WEBVTT NOTE What Empire Does to a Culture 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.900 Today I wish to consider a certain argument for empire that comes not from liberty's enemies, but from its friends, 2 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:10.360 though on this issue misguided friends, in my opinion. 3 00:00:10.360 --> 00:00:14.200 I shall call it the cosmopolitan argument for empire. 4 00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:23.160 According to the cosmopolitan argument for empire, there is a tendency for empires to be more tolerant and pluralistic than the more local regimes they subsume, 5 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:27.960 precisely because they draw on a wider variety of cultural traditions and values. 6 00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:32.220 James Madison makes essentially this argument in Federalist 10, when he writes, 7 00:00:32.220 --> 00:00:38.880 quote, the smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it. 8 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:44.120 The fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party. 9 00:00:44.120 --> 00:00:49.520 And the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, 10 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:53.680 the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. 11 00:00:53.680 --> 00:00:57.680 Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests. 12 00:00:57.680 --> 00:01:03.680 You make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common interest to invade the rights of other citizens, 13 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:11.680 or, if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other. 14 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:15.680 The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular states, 15 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:20.680 but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other states. 16 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:24.880 A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy, 17 00:01:24.880 --> 00:01:28.480 but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it 18 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:32.380 must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. 19 00:01:32.380 --> 00:01:37.680 A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, 20 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:40.480 or for any other improper or wicked project 21 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:44.980 will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it. 22 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:49.080 And the same proportion of such malady is more likely to taint a particular county 23 00:01:49.080 --> 00:01:52.080 in a district than in an entire state, end quote. 24 00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:57.080 It is from this perspective that the British Empire, for example, 25 00:01:57.080 --> 00:02:01.080 has been praised by some libertarians for combating oppressive practices 26 00:02:01.080 --> 00:02:04.080 such as human sacrifice and the caste system and its colonies. 27 00:02:05.080 --> 00:02:08.080 Isabel Patterson, for example, writes in God and the Machine, 28 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:12.080 quote, as with Rome, the world accepted the British Empire 29 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.080 because it opened world channels of energy for commerce in general. 30 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:20.280 On the whole, England's invisible exports were law and free trade. 31 00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:29.280 Practically speaking, while England ruled the seas, any man of any nation could go anywhere, taking his goods and money with him in safety." 32 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:38.780 And the Spencerian anarchist, Wordsworth Donesthorpe, likewise said that he supported the British Empire because where the Union Jack flew, free trade followed. 33 00:02:38.780 --> 00:02:41.780 Patterson sees virtue in the Roman Empire as well, 34 00:02:41.780 --> 00:02:44.780 arguing that the Carthaginian assault on Rome failed 35 00:02:44.780 --> 00:02:48.780 because Rome's subject allies, whom Hannibal had expected to join the invader 36 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:53.780 in throwing off the Roman yoke, remained loyal to Rome because of the benefits of Roman law. 37 00:02:53.780 --> 00:02:58.780 And referring to the incident when the Apostle Paul escaped scourging by invoking his Roman citizenship, 38 00:02:58.780 --> 00:03:00.780 she writes, quote, 39 00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:04.780 The crux of the affair is that a poor street preacher of the working class, 40 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:13.780 In the American case, centralized power has been seen as vital to the protection of minority rights, putting an end to slavery in the 19th century into Jim Crow in the 20th. 41 00:03:13.780 --> 00:03:25.780 David Bernstein has argued that the much-maligned pro-freedom-of-contract Lochner Court provided valuable protection in this area by striking down racist state laws restricting a freedom of contract to the detriment of equity. 