The natural state of things: the EL manifesto

Why libertarianism? And why Christianity? And why should they be combined?

After all, didn't Christ tell us to submit to government authorities? And isn't libertarianism essentially organized anarchy -- questioning the authority and place of the rulers God has allowed to rule over us?

The answer really begins with the question -- "why government?"

Human government is the result of the fallen nature of man. In a perfect world, we submit to the nature and will of God and do as he wishes. But because of our sinful nature, we need government to protect us from ourselves. Governments are created for three reasons -- power, security or to bring forth liberty.

Early governments were often created to provide security. People willingly give up some basic freedoms for security and to protect the natural order. For example, I will give up my right to roam freely to allow you to build a wall to protect my property. I will give up my right to absolute self-satisfaction by allowing the government to create laws and punishments banning theft and protecting private property. The reason? Social order. This is still the chief function of government today -- to protect us from our own sinful nature.

Governments are created to protect us from our own immorality, but they also need a moral compass to guide them. Without it, we first descend into anarchy. Whenever that happens, we will soon descend into despotism.

There are a lot of examples.

In any government, the leaders are bound to seek -- or abuse -- their own power at some point in its life cycle. The people are usually more than willing to let it happen in a time of crisis because it provides security. But the early history of the world is littered with small societies that eventually grew, and the strongest societies then began to seek power by conquering the weaker ones nearby and forming empires. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongolians ... none of them began as huge societies. Some were governed by law and order. Some had ideal governments. Some were militaristic right off the bat.

But eventually, they all became militaristic and turned to conquest and despotism. To protect themselves, so did nearby states. We see this pattern in both the ancient and modern worlds.

The Spartans allowed their government to turn their society into a regimented military state to provide security from slave rebellions. More recently, the war-weary and hungry Russians turned to communism in 1917 because of the economic security it promised from an inept Czarist regime. The Italians turned to fascism to provide order and security when worker uprisings were creating instability -- essentially, they turned to one form of despotism to protect them from another. The Germans turned to despotism to provide economic and military security after they felt violated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Around the world, military coups take place when one group seeking power overthrows another.

It is the natural state of man to be sinful and to seek power. It is also the natural state of man to seek security from others who seek power. It is therefore the natural state of government to become statist in its nature -- whether it be the extreme of communism or the extreme of fascism. Our security is most threatened in crisis, and therefore, it is in human nature to cede more power to the government in exchange for the perception of more security, whether it be economic or defense security.

However, those crises are almost always brought on by sin and immorality.

Is this state of man ideal? We can look at Israel for guidance. Israel was governed by judges who ruled over the nation, and those judges looked to God for guidance -- and were appointed by God. Samuel -- one of the most Godly men in the Bible -- appointed his own sons as judges. That alone was questionable. Immediately, "they turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice" (1 Samuel 8:3 NIV).

So the people of Israel asked for a king, like all of their (sinful) neighbors had. According to the Lord, asking for a king was a rejection of Him -- not a rejection of Samuel's decision or Israel. A king means we have to submit to an earthly authority whose authority may differ from the Lord's. The Bible is littered with kings of Israel who were wicked, self-aggrandizing and power-hungry.

The asking for a king -- a strong ruler whose motives may or may not be good ("may not" being the correct answer more often than not) -- came out of the crisis Samuel brought on by appointing his sons as judges despite the fact that they were morally and ethically bankrupt. Seeking security and freedom from immorality at the top, Israel took a bad situation and made it worse by inviting a situation that would eventually lead to despotism. In the long term, it would lead to the division of the nation and their later capture by Assyrians and Babylonians, bringing forth nearly two millenia of outside rule of Israel.

The Lord forewarned Israel that this was coming, but they didn't care. He told them the best of what they had was going to be taken by the king to give to his attendants and officials and that Israel would become the slaves of the king. "When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:18 NIV).

The third reason we form governments is liberty. This is the American experiment, spread to Europe and many other points of the globe. Today, 233 years in, that experiment appears to be on life-support, in large part because we have abandoned our moral compass. John Locke stated that all humans have three natural rights -- life, liberty and property. We cede some power to governments to protect those three rights. When government ceases to protect those rights, then we have the right to overthrow it. We did so with the British in 1776, over taxes and impositions much tamer than what we face today.

Many of America's founding fathers were undoubtedly libertarian in their ideals. Both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution create the concept of a limited government bound by a Constitution that gives them a very, very narrow scope of what the government can do. In doing so, it protects the liberties and freedoms of the people. Both constitutions created a government that was designed to be very difficult to work -- the current one creating a checks and balances system that makes passing legislation extremely difficult.

Liberty is our natural state. Humans yearn to be free. And therefore the ideal government is one that protects our security and our freedoms, by staying within the boundary lines created by the Constitution, and not ever straying from it even in times of crisis.

But sin is also our natural state. Humans are sinful.

How can we marry those two diametrical opposites into an ideal state?

To have that much freedom requires a moral compass. Government has to be limited for humans to have freedom. Otherwise, the people will naturally cede rights to the government to further their own security. In many cases, they'll cede them to further their own power -- witness the Euro-style social engineering that has begun to jump the pond in the last year.

America's founding fathers had that moral compass. For much of this nation's history, it has been acknowledged that moral compass is the driving force behind this nation. In the last 40 years, there has been a significant and successful attempt at moral inversion away from the Judeo-Christian values that were the underlying part of how this nation was founded. In turn, that has led to freedom without morality. Amassed in the hands of the free market, freedom without morality becomes greed and exploitation -- but one does not necessarily have to participate in it. The response to that is to put more power in the hands of a government, but government without morality makes us all subjects of despotism -- and one has no choice but to participate.

As our society has become more amoral and has drifted farther from our core values, we have become more subjected to the excesses of freedom without morality, and the results have not been pretty.

The answer is always freedom and liberty -- and bringing our nation back to the starting point of a strictly-followed constitution that protects the rights to life, liberty and property. But liberty cannot exist without a moral center to guide our decisions.