There is a phenomenon among intellectuals that is called beröringsskräck in Swedish. There is no precise translation; it refers to a person’s fear of speaking of something, of delving into it intellectually, dreading causing a debate that he or she is not ready to take. In rustic American parlance, we often talk about ‘opening a can of worms’, but rather than focusing on what one might find when opening the proverbial can, beröringsskräck emphasizes a person’s feelings of self-doubt that keeps him or her from even wanting to open the can in the first place.
Ever since I moved to America 21 years ago, I have been amazed at the beröringsskräck that this country’s libertarians show when it comes to policy practice. Conservatives show notably more courage in this regard; the reason, while easily explained by a common belief in God among conservatives, is of no real consequence here. The lack of practical intellectual prowess among American libertarians has puzzled me for many years.
Sometimes, a publication comes along that promises to take libertarianism beyond the smoke-filled rooms of pure theory. Therefore, it was with the hopes of finding a libertarian who has overcome his beröringsskräck that I opened Alexander Salter’s 99-page pamphlet The Spirit of ’76: Libertarianism and American Renewal. Salter is a prolific columnist and has produced a couple of books along the way, one of them being the Catholic-inspired Political Economy of Distributism. He is an economics professor with Texas Tech University, which explains his bias toward at least touching upon economic issues in his writings.
When you want to get into the arena of public policy or public affairs, and when you aspire to turn your ideological convictions into policy reform, it certainly helps to be trained in economics. This is true especially for those of us who belong in the right-of-center arena: for a good century now, our socialist ideological adversaries have used economic policy as leverage to socially and economically transform both Europe and America. Without proper understanding how economic policy can be used in our favor, conservatives and libertarians will never be able to move from theory to reality.
Salter sets a clear goal for himself in the introduction to his pamphlet. His ambition with this collection of op-eds, originally published in a local newspaper in Lubbock, Texas, is clear:
I wanted to explain the philosophy of liberty in terms everybody could understand. Public affairs shouldn’t be the domain of political operatives and intellectuals. Self-governance is essential for liberty; public deliberation about important issues and ideas must be the domain of the many, not the few.
Self governance means taking control over government policy making. Therefore, Salter aspires to guide voters and taxpayers to go into politics and turn libertarian theory into actual policy.
Again, this is a respectable ambition worthy of support. The problem with this pamphlet is that the author does not deliver as promised.
That does not mean the pamphlet is without merit. I would recommend it to any high-school student who is making his or her first foray into political theory. One of Salter’s strong points is that he spends about two thirds of the pamphlet presenting well-known talking points about the American founding, the constitution, and the central concept of libertarianism. He does so crisply and with an easily accessible terminology.
The problems for Salter begin when his beröringsskräck slams the brakes on his foray into public affairs. He simply does not dare to take his ideological views all the way into the political arena; as a reader, it is easy to get the impression that Salter is a bit scared of having to defend the legislative reforms that he would smith from his ideological iron.
As a result, he offers an unremarkable list of policy ideas, while failing to explain to his reader how those ideas translate libertarianism into policy practice.
One could defend his lack of clarity here with an expectation that the reader make the connection. That would be reasonable if Salter wrote for an audience who already has some understanding of libertarianism in theory and practice. However, with his target audience clearly being political novices, a higher level of pedagogical rigor is to be expected.
After having spent two thirds of his pamphlet explaining libertarian concepts and theorems, Salter gets to work on what he refers to as “American liberty in the 21st century.” In nine brief parts, he brushes on an assortment of policy issues. This is where the reader would expect to find reform ideas that are concise from a legislative viewpoint, and clearly libertarian in their foundations.
Alas, Salter does not deliver. When talking about how to “keep government small and local,” his only tangible idea is to replace the federal government’s environmental bureaucracies, primarily the Environmental Protection Agency, with “a simple pollution tax”. He wants green bureaucrats to no longer identify and regulate environmental problems. Instead, they should identify them and tax them.
No shrinking government, just rearranging its deck chairs.