42 00:03:25.780 --> 00:03:35.780 and the pro-freedom-of-contract Lochner Court provided valuable protection in this area by striking down racist state laws restricting the freedom of contract to the detriment of African Americans. 43 00:03:35.780 --> 00:03:51.780 One can likewise point to a variety of other areas, from censorship to reproductive freedom to gay rights, where a federal judiciary with apparently more tolerant cultural values has acted to protect individual freedom against state and local governments with less tolerant values. 44 00:03:51.780 --> 00:04:00.780 Anarchist legal theorist Randy Barnett has defended the theory of constitutional jurisprudence involving the federal imposition of libertarian standards on the states. 45 00:04:00.780 --> 00:04:07.780 In this vein, libertarian blogger Lady Astor offers the following critique of decentralization. 46 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:12.220 Quote, I've long been skeptical about decentralization. 47 00:04:12.220 --> 00:04:16.660 What I fear is that societies with pre-modern traditional cultural values 48 00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:19.260 will impose their local prejudices ruthlessly 49 00:04:19.260 --> 00:04:22.780 without a check from a larger, more cosmopolitan society. 50 00:04:22.780 --> 00:04:27.500 I'm very glad for Lawrence versus Texas and terrified by South Dakota. 51 00:04:27.500 --> 00:04:31.020 And while I would support reduction or elimination of the state power, 52 00:04:31.020 --> 00:04:33.540 I also believe state power is less destructive 53 00:04:33.540 --> 00:04:37.460 when it precisely isn't in the hands of local traditional social authorities. 54 00:04:37.460 --> 00:04:48.460 Historically, tolerance has been a value nurtured by education, leisure and urbanity and made politically necessary wherever a polity comprises a variety of constituent cultures. 55 00:04:48.460 --> 00:04:57.460 My experience leads me to believe that the rights of minorities, including immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, would not be better protected under decentralization. 56 00:04:57.460 --> 00:05:02.460 True, there are cases where the local society would pass better laws than the centralized state, 57 00:05:02.460 --> 00:05:08.460 But even so, my reading of history is that the general tendency is for cultural tolerance to flourish in urban centers. 58 00:05:08.460 --> 00:05:14.460 With this being the case, localism seems an idea with which I can have some anarchistic sympathy, 59 00:05:14.460 --> 00:05:21.460 but which seems in practice a deadly threat to minorities, dissidents and non-conformists of all types." 60 00:05:21.460 --> 00:05:28.460 While I sympathize with many of the concerns embodied in the cosmopolitan argument for empire, I believe the argument is mistaken. 61 00:05:28.460 --> 00:05:31.460 Let me explain why. 62 00:05:31.460 --> 00:05:38.260 To begin with, we should be cautious in concluding that imperial centralization leads to a flourishing and cosmopolitan culture. 63 00:05:38.260 --> 00:05:41.660 Admittedly, there are cases that might seem to support such a contention. 64 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:47.360 The Roman and British empires, France under the Bourbons, Austria-Hungary under the Habsburgs. 65 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:50.160 But the contrary cases are striking as well. 66 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:57.060 Consider China, Greece, Germany and Renaissance Italy in their respective cultural heydays. 67 00:05:57.060 --> 00:06:01.060 In each case, the leading thinkers spend a great deal of time bemoaning the fact 68 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:04.060 that their region was fragmented into many tiny states 69 00:06:04.060 --> 00:06:08.060 and issued fervent calls for greater political unification. 70 00:06:08.060 --> 00:06:11.060 And in each case, when the desired unification arrived, 71 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:14.060 the vigorous and dynamic cultural explosion largely fizzled out, 72 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:18.060 along with the competition that had arguably fueled it. 73 00:06:18.060 --> 00:06:21.060 In the Muslim world too, the high point of cultural creativity 74 00:06:21.060 --> 00:06:24.060 and religious toleration occurred not under the Ottomans, 75 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:27.060 but under the rather less centralized Arab hegemonies 76 00:06:27.060 --> 00:06:30.060 that preceded Ottoman rule. 77 00:06:30.060 --> 00:06:34.060 The protection offered by imperial centralism should also not be overestimated. 78 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:39.060 The vision of the British Empire as a universal guarantee of free trade looks like a bad joke 79 00:06:39.060 --> 00:06:44.060 when one considers the mercantilist system of economic privilege that Britain upheld in India, for example. 