned from the experience of Rome that Republican government can only coexist with liberty when both the territory and population size are small. 149 00:15:47.040 --> 00:15:53.040 Otherwise, they degenerate into despotic and unworkable schemes for central planning. 150 00:15:53.040 --> 00:15:59.040 The knowledge of this reality is what led to the revolt against their masters overseas. 151 00:15:59.040 --> 00:16:07.040 School kids are taught that the basis of the American Revolution was the desire of the colonies not to be ruled by a king. 152 00:16:07.040 --> 00:16:09.040 But this is a superficial view. 153 00:16:09.040 --> 00:16:15.040 It is also misleading to say that the colonists were driven to revolution by taxes or trade monopolies. 154 00:16:15.040 --> 00:16:22.040 These were both symptoms of a larger reality that had begun to dawn on them, namely that they were capable of self-government 155 00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:28.040 and that therefore the empire was imposing a wholly unnecessary despotism on them. 156 00:16:28.040 --> 00:16:33.040 They didn't need to be ruled by some far-flung government on the other side of the world. 157 00:16:33.040 --> 00:16:37.040 They could rule themselves and they had every right to assert that truth, 158 00:16:37.040 --> 00:16:41.040 which is what they did in the Declaration of Independence. 159 00:16:41.040 --> 00:16:45.040 The Revolutionary Generation, book of the high debts of the British government, 160 00:16:45.040 --> 00:16:50.040 of its patronage and corruption, of the cruelty of its colonial administrators, 161 00:16:50.040 --> 00:16:55.040 of its arrogance and pride, of its departures from its historic principles of liberty, 162 00:16:55.040 --> 00:17:10.040 and all of these were seen as the inevitable consequence of empire, which is nothing more than the attempt to rule too many people over too larger territory under rules and laws that favor interest groups in league with the imperial state. 163 00:17:10.040 --> 00:17:16.040 The colonists spoke aggressively about liberating the colonies from the grip of the British Empire. 164 00:17:16.040 --> 00:17:24.040 They spoke of how a revolution against the empire would ultimately prove to be beneficial even to Britain itself because it would help to return it to its first principles. 165 00:17:24.040 --> 00:17:30.040 They spoke of how the world would rejoice to see the British Empire humiliated in defeat. 166 00:17:30.040 --> 00:17:41.040 Mercy Otis Warren writes in her History of the Revolution that Americans felt a solidarity with many nations around the world who had been cruelly treated by the British Empire. 167 00:17:41.040 --> 00:17:49.040 Their identity began to be shaped around themselves as resistors to empire, and it even affected historiography at the time, 168 00:17:49.040 --> 00:17:56.040 The Decisive Force in the Revolution was that despotism was being posed at so remote a distance by a government that knew nothing and understood nothing about the distinctive American cultural and political identity that had been shaped over the previous hundred years. 169 00:18:19.040 --> 00:18:25.460 It was this that gave rise to such rhetoric, as found in the sermon of Pastor Jonathan 170 00:18:25.460 --> 00:18:33.520 Mayhew in 1750, quote, For a nation thus abused to arise unanimously and to resist their prince, 171 00:18:33.520 --> 00:18:40.420 even to the dethroning of him, is not criminal, but a reasonable way of vindicating their 172 00:18:40.420 --> 00:18:42.800 liberties and just rights. 173 00:18:42.800 --> 00:18:47.880 It is making use of the means, and the only means, which God has put into their power 174 00:18:47.880 --> 00:18:52.760 for Mutual and Self-Defense, and it would be highly criminal in them not to make use 175 00:18:52.760 --> 00:18:55.360 of these means." 176 00:18:55.360 --> 00:18:59.660 It was the successful overthrowing of an empire that inspired the first code of government 177 00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:03.780 after the revolution, the Articles of Confederation. 178 00:19:03.780 --> 00:19:06.600 The United States was to be an assembly of republics. 179 00:19:06.600 --> 00:19:12.420 We must understand that the word republic in those days was synonymous with small. 180 00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:15.200 The territory would be small. 181 00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:20.160 This could be larger, but even they had to divide as their populations grew. 182 00:19:20.160 --> 00:19:24.440 This view towards the size of republics was due to the influence of Montesquieu, who argued 183 00:19:24.440 --> 00:19:26.480 the point in great detail. 