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Could We Re-Found America? Here Are 7 Principles On Which To Do So.

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In a continuing exploration of the implications of Mark Shupe’s review of the founding principles of America, via his explication of the book “America’s Revolutionary Mind”, we are listening to several voices articulating future pathways out of progressive collectivism and back to American individualism.

Human life is never quite as stable as we’d like, but we live in uniquely unsettling times. Some of us are angry. Many of us are worried. All of us are anxious about an uncertain future. In these circumstances, the bombastic, triumphal optimism of the pro-Biden crowd – just take a look at CNN for about 10 seconds and you’ll see what I mean – is obviously the product of deep insecurity. Like a 5’8” teenager driving a souped-up F150, it’s clear that the façade of Biden’s popular mandate to govern is masking a dangerously hollow reality.

According to a number of recent polls, overwhelming proportions of Trump supporters and large supermajorities of likely Republican voters as a whole believe that Biden’s election victory was illegitimate. Based on the existing popular vote counts, a good estimate would put the number of American voters who think Biden will be an illegitimate president at around 60 million. That’s the approximate population of Italy, France, or the U.K.

Put this together with the analysis I presented in my “2020 Retrospective” article on the urban/rural divide, and the result is staggering: A population of Americans equal in size to a large European country, occupying a land area about 20 times the size of any of them, currently believes they are facing the prospect of a usurped, illegitimate administration come January 20.

This stark reality of our political and geographical division sits on top of the similarly stark reality of our intellectual and spiritual division. This might not be a problem for Italy, France, or the U.K.—but it is for us. The United States has never been held together by ancestry, national origin, ethnicity, or race. We have always aspired to be a “melting pot,” a nation whose existential glue is not who you are but what you believe. A common creed, not demographics, has always defined American identity.

Today, this common creed has vanished. We are two Americas: Biden’s America and Trump’s America. These two Americas have nothing of importance in common with each other, and no common ground to stand on. There is not a single moral or political principle upon which these two Americas agree. Sure, everybody wants “freedom,” “justice,” “equality,” “democracy,” and a host of other glittering ideals. So have most dictators, Communists, and war criminals in modern history. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao gave stirring speeches in favor of all of them. The reality is that in the United States, we have long since ceased to do anything more than pay lip service to a sham facsimile of our old shared ideals.

What does this mean for us? If we are not held together as a nation by anything except the fact that we live in the same place (and, of course, even this isn’t true of parts of the U.S.), then we are not members of a common political community. Our union is built on what Alexander Hamilton called “accident and force” in the very first Federalist paper. We are subjects, not self-governing citizens.

What should we do about this? When our forebears faced a similar situation in 1776, they took decisive action. “Give me liberty or give me death,” they said. They adopted a Declaration expressing their common moral and political principles, and they affirmed their right to form a political community that would aspire to live according to those principles. It is high time for an American re-founding; not a “secession” or “separation,” but a “perpetuation” of self-evidently true American political principles embodied in a new political Union. This is what the United American Counties could be.

The principles of this new Union would be the principles of the Declaration of Independence, along with certain corollaries to these principles that elaborate its true meaning:

  • Limited and local government is the foundation of a genuine republic.
  • The natural right to religious liberty—of both worship and exercise—exists beyond politics, taking precedence over all rights merely positive, civil, or legal.
  • The natural right to life for all human beings at all ages and stages of development is entitled to recognition, respect, and protection.
  • The natural family begun in marriage between one man and one woman is the cornerstone of society.
  • The right to private property is fundamental, and should only be regulated as absolutely necessary to maintain free markets, equal opportunity, and the fair reward of industry and merit.
  • All citizens should be educated to understand the meaning and importance of American political principles, and equipped to become informed, active participants in our local, regional, and national systems of government.
  • Citizenship in the United American Counties is available to all who understand, profess, and commit to uphold the principles in this Declaration, regardless of national origin, racial or ethnic identity, or religious belief.

The common sense of 1776 dictated the American Revolution. The common sense of 2020 dictates the creation of a new political vehicle for perpetuating the true principles of the Revolution.

Biden’s Urban America has already seceded from the United States of America that many of us know and love. Trump’s Counties can be a life raft for the American experiment in its most dire hour of need.

Morality, What Is It? America’s Revolutionary Minds Wanted to Know. Some Still Do.