80 00:06:44.060 --> 00:06:50.060 And in the United States, the federal government presided happily over slavery for nearly a century before doing much about it, 81 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:55.060 and then presided happily over the Jim Crow system for nearly another century before doing very much about that. 82 00:06:55.060 --> 00:06:59.060 Moreover, the struggle against Jim Crow was initially waged at the grassroots level. 83 00:06:59.060 --> 00:07:02.060 by private citizens with relatively little federal support, 84 00:07:02.060 --> 00:07:05.060 and it was only after the civil rights movement had begun to take on steam 85 00:07:05.060 --> 00:07:08.060 that the federal government moved like the owl of Minerva 86 00:07:08.060 --> 00:07:11.060 to position itself at the head of the movement. 87 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:15.060 While it's true that the federal government has been more tolerant than local jurisdiction on some issues, 88 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:20.060 there are plenty of exceptions, firearms and marijuana being two obvious examples. 89 00:07:20.060 --> 00:07:25.060 And even when the central government is indeed a protector of more tolerant values, 90 00:07:25.060 --> 00:07:28.060 one problem with this sort of centralist solution 91 00:07:28.060 --> 00:07:32.060 is that it drives local reactionaries into national and nationwide politics, 92 00:07:32.060 --> 00:07:37.060 since reactionaries then see taking over the central government as the only available means to protect their values. 93 00:07:37.060 --> 00:07:43.060 And once reactionaries win at the national level, then they're in a position to impose their agenda on everybody. 94 00:07:43.060 --> 00:07:47.060 At least with decentralization, they're somewhere to escape to. 95 00:07:47.060 --> 00:07:55.060 Suppose Madison is right that a rage for any improper or wicked project will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it. 96 00:07:55.060 --> 00:08:01.060 All the same, there are means in a centralized system, whereby local oppressions can write themselves larger. 97 00:08:01.060 --> 00:08:08.060 Suppose Falwellville favors burning books by Darwin, while Mephistoville favors burning books by C.S. Lewis. 98 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:16.060 In a centralized legislature, representatives or lobbyists from Falwellville may be willing to lend their support to burning books by C.S. Lewis 99 00:08:16.060 --> 00:08:21.060 in exchange for representatives or lobbyists from Mephistoville lending their support to burning books by Darwin. 100 00:08:21.060 --> 00:08:28.060 Thus, centralization provides a path whereby local tyrannies can gain more support nationwide than they otherwise would. 101 00:08:28.060 --> 00:08:32.060 And once local tyranny does succeed in establishing itself at the centralized level, 102 00:08:32.060 --> 00:08:36.060 one can no longer escape to it simply by moving to another local district. 103 00:08:36.060 --> 00:08:40.060 A president bush is much more dangerous than the governor bush, 104 00:08:40.060 --> 00:08:45.060 who in turn is much more dangerous than would be a mayor bush. 105 00:08:45.060 --> 00:08:51.100 It's also worth remembering that what imperial central powers decide to impose on local jurisdictions, 106 00:08:51.100 --> 00:08:54.860 even when they are not unduly influenced by representatives of local oppression, 107 00:08:54.860 --> 00:08:58.500 is not always going to be a move in the direction of greater liberality. 108 00:08:58.500 --> 00:09:04.300 Think of the Soviet treatment of Hungary in 1956 or of Czechoslovakia in 1968. 109 00:09:04.300 --> 00:09:11.660 And of course, the same Paul who was protected by Roman law in the provinces was executed under Roman law in the capital. 110 00:09:11.660 --> 00:09:14.460 As Charles Johnson writes, quote, 111 00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:20.260 urbanity at its best tends to help certain kinds of tolerance and pro-freedom thought flourish, 112 00:09:20.260 --> 00:09:25.060 but I think agrarianism, agrarianism at its best tends to help other kinds flourish. 113 00:09:25.060 --> 00:09:32.160 The best parts of the American Revolution, radical, anti-statist, directly democratic, anti-mercantilist, etc. 114 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:35.560 for example, generally came out of the Massachusetts hinterland, 115 00:09:35.560 --> 00:09:38.760 with most of the mercantilist jobbery and law and order conservatism 116 00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:42.240 coming out of the urban centers in Boston, New York, etc. 117 00:09:42.240 --> 00:09:44.240 What I'm inclined to say is that each form of life 118 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:46.340 nurtures both its own characteristic virtues 119 00:09:46.340 --> 00:09:48.760 and its own characteristic vices. 