184 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:31.440 In his view, large republics were necessarily corrupt and contained the seeds of their own 185 00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:33.360 destruction. 186 00:19:33.360 --> 00:19:37.240 Montesquieu was the favorite thinker of the intellectuals and activists who opposed the 187 00:19:37.240 --> 00:19:43.160 creation of the U.S. Constitution on precisely the grounds that such a big state would constitute 188 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:45.160 and Empire. 189 00:19:45.160 --> 00:19:50.160 Robert Yates, writing under the name Brutus, said against the Constitution, quote, 190 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:56.160 History furnishes no example of a free republic, anything like the extent of the United States. 191 00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:01.160 The Grecian republics were of small extent, so also was that of the Romans. 192 00:20:01.160 --> 00:20:08.160 Both of them, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquest over large territories of country. 193 00:20:08.160 --> 00:20:23.160 and the consequence was that the character of their governments were changed from those of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world, Patrick Henry, as usual, was more eloquent than anyone. 194 00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:33.160 Quote, if we admit this consolidated government, consolidated meaning centralized, it will be because we like a great, splendid one. 195 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:40.160 Some way or other, we must be a great and mighty empire. We must have an army and a navy and a number of things. 196 00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:45.160 When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different. 197 00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:59.160 Liberty, sir, that was the primary object. But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire. 198 00:20:59.160 --> 00:21:08.160 Such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism. There will be no checks, no real balances in this government." 199 00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:15.160 So powerful was this argument that Alexander Hamilton was forced to reply in the Federalist Papers. 200 00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:27.160 Quote, the opponents of the plan proposed have, with great assiduousness, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. 201 00:21:27.160 --> 00:21:37.160 When Montesquieu recommends a small extent for republics at Hamilton, the standards he had in mind were of dimensions far short of the limits of almost every one of these states. 202 00:21:37.160 --> 00:22:05.160 You see the sleight of hand here. He is citing the cases of the states not being empires, but what was at issue was not the states, they were already sovereign, but the creation of the national government. 203 00:22:05.160 --> 00:22:08.160 That was what the Anti-Federalists feared. 204 00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:14.160 The Federalists, who were of course misnamed, promised that the states would retain their political autonomy. 205 00:22:14.160 --> 00:22:20.160 But that begged the question of why there was a need for a federal government at all. 206 00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:24.160 All such questions must be considered in context. 207 00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:31.160 Might Hamilton have reversed his judgment had he lived to see the federal government trample on the legal rights of the states? 208 00:22:31.160 --> 00:22:34.160 Or seen the states expand from 13 to 50? 209 00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:40.860 in 1950, or seen the Empire spread from the Northeast all the way to Hawaii and Alaska. 210 00:22:40.860 --> 00:22:44.720 Might he have eaten his words if he could have seen the dreadful results of the attempt 211 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:51.460 of the U.S. Empire to impose its rule in a long series of wars? It is difficult to say, 212 00:22:51.460 --> 00:22:56.340 but this much we do know. The Anti-Federalists were precisely right that the creation of 213 00:22:56.340 --> 00:23:02.260 the new Federal Government would create too many temptations to Empire. 214 00:23:02.260 --> 00:23:11.260 I'm particularly intrigued by Patrick Henry's comments. He says that a free people do not speak of imperial greatness, but of liberty itself. 