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“A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It” is the subtitle for C. Bradley Thompson’s 2019 book, America’s Revolutionary Mind. However, the concept of morality is a high-level abstract idea. Unfortunately, in a country whose education, media, and political institutions wallow in moral subjectivism, it means different things to different people. Today, America’s dominant philosophy can be summed as: There are no absolutes. Just be a nice person. Love is the answer.

This 1960’s Age of Absurdity nonsense is anchored by the ideas of 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who defined it as, “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.” This ambiguity is supported by another German philosopher, Georg Hegel, who believed “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”

This brings us to the most common view of moral questions, the difference between doing what is right and doing what is wrong. In the Christian tradition, pacifism is what is right: turn the other cheek, and St. Paul the Apostle, in his letter to the Galatians explains, “Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom.” Yet, both moral codes require humility and self-denial.

Its because the religious morality of the premodern world (ante Age of Enlightenment), and the secular morality of the postmodern world (post Age of Reason) are commonly accepted in 2020’s American culture, that the moral principles of America’s founding are virtually unknown. In an effort to solve this false dilemma, Center for Individualism has created a Facebook group whose purpose is to study each chapter of America’s Revolutionary Mind.

Our modest goal is to help members of our group and readers of this column answer the question below; one posed by Irina Dunaev in Ayn Rand’s 1936 novel, We the Living. After being sentenced to ten years in a Soviet gulag (a slow, horrific death sentence) because her brother was a snitch for the socialist criminal gang (like there’s any other kind), she asked her cousin Kira Argounova,

There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that its something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now its over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone. But there’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?

In order to understand the moral code that created the most tolerant and prosperous society the world has ever known, we will begin reading and discussing Thompson’s book the week of November 30th, and cover one chapter each week through the week of February 22, 2021. To keep the conversation robust, ice breaker questions will be offered and examples that relate to current events will be encouraged. This is an open group, and it can be easily found searching the group name: Waking America’s Revolutionary Mind.

Membership is automatic once three simple questions have been answered to confirm your participation, which simply means – have an active mind. The foundational precept of human beings with an active mind is: Existence exists. The universe is all there is, and Its a Wonderful Life. The only thing that can go out of existence is that which is living. Therefore, it is imperative that morality, at its core, promotes life at its most robust.

To quote the Buffalo football fan whose sign was caught on national TV after the Bills won a fourth consecutive American Conference championship in 1993, “Deal With It America!”  Americans of any nationality routinely do this. It, being reality.

The Left Will Not Practice Civility, Much Less Adhere To Any Moral System That Would Require It.

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Free Market Capitalism Is Morally Superior To All Other Economic Systems.

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Dr. Richard Ebeling, professor of economics at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and my longtime friend and colleague, has written an important article, “Business Ethics and Morality of the Marketplace,” appearing in the American Institute for Economic Research. Its importance and timeliness is enhanced by so many of America’s youth, led by academic hacks, having fallen prey to the siren song of socialism.

In a key section of his article, Ebeling lays out what he calls the ethical principles of free markets. He says: “The hallmark of a truly free market is that all associations and relationships are based on voluntary agreement and mutual consent. Another way of saying this is that in the free market society, people are morally and legally viewed as sovereign individuals possessing rights to their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, who may not be coerced into any transaction that they do not consider being to their personal betterment and advantage.”

Ebeling says that the rules of a free market are simple and easy to understand: “You don’t kill, you don’t steal, and you don’t cheat through fraud or misrepresentation. You can only improve your own position by improving the circumstances of others. Your talents, abilities, and efforts must all be focused on one thing: what will others take in trade from you for the revenues you want to earn as the source of your own income and profits?”

For many people, profit has become a dirty word and as such has generated slogans such as “people before profits.” Many believe the pursuit of profits is the source of mankind’s troubles. However, it’s often the absence of profit motivation that’s the true villain. For example, contrast the number of complaints heard about profit-oriented establishments such as computer stores, supermarkets and clothing stores to the complaints that one hears about nonprofit establishments such as the U.S. Post Office, the public education system and departments of motor vehicles. Computer stores, supermarkets and clothing stores face competition and must satisfy customers to earn profits and stay in business. Postal workers, public teachers and department of motor vehicles employees depend on politicians and coercion to get their pay. They stay in business whether customers are satisfied with their services or not.

In a free-market society, income is neither taken nor distributed. Income is earned by serving one’s fellow man. Say I mow your lawn. When I’m finished, you pay me $50. Then, I go to my grocer and demand, “Give me two pounds of sirloin and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced.” In effect, the grocer asks: “Williams, what did you do to deserve a claim on what your fellow man produced?” I say, “I served him.” The grocer says, “Prove it.” That’s when I pull out the $50. We might think of dollars as “certificates of performance,” proof of serving our fellow man.