120 00:09:48.760 --> 00:09:51.240 The agrarian tradition, at its best, 121 00:09:51.240 --> 00:09:54.880 cultivates populist skepticism towards self-appointed elites, 122 00:09:54.880 --> 00:09:57.200 individualist skepticism towards the arbitrary demands 123 00:09:57.200 --> 00:10:00.160 of others, an ethic of self-reliance, 124 00:10:00.160 --> 00:10:01.400 a willingness to live and let live 125 00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:03.240 in matters of private property, 126 00:10:03.240 --> 00:10:06.320 a skepticism of utopian central planning, etc. 127 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:21.320 At its worst agrarianism tends to encourage parochialism, anti-intellectualism, hidebound traditionalism, I got mine, indifference, conventional bigotry, a failure of skepticism towards traditional and supposedly natural authority, etc. 128 00:10:21.320 --> 00:10:35.320 Conversely, the tradition of urbanity, at its best, tends to cultivate cross-cultural tolerance, respect for intellect and education, solidarity with others, intense skepticism towards traditional centers of authority, etc. 129 00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:43.320 But at its worst, it has also cultivated predatory mercantilism, soul-killing mass politics, typically in the name of democracy, 130 00:10:43.320 --> 00:10:50.320 utopian central planning, imperial arrogance, both towards the provinces and towards the underclass of the city itself, etc. 131 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:59.320 Moreover, even when the central powers' values are more liberal, the results of attempting to impose them may not be what one hopes. 132 00:10:59.320 --> 00:11:07.320 It sometimes argued, for example, that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan actually represented a liberalization, especially for women. 133 00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:14.320 I think there's some truth to this. The Soviets supported education, careers and marital choice for women and didn't impose hijab. 134 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:20.320 On the other hand, the Soviet treatment of women in Afghanistan has its own horror stories, but even leaving that aside, 135 00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:26.320 the problem with imposing liberal values by means of military force is that it tends to associate liberal values 136 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:39.320 In the minds of the population with invasion and oppression, one is unlikely to be won over to the cause of women's rights when those preaching on behalf of that cause have stolen your farm, shot your brother, and blown your children's hands off with a landmine. 137 00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:45.320 Indeed, the cause of women's rights is probably in the long run set farther back by such associations. 138 00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:54.320 Cultural reform is generally more effective, provoking less resistance and reaction when accomplished by seduction and osmosis rather than at bayonet point. 139 00:11:54.320 --> 00:12:00.320 I fear the United States has learned little from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, since it seems bent on repeating it. 140 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:12.320 I don't mean to deny, of course, that the influence of centralized power upon local jurisdictions can sometimes have the effect of liberalizing culture and protecting individual rights against local oppression. 141 00:12:12.320 --> 00:12:21.320 But I maintain that when empires do this, they do so not qua empires, and so any points they earn in this respect should not be credited to empire as such. 142 00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:29.320 International trade and cultural exchange can have a liberalizing effect whether or not they are accompanied by military occupation. 143 00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:33.320 Indeed, I've argued that military occupation hinders more than helps the process. 144 00:12:33.320 --> 00:12:39.320 If one drinks both medicine and poison, and the medicine has some good effect, one shouldn't give credit to the poison. 145 00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:45.320 As for cases when centralized power genuinely protects rights by overriding local authority, 146 00:12:45.320 --> 00:12:49.320 the benefit it offers has nothing to do with centralization at all. 147 00:12:49.320 --> 00:12:56.320 What's significant in such cases is that the central power is offering legal services in competition with the local authority. 148 00:12:56.320 --> 00:13:01.320 And insofar as the benefit of central power lies in its role as a competitor to local authority, 149 00:13:01.320 --> 00:13:06.320 whatever merits it earns should go on the decentralization rather than the centralization side of the ledger, 150 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:12.320 since if competition is good at the local level, it's surely good at the large-scale level as well. 151 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:17.320 Centralized power may be one way to provide competition at the local level, but it's not the best way, 152 00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:21.320 since it does so by decreasing competition at the large scale level. 