[gerard.casey]

The distinction, if there is one, between a democracy and a republic is contentious. One common way of thinking about this topic is to contrast democracy as direct rule by the people, unconstrained by any external or constitutional factors, with a republic as rule by representatives (so-called), whether elected or appointed, whose actions are subject to some form of constitutional constraint. If these representatives were to be elected by the people, then you would seem to have a representative democracy which is simultaneously a republic. In my Libertarian Anarchy, I’ve argued that so-called representative democracies are neither representative nor democratic being, in fact, merely elective oligarchies. The signers of the Constitution feared democracy as a form of political chaos, where government would be conducted at the whim of a volatile and fickle electorate.

In my Freedom’s Progress?, I wrote: “What will seem strange to modern eyes is that Athenian democracy was largely non-elective. The Council (βουλή) with 500 members, the Supreme Court (Ήλιαία) with six thousand members and roughly six hundred of the seven hundred magistracies (to be held only once by any one citizen) were filled by casting lots, the remaining magistracies, including the ten strategoi (the generals or diplomats) and the officials responsible for financial matters, were filled by election. The allotment of the non-technical responsibilities was intended to prevent the domination of governance roles by the rich or the well-born which, it was feared (with some justification) would happen under an elective system. As Aristotle remarked, ‘the appointment of magistrates by lot is thought to be democratical, and the election of them oligarchical…’ Since not every citizen participated in every aspect of government at all times, it would perhaps be something of an exaggeration to describe Athenian democracy as direct. David Van Reybrouck suggests that it might be described as a ‘non-electoral representative democracy’ or, indeed, given the use of lots, as an ‘aleatoric representational democracy.’” [see his Against Elections] As can be seen from Aristotle’s comment, appointment of officials by lot was thought to be democratic, whilst their appointment by election was thought to be undemocratic! Today, we tend to think of democracy and elections as being intrinsically connected so Aristotle’s comment seems counter-intuitive!]

[gerard.casey]

I’m delighted to hear that you’ve started to enjoy the lectures.

You wrote: “I’ve always agreed with Locke about the natural goodness of man, as opposed to the natural depravity of man as taught by Augustine and the established church authorities.”

I don’t really want to go too far into theological issues but I think it is true to say that while some Christians hold that man is totally depraved (Calvinists in particular but also, to some extent, Lutherans), Catholics believe rather that man’s intellect is darkened and his will weakened without that amounting to total depravity. (Of course, I’m speaking of original Calvinism and Lutheranism, not necessarily of any current descendant of those varieties of Christianity.)

The original thirteen states came into being in a variety of ways but the end result in each was a system in which, to a greater or lesser degree, you can find the characteristic notes of the state: the claim to monopolise force and the right to tax its citizens. On this topic, may I recommend Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty (4 volumes) which is (or at least used to be) available on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website.

I hope you continue to enjoy the lectures.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

I’m sorry you found the initial material disappointing. The early material is, of course, speculative. If you’d like to put your feet on more solid ground, could I suggest moving immediately on to no. 6, ‘The Sophists and the Polis’?

In fact, while there is some merit in following any history chronologically, the various major segments (in particular, those on individual thinkers) are relatively stand-alone and so can be taken in the order in which they are of most interest to you.

I hope you find the material from the Sophists onwards more acceptable.

With every good wish,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Test response.

GC

[gerard.casey]

You’re very welcome. Sorry to be so slow in responding to your question on Rome and liberty.

[gerard.casey]

Law is the primary Roman contribution to civilisation, especially the law of the Republic which was essentially private law. In its recovery (as it was developed under the Imperial partly-Christianised period) during the High Middle Ages, it became a significant factor in the emergence of the politically highly diversified but culturally highly unified Christendom. On the down side, Rome of the Imperial period was the ultimate source of the idea that sovereignty could be transferred from the people to their ruler.

[gerard.casey]

Finally, I get back to you and your question, and not before time!

‘What’s the historical significance of Simon de Montfort and his parliament(s)?’

Short answer: much less than is usually attributed to them by those looking back at them through the lens of 600 years of history.

It would be anachronistic to describe Simon de Montfort as a classical liberal. It is important to remember that his activities took place in the context of the more of less permanent struggle between the king and his semi-independent barons.

Some have said that de Montfort’s first parliament stripped the king of unlimited authority but that can’t be right for kings in those days didn’t have unlimited authority! Kings were simply primus inter pares, first among equals.

In the matter of summoning ‘ordinary’ townspeople to parliament, this is not as revolutionary as it may sound when we realise that parliament was primarily a tax-granting body, not a law-making body and its purpose was to provide finance to the king.

‘Who is the father of British constitutional government?’

