The statists must be getting nervous — they keep writing baseless attacks on libertarians, evidently out of fear that people who are sick of super-expensive, authoritarian government might figure out that, as Albert Jay Nock put it, the state is their enemy. Here’s a letter from Don Boudreaux inspired by such an attack written by Jeffrey Sachs.
Editor, Huffington Post
Dear Editor:
Attacking libertarianism, Jeffrey Sachs writes that "Libertarians hold that
individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or
causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility,
respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable – all are to take a
back seat" ("Libertarian Illusions," Jan. 16).
As non-sequiturs go, this one's a doozy. Mr. Sachs here performs the equivalent
of, say, accusing someone who advocates sobriety of thereby being indifferent to
other values such parental responsibility, financial prudence, and
neighborliness. But just as being sober in no way precludes – and likely
promotes – other values such as parental responsibility, being a libertarian in
no way precludes any of the values and causes that Mr. Sachs lists. Indeed,
libertarians argue that these other values and causes are best PROMOTED by
individual liberty, and that too many people who insist that achieving these
other values requires the suppression of liberty are simply seeking cover for
their own self-aggrandizement.
Of course, libertarians might be mistaken about liberty's merits. But that Mr.
Sachs ASSUMES that libertarians hold cheap such values as compassion, civic
responsibility, and honesty proves that what Lord Acton wrote about Robert Kemp
Philp's description of history applies perfectly to Mr. Sachs's description of
libertarianism: "It were well if he knew his subject as well as he knows his own
mind about it."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