Free markets are morally superior to other economic systems. To have a claim on what my fellow man produces, I’m forced to serve him. Contrast that requirement to government handouts, where a politician says to me: “You don’t have to get out in that hot sun to mow your fellow man’s lawn. Vote for me and I’ll take what your fellow man produces and give it to you.”

Ebeling says that those deserving condemnation are those who use government coercion to gain at the expense of others. There are thousands of such examples: government subsidies at taxpayers’ expense, paying farmers not to grow crops or guaranteeing them a minimum price paid for through tax dollars and higher prices for consumers, regulations that limit entry into various professions and occupations, regulations that limit consumer choice, and corporate handouts and bailouts.

In a word or so, our protest should not be against capitalism. People should protest crony capitalism, where people use the political arena to buy government favors. If millennials and others want to wage war against government favors and crony capitalism, I’m with them 100%. But I’m all too afraid that anti-capitalists just want their share of the government loot.

American Patriotism Is About The Moral Values Of Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness – And Well Worth Fighting For.

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“The future belongs to patriots,” President Trump told the United Nations last month. But when it comes to Americans, at least, the data seems to indicate the opposite. A Gallup poll released just before the Fourth of July found that the share of participants who felt “extremely proud” to be American was the lowest in the poll’s 18-year history—just 47%, down from 70% in 2003. And according to a recent WSJ/NBC poll, the younger you are, the less likely you are to say that patriotism is a “very important” value. Among Americans older than 55, nearly 80% of respondents agreed with that statement; among those under 38, only 42% did so.

Perhaps the shift has to do with the fact that, in a time of bitter political division, people often bring up patriotism only to suggest that their opponents lack it. President Trump, who during the 2016 campaign made a habit of literally hugging American flags, has accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of treason. Meanwhile, Sen. Kamala Harris said that former Vice President Joe Biden, her fellow Democratic presidential candidate, has “more patriotism in his pinkie finger” than President Trump “will ever have.” Members of both parties seem to see the other side as proof of Samuel Johnson’s famous definition of patriotism as “the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Johnson, the English man of letters, coined that phrase in 1775, suggesting that the use of patriotism as a political football is hardly a new phenomenon. What does seem to be new in our time is the growing sense, on both sides of the aisle, that American patriotism as traditionally conceived is unworthy of support. At just the moment when the U.S. is most in need of common values and aspirations, we seem to be in danger of losing them. How to restore American patriotism? The first task is to understand what makes it unique—and so vulnerable.

American patriotism, like America itself, is a continuing experiment in the power of ideas to bring human beings together. Other nations form their identities around shared ethnic origins or ancestral experiences—things that are themselves often imaginary, based more on myth than history. But the word “fatherland,” so powerful in other languages, is alien to American usage, because our forefathers all came from different lands. Instead, the classic formulas of American patriotism are about moral and political ideas: “all men are created equal”; “government of the people, by the people, for the people”; “liberty and justice for all.”

By casting our national identity in terms of democratic aspirations, the Founders ensured that American patriotism would be self-critical. We are constantly measuring ourselves against the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and since Americans are no more inherently moral than anyone else, we frequently find ourselves wanting.

This gives rise to the two threats that face our politics today. On the populist right, there is a temptation to see the nation merely as an impediment to the interests of one’s own tribe, whether that is defined in terms of race, region, religion or class. On the left, there is a complementary temptation to believe that American ideals have never been anything more than window-dressing for racial or class self-interest, so that achieving social justice means repudiating the nation and its claims.

Both of these lines of attack lead to a rejection of American patriotism as the demanding ideal it has been and should be again. A society as large and diverse as our own requires that ideal: Americans may not always be able to love or understand each other, but as long as we all love our country we can enjoy a certain level of political trust. When that trust evaporates, political opponents turn into enemies, and norms and laws become irritating constraints on the pursuit of power.

Traditionally, the case against patriotism in American politics has come from the left, which has been suspicious of it as an accessory to militarism and an excuse for oppression. The classic statement of this case was made by the radical thinker Randolph Bourne in his 1918 essay “The State.” Ordinarily, Bourne believed, love of country was a peaceful emotion: “There is no more feeling of rivalry with other peoples than there is in our feeling for our family.” But patriotism becomes dangerous when it suppresses individual conscience in favor of blind obedience to the government: “In responding to the appeal of the flag, we are responding to the appeal of the State, to the symbol of the herd organized as an offensive and defensive body, conscious of its prowess and its mystical herd strength,” Bourne wrote. He was responding, in part, to the Wilson administration’s persecution of critics of World War I, like the socialist politician Eugene V. Debs, whose antiwar speeches led to his imprisonment under the Sedition Act of 1918.

