Does Liberty Depend on Preconditions It Can't Create?

You know, how did we uh you know, how did we get here? I suppose it's questionable whether we have liberty today, although I think even by history standards, we have more liberty uh, you know, today uh than we have for much of human history. I I believe you agreed with this one. Yes, yes. Okay. Uh so tell me about your tell me about your thoughts on this proposition. Uh well, I I agree with Machiavelli on this. A lot of people think of Machiavelli because of the prince as a monarchist, but that's not actually the case. Uh Machiavelli was actually a fan of uh republicanism, which you'll find if you read his discourses on Livy, uh, which is a less read work of his. Uh, but his point was ultimately that uh in order to have liberty, you need a virtuous people, and this is true all the way back to someone like Aristotle, they'd agree on this, or you can move all the way up to the American founding fathers and find Gil Adams talking about how we need a virtuous people uh who believe in God, follow the Ten Commandments.

That's the only way that you can live under the American Constitution. And so liberty, I think is something that proceeds from that virtuous population who's able to care for themselves, not because caring for yourself is in and of itself the good, but because it's a product of being good, of being virtuous, of doing that which needs to be done, filling the roles in your community. If there's one criticism I usually have about kind of ideological libertarianism, it tends to be focused on the system and less on the behavior of the people, less on building those communities that allow for freedom, allow for liberty, and understanding it more as of a function of the contract rather than a function of the people and the way they behave. And so Machiavelli said that if you don't have that virtuous people, they'll have to be ruled by a king, they'll have to be ruled by someone who can actually force them into that behavior.

And so if you want to maintain a republic, if you want to pretend uh maintain a self-ruled people, the only way to do that is that they have mastered themselves. It's not about doing whatever you want, it's about do it pursuing the good in your community, and once everyone is doing that implicitly, you don't need a top-down sovereign in order to dictate that. That's what generates liberty. Yeah, I've I've spent an incredible amount of time talking to libertarians, and I love them, and I'm going to defend them, of course, here in this conversation. But one of the certainly problems that I you know encounter is uh it's sort of like the libertarian breakfast question. You know, what would you do if everyone was not a libertarian? Right. But I am a libertarian. Uh, you know, and it and and you know, because I do think the people inclined to libertarianism would thrive with more liberty for the most part.

Some of them, maybe not. Some of them would have heroin. Well, but certainly the the people in this room. Uh, you know, uh, and and like I am, of course, part of the reason uh I I will admit I'm uh I I'm I'm completely selfish here. That like part of the reason that I want liberty is I'm I'm frustrated by the degree to which you know uh laws and so on constrain my ability to build things and and make things and and do what I think is is good, and and these laws are you know ostensibly to you know protect other people, uh but my feeling is that you know they're in the way, and they're uh and uh and so you have this tricky problem where um we are in a situation where we've you know we've extended the vote to everyone, uh we have mass democracy, uh, you know, and sort of the system is fully legible, it's fully exploitable, and now we started with liberty, we've created this system that doesn't seem to be capable of maintaining it.

And I think a lot of the people here, you know, we want to get back to that. Well, how do we get liberty again? How do we get back to those, you know, uh preconditions? And it doesn't as much as I want liberty, as much as I want a pretty libertarian or even a radically libertarian society, it's not clear in our sort of current climate how you know how we could even produce that, because uh it's it's largely citizens of America, uh, well, uh residents of America. People subjects there too of the jurisdiction of you know uh and because libertarians often like to focus their eye on the state, but it's like, well, no, this is the we we had liberty, we we and we created these situations, and now we don't have it anymore. Uh and so that that's sort of why this this proposition is is true to me. One of the things I think would be very helpful for people to consult is really just history.

Uh, we look at Polybius' cycle of regimes, right? You start as a kingdom, uh, you move to a republic, uh, but then once liberty has been taken, uh, you tend to see the rise of a strong man again, right? The we cycle through these different stages. Uh the democracy leads us back into uh a sovereign who has to rediscipline the people. We can look at something like Rome. It begins as a kingdom, it moves into republic phase, but once republican virtue has fallen and you expand too far into empire, which we'll probably get to a little more, uh you would eventually import too many foreigners, you try to spread yourself too thin, and you eventually have to collapse back into a strong man in order to keep uh you know uh the to keep order there. And so I don't think um I think again one of the problems that uh we we tend to do when we live in theory land, even though I'm referencing a bunch of philosophy here.

I think one of the problems when we completely disconnect theory from history is we don't pay attention to these preconditions. And so if you don't notice that the form and uh is not matching the ideology, uh then you can sit there and say, oh, well, if I just properly align the laws, I'll create these issues. And it's like, no, actually, you really have to pay attention to what's happening to the people, what's happening to the beliefs of the people, the quality of the people, the way they live their lives.