153 00:13:21.320 --> 00:13:25.320 Instead, the cure for local tyranny is not less decentralization but more. 154 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:30.320 If a smaller region secedes from a larger region and then practices oppression, 155 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:34.320 the safest solution is not to reabsorb it into the larger region, 156 00:13:34.320 --> 00:13:37.320 with the risk of larger scale oppression that brings, 157 00:13:37.320 --> 00:13:42.320 but to promote the secession of still smaller regions from it. 158 00:13:42.320 --> 00:13:46.320 Critics of secession point to the Confederacy's practice of slavery 159 00:13:46.320 --> 00:13:52.320 and other political vices, but of course the Confederacy was itself a huge, sprawling, centralized empire. 160 00:13:52.320 --> 00:13:58.320 Even the member states of the Confederacy, taken individually, were the size of European countries. 161 00:13:58.320 --> 00:14:01.320 They simply didn't take decentralization far enough. 162 00:14:01.320 --> 00:14:07.320 The true defender of secession was Lysander Spooner, who defended not only the secession of Confederate states from the Union, 163 00:14:07.320 --> 00:14:13.320 but also the secession of slaves with their homesteaded plantation property from the authority of their masters. 164 00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:22.320 As Johnson points out, those concerned with the protection of urban cosmopolitan values have as much reason to favor decentralization as anybody else. 165 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:31.320 Quote, one kind of decentralist politics that you might endorse would be to advocate the secession of urban centers from the surrounding states, 166 00:14:31.320 --> 00:14:36.320 and a decentralist order that's partly based on people forming a network of pole-laces around these urban centers. 167 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:47.320 Certainly there are a number of cities, New York, San Francisco, Detroit, Austin, Atlanta, where enough people are disgusted enough with their state governments that this kind of the idea might have some real traction. 168 00:14:47.320 --> 00:15:00.320 After all, the power of suburban and ex-urban and rural counties to lord it over cities through majoritarian control of the state government is, or at least ought to be, just as much a concern for these centralists as the reverse." 169 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:06.920 And Isabel Patterson inadvertently makes my point about empires not winning their points 170 00:15:06.920 --> 00:15:09.920 qua empires in the following passage. 171 00:15:09.920 --> 00:15:14.920 There has never been a military empire, nor ever can be. 172 00:15:14.920 --> 00:15:17.920 It is impossible in the nature of things. 173 00:15:17.920 --> 00:15:23.920 When Augustus became emperor, his first move toward consolidating the Roman dominion was to reduce the size of the army. 174 00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:29.920 Subsequently, when Rome included within its boundaries most of Europe, the Near East and North Africa, 175 00:15:29.920 --> 00:15:38.920 The task was performed with less than 400,000 soldiers, of whom half were auxiliaries, that is, regiments supplied by subject nations and officers by Romans. 176 00:15:38.920 --> 00:15:43.920 The Roman armies would have been pitifully inadequate to hold such a wide territory by force. 177 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:50.920 The ordinary man wished to live under Roman law. The victorious legions were a result, not a cause. End quote. 178 00:15:50.920 --> 00:15:53.920 There are two things to say about this. 179 00:15:53.920 --> 00:16:00.920 First, the fact that Rome did not maintain its empire by force of arms alone is no proof that its rule was benign. 180 00:16:00.920 --> 00:16:08.920 As thinkers as diverse as Etienne de la Boitie, David Hume, Mahatma Gandhi, Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard have pointed out, 181 00:16:08.920 --> 00:16:13.920 no government, no matter how tyrannical, maintains its power by force of arms alone. 182 00:16:13.920 --> 00:16:20.920 The ruled always greatly outnumber the rulers, and so government depends essentially on the acquiescence of the populace, 183 00:16:20.920 --> 00:16:24.920 and acquiescence and attempts to promote through patronage and propaganda. 184 00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:29.920 But second, suppose that many of Rome's subjects really did accept Roman rule 185 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:32.920 because they preferred its legal system to any known alternative. 186 00:16:32.920 --> 00:16:36.920 And I certainly grant that Roman law had many positive features. 187 00:16:36.920 --> 00:16:40.920 In that case, or to that extent, the Roman Empire was unnecessary. 