A state criminal case in Michigan helps show a fundamental moral difference between libertarians on the one hand and liberals and conservatives on the other.
Brian Randolph, 23, is charged with robbing a credit union of $8,100. He told police that he needed the money to pay for his baby’s chemotherapy. Let’s assume that he’s telling the truth and set aside the fact that the police found a Gucci bag and several new pairs of shoes and clothes in his car.
Will the fact that Randolph was going to use the money to pay for his child’s chemotherapy serve as a defense at his criminal prosecution?
Under the law, the answer is no. As Lt. Chris Sovik of the South Lyon, Michigan, Police Department put it, “You want to do everything you can to protect your daughter. But there are lots of fathers whose daughters have cancer as well, and you don’t see them out there robbing banks all the time.”
If we were to do a survey of liberals and conservatives on whether they believe that Randolph has done something morally wrong here, my hunch is that 99 percent of them would say yes. They would say that it’s wrong to steal, even when the thief uses the money for a good purpose. They might say that the judge should go easy on him when setting his punishment, but I think most liberals and conservatives would say that he should be prosecuted for committing the crime.
That’s also the way libertarians feel.
So far, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians are on the same page. Stealing is wrong even when the thief has good intentions with respect to the stolen money.
Where libertarians and conservatives part company with liberals is with respect to what we call the welfare state.
Suppose Randolph went to city council and persuaded it to impose a special tax on local banks in order to help Randolph pay his daughter’s healthcare costs. The tax is imposed and a grant is given to Randolph, who then gives the money to the doctors and hospital in return for treating his daughter.
Libertarians say: There is no difference here, not from a moral standpoint. The state has no legitimate authority to take money from whom it belongs — in this case, the banks — in order to give it to whom it doesn’t belong. Even though the taking is illegal in one instance and legal in the other, it’s still stealing.
Liberals don’t get that. When it comes to the welfare state, they have a real blind spot or, to put it another way, they simply have insufficiently developed consciences. In their eyes, the tax and welfare grant to Randolph is just a government welfare program, one designed to help the poor and needy. So, while they would condemn Randolph for his thievery, they would praise city officials for taking the money from the banks and giving it to Randolph.
Where do conservatives fit in here? They are on the libertarian side. They understand that there is no difference in principle, from a moral standpoint, between what Randolph has done and what the city council has done. Stealing is stealing, they would say, whether it’s committed by a private citizen or the state.
That’s in fact one of the reasons that conservatives never fail to berate the food-stamp mother in the grocery-store line or government funding for the arts. They say that the state shouldn’t be taxing Peter to give the money to Paul.
But there is one big problem with conservatives, which actually makes them much worse than liberals.
What’s the problem?
The problem is that despite their understanding and acknowledging that welfare schemes are no different from private stealing, conservatives themselves endorse political stealing when it benefits them.
A good example is school vouchers, a scheme by which the state takes money from people through taxation in order to give it to people who wish to put their children into private schools.
In principle, school vouchers are no different from the food-stamp program or government funding for the arts. In all three cases, the state is forcibly taking money from people to whom it rightly belongs and giving it to others.
Conservatives say: “We are using the money to save poor children from being ravaged by public schooling.” But Randolph, the thief, would say: “I am using the money I’ve stolen to save my daughter from the ravages of cancer.”
Many liberals disagree with the voucher program but not because they consider it to be stealing. Remember: Their blind spots and insufficiently developed consciences do not enable them to think at that level. So, they see vouchers as just another government program, one that in this case they simply disagree with.
But remember also that conservatives are different. In their own minds and within their own consciences, they know, like libertarians do, that welfare schemes are no different from private stealing. And yet, here conservatives are — endorsing vouchers and trying to induce others to participate in this immoral scheme of political stealing.
Unfortunately, vouchers are not the only example of where conservatives violate their own consciences by engaging in conduct that they themselves know is morally wrong.
Consider Social Security, the crown jewel of the welfare state. This is a welfare-state scheme that is ardently endorsed by conservatives. Yet, like all other welfare-state schemes, including food stamps and aid to the arts, it is based on the system of political stealing — that is, the government collects money from younger people into to give it to older people.
Again, liberals see nothing wrong with this, even though they would undoubtedly condemn some 70-year-old man who robbed a 30-year-old woman to fund his retirement. Again, that’s because of the moral blind spot and insufficiently developed conscience that afflicts liberals.
But conservatives are fully aware that by endorsing Social Security, they are supporting what they themselves know is a morally wrong program on the part of the government, no different in principle than the actions of private robbers and thieves.
Even worse, conservatives try to rationalize their support of this immoral program by convincing themselves that Social Security is not based on political plunder at all but rather just constitutes “getting back what I put in.”
The same, of course, holds true for Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, foreign aid, and every other welfare-state scheme endorsed by conservatives. Acknowledging that political stealing is just as wrong as private stealing, conservatives nonetheless knowingly, intentionally, and consciously support what they themselves acknowledge are morally wrongful programs, even as they continue to condemn food-stamp recipients and others who receive welfare-state largess.
Is it any wonder that young people are leaving the conservative movement in droves and joining the libertarian movement? Who wants to be part of a movement that prides itself on conscious wrongdoing and hypocrisy?
