Libertarians Should Embrace Responsibility & Accountability

Last week I received a form letter from the leader (actually EVP) of a well known libertarian think tank inviting me to join/subscribe/donate to its cause.  I suspect I received the invite for the following reasons, which are:

1. I am a super voter,
2. Middle-aged, and
3. That I have no party affiliation following my departure from the GOP more than five years ago.

Upon initially reading the invite something bothered me about it, which led me to peruse the invitation and analyze its contents.  I shared my takeaways from my analysis with the leader of this think tank using a lot of his own words in a letter that I sent him last week.  I provide the contents of my letter below.  In this letter I describe my beliefs pertaining to freedom and responsibility, a subject that I said I would write about years ago. I hope you find what I write informative and more importantly, helpful.

Dear EVP:

I received your letter earlier this week asking that I join your think tank (TT). You seek funds for a “more prosperous, free and peaceful future” to achieve the goal of “a better and freer” society. Sounds wonderful, but I believe you fail to:

1. Fully acknowledge, 
2. Accurately disclose, and 
3. Subsequently lead with the most critical element in achieving these goals, individual responsibility and accountability. 

I agree with you when you state that, “our lives would be freer, more prosperous, and more satisfying” when the “exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom…requires justification.” You write “free,” “freer,” and “freedom” approximately 45 times (45x), yet only write “responsibility” three times (3x).  Should it not at least be one-to-one (1:1) and most likely more heavily slanted towards personal responsibility? You even promote your book a third more than “responsibility”, mentioning it four times (4x). Sadly, you do not mention “accountability” of one’s actions once (0x).

As a fellow Vanderbilt University alumnus, I am extremely disappointed in your arguments; you can and should do better if you truly seek to promote liberty. Your lack of appreciation and need for individual responsibility and accountability paints you as hypocrite, which I point out further below. Additionally, your letter preys on our sensibilities and smacks as an opportunistic way to raise funds to pad TT coffers and possibly fund your retirement.

You allude to individual responsibility when you mention the “essence of libertarianism,” but you fail to drive home the importance that all people must act responsibly to protect “the rights and dignity of the individual” those rights being “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.”  You do not even list responsibility as a  “key concept of libertarianism;” its simply embedded in the “rights…of the individual.”

I think you struggle with the concept of right versus wrong and accountability as you derisively use the word, “moral”, when you state, “moral agenda” and “moral codes.” I think I may know why based on how and what you state and if I am right, I regret you have experienced that pain.  I encourage you to have the strength and fortitude to move past that pain and embrace the concept of a strong moral compass (including “spreading equal rights for women, gay people and minorities”) to act as one’s guide.  As you may know, Marcus Tullius Cicero, a well known Roman statesman and philosopher, created the basis of the word “moral” that we use today when he translated works of the great Greek philosophers to help his fellow Roman understand the difference between right and wrong.  You are in a way a philosopher.  Whether you acknowledge it our not, you seek to change our understanding of what it means to be morally right so people have more freedoms and I respect that.

You attribute the loss of freedoms to both conservatives and liberals “endorsing restrictions,” yet does TT research to find what causes led to this effect?  I argue no because you state that TT, “principally focus[es] on analyzing the domestic and international policies of the federal government” as to whether “those policies extend or limit liberty.”

I contend we have increasingly lost our freedoms to increasingly more restrictions over the past 230 plus years because people failed to act responsibly so our elected officials enacted laws to either enforce that responsibility at the behest of the electorate or opportunistically for their benefit.  Some times they got it right, most times they got it wrong because they are human and they may not fully appreciate what is right and wrong as well. Consequently, I encourage TT to focus more on the causes to ultimately improve the effects of legislation (i.e. extend liberty).

As anecdotal evidence, please allow me to describe a loss of freedom that not only my family experienced, but also many other families with school age children in Florida experienced. I can no longer walk my daughter to her classroom through a gate in the fence surrounding the elementary school she attends.  Instead, we must walk further to pass by a policeman prominently displaying a gun to go through the main building (adding insult to injury, the salaries for the additional security are being funded in part from cuts in Humanities).  Additionally, all the classrooms are locked; we have to knock before entering.  You should:

1. Think to yourself that this harks of prison and
2. Concerned that she, I, and other families have lost freedoms. 

Sadly, our loss in freedom pales in comparison to the loss in lives that led to this loss in freedom, which I hope further upsets you, but more importantly, emboldens you to take action.

We lost our freedoms because our elected officials chose to enact a law requiring heightened security at schools following the loss of 19 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the hands of a young mentally disturbed man wielding a firearm he legally obtained in Florida because the State and Federal laws are lax as a result of heavy lobbying by the gun industry as evidenced by its actions of pimping out one sentence of our Constitution to sell more weaponry to increase the industry’s coffers with which to pay executives (a sentence crafted with my favorite author in mind).

I just described many causes and many effects, but what is the root cause? The root cause is a lack of personal responsibility on many peoples’ part, but who are these people?  The people that acted irresponsibly are the:

1. Executives within the gun industry 
• (Promoting gun ownership with nary a word on safety and 
• Seeking to influence our government for their benefit and to our collective demise),
2. People purchasing the guns 
• (Failing to either respect the inherent dangers of owning a gun and or 
• Ensuring other gun owners have that same respect), and
3. Elected representatives 
• (That enacted laws and or 
• Did not enact laws that ultimately benefited their donors and themselves). 

Yet, did the school age children and their parents acted irresponsibly? No! Therefore, who should be held accountable for the loss in lives and freedoms, the

• People that acted irresponsibly or 
• The group of people who experienced losses in lives and freedoms?

The people that acted irresponsibly should be held accountable, yet you do not seem to believe that nor do our elected officials (& some gun owners).

You seem to believe the killing of school age children, my loss of freedom, those of my child, and all the other school age families is acceptable based on what you write.  You, who touts individual rights and personal freedoms, believe that, “politicians and political majorities shouldn’t be arbiters of what can be sold,” which implies that it is okay to promote more guns without requiring responsibility from either the seller or buyer.  Please keep in mind I swore an oath to protect our Constitution when I served our nation as a Naval Submarine Officer. As such, I view you as hypocrite and an imposter, which I attribute to failing to:

1. Understand human behavior (at our root we are greedy, impatient, and lazy),
2. Acknowledge that individuals must have a strong moral compass (that includes “spreading equal rights for women, gay people and minorities”), and
3. Hold people and ourselves accountable for their and our own actions.

Maybe the gun industry is a big donor of TT and you have been corrupted, too. Please tell me it is not so.  Please tell me that I misunderstood your words and took them out of context.  Please tell me that you and TT will:

1. Study and understand human behavior (to better understand the causes leading to bad legislation), 
2. Promote the need for all of us to have a strong moral compass so we can guide ourselves to ensure life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for not only ourselves, but for all others with minimal interference from our government, and
3. Promote accountability.  

I am passionate about freedom – yours, everybody’s, and mine.

Demonstrate to me that you know how to influence behavior to increase personal freedoms and I will donate to TT so you can help create a “political movement that will [positively] change the century.”