188 00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:43.920 If Roman jurisprudence really was a superior product, 189 00:16:43.920 --> 00:16:48.920 it could have dominated the market without any need for legions, senators, consuls, emperors, 190 00:16:48.920 --> 00:17:14.920 Nor is empire of dubious value only for the subjugated. Citing not only the Roman case but also Egypt, Sparta, Japan, absolutist France, and the contemporary British Empire, Herbert Spencer documents some variety of ways in which the need to hold a subject people in bondage tends to result in restrictions on the freedom of the ruling group as well. 191 00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:23.220 In proportion as liberty is diminished in the societies over which it rules, he says, liberty is diminished within its own organization. 192 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:26.820 Spencer draws the following analogy, quote, 193 00:17:26.820 --> 00:17:33.820 Here is a prisoner with hands tied and a cord around his neck, being led home by his savage conqueror who intends to make him a slave. 194 00:17:33.820 --> 00:17:39.620 The one you say is captive and the other free? Are you quite sure the other is free? 195 00:17:39.620 --> 00:17:50.620 He holds one end of the cord, and unless he means to let his captive escape, he must continue to be fastened by keeping hold of the cord in such a way that it cannot easily be detached. 196 00:17:50.620 --> 00:17:55.620 He must be himself tied to the captive while the captive is tied to him." 197 00:17:55.620 --> 00:18:02.620 The U.S. Civil War, along with the period leading up to it, offers a useful illustration of Spencer's thesis. 198 00:18:02.620 --> 00:18:08.620 The Union was an imperial expansionist power desperate to maintain its control over the South. 199 00:18:08.620 --> 00:18:14.120 But the South, too, was an imperial expansionist power, desperate to maintain its control over the slaves. 200 00:18:14.120 --> 00:18:20.120 In both cases, the need to maintain such control had a corrosive influence on both liberty and culture. 201 00:18:20.120 --> 00:18:25.620 To maintain the slave system, the South had to retreat from the libertarian principles of Jefferson and the Revolution. 202 00:18:25.620 --> 00:18:34.120 Southern governments found it necessary to impose greater and greater restrictions on the civil and economic liberties of whites in order to keep blacks in subjection. 203 00:18:34.120 --> 00:18:42.120 Many states made it illegal for slave owners to free their slaves, and there was soon no freedom of speech or press for whites who advocated abolition. 204 00:18:42.120 --> 00:18:46.120 In some cases, speaking against slavery was punishable by death. 205 00:18:46.120 --> 00:18:57.120 Once cessation finally came and the Confederacy was established, suppression of white freedoms grew even greater as the central government, in the name of military necessity, extended its controls over every aspect of life. 206 00:18:57.120 --> 00:19:06.120 Internal passports were required for travel, traditional civil rights like habeas corpus were suspended, currency was devalued, and most sectors of the economy were nationalized. 207 00:19:06.120 --> 00:19:16.120 In their desperate quest to maintain their control over blacks, southern whites found themselves compelled to establish an authoritarian political order that ended up claiming their own freedom as well. 208 00:19:16.120 --> 00:19:24.120 The North's drive to subjugate the South had an effect on the North, analogous to the effect the South's drive to preserve slavery had on the South. 209 00:19:24.120 --> 00:19:28.620 More authority was centralized in Washington. Civil liberties were routinely violated. 210 00:19:28.620 --> 00:19:32.120 Income taxation and federally administered conscription were introduced. 211 00:19:32.120 --> 00:19:37.120 And an ominous cult of national unity spread through the American consciousness. 212 00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:40.620 The result was a federal government with vast new powers. 213 00:19:40.620 --> 00:19:44.620 The decline in political culture on both sides is also notable. 214 00:19:44.620 --> 00:19:49.620 In the South, during the period leading up to the war, the prevailing ideology gradually shifts 215 00:19:49.620 --> 00:19:53.120 from the natural rights approach of Jefferson and Taylor 216 00:19:53.120 --> 00:19:57.400 to the anti-natural rights but still in crucial respects liberal Calhoun 217 00:19:57.400 --> 00:20:01.120 to the hopelessly anti-rights, anti-liberal George Patu 218 00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:06.320 each of these not coincidentally easier to reconcile with slavery than its predecessor 219 00:20:06.320 --> 00:20:11.520 on the northern side as we pass from the Federalist and Quig parties to the Republican party 220 00:20:11.520 --> 00:20:14.760 the commitment to mercantilist privilege remains unchanged 221 00:20:14.760 --> 00:20:18.520 but the urbane enlightenment outlook of Hamilton, whatever his faults 222 00:20:18.520 --> 00:20:23.400 gives way to the fervent prohibitionism of paternalistic fanatics. 223 00:20:23.400 --> 00:20:27.800 Today we face a similar dynamic as the US government's attempts to contain 224 00:20:27.800 --> 00:20:31.480 the terrorist blowback resulting from its own foreign policy adventures. 