Pick a card, any card! I’m disinclined to think of any one person as playing that role and would be more inclined to trace constitutional government to the emergence of the supremacy of parliament after the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ and its gradual transition from a tax-granting to a law-making body and, especially, the emergence of the cabinet system and prime ministership, when the German-speaking king stopped attending meetings of his ministers.

I hope this helps.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Hello John,

Thank you for being so patient!

You ask if we should view Cromwell as a classical liberal? Well, I’m inclined to say that the presupposition of your question is slightly anachronistic. I doubt very much if anyone in the seventeenth apart from a very few bold thinkers could be described as being classical liberals.

Cromwell was a major figure in a struggle between Parliament and King which had not only political but religious implications. This struggle is often portrayed as one between lovers of freedom and supporters of tyranny but the reality is considerably less black and white. For the last 10 years of his life, Cromwell was, in effect, king of England, and, if anything, rather more inclined towards tyranny than Charles I!

This is the context of the extraordinary attack on Cromwell made by one Edward Sexby in his Killing Noe Murder. I reproduce the short account of this attack from my Freedom’s Progress?

Killing Noe Murder
Once Oliver Cromwell took power, the fluid post-conflict political situation hardened and it seemed for a time as if a new royal dynasty was going to be established. The prospect of this produced one spectacular piece of writing from this period that doesn’t fit neatly into either the Leveller or the Digger camp but harkens back to an earlier tradition of the justification of tyrannicide. This is Edward Sexby’s (aka William Allen’s) ‘Killing Noe Murder (1657). This tract has to be one of the most extraordinary productions of the revolutionary period, both in content and in sustained literary sardonic style. It is a general defence of tyrannicide addressed to the specific desired object of that exercise, Cromwell! Nothing in life, Sexby thinks, will become Cromwell better than his leaving of it. ‘To your Highness justly belongs the honour of dying for the people,’ he says, ‘and it cannot choose but be unspeakable consolation to you in the last moments of your life to consider with how much benefit to the world you are like to leave it.’

Sexby believes three questions need to be considered; first, is Cromwell a tyrant?; second, if he is, is it lawful to kill him?; and third, if lawful, would his killing be beneficial or harmful to the commonwealth? Let us take a look at Sexby’s treatment of the first two of these questions. Sexby makes the common distinction between two types of tyrant: those who although entitled to govern, do so tyrannically (tyrannus exercitio); and those who aren’t entitled to govern at all (tyrannus sine titulo). To further his accusation of tyranny against Cromwell, Sexby supplies us with a list of characteristics of the tyrant which he has gleaned from a variety of sources, including Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus and Machiavelli. Many tyrants begin their career as military defenders of the people against oppression, which oppression, that battle won, they then themselves resume. They use fraud more than force. They eliminate all possible competitors and all persons of excellence. They limit or prohibit public assemblies. They are always well guarded. They impose burdensome taxes and duties and excise on the people. They use war as a way to divert people from the ills they suffer and as a spurious means of justifying the taxes and levies. They use others to do their dirty work. They pretend to love God and even to be divinely inspired. [Sexby, 368-370] On all these counts, Sexby thinks, Cromwell fits the bill. The answer to the first question, then, is yes—Cromwell is a tyrant.

So, he now asks Cromwell for the source of his authority. Who, he asks, ‘made thee a prince and a judge over us?’ If God, please show us evidence of this. If the people, how was this done? ‘If to change the government without the people’s consent; if to dissolve their representatives by force and disannul their acts; if to give the name of the people’s representatives to confederates of his own, that he may establish iniquity by a law; if to take away men’s lives out of all course of law, by certain murderers of his own appointment, whom he names a High Court of Justice; if to decimate men’s estates, and by his own power to impose upon the people what taxes he pleases; and to maintain all by force of arms: if I say, all this does make a tyrant, his own impudence cannot deny, but he is as complete a one as ever has been since there have been societies of men.’ Cromwell, then, is a tyrant and a tyrant without title.

