 Here Mr. Rockwell articulates his position and takes his stand in the current battle of ideas that is now tearing at our society.
It is this: "Some will protest that a third option is available: a judicious combination of the state and liberty, it may be said, is necessary to human flourishing. But this is merely an apologia for the state, since it takes for granted precisely what we libertarians dispute: that the state is the indispensable source of order, within which liberty flourishes."
This is a difficult topic and the following is my effort to simplify it in my own mind.
Initially, the founding of America was based on the recognition of inherent freedoms protected -- not given -- by the State: the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness -- although a better word than 'happiness' and I think the one intended would have been 'property'. The individual, not the State, was responsible for his life, was free to engage in voluntary trade with his neighbor and to keep the profits of his labor; free to protect his life and acquired and dispose of property, and free to speak his mind without fear of retaliation. Beyond that mandate of protection, the State had no power -- including that of taxation. The State was the sole arbiter of dispute and defender of enemies both foreign and domestic.
Unfortunately this initial arrangement faded away, the State acquiring more and more powers over individual life. The system was corrupted when politicians realized they could stay in power buying votes by distributing public funds (the evil of taxation having crept in) -- and this has continued until our present day with economic collapse and dictatorship now a reality.
Enter the opposition: the Libertarians. They are by no means unified and are, ideologically, in fundamental conflict. One side wishes a return to the original government as protector of rights and no more; the other, the elimination of even that function of government. One wishes a limited State; the other, no State. The former would fix the loopholes that allowed the State to seize power while the latter thinks that impossible. Lew Rockwell is of that persuasion. His argument is that ceding any power to the State is a fatal mistake: like introducing bacterium that, by it's nature, will only proliferate and eventually take over a system, as it has in our nation.
What is Rockwell's alternative? No government at all. How he believes this would work without degenerating into total chaos, the clash of private police forces and clans, is beyond me and I've never heard an exposition of how this would practically work. Yet the disgust with having individuals -- like Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Feinstein -- with power over our lives makes even that alternative alluring.
The closest political exponent of Rockwell's view is Ron Paul. The closet political exponent of the opposite, the return to limited government, is Rand Paul.
Were I to chose between the two, I believe any hope for the nation resides in Rand Paul as the only articulate voice of opposition to the current plague of Socialism ravaging our nation and the world. Now how Rand Paul would prevent our society -- if he could reverse it to the original credo -- from committing the same errors again, is something I would like to hear him elaborate at.
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