In our time, however, we are seeing the beginnings of a turn away from American patriotism in certain parts of the right as well. It is significant that the “national conservative” movement, which gained attention with a conference of intellectuals and politicians in Washington, D.C., this summer, prefers the language of nationalism rather than patriotism. The word conjures up European nationalisms based on language and ethnicity, and indeed one of the key arguments of national-conservative thinkers like Yoram Hazony is that nations must possess an integral, exclusive identity to thrive. “National cohesion is the secret ingredient that allows free institutions to exist, the bedrock on which a functioning democracy is built,” Mr. Hazony wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year.

Patriotism is open to skepticism from both sides of the political spectrum because loyalty to a country is, in fact, a fragile principle. Emotionally and biologically, our strongest loyalties belong to our actual relatives—our family, clan or tribe. From a religious point of view, on the other hand, we are united with everyone who shares our faith, regardless of nationality. As St. Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek…for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Certainly, being loyal to a few people you know personally or to all your fellow-believers are much older modes of identity that being loyal to a group of intermediate size—tens or hundreds of millions of people with whom you are supposed to have something deeply in common because you happen to speak the same language or share the same passport. It was to overcome these objections that classic European nationalism tried to invest the nation with the qualities of both a family and a faith: “It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny,” wrote the historian Benedict Anderson in his 1983 book “Imagined Communities.”

But this kind of nationalism is manifestly unsuited to the American experience, since Americans have never been all of one kind either ethnically or spiritually. On the contrary, our history shows a steadily increasing diversity along both dimensions. With each new immigrant wave, voices have been heard to insist that this latest arrival—from Irish Catholics in the mid-19th century, to southern Europeans and Jews in the early 20th century, to Muslims today—cannot be Americanized; and so far they have all been proven wrong.

In this way, American history has vindicated the Founders’ faith that all human beings share the same basic desire for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This universalism makes it a perpetual challenge, however, to draw the circle of mutual loyalty among citizens in the way that most nations do. If anyone in the world is a potential American, then why should we be more loyal to our fellow citizens than to humanity at large?

This problem is thrown into sharp relief by the issue of immigration, which is so polarizing precisely because it reminds us of the contingent nature of Americanness. Ethnic nationalism depends on the myth of primeval unity, but what separates today’s American from today’s immigrant is merely priority in time, a morally insignificant fact.

The idea that Americanness is defined by values rather than by birth is one of the noblest definitions of citizenship any country has established—and for that very reason, one of the most difficult to live up to. That is why, like the biblical prophets, America’s prophetic moralists have often served the country by pointing out its failures—which are nowhere clearer than in its history of slavery, segregation and racism. When Fredrick Douglass poured scorn on expressions of American patriotism in his 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” he was reminding his white audience that the American promise stood in glaring contradiction to the American reality. “The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common,” Douglass said. “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.”

Abraham Lincoln returned to this image of the slavedriver’s whip in his Second Inaugural Address: “Yet, if God wills that [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

It might seem strange to call this an expression of American patriotism, but in the deepest sense it was: In accepting punishment, Lincoln affirmed that America should be judged by its own highest principles. After all, it is only those principles that make the country what he said it was in a message to Congress in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation—“the last best hope of earth.” Even Douglass concluded his oration by saying that he believed America’s future would be better than its past, in part because he drew “encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains and the genius of American Institutions.”

Of course, American principles have always been interpreted in different ways—in particular, depending on whether you think the greatest threat to liberty comes from the state or the market, the point on which conservatives and liberals traditionally divided. But that political division, bitter as it could become, has been constrained by both parties’ allegiance to the American vocabulary of liberty and self-determination. Both sides could claim to be acting in the tradition of the Declaration and the Constitution.

If today’s politics seems more dangerous—more reminiscent of the 1850s, the most polarized period in American history—it is partly because this kind of principled patriotism is losing its value as a shared moral vocabulary. When it thrives, American patriotism brings the particular and the universal into a new synthesis—a way of pursuing our own interest by pursuing justice. When it fails, those elements come apart, as they did for the North and South before the Civil War and as they seem to be doing in our red-and-blue America today. Americans increasingly feel that the nation is an obstacle to the achievement of what they value most, whether that means the empowerment of their tribe or the fulfillment of their moral ideals.