215 00:23:11.260 --> 00:23:17.260 They do not seek to be feared by the world, but appreciated, admired and emulated. 216 00:23:17.260 --> 00:23:22.260 In the same spirit, a free people do not rule by tanks and guns and bombers. 217 00:23:22.260 --> 00:23:28.260 They win converts to their cause through peaceful cooperation and good example. 218 00:23:28.260 --> 00:23:38.260 This is the ideal of Patrick Henry. He fought to immunize the American people against the great era that has bamboozled the producers from the ancient world to our own time. 219 00:23:38.260 --> 00:23:44.260 The myth that imperial greatness can be achieved without the expense of freedom. 220 00:23:44.260 --> 00:23:52.260 All nations that aspire to imperial greatness lose their liberty and learn, but all was at a date too late. 221 00:23:52.260 --> 00:23:58.260 In the early part of the 20th century following World War I, Europe faced a similar crossroad. 222 00:23:58.260 --> 00:24:06.260 Would it choose a path of liberty, or would it attempt to shore up the old imperial states that existed in the 19th century? 223 00:24:06.260 --> 00:24:11.260 A new democratic age had dawned, and monarchies had been overthrown. 224 00:24:11.260 --> 00:24:21.260 Mises was the new Montesquieu, warning against large states and urging radical devolution of government as the only path to peace and prosperity. 225 00:24:21.260 --> 00:24:25.260 The book in question, as Guido discussed, is Nation, State and Economy. 226 00:24:25.260 --> 00:24:28.260 It was Mises's first book on politics. 227 00:24:28.260 --> 00:24:33.260 His explicit purpose was to map out a plan for Europe to avoid future war. 228 00:24:33.260 --> 00:24:43.260 To Mises, that meant turning the nationalist impulse towards a productive use in the creation of much smaller states and avoiding the era of empire. 229 00:24:43.260 --> 00:24:50.260 He wrote that princely states strive for expansion of territory and for unlimited increases in the number of subjects 230 00:24:50.260 --> 00:25:03.260 The State believes that its survival depends on its size. The more mighty and expansive, the more it assures its preservation and prosperity. 231 00:25:03.260 --> 00:25:08.260 But the idea of classical liberalism introduced a revolutionary idea. 232 00:25:08.260 --> 00:25:16.260 It saw that prosperity depends not on the size of the State, but on its economic structure. 233 00:25:16.260 --> 00:25:23.260 In fact, an expansive state requires high taxes and inflation, and these institutions war against prosperity. 234 00:25:23.260 --> 00:25:34.260 Moreover, it saw that small states are actually more stable and long-lasting because they avoid the expense of war and refrain from cultivating enemies that seek their destruction. 235 00:25:34.260 --> 00:25:38.260 Their governments are more likely to remain small and limited. 236 00:25:38.260 --> 00:25:43.260 The old liberal position, then, turned ancient wisdom on its head. 237 00:25:43.260 --> 00:25:59.260 It is not through empire that a nation, which is of course different from a state, achieves prosperity and longevity, but through free markets, free trade, small and localized forms of government, and international policy of peace. 238 00:25:59.260 --> 00:26:05.260 That was the only way forward for Europe if another war were to be prevented. 239 00:26:05.260 --> 00:26:15.260 As another point, small government resolves the civil strife that comes with too many people within a diverse population living under a unitary state. 240 00:26:15.260 --> 00:26:29.260 The struggle to gain power and impose one's group's will on the other will always be present, but devolved government keeps people out of each other's hair and allows all people to interact by means of human choice rather than force. 241 00:26:29.260 --> 00:26:35.260 If we can understand that point, we can begin to make sense not only of America's immigration problems, 242 00:26:35.260 --> 00:26:40.260 but also of why the war in Iraq has proven such an abysmal failure. 243 00:26:40.260 --> 00:26:45.260 Quote, liberalism knows no conquests, said Mises. No annexations. 244 00:26:45.260 --> 00:26:49.260 It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. 245 00:26:49.260 --> 00:26:54.260 Whoever wants to immigrate is not held back. That's immigrate with an E, I might add. 246 00:26:54.260 --> 00:26:57.260 When a part of the people of the state want to drop out of the Union, 247 00:26:57.260 --> 00:27:04.260 Liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. 248 00:27:04.260 --> 00:27:11.260 The nation as an organic entity can neither be increased nor reduced by changes in states." 