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If Radical Political Liberty Is So Great, Why Are We So Embarrassed?

By Walter Donway

September 3, 2021

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Book Review:  Politics in One Lesson by Kyrel Zantonavitch (2021, independently published)

 

Politics in One Lesson takes as its inspiration Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, perhaps the single most useful book ever published to explain economics.

Kyrel Zantonavitch has shown exquisite taste in choosing his model. Politics in One Lesson takes as its inspiration Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, perhaps the single most useful book ever published to explain economics to the general reader. I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, when I read it. I never again viewed the flood tide of political policy recommendations as “economics.”

Hazlitt brazenly claimed that to understand economics you required only one lesson: Look not only at the short term, but at the long term. Consider the impact of the proposed policy not on one group but all groups.

Zantonavitch brings the same structure to his book on politics. Amidst the endless complications and debates—the billions of words spilled in the media to explain the complexities of politics—is there not also one “lesson”?

Yes, says Zantonavitch. The lesson is that government was invented, as was law—more than five millennia ago—and the goal was to protect the freedom of the individual from his fellow man. “The purpose of government is to preserve, protect, and defend the exceptionally vulnerable one.” This is an example of the near-poetry that this book achieves.

Just that: to move the condition of man from battle of all-against-all to the society that sought to eliminate the initiation of force from human relationships. And organize the use of retaliatory force against criminals and invaders. “The purpose of government is freedom. It exists to provide liberty to every individual in society. That’s it.”

As I read this book’s section on political ideals, “the lesson,” I admired the excellent, even beautiful writing, and logic. I also enjoyed the feisty tone and humor. This was a ringing declaration of my own convictions.

I saw just two things to question. One is that Zantonavitch may be confusing how easy it is to understand the basic concept and principles of a radically voluntary society with how easy it is to implement those ideas. He seems to take ease of understanding the relatively few fundamentals of the politics of freedom as the same as the ease (“a child could do it”) of setting up a society so governed. Set it up on paper, yes; diagram it, yes. But it is the most difficult thing in history to bring that government and society into existence and sustain its freedom.

The second problem with this first “lesson” section is the assertion that the rationality of the radically voluntary society is utterly obvious. But the case includes something Zantonavitch never mentions in this section: the foundation of the case in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics (why man has rights, the relationship between reason, human survival, and rights).  So, in truth, the “lesson” is an ex cathedra statement.  Or let me put it most positively because I enjoyed it: it is an explication of principles of the society of consistent human rights, but not an argument. There is no argument without philosophical premises.

As a result of his view that laissez-faire capitalism—uncompromised individual freedom— is self-evident, Zantonavitch on almost every page hurls accusations, condemnation, threats, and, literally, curses on those who pretend not to see the truth. Some of this is tongue-in- cheek, I suspect, or high rhetoric, but the sarcasm and denunciation accelerate as the book goes on.

There is no room for “open Objectivism” (for that surely is Zantonavitch’s inspiration), here, in the realm of political philosophy and government because there are no errors of knowledge—only evil.

When the book moves from the “lesson” to its applications of the lesson (e.g., to the idea that democracy justified policies, to balanced budgets, to defense, to immigration), the conviction that he is writing for evaders, rationalizers, power-seekers, corrupt politicians, and sundry scoundrels really takes off! It is not that those are in short supply in political philosophy or in office. It is that they too often are defined by their disagreement with Zantonavitch.

A chief problem is that Zantonavitch moves from political principles and their deductive demonstration (e.g., the principle of individual freedom is incompatible with majority rule), where he rightly can demand that readers recognize his clear logic, to policy decisions at the intersection of many principles and considerations—something called “context”—and his rhetoric and tone become ragingly, abusively, demandingly absolutist. There are threats on almost every page.

So in the section of the book where disagreements on applications of principles becomes inevitable, Zantonavitch sees all disagreement as dishonest and worse—much worse. This is not to say there are no good ideas and applications of libertarianism, here. There are many. The problem is that he states them in brief absolute terms and then turns to pre-emptively attacking anyone who might oppose these policies in theory or practice.