“A nation’s existence is…a daily plebiscite,” said the French historian Ernest Renan in his 1882 lecture “What Is a Nation?” Nationhood “presupposes a past but is reiterated in the present by a tangible fact: consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life.” Today, when so many Americans are disillusioned with our common life and wish, secretly or openly, that there was a way to separate from those they consider enemies, people who retain their faith in American ideals have a duty to voice their patriotism. Like so many important things, we may not realize how much we need it until it’s about to disappear.

Bernie Sanders And The Left Get Morality 100% Wrong.

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Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has served to once again confirm that his – and those of the ‘democratic socialist’ and ‘progressive’ movements’ – vision for society endorses an aggressive threat of violence against innocent individuals, and seeks to negate morality itself.

While often declaring goods like health care and daycare “rights,” Sanders also insists that political solutions, rather than voluntary charity, are the only truly moral means of achieving justice.

For instance, Sanders recently tweeted that his Medicare for All plan is “the moral thing to do.”

Compare this to Sanders’ longstanding aversion to private charity. Despite his status as a millionaire, Sanders is notoriously stingy in giving to charity, and has a past of being downright hostile to it.

”I don’t believe in charities,” Sanders told a crowd gathered at a local 1981 United Way fundraiser, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. According to the New York Times, Sanders “went on to question the ‘fundamental concepts on which charities are based’ and contended that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs.”

In other words, Sanders would have us believe the only moral avenue to help the needy in through political means. Somehow the “fundamental concepts” of private charities are not sufficient in Sanders’ view.

To evaluate these claims, we can compare the two institutional frameworks constituting the hero and villain in Sanders’ narrative: government programs versus voluntary, private charity.

The use of force backed by the threat of violence is the bedrock upon which all government programs are built. Their very existence relies on compelling citizens to pay their taxes lest they be punished for their resistance. And to be clear, such threats are not leveled against the perpetrators of any crime, but rather against innocent victims who have aggressed against no one.

By contrast, private charity programs rely on peaceful, voluntary donations for their existence. Donors are free to refrain from turning over their money to an organization which they object to the goods or services being provided, or feel the organization is not effectively using funds to benefit those in need.

Contrast that with how the government would react if you decided to stop paying taxes because you don’t like the services it offers and provides in return. Agents of the government would descend upon you and threaten fines and imprisonment – resorting to physical assault if necessary – if you didn’t obey.

So, without you having threatened or aggressed against anyone, but merely by boycotting the submission of your property (via taxes) to the government, this organization would not stop short of invading your property and initiating violence against you.

Such is the true nature of how to achieve Sanders’ “moral code” of “economic rights.” This is what progressives often refer to as “social justice.”

I prefer the definition of justice offered by George Mason University professor and columnist Walter Williams: “What’s just has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: ‘I keep what I earn, and you keep what you earn.’ Do you disagree? Well, then, tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why.”

Finally, Sanders’ brand of “morality” not only extols the use of aggressive violence against innocents, but it would also run the risk of extinguishing the ability of individuals to exercise moral judgment, thus negating real morality. True morality and charity for those in need is housed in the hearts of individuals expressing their own compassion, not in response to political orders.

As noted economist and political philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek stated, “Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of duty not exacted by compulsion, but the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”

Or, as Murray Rothbard so succinctly wrote: “No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.”

Humans act in accordance with their own judgment. This includes judgment about helping others in need, as determined by one’s own conscience. Government, however, interferes with the connection between judgment and action. As the state forcibly outsources the exercise of moral compassion, individuals’ ability to do so atrophies.

Sanders’ and other progressives’ blustering about “morality” is really a smokescreen designed to distract from their vision of a society organized around the threat of government aggression against innocents and devoid of the exercise of individuals freely expressing true moral acts.

How Society Benefits from the Self-Interest of the Individual

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Each week, a group of individualists in my neighborhood get together for drinks. And each week as I enter the restaurant and approach the host stand, I am greeted with, “Are you with the individualist group?” This always makes me chuckle, “individualist group” seems like a such a contradiction in terms.

Critics like to characterize individualists as hermits, unwilling to work with the rest of society and preoccupied with their own self-interest. To be sure, self-interest does play an integral role in the classical liberal tradition. But this does not make its followers antisocial by any means. In fact, without society, our self-interests could not feasibly be served. And without self-interest, society’s ends could not be met either.