249 00:27:11.260 --> 00:27:19.260 Mises was very shrewd at turning the idea of democracy, which was then heralded by all as the great leap forward out of monarchical states, 250 00:27:19.260 --> 00:27:22.260 towards a literal rendering of the idea. 251 00:27:22.260 --> 00:27:27.260 To Mises, democracy meant that people consent to a government of their choosing. 252 00:27:27.260 --> 00:27:33.260 If people want to leave that government and form a new one, they are following the democratic impulse. 253 00:27:33.260 --> 00:27:36.260 Such is usually the case in territories. 254 00:27:36.260 --> 00:27:41.260 To prevent people from leaving would be to assert the rights of empire over democracy. 255 00:27:41.260 --> 00:27:49.260 Democracy, he wrote, is self-determination, self-government, self-rule. 256 00:27:49.260 --> 00:27:52.260 The connection with his advocacy of free markets is clear. 257 00:27:52.260 --> 00:27:58.260 Just as in political life, people must always consent to the way in which they are ruled. 258 00:27:58.260 --> 00:28:06.260 In economics, people should not be ruled without their consent in their exchanges, business enterprises, or choices of any kind. 259 00:28:06.260 --> 00:28:11.260 So long as people are not forced against their will in economics or politics, they are free. 260 00:28:11.260 --> 00:28:15.260 And it is this free condition that leads to peace and prosperity. 261 00:28:15.260 --> 00:28:27.260 So Mises' idea of democracy had nothing to do with what we think of as democracy today, in which an unwilling majority is ruled by special interest groups under ever-increasing power relations. 262 00:28:27.260 --> 00:28:37.260 While we might not agree with Mises in believing that democracy could work so long as government is in charge, we can commend his attempt to reconcile the idea of law with freedom. 263 00:28:37.260 --> 00:28:43.260 This ideal depended heavily on governmental structures that are close to the people and can be influenced by them. 264 00:28:43.260 --> 00:28:49.260 There can be no compromise between the liberal idea and the imperial idea. 265 00:28:49.260 --> 00:28:54.260 And no special considerations justify replacing the former with the latter. 266 00:28:54.260 --> 00:28:59.260 Quote, the idea of liberalism starts with the freedom of the individual, wrote Mises. 267 00:28:59.260 --> 00:29:03.260 Quote, it rejects all rule of some persons over others. 268 00:29:03.260 --> 00:29:11.260 It knows no master peoples and no subject peoples, just as within the nation itself it distinguishes between no masters and no serfs. 269 00:29:11.260 --> 00:29:22.260 For fully developed imperialism, the individual no longer has value. He is valuable to it only as a member of the whole, as a soldier of an army, unquote. 270 00:29:22.260 --> 00:29:32.260 Imperialism, wrote Mises, quote, strives for the numerical greatness of the nation to make conquests and hold them when it must have the upper hand militarily. 271 00:29:32.260 --> 00:29:38.260 and military importance always depends on the number of combatants at one's disposal. 272 00:29:38.260 --> 00:29:44.260 Attaining and maintaining a large population thus becomes a special goal of policy. 273 00:29:44.260 --> 00:29:47.260 The imperialist wants a state as large as possible. 274 00:29:47.260 --> 00:29:53.260 He does not care whether that corresponds to the desires of the peoples." 275 00:29:53.260 --> 00:30:00.260 In contrast, Mises favored a globalism in economic relations and a localism in political relations. 276 00:30:00.260 --> 00:30:10.260 To achieve these required an ideological change that set aside grudges in favor of a future of liberal individualism. 277 00:30:10.260 --> 00:30:17.260 Such was the Misesian vision in 1919. It was not to come to pass. 278 00:30:17.260 --> 00:30:23.260 World War I had ended with many resentments stewing and the old longing for empire certainly not gone away. 279 00:30:23.260 --> 00:30:31.260 Germany in particular was ripe for bamboozlement by a leader who could tap into the resentment concerning lost territories. 280 00:30:31.260 --> 00:30:37.260 The leader would convince the people that the urge for justice can only be satisfied by recreating the empire, 281 00:30:37.260 --> 00:30:43.260 and only the strongest possible leader could manage to accomplish this against all odds. 282 00:30:43.260 --> 00:30:48.260 Mises wrote with an impassioned desire to stop the course of events, 283 00:30:48.260 --> 00:30:58.260 Quote, it would be the most terrible misfortune for Germany and for all humanity if the idea of revenge should dominate the German policy of the future, he wrote. 