As a tyrant without title, may Cromwell be lawfully killed? Sexby adheres to the traditional view that a ruler who has degenerated into a tyrant (tyrannus exercitio) may be brought to justice by the people’s representatives but not by a private individual acting without authority. On the other hand, tyrants without title are simply criminals who deserve ‘no benefit from human society’ and ‘no protection from the law.’ Men enter society to live and to live well and to do so they submit to the law of reason and justice. Without law, Sexby remarks in a Hobbesian manner, men’s appetites ‘would quickly make society as unsafe, or more, than solitude itself, and we should associate only to be nearer our misery and our ruin.’ But a tyrant without title is under no law. He is not only not a magistrate, he isn’t even a member of society properly conceived. ‘A tyrant,’ he says, ‘being no part of the commonwealth, nor submitting to the laws of it, but making himself above all law, there is no reason why he should have the protection that is due to a member of a commonwealth, nor any defence from laws, that does acknowledge none.’ [Sexby, 372] As the tyrant without title, then, isn’t under any law, individuals may defend themselves against him by appropriate means including deadly force if necessary. In a passage that recalls the famous interview between Alexander and the Pirate, and which will warm the hearts of libertarians, Sexby writes, ‘for what can be more absurd in nature, and contrary to all common sense, than to call him thief and kill him that comes alone with a few to rob me, and to call him Lord Protector and obey him that robs me with regiments and troops….But if it be the number of adherents only, not the cause, that makes the difference between a robber and a Protector, I wish that number were defined, that we might know where the thief ends and the prince begins, and be able to distinguish between a robbery and a tax.’

[gerard.casey]

Hello John,

I’m tied up with personal issues at the moment. Give me a little while and I’ll reply properly to your question.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Hello John,

I’m tied up with personal issues at the moment. Give me a little while and I’ll reply properly to your question.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Hello Joe,

Many thanks for the kind comment. I’m glad you found the discussion interesting. And Seraphim’s flowchart is indeed amazing!

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

You are welcome!

Dr Woods and I have done some podcasts on my Freedom’s Progress? which might be of interest to you.

Best wishes,

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

After a week, I suspect that you will be disappointed by the results of my thinking!

I agree that some personality types are more susceptible to libertarian ideas than others. The implication of this, for the purposes of libertarian persuasion, is that some audiences are essentially unconvertible, others have to be moved emotionally before reason can get some traction on their minds. I have a great interest in the classical art of rhetoric which consists of finding the available means of persuasion. If ‘location, location, location’ is the war cry of real estate agents, then ‘audience, audience, audience’ is the battle cry of the rhetorician. Persuasion must be tailored to one’s audience. It’s no good expecting them to be where you are or to have read what you’ve read or to share your concerns to the same degree that you do – you’re task is to find whatever it is that will move them and speak to that.

You wrote, “My proposal is to find solutions that get to the root cause of the vicious cycles — namely, solutions that leverage economic motivations — and try to focus individual and political action in that direction. Educational efforts can be a strong support here, but are not enough on their own to create the sustained behavioral changes that will break the vicious cycles.”

I also agree with your more fundamental point that the discovery of economic motivations can be a (if not the) significant inducement to listen to reason. James Harrington was, I believe, the first thinker to make this point, many years ago.

[gerard.casey]

Thanks for resending the diagram. It’s now coming through loud and clear! I am inclined (at least in part) to agree with your analysis but I’d have to think about it a little more before committing myself.

Gerard Casey

[gerard.casey]

Why, if we are free, do we have states? Good question! (Incidentally, I’m unable to see your diagrams properly in these panels. Right-clicking on them produces an error message.)

In Freedom’s Progress? I address (in passing) this question. Here’s an excerpt from the “Preface”.

“While the desirability and necessity of individual liberty may be obvious to libertarians, however, it is not quite so obvious to everyone else. As H. L. Mencken noted, most people want security in this world, not liberty. ‘Libertarians,’ writes Max Eastman, ‘used to tell us that “the love of freedom is the strongest of political motives,” but recent events have taught us the extravagance of this opinion. The “herd-instinct” and the yearning for paternal authority are often as strong. Indeed the tendency of men to gang up under a leader and submit to his will is of all political traits the best attested by history.’ [Eastman, 37] As Brian Doherty notes, ‘…many people loathe and fear liberty, and not just for others—that tyrannical impulse is easy enough to recognize—but even for themselves.’ [Doherty, 509] Not everyone values freedom, then, for with freedom comes responsibility, and the necessity to accept that success or failure are, in part at least, a function of one’s own actions and abilities. ‘Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration,’ remarks Eric Hoffer. ‘Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual. And as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies failure and frustration….Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden’ [Hoffer, 35, §26] In a revealing statement made shortly before the Second World War, a young Nazi remarked to Ida Wylie, ‘We Germans are so happy. We are free from freedom.’ [Wylie, 2]

“The libertarian vision, or at least, my libertarian vision, is not of rugged John the Baptists living alone in the wilderness dining on locusts and wild honey but rather one of individuals integrated into society by virtue of voluntary association, not just because of their status, personal history, family connections, place of birth or other adventitious circumstances. ‘No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ [John Donne] The completely isolated individual is a creature of fiction; the dichotomy—either group or individual—is false. Some libertarians are so concerned to defend the individual against subsumption into the group that they can give the impression that the ultimate human desideratum is a kind of social atomism, while reluctantly conceding that we must, regrettably, associate with other human beings from time to time! But few men, if any, can be satisfied with their own narrow, time-bound and limited lives and most seek some way in which to transcend their individual limitations. Self-transcendence can come in many forms—social, sporting, military, religious or other. In his legitimate quest for self-transcendence, the contemporary isolated individual risks being re-submerged once more in the group, only this time in much larger and more dangerous groups than his predecessors. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen more than their fair share of such cancerous forms of self-transcendence—Militant Nationalism, Fascism, National Socialism and Communism. Liberty’s progress throughout history has been real and substantial, but it is still a far from complete and its advances are yet capable of reversal”

And here’s an excerpt from the chapter on “The Reformation”.