As Dan Sanchez writes:

“The truth is, the self-interest-centered individualism of the centuries-old classical liberal tradition has never been antisocial. Indeed, from the beginning, one of its main objectives has been to explain and promote human communities.”

Echoing this sentiment, economist Peter Boettke says:

“The classical liberal political economists treat the individual not as atomistic, but as embedded within social settings – in families, in communities, in history.”

It is precisely the insights of liberalism that allow us to understand how individuals operate within larger groups, and how self-interest actually serves to benefit society as a whole. Mises touches on this when he discusses the importance of individuals working in societies in his book Liberalism.

We Need Each Other

Mises writes:

“A man living in isolation has no moral rules to follow. He need have no qualms about doing anything he finds it to his advantage to do, for he does not have to consider whether he is not thereby injuring others.”

At first glance, such a lifestyle might sound appealing to some. But in practice, it would be quite miserable. For even though a man living in isolation has to worry about no one but himself, he is also left to worry about meeting all of his needs with no other resources but those he provides on his own.

To avoid such deprivation, we have chosen to join society and engage in specialization and voluntary exchange. By doing so, we are able to exchange the fruits of our own labor.

This social cooperation has allowed us to thrive as individuals and thus, as societies as well.

As Mises writes:

“For the life of the individual in society is possible only by virtue of social cooperation, and every individual would be most seriously harmed if the social organization of life and of production were to break down.”

If I was left with no other option but to forage for my own food, I would quickly go hungry. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is not my area of expertise. But this goes both ways. Without my demand for sustenance, producers of such would also be unable to provide for other necessities in areas where they do not specialize. Each of us produces for our own benefit, specifically to serve our own self-interest. But by doing so, we also create value for others.

Adam Smith touched on this when he said:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.”

This reliance on others within a society is fueled by our own self-interests. But this encourages us to work together because, to put it simply, it is vital to our own quality of life and in many instances, our own survival.  

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Critics of the classical liberal tradition do not believe that the economy is capable of functioning without government oversight specifically because of individual self-interest. Many think that if an individual has the opportunity to do something terrible to another person, they will. But since the market operates through incentives and feedback, true liberals understand that individuals are capable of self-regulation.

If an individual wishes to be successful in his own field of expertise, he must take the rest of society into account. Doing harm to others only serves to do harm unto himself, especially in market interactions.

As Mises says:

“In requiring of the individual that he should take society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that, while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively minor advantage in exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit.”

True, a producer could knowingly set out to harm a consumer by providing an unsafe product.

However, by doing so he risks his own reputation and thus, his own wellbeing. Let’s say that by committing harm by not thoroughly inspecting his produce, for example, a farmer saves himself time. But as a result, many consumers become ill and immensely unhappy with him. As a result, the consumers subsequently decide to take their business elsewhere.

Those few extra hours the farmer gained by neglecting to properly inspect his produce have now resulted in a loss of profits. And this loss in profits may continue until he is able to mend his bad reputation with consumers if he is able to do so at all. The farmer doesn’t need government force as an incentive to behave properly. He need only understand how incentives work.

A bad reputation means fewer people wanting to interact with you and voluntarily exchange with you. This is exactly why Mises writes:

“Whoever gives up a momentary advantage in order to avoid imperiling the continued existence of society is sacrificing a lesser gain for a greater one…The continued existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a common way of life is in the interest of every individual.”

But critics cannot seem to see past this idea that self-interest is somehow always immoral. They believe individuals should sacrifice certain whims and desires and become a part of society simply because the act of sacrifice is the essence of true morality. But Mises knows better.

He writes:

“The meaning of this regard for the general social interest has frequently been misunderstood. Its moral value was believed to consist in the fact of the sacrifice itself, in the renunciation of an immediate gratification. One refused to see that what is morally valuable is not the sacrifice, but the end served by the sacrifice, and one insisted on ascribing moral value to sacrifice, to renunciation, in and for itself alone.”

He continues:

“But sacrificing is moral only when it serves a moral end. There is a world of difference between a man who risks his life and property for a good cause and the man who sacrifices them without benefiting society in any way.”

Self-interest keeps the gears of society in motion. It is the reason societies have managed to endure for so long in spite of the vastly different personalities that exist within it. So to call classical liberals atomistic is not only frivolous, it also discounts the pivotal role these individualists play in society as a whole. We don’t have to agree on some of the finer points in life, but so long as we serve our own interest by producing and exchanging with others each member of society benefits. Therein lies the beauty of the free market.

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