284 00:30:58.260 --> 00:31:10.260 To become free of the fetters that have been forced upon German development by the peace of Versailles, to free our fellow nationals from servitude and need, that alone should be the goal of the new German policy. 285 00:31:10.260 --> 00:31:22.260 To retaliate for wrongs suffered, to take revenge and to punish does satisfy lower instincts, but in politics the avenger harms himself no less than the enemy. 286 00:31:22.260 --> 00:31:28.260 What would he gain from quenching his thirst for revenge at the cost of his own welfare? 287 00:31:28.260 --> 00:31:32.260 There is only one problem with the Misesian analysis. 288 00:31:32.260 --> 00:31:38.260 While it is true that the people of a nation do not and cannot gain anything from a policy of revenge, 289 00:31:38.260 --> 00:31:44.260 government leaders do gain what they always and everywhere seek above all else, power and money. 290 00:31:44.260 --> 00:31:52.260 It then becomes the task of the leaders to convince the masses of people that everyone benefits when the leaders benefit. 291 00:31:52.260 --> 00:31:59.260 In short, the people must be bamboozled into accepting the ideological rationales 292 00:31:59.260 --> 00:32:07.260 For government to expand and become an imperial power that rules us as much as possible. 293 00:32:07.260 --> 00:32:10.260 What kinds of rationales are there available? 294 00:32:10.260 --> 00:32:15.260 Almost any idea alive in the culture is open to being co-opted. 295 00:32:15.260 --> 00:32:21.260 If people are religious, the rulers claim that the empire is necessary for religious reasons. 296 00:32:21.260 --> 00:32:26.260 If they have a fear of some ghastly ideology like fascism or communism, 297 00:32:26.260 --> 00:32:36.260 If they believe that their economic well-being is being threatened from abroad, an economic nationalism can be advanced. 298 00:32:36.260 --> 00:32:39.260 There are many other available rationales. 299 00:32:39.260 --> 00:32:45.260 In the interwar period, for example, race theory became popular among the educated elites of all Western nations. 300 00:32:45.260 --> 00:32:52.260 And this theory was often linked with a socialist plan for using eugenic policies to bring about some purported ideal. 301 00:32:52.260 --> 00:32:59.260 Nazism did not invent this, but it did use what was alive in the culture as a way of justifying its power. 302 00:32:59.260 --> 00:33:03.260 These ideas were no less popular in Britain and the United States. 303 00:33:03.260 --> 00:33:09.260 Americans have a deep-rooted attachment to the ideal of liberty, which is a glorious thing. 304 00:33:09.260 --> 00:33:17.260 But it is also why American leaders have always justified foreign wars in the name of liberating the oppressed peoples of the world. 305 00:33:17.260 --> 00:33:22.260 The mistake is in thinking that freedom can be achieved by means of force. 306 00:33:22.260 --> 00:33:27.260 The Cold War originated with the idea that the U.S. should do whatever was necessary 307 00:33:27.260 --> 00:33:33.260 to roll back the very Soviet client states that the U.S. worked to establish at the end of World War II. 308 00:33:33.260 --> 00:33:37.260 Then the U.S. pursued a series of wars in far flung places 309 00:33:37.260 --> 00:33:41.260 that cost lives and liberty and did nothing to roll back communism. 310 00:33:41.260 --> 00:33:45.260 Murray Rothbard saw what was happening in the late 1940s 311 00:33:45.260 --> 00:33:53.260 and emerged of the last surviving member of the old right, the united love of free markets with an anti-imperial foreign policy. 312 00:33:53.260 --> 00:34:02.260 This eventually became known as libertarianism, which at its best form is as much opposed to imperial warmongering as anyone on the left. 313 00:34:02.260 --> 00:34:11.260 His strength as a writer and commentator on public affairs was that he saw through the official eyes of the state, particularly in wartime. 314 00:34:11.260 --> 00:34:17.260 The more implausible the imperial war, the more a variety of rationales become necessary. 315 00:34:17.260 --> 00:34:24.260 Iraq has been justified on grounds of security, safety, religion, vengeance and economics, 316 00:34:24.260 --> 00:34:29.260 each rationale carefully tailored to appeal to a certain demographic group. 317 00:34:29.260 --> 00:34:34.260 All that is necessary is that the state convince a majority, however temporarily. 318 00:34:34.260 --> 00:34:39.260 Hardly a day goes by when I don't receive emails from advocates of war 319 00:34:39.260 --> 00:34:47.260 Advocates of War, explaining to me why the wars of the Bush administration are actually wonderful and just and great for all of us. 320 00:34:47.260 --> 00:34:54.260 They all have a different tenor. Some are about security. Some emphasize the need to overthrow foreign dictators. 