It gets better, though. After having turned envirocrats into tax collectors, the good libertarian suggests that Texas—his home state—should adopt a fully funded school-choice model from Arizona. Known as Educational Savings Accounts, ESA, in its original form, this model simply backpacks school funding with the kid.
This is a good idea. I had the opportunity to use a comparable version of individual school funding when I lived in Denmark. I used it to put my son in a private school. A few years ago, while working for a state policy think tank in Wyoming, I explained the principles of backpack school funding to a legislative committee (a version of the presentation is available here). I am therefore glad to see this reform included in Salter’s book; he does indeed do a favor for a young student interested in the elements of libertarianism.
He does not explain clearly how the ESA is true to libertarian ideals—it is after all still a government school funding monopoly—but the fact that he includes it gives the political novice something to think about.
After his welcome contribution to the ESA debate, Salter returns to his trajectory of casually chatting about policy. His next policy reform idea is probably his least thoughtful, yet it is one that he shares with many other libertarians. For incomprehensible reasons, there is an obsession among many on the right with the privatization of money. After criticizing the excessive monetary expansion in the United States in 2020-21, Salter explains:
In truth, we don’t need a central bank at all. A free market for money and finance works just as well as for pizza, laptops, and sportscoats.
I will resist the temptation to explain monetary theory to Dr. Salter. The implicit idea behind this paragraph is more banal than that: with competing private currencies, the argument goes, there will be no path to excessive monetary inflation. If one currency is devalued by excessive supply, people will switch to another. As I explained last year in my analysis of the crypto-currency phenomenon, this is a reasonably good theory.
Unfortunately, it falls apart the instant government begins to collect taxes. Government is not going to want taxes paid in multiple currencies, nor is it going to spend money in multiple currencies. It is no more convenient for the government to receive Bob’s Cash alongside Salter Dollars than it is to let people pay income taxes in Canadian dollars as well as our own beloved greenback.
The tax collector will settle on one currency, and since everybody is forced to pay taxes (even in Salter’s world where there is also a “simple pollution tax”), everybody will want to do their own private transactions in that currency. It makes life a lot easier and your finances more predictable, especially when your taxes are due.
I wish libertarians would stop obsessing over monetary competition as a means to increase liberty. The reasons for monetary over-expansion have nothing to do with monetary policy—they are external to our central banks. However, Salter’s pamphlet makes me convinced that he, like other libertarians, is afraid to address the real problem: the massive welfare state that consumes 70% and more of government spending both in the United States and in Europe.
Salter touches upon the welfare state, but his beröringsskräck reveals itself in that he uses the term “entitlement state” for it. Perhaps this is in part the result of Salter not investigating the ideological origin of the welfare state. Regardless, his discussion of big, redistributive spending programs does not lead the reader to see how libertarianism can be used to reform away these socialist programs.
In fairness, he does want to “stop” Social Security, the retirement benefit program that is also the largest entitlement program in the federal government’s budget. However, he offers no path to its termination; staying true to libertarian tradition, he simply demands a stop to the checks that retirees get, without a reform that will allow the country to transition into an alternative model. (For a more libertarian option, see this collection of policy reform ideas.) As for Medicare, a federal entitlement program that provides health insurance for retirees, Salter simply wants to transfer its funding and operation to the states.
At least Salter admits that this is not a very libertarian idea.
The problem for libertarians is not that their ideology cannot inspire policy reform; for many years, I considered myself a libertarian and worked hard to develop reform ideas based on that ideology. My disagreement with libertarianism as a political theory notwithstanding, I would welcome serious, ideologically founded, and practically useful policy-reform ideas from libertarians. A vigorous debate about well-founded alternatives is the only way to make sure the most sustainable solutions rise to the top.
The problem for libertarians is their lack of courage in terms of policy reform. This is what makes “The Spirit of ’76” feel like a half-baked pie with some policy-reform cherries thrown on the top for good looks. Salter clearly wanted to help his reader transform political theory into political practice, but when it was time to get to work on those reforms, his beröringsskräck stood in the way.