225 00:20:31.480 --> 00:20:36.120 It's resulting in restriction of freedom not only on America's alleged enemies overseas 226 00:20:36.120 --> 00:20:40.840 but also on American citizens, even those who support the government's policy. 227 00:20:40.840 --> 00:20:45.440 And yet such restrictions from the war on gels to the war on habeas corpus 228 00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:50.080 are embraced in the spirit of regarding any loss of freedom as justified 229 00:20:50.080 --> 00:20:53.800 if it aids, or is alleged to aid, the war on terror. 230 00:20:53.800 --> 00:20:57.640 The president is elevated in the public imagination to a godlike figure, 231 00:20:57.640 --> 00:21:01.520 thus enabling an increasing shift of power to the executive branch. 232 00:21:01.520 --> 00:21:06.680 Movies like Black Hawk Down inflame popular passions against a vaguely conceived enemy, 233 00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:11.960 while television shows like 24 glorify the violation of ordinary rules of moral decency 234 00:21:11.960 --> 00:21:14.360 in the name of national security. 235 00:21:14.360 --> 00:21:19.960 The religion whose founder taught the love of one's enemies is pressed once more into the service of hate, 236 00:21:19.960 --> 00:21:26.760 and those who claim to follow a religious leader who was tortured to death by the state are now insouciately defending torture. 237 00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:34.760 The populace is so gripped by a delusive imagination that one can substitute one enemy for another, Iraq for al-Qaeda, 238 00:21:34.760 --> 00:21:43.560 without their batting an eye, as the government propaganda ministers in Orwell's 1984 substituted East Asia for Eurasia in mid-speech. 239 00:21:43.560 --> 00:21:49.560 This, needless to say, is not the sort of centralization that proponents of the cosmopolitan argument for empire are seeking. 240 00:21:49.560 --> 00:21:52.560 But it seems to be what we're getting. 241 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:59.560 Over a hundred years ago, Spencer described the political and cultural effects of centralization and imperialism, 242 00:21:59.560 --> 00:22:05.560 its tendency to foster what he called regimentation, rebarbarization, and the militant mode of society. 243 00:22:05.560 --> 00:22:08.560 And I could do no better than to quote him, at length. 244 00:22:08.560 --> 00:22:16.560 Quote, Let us note how, along with the nominal extension of constitutional freedom, there has been going on actual diminution of it. 245 00:22:16.560 --> 00:22:22.560 There is first the fact that the legislative functions of parliament have been decreasing, while the ministry has been usurping them. 246 00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:28.560 Important measures are not now brought forward and carried by private members, but appeal is made to the government to take them up. 247 00:22:28.560 --> 00:22:32.560 The making of laws is gradually lapsing into the hands of the executive. 248 00:22:32.560 --> 00:22:36.560 And then within the executive itself, the tendency is toward placing power in fewer hands. 249 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:42.560 In like manner, by taking for government purposes more and more of the time which was once available for private members, 250 00:22:42.560 --> 00:22:50.560 by the cutting down of debates by the closure, and now by requiring the vote for an entire department to be passed en bloc without criticism of details, 251 00:22:50.560 --> 00:22:54.560 we are shown that while extension of the franchise has been seeming to increase the liberties of citizens, 252 00:22:54.560 --> 00:22:59.560 their liberties have been decreased by restricting the spheres of actions of their representatives. 253 00:22:59.560 --> 00:23:04.560 All these are stages in that concentration of power which is the concomitant of imperialism. 254 00:23:04.560 --> 00:23:09.560 The quality of a passion is in great measure the same whatever the object exciting it. 255 00:23:09.560 --> 00:23:14.560 Fear aroused by a mad dog is at the core like the fear produced by the raised weapon of an assassin, 256 00:23:14.560 --> 00:23:20.560 and the hate felt for a disgusting animal is of the same nature as the hate felt for a man very much disliked. 257 00:23:20.560 --> 00:23:24.560 Especially when the objects which excite the passions are imaginary, 258 00:23:24.560 --> 00:23:27.560 is there likely to be little difference between the state of mind produced. 259 00:23:27.560 --> 00:23:32.560 The cultivation of animosity towards one imaginary object, strengthening the sentiment of animosity at large, 260 00:23:32.560 --> 00:23:39.560 makes it easier to arouse animosity towards another imaginary object. 261 00:23:39.560 --> 00:23:44.560 I make, as is still Spencer, I make these remarks apropos of the Salvation Army. 262 00:23:44.560 --> 00:23:53.560 The word is significant, army, as are the names for the ranks, from the so-called general, descending through brigadiers, colonels, majors, down to local sub-officers, all wearing uniforms. 