321 00:34:54.260 --> 00:34:59.260 Some are religious in nature and express great fear about the old religion of Islam, 322 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:06.260 with which the West has had peaceful and productive relations, provided we've not been working to overthrow their governments and invade their lands. 323 00:35:06.260 --> 00:35:18.260 But a theme has emerged from all these emails is the one that we need to be most on guard against, raw enthusiasm for the state as the appointed representative of American interests. 324 00:35:18.260 --> 00:35:23.260 In fact, I would say this attitude is un-American in the most profound sense. 325 00:35:23.260 --> 00:35:31.260 What must a person forget in order to believe in the unity of interests between U.S. foreign policy and the American people? 326 00:35:31.260 --> 00:35:40.260 They must forget that the U.S. was born in revolt, not only against the British Empire, but also against the very idea of empire itself. 327 00:35:40.260 --> 00:35:48.260 They must forget that the only way the U.S. Constitution was adopted was the promise that it would not act imperialistically at home or abroad. 328 00:35:48.260 --> 00:35:54.260 They must forget the warnings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many leaders of the 19th century. 329 00:35:54.260 --> 00:35:59.260 They must forget about the history of failure of our own imperial wars of the 20th century 330 00:35:59.260 --> 00:36:04.260 in which guerrilla armies have consistently beat back our regular troops. 331 00:36:04.260 --> 00:36:09.260 Every American is right to be mighty angry at the Bush administration. 332 00:36:09.260 --> 00:36:16.260 Bush originally campaigned against the big government of Clinton and called for humility in foreign policy. 333 00:36:16.260 --> 00:36:19.260 And what did the Republicans do with their political capital? 334 00:36:19.260 --> 00:36:23.260 They squandered every last bit of it on an imperial adventure. 335 00:36:23.260 --> 00:36:31.260 In so doing, they further discredited other causes which the Republicans are linked in the public mind, including the cause of free markets. 336 00:36:31.260 --> 00:36:36.260 War is all they have to show for themselves, and it's a disgrace. 337 00:36:36.260 --> 00:36:44.260 And at this late stage in the Iraq conflict, the Bush-run state is asking us to forget even how the Iraq war began. 338 00:36:44.260 --> 00:36:51.260 Recall that the idea was to bomb Baghdad, create shock and awe, decapitate the head of state, 339 00:36:51.260 --> 00:36:57.260 and then watch as the rest of the country celebrated their liberation from Saddam and threw flowers at us. 340 00:36:57.260 --> 00:37:02.260 Today, Iraq is a country in ruins. Death and violence are everywhere. 341 00:37:02.260 --> 00:37:06.260 The reconstruction is going nowhere, although billions have been stolen. 342 00:37:06.260 --> 00:37:11.260 Almost 10% of the population, including most of the Christians, have fled. 343 00:37:11.260 --> 00:37:15.260 The only immigrants coming in are those swearing to kill. 344 00:37:15.260 --> 00:37:18.260 And yet I read the headline of the New York Times, 345 00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:23.260 which quotes what is passed on as some sort of revelation from the military commanders in Iraq. 346 00:37:23.260 --> 00:37:30.260 They decided that the future of Iraq depends heavily on taking Baghdad, cleaning out its rebels and dissidents, 347 00:37:30.260 --> 00:37:33.260 and enforcing this all through massive violence. 348 00:37:33.260 --> 00:37:38.260 Folks, this is how the war began. This is how it's ending. 349 00:37:38.260 --> 00:37:44.260 But let me say something in defense of the U.S. military commanders in Iraq who concocted this latest scheme. 350 00:37:44.260 --> 00:37:52.260 There is something intuitively plausible and honest about this statement that if a government can't control its own capital, it can't control the rest of the country. 351 00:37:52.260 --> 00:37:56.260 In fact, I propose that this same approach be used domestically. 352 00:37:56.260 --> 00:38:02.260 Before the federal government makes any more attempts to bring their proposed utopia to the rest of the country, 353 00:38:02.260 --> 00:38:12.260 let them eliminate poverty, crime, gang war, hate, despair, abuse, corruption and injustice in Washington DC. 354 00:38:12.260 --> 00:38:18.260 C. 355 00:38:18.260 --> 00:38:21.900 Once that city is cleaned of all such vice, we can talk about moving on to other parts 356 00:38:21.900 --> 00:38:27.260 of the country, but I think I can safely predict a quagmire. 