No matter who is considered the winner of last night’s presidential debate, one thing is painfully clear: Regardless of who wins the election, we will continue to live in an unfree society. The election will simply decide who is going to be our ruler — Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
Unfortunately, the presidential race has been devoid of any discussion of the principles of a genuinely free society. Last night’s debate was no exception. The assumption is that the welfare state, warfare-state, regulated/managed-economy way of life is a given and that it’s just a matter of which side is going to govern it.
What would a genuinely free society entail? For starters:
1. The repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other socialist programs.
2. The dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of our founding system of a limited-government republic.
3. The separation of money and the state.
4. The separation of education and the state.
5. The separation of economy and the state.
6. The repeal of all drug laws.
7. The repeal of all restrictions on the free movements of goods, services, and people across borders.
8. The abolition of all U.S. sanctions and embargoes.
9. The end of all U.S. foreign interventionism.
10. The end of all U.S. foreign aid.
11. The withdrawal from NATO and all other alliances.
12. The dismantling of America’s empire of foreign and domestic military bases.
13. The abandonment of all foreign military bases and bringing all troops home and discharging them.
14. The repeal of all gun-control laws.
Did you hear any of these points being made in last night’s debate? Of course not, not from the candidates themselves and not from the two debate moderators asking them questions. The mindset among all of them — and unfortunately among all too many Americans — is that the welfare-warfare state, regulated/managed economy way of life is now permanent. We are simply electing the person who people feel will be best at managing it. And every one of these statists candidates who are aching to rule over us always has a plan to make it work, just as we saw in last night’s debate.
But no president and no plan will ever make this system work. That is because it is an inherently defective and malevolent system. No matter who is elected president, the perpetual crises will continue. There will continue to be an immigration crisis, a deficit crisis, a monetary crisis, a Social Security crisis, a Medicare crisis, a healthcare crisis, a drug-war crisis, a fiscal crisis, and, of course, never-ending foreign-policy crises. That’s because the problem that many people are still loathe to confront is that we have a system problem, not a problem of electing “better” people with “better” plans to public office.
Moreover, convincing one’s self that serfdom is freedom does not bring freedom. Denial of one’s condition does not change reality, and it can actually worsen one’s condition. As Johann Goethe put it, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Can we libertarians really achieve a genuinely free society? Of course we can. We just need a critical mass of Americans who understand what it truly means to be free and who decide they want genuine freedom rather than better people to rule over us. Regardless of who is elected president, those of us who are striving for a genuinely free society must just keep on keeping on by raising people’s vision to what a genuinely free society entails and showing people why a life of freedom would be infinitely better than a life of serfdom.