Individual Rights: The Crumbling Foundation of American Government; R. Higgs

The Natureof Government When we say the word "government," we may mean various things. Sometimes we refer to cer tain institutions, the established rules and pro ceedings by which the body politic is ordered and incorporated into the making and maintaining of collective arrangements for social life. At other times we refer to the particular persons who wield established authority over the citizenry. The two meanings are connected. Government as rulers operates according to government as insti tutions, which people often call "the system." This connection holds whether the type of govRobert Higgs is the Thomas F. Gleed Professor in the Albers School of Business and Economics and Director, Centerfor the Study ofSocial Dynamics, Seattle University. ernment be dictatorship, oligarchy, monarchy, or representative democracy. Governments have existed for thousands of years. Philosophers have argued that they are either natural-it would be inconceivable that humankind not have them-or that people with out a government would be, in Thomas Hobbes's words, so "few,fierce, short-lived, poor, nasty,and deprived of all that pleasure and beauty of life, which peace and society are wont to bring with them," that no one would want to be without a government.2 In Hobbes' estimation, it would be a good bargain for individuals to surrender all their freedom of action to a ruler in exchange for a modicum of peace and social order.

A government, by definition, claims a mono poly of legitimate coercion within its jurisdiction. Every government, ultimately if not immediately, relies on physical violence to enforce its rule. If it cannot do so effectively, it probably will be replaced by another government that can. Hence it is entirely natural that governments maintain police, prisons, and armed forces, whereas Gener al Motors, Exxon, and IBM do not. People some times talk about "economic power" as if it were comparable with governmental power. It isn't. Every government recognizes that people will obey orders more readily if they believe the orders are proper and, in some sense, in the best interests of the ruled as well as the rulers. Historically, a close linkage of the warrior class and the priest hood has characterized most societies. The blessing of religion has givenmany governments a more effective claimto obedience. Whether by appeal to religion or by appeal to secular principles of right or virtue, governments always try to legitimate their actions. This striving after legitimation is the principal difference between governments and mere criminal gangs.

Whether government really is necessary (and a few of us still consider, the question open to debate), once a society has a government, the potential exists for rulers to abuse their power by pursuing their own ends rather than those cher ished by the people they rule. Unchecked govern ment can give rise to tyranny. Accordingly, many lovers of liberty have called government a neces sary evil:necessary because they see no alternative institution to maintain peace and domestic order, and evilbecause the rulers, by virtue of their exclu sive control of legitimate coercion, may over extend their powers at the expense of the well being and liberties of the ruled. RevolutionaryIdeals The men who founded the United States were, in the eyes of the established British government, outlaws-traitors, thieves, and murderers. Ameri cans nowadays so venerate the memory of Jeffer son, Madison, Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, and the other Founding Fathers that we easily forget the raw reality of what they under took to do between.1775 and 1783. They armed themselves, laid claim to authority denied them by established law, and set out to overthrow the established government by killing the men who defended it.

They were not murderers by profession. Indeed, they probably were the most thoughtful, best edu cated, and most articulate band of outlaws in his tory. When they decided to take up arms to over throw the government, they debated their cause at length, and they wrote down in various places their reasons for resorting to killing other human beings, their justification for actions they ordinar ily would have strongly condemned. How did they justify their actions? They claimed that they, in common with all men, had rights, and that in the existing circum stances they could effectively defend their rights only by violence. In 1774 the First Continental Congress made a declaration of what its members 367 called "their indubitable rights and liberties; which cannot be legally taken from them, altered or abridged by any power whatever, without their own consent. .... " They claimed that they were "entitled to life, liberty, and property.... "

Where did the asserted rights come from? They said that they held the rights "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English consti tution, and the several charters or compacts" establishing the British colonies in North America. 3·Again and again the rebels justified their cause by claiming a right to liberty. They insisted that the legitimacy of government required the consent of the governed. The Continental Congress's "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms," issued July 6, 1775, declared that "a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dic tates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.... Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors.... The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will ... employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves. [And finally]in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and ... for the protection of our property, ... we have taken up arms."4 Then, in 1776,the Continental Congress issued a Declaration of Independence. Here is the justifi cation the rebels gave for their actions: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Gov ernment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Declaration continued by explaining that 368 THE FREEMAN • OCTOBER 1991 Howard Pyle drew this illustration of the members of Congress leaving Independence Hall on the occasion of the first public reading of the Declaration on July 8, 1776. Many members of Congress are identifiable, and the dense crowd lends the composition a feeling ofserious common purpose. the rebels had not rashly taken up arms against the established government: Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer,while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abol ishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a longtrain of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despo tism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.