357 00:38:27.260 --> 00:38:33.700 The U.S. has no business attempting to run a government in Iraq halfway around the world. 358 00:38:33.700 --> 00:38:38.780 A policymaker who claims to be surprised by the resistance is feigning ignorance of the 359 00:38:38.780 --> 00:38:40.660 heritage of America. 360 00:38:40.660 --> 00:38:46.900 We are all rebels in our hearts. Anyone who longs for freedom must be. The same can be 361 00:38:46.900 --> 00:38:52.060 said of the entire United States. It is an utterly unviable project to attempt to rule 362 00:38:52.060 --> 00:38:57.380 300 million people under a single central government. The experience of all mankind 363 00:38:57.380 --> 00:39:03.300 teaches us that. For that reason, a consistent anti-imperialist stance must not only oppose 364 00:39:03.300 --> 00:39:08.440 the U.S. war in Iraq in its attempt to manage governments anywhere in the world, but also 365 00:39:08.440 --> 00:39:17.440 must also favor a complete rollback of the U.S. empire at home on grounds that it is contrary to liberty and contrary to our heritage. 366 00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:26.440 If we understand something about economics, we must also see that a consistent stance against imperialism must also favor a completely free market, 367 00:39:26.440 --> 00:39:31.440 not only within the territory of the state but also with the entire world. 368 00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:43.440 People who live in small city-states can be the most prosperous in history, provided they keep the markets free of any impediments, maintain a sound currency, and not interfere with the right of free association. 369 00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:53.440 The old liberal vision is as valid today as it was before 1776, before 1787, and in 1919. 370 00:39:53.440 --> 00:40:00.440 There was a unity in the idea of a free economy at home and abroad, and a reduced and devolved form of government. 371 00:40:00.440 --> 00:40:12.380 Why is it, then, that the Mises Institute is nearly alone in championing such a policy? 372 00:40:12.380 --> 00:40:16.260 After all, it is part of the conventional apparatus of received wisdom in this country 373 00:40:16.260 --> 00:40:21.740 that people who love free enterprise also love war, while those who love peace are also 374 00:40:21.740 --> 00:40:27.940 friendly to socialism and people impoverishing ideologies like environmentalism. 375 00:40:27.940 --> 00:40:31.940 Why is it that the Mises Institute position on this so rare? 376 00:40:31.940 --> 00:40:35.940 Well, we can observe that the position was rare in Mises' day, too. 377 00:40:35.940 --> 00:40:39.940 When Rothbard took up the cause after World War II, he was nearly alone. 378 00:40:39.940 --> 00:40:44.940 And yes, this opinion is still rare, but it need not stay that way. 379 00:40:44.940 --> 00:40:49.940 The cause of anti-imperialism and freedom triumphed in 1776. 380 00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:55.940 And it can triumph again, provided we have the courage to continue to speak the truth. 381 00:40:55.940 --> 00:40:59.940 Never has the work of the Mises Institute been more essential. 382 00:40:59.940 --> 00:41:07.940 This country and this world needs a voice that addresses the questions that others not only fail to answer, but also fail to ask. 383 00:41:07.940 --> 00:41:10.940 The cause of liberty itself needs the Mises Institute. 384 00:41:10.940 --> 00:41:12.940 It needs our student programs to thrive. 385 00:41:12.940 --> 00:41:15.940 It needs our publishing to be even more aggressive and prolific. 386 00:41:15.940 --> 00:41:19.940 It needs our web presence to be even more spectacular. 387 00:41:19.940 --> 00:41:24.940 Academia is in desperate need of thinkers who understand what liberty means. 388 00:41:24.940 --> 00:41:32.940 The human population needs liberty in order to continue to grow in numbers and well-being. 389 00:41:32.940 --> 00:41:35.940 And liberty needs the champions to make it so. 390 00:41:35.940 --> 00:41:40.940 This is what is needed for social peace and economic prosperity. 391 00:41:40.940 --> 00:41:45.940 And above all, the Mises Institute needs you, your fighting spirit that inspires our work 392 00:41:45.940 --> 00:41:51.940 and the confidence you give us to forge ahead and say what few others are willing to say. 393 00:41:51.940 --> 00:42:04.940 Thank you for all you have done to give voice to the wisdom of the ages and for enabling us to point to a future in which the idea of liberty rises above all the ideologies that seek to kill the human spirit. Thank you.