263 00:23:53.560 --> 00:23:57.560 This system is like, in idea and in sentiment, to that of an actual army. 264 00:23:57.560 --> 00:24:07.560 Then what are the feelings appealed to? The official Gazette of the Salvation Army is entitled The War Cry, and the motto conspicuous on the title page is Blood and Fire. 265 00:24:07.560 --> 00:24:11.560 I think the Salvation Army is more interesting in his day than it is now. 266 00:24:11.560 --> 00:24:20.560 Doubtless it will be said that it is towards the principle of evil, personal or impersonal, towards the devil and all his works, that the destructive sentiments are invoked by this title and this motto. 267 00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:29.560 So it will be said that in the hymn conspicuous in the number of the paper I have in hand, the like animus is displayed by the expressions which I call from the first 30 lines. 268 00:24:29.560 --> 00:24:40.560 Made us warriors forever, sent us in the field to fight, we shall win with fire and blood, stand to your arms, the foe is nigh, the powers of hell surround, the day of battle is at hand, go forth to glorious war. 269 00:24:40.560 --> 00:24:43.560 These and others like them are stimuli to the fighting propensities. 270 00:24:43.560 --> 00:24:48.560 In the excitement of song, joined with the martial processions and instrumental music, 271 00:24:48.560 --> 00:24:54.560 cannot fail to raise high those slumbering passions which are ready to burst out, even in the intercourse of ordinary life. 272 00:24:54.560 --> 00:25:03.560 Such appeals as there may be to the gentler sentiments which the creed inculcates, are practically lost amid these loud-voiced invocations. 273 00:25:03.560 --> 00:25:11.560 Out of mixed and contradictory exhortations, the people who listen respond to those which are most congruent with their own natures and are little affected by the rest, 274 00:25:11.560 --> 00:25:14.560 so that under the nominal forms of the religion of amity, 275 00:25:14.560 --> 00:25:18.560 there are daily exercised the feelings appropriate to the religion of enmity. 276 00:25:18.560 --> 00:25:22.560 And then, as before suggested, these destructive passions directed toward the enemy, 277 00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:24.560 as the principle of evil is called, 278 00:25:24.560 --> 00:25:27.560 are easily directed towards an enemy otherwise conceived. 279 00:25:27.560 --> 00:25:29.560 If for wicked spirits or substituted wicked men, 280 00:25:29.560 --> 00:25:31.560 these are regarded with the same feelings, 281 00:25:31.560 --> 00:25:33.560 and when calumnies sown broadcast, 282 00:25:33.560 --> 00:25:35.560 make it appear that certain people are wicked men. 283 00:25:35.560 --> 00:25:40.560 The anger and hate which have been perpetually fostered have ended upon them. 284 00:25:40.560 --> 00:25:48.060 This diffusion of military ideas, military sentiments, military organization, military discipline has been going on everywhere. 285 00:25:48.060 --> 00:25:55.560 Thus, on every side we see the ideas and feelings and institutions appropriate to peaceful life, replaced by those appropriate to fighting life. 286 00:25:55.560 --> 00:26:03.560 The continual increases of the army, the formation of permanent camps, the institution of public military contests and military exhibitions have conduced to this result. 287 00:26:03.560 --> 00:26:13.160 Perpetual excitements of the destructive passions have made battle and blood and fire familiar and under the guise of fighting against evil have thrust into the background the gentler emotions. 288 00:26:13.160 --> 00:26:19.560 System, regulation, uniformity, compulsion, these words are being made familiar in discussions on social questions. 289 00:26:19.560 --> 00:26:25.060 Everywhere has arisen an unquestioned assumption that all things should be arranged after a definite plan. 290 00:26:25.060 --> 00:26:33.060 So long as the passion for mastery overrides all others, the slavery that goes along with imperialism will be tolerated. 291 00:26:33.060 --> 00:26:52.060 Spenser's message remains all too appropriate to our present era, and it suggests, as a glance at the present document of the White House should likewise suggest, that imperial ambitions and centralization of power are no recipe for the triumph of urbane cosmopolitan values over small-minded reactionary oppression. 292 00:26:52.060 --> 00:26:57.060 Once again, the cure for local tyranny is not less decentralization, but more. 293 00:26:57.060 --> 00:27:07.560 First, break up empires into states, states into counties, counties into wards, wards into townships, townships into neighborhoods, and so on down to the level of the sovereign individual. 294 00:27:07.560 --> 00:27:20.060 Second, decouple jurisdiction and legal association from geography. If I live in Mississippi but prefer Massachusetts law or vice versa, I should be free to sign up with the system I prefer without having to physically relocate. 295 00:27:20.060 --> 00:27:25.060 Maximize competition and we thereby minimize the opportunities for oppression. 296 00:27:25.060 --> 00:27:32.060 The truest security for liberal cosmopolitan values lies not in empire, but in secession and anarchy.