Zantonavitch on almost every page hurls accusations, condemnation, threats, and, literally, curses on those who pretend not to see the truth.

Balanced budget amendments? His chief focus in on what he would do to legislators who fall short of his demands: slash their salaries, impose fines, jail terms, banish them from politics, strip them of the right to vote, of citizenship. I would suggest that Zantonavitch, as he becomes less sure of his case, becomes more absolutist and threatening.

His wild invective condemning those who disagree with him clashes with my conviction that it is far from self-evident in any individual case what is immorality (denial, evasion, whim-worshipping) and what is error. But, Zantonavitch shows little concern for that distinction because he sees the argument for freedom as the simplest state of a dozen self-evident concepts and their relationships. In fact, the case for radically voluntary government involves premises about human nature, the human means of survival, the goal of individual action, a rational standard of value—and in those realms, mankind, including many of the most intellectual, or devout, or scholarly, has wandered for millennia.

There have been centuries when not liberty, but the salvation of the human soul was held paramount. What is the worth of freedom to sin when the eternal fate of the soul is at stake?  Zantonavitch’s argument limited to the value of human liberty—including emphatically freedom to be evil, to sin—would not have engaged that era.

And today, the philosophy of secular altruism is the automatic objection to the individual’s unqualified right to his wealth, which means his work, which means his time, which means his life. One cannot respond to the charge of selfishness against capitalism without philosophy. The singular insight that Ayn Rand brought to the economics of laissez faire was that no argument for the practical, worldly productive benefits and beneficence of capitalism ever trumped the argument that capitalism is “selfish” instead of altruistic.

Politics is defiantly mucked up because it rests on philosophy, which is mucked up.

Zantonavitch does turn to philosophy, finally, toward the end of the book. In a chapter on “Selfishness and Greed” he does give the bare bones of the Objectivist case for selfishness. Here as elsewhere he goes over the top rhetorically about greed. “Being massively and selfishly greedy is the key to prosperity and joy for the Holy Individual and his derivative society.”

To my mind, this does not solve the problem of leaving the principles of liberty without philosophical roots. Even if this would help with that problem, why does this chapter come not with the argument for the radically free society but almost at the end of the book? It seems that perhaps this, like much else in the book, exists like a free-standing and self-evident truth, not integrated into a philosophy. Realizing that Zantonavitch is conversant with Ayn Rand’s philosophy, active on various Facebook pages about Objectivism, I hesitate to believe he has not heard about the power of an integrated philosophy.

Clearly conversant with Ayn Rand’s ideas and with Objectivism and libertarianism, Zantonavitch attacks her in a way she well understood. If politics is about and only about libertarian principles, then vote only in that context. Ayn Rand viewed that, in her time, as the disaster of libertarianism (things have changed since then): the view that the philosophy of liberty is self-sufficient and self-justifying. Without its base in a rational philosophy, liberty has not and cannot be sustained. Nor can it be brought back to America. Zantonavitch tosses a vituperation at Ayn Rand for voting Republican and not for any liberty party and any candidate however obscure.

In this chapter, “Criminal Voting,” he writes:

The evil voter is guilty of, and legally responsible for, an objective violation of the Natural Law in the here and now. He is an absolute criminal.  He needs to be punished.  He deserves to be stripped of his citizenship, severely fined, harshly beaten, imprisoned for a lengthy sentence, then deported an illegal alien.

Is this a satire? It does not appear to be. He refers to Ayn Rand as an example of the evil voter. He writes: “Perhaps you—you liberty-destroying Objectivists and Libertarians—are pragmatically safe in your fascist and socialist irresponsibility … you are committing a serious felony—of your own free choice—and you deserve to be criminally punished.”

In his briefest chapter, “Moslems in America,” Zantonavitch claims that the “vast majority” of Moslems in America support Sharia and Jihad and donate to these causes; they favor slavery. They support Sharia charities and so “mass murder and universal enslavement.”  And he asks: “So why aren’t the vast majority of Moslems in America arrested, jailed, executed, or at least deported?” The last part of this sentence is objectively humorous with “or at least deported.”