“Boétie was perhaps the first thinker to explore systematically what may well be one of the most fundamental mysteries of politics—how is it that the few, or the one, succeed in dominating the many? For Boétie, human beings are naturally free and equal: ‘we are all naturally free, inasmuch as we are all comrades. Accordingly it should not enter the mind of anyone that nature has placed some of us in slavery, since she has actually created us all in one likeness….Since freedom is our natural state, we are not only in possession of it but have the urge to defend it. [de la Boétie, 51-52] Being thus free and equal, if one man dominates another, that domination stands in need of explanation and justification. Perhaps that man is stronger than his victim. That may well be so one on one, but it can scarcely explain how, as in the case of political rule, one man or a small group of men succeeds in dominating thousands or millions. ‘For the present,’ he writes, ‘I should [desire] to understand how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation!’ [de la Boétie, 42] In words that are eerily reminiscent of 1 Samuel 8: 11-18, too reminiscent perhaps to be entirely coincidental, Boétie details the depredations typically inflicted on subjects by their ruler: ‘You sow your crops in order that he may ravage them, you install and furnish your homes to give him goods to pillage; you rear your daughters that he may gratify his lust; you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows—to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance; you yield your bodies unto hard labor in order that he may indulge in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures; you weaken yourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold you in check. From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed.’ [de la Boétie, 48]

“The mystery of political domination becomes even more enigmatic when the people are dominated not by some alien conqueror but by one of their own, one who owes his power precisely to the obedience of those whom he dominates. ‘All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin,’ writes Boétie, ‘descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death.’ [de la Boétie, 48] This enemy is only one man or, at most, a few, staggeringly outnumbered by the subject population. ‘He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?

“Boétie believes, correctly, that it is not by primarily by force that the many overbear the few. ‘Whoever thinks that halberds, sentries, the placing of the watch, serve to protect and shield tyrants is, in my judgment, completely mistaken. These are used, it seems to me, more for ceremony and a show of force than for any reliance placed in them….It is not the troops on horseback, it is not the companies afoot, it is not arms that defend the tyrant.’ [de la Boétie, 71] The real political structure isn’t a direct relationship between the one and the many, but rather a human cascade, with the ruler being supported by a small number of supporters or collaborators (sometimes rivals), they, in turn controlling a rather larger number of supporters or clients, and so on downwards. Boétie remarks that ‘there are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs. The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence.’ [de la Boétie, 71-72]

“If it is not by superior force that rulers keep their subjects in submission; what is the source of the ruler’s power? In an anticipation of a theme that would later emerge in the writings of David Hume, Boétie believes rather that political rule is grounded in the voluntary subjugation of the many, based upon a habit of obedience deriving from prescription, custom and habit, the whole psycho-social edifice propped up by an array of ideological supports. ‘[T]he essential reason why men take orders willingly,’ Boétie writes, ‘is that they are born serfs and are reared as such. From this cause there follows another result, namely that people easily become cowardly and submissive under tyrants.’ [de la Boétie, 62] Astonishing as it may seem, the mass of men actually consent to their own servitude, and Murray Rothbard notes that ‘this consent is engineered, largely by propaganda beamed at the populace by the rulers and their intellectual apologists. The devices—of bread and circuses, of ideological mystification—that rulers today use to gull the masses and gain their consent, remain the same as in La Boétie’s days. The only difference is the enormous increase in the use of specialized intellectuals in the service of the rulers. But in this case, the primary task of opponents of modern tyranny is an educational one: to awaken the public to this process, to demystify and desanctify the State apparatus.’ [Rothbard 1975, 35] If customary obedience is the ground of political rule, then disobedience is the means by which political rule can be undermined; ‘if tyranny really rests on mass consent, then the obvious means for its overthrow is simply by mass withdrawal of that consent. The weight of tyranny would quickly and suddenly collapse under such a non-violent revolution.’ [Rothbard 1975, 16-17]”

If you’re thinking of buying my book, check around on Amazon for the ‘ X used from…; Y new from…’tab to see the best price. The Book Depository is also a reasonably good option.

Best wishes,

Gerard

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