So, is he joking, sort of? Or does he feel subconsciously in his rage and indignation and, I am sorry to say, hate, that no punishment is inappropriate for the legion “crimes” in the book, but, at the end of the list, calms down?  I really do not know.

And so, you will be interested in the almost final chapter of Politics in One Lesson: “Objectivists, Libertarians, and Freedom.”  So what is his take on these, his obvious allies in advocating the radically voluntary society?  Bad news. “They have all the truth in the world on their side…” but they lose almost every argument. They pay no attention to philosophy and principles. Above all, they hated to be hated. And so, they never take a stand on anything important; they discuss trivia. When they discuss politics and government, they focus on side issues and trivia. They are uncomfortable with philosophy and abstract theory, so they lack intellectual rigor. For rigor they substitute “sarcasm, bitterness, and personal insults to their opponents.” They know how shocking and radical their ideas are, so they never state them. In fact, they disguise themselves as conservatives. They are Republicans, “too sad and bitter for words.”

To sum up: “They are wildly incompetent. Next, they are profoundly dishonest. Finally, they are extremely cowardly.”

You may take Politics in One Lesson as an example of what Objectivists and libertarians have failed to be.

You may take Politics in One Lesson as an example of what Objectivists and libertarians have failed to be.

And you know, of course, if you have read, heard, and understood Ayn Rand, that Zantonavitch is more than half right. When it came to the tragic flaw of advocates of political freedom, she said, it was moral self-doubt or moral intimidation. Every brilliant, articulate defender of liberty, making the case for its immense human beneficence, had gone down—not immediately, but eventually. Being Judeo-Christian, or the Kantian version of that, they could not openly, confidently denounce altruism. Really denounce it. And so, all their arguments, their brilliant practical economic encomiums to laissez faire, have gone down.

Politics in One Lesson is intended to be a kind of tour de force in what it would mean to defend capitalism and genuine human freedom with utter moral self-confidence, defiantly on the high ground, asking Lyndon Johnson how he could be such slithering beggar for government power, not milk for kids’ lunches.

But the flaw of Politics in One Lesson is that its summons to moral confidence, the righteous march for the free mind, man, and economy, is undercut by a persistent signal of self-doubt. That repeated signal is the tone of the Puritan preacher against Satan, calling down damnation, summoning up the punishments of hell.

To revert to the 1964 Goldwater campaign, the cradle of my political development, “In my heart, I know he is right.”

He is right that the advocates of human liberty in principle, unqualified, uncompromised, are the bearers of human secular salvation. They should be unabashed, unintimidated, and unbowed.

But … they also must be rooted in philosophy, integrated in their views, allergic to dogma including the assumption of evil motives, and realistic always about the complexities that drive history.

With its rhetorical volume toned down to the sternly lucid logic and marshalling of essential facts, a second edition of Politics in One Lesson might be just the book to hand out to family, friends, and colleagues.

Politics in One Lesson is worth reading because its ideas often are truth, or a kernel of the truth, but even more because it typifies deracinated libertarianism. Without roots in philosophy, the philosophy of political freedom cannot even be fully grasped, never mind made convincing. Without understanding the nature and interaction of principles, we can’t explain why forcing every business in America to create parking spaces for our disabled neighbors is tyranny. Or reply to Lydon Johnson’s television speech in which he lugubriously pleaded; “Does giving little children milk with their school lunch damage our freedom?”

Politics in One Lesson probably warrants a new edition. It is a great concept because the “lesson” that government exists solely to protect citizens from the initiation of force (including fraud), once established, its roots understood, does give us a single standard by which to judge the legitimacy of any policy proposal. With its rhetorical volume toned down to the sternly lucid logic and marshalling of essential facts of Henry Hazlitt, a second edition of Politics in One Lesson might be just the book to hand out to family, friends, and colleagues.

Perhaps such a second edition would be introduced like Hazlitt’s book was—“Just read this, okay? It’s short. Then, we’ll talk, again.”

 

 

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