Christian Libertarianism

In my brother's blog he writes in one of his posts, "Many people do not understand how I can be a libertarian and a conserative Christian," and then goes on to explain some of his difficulties. I find it humorous that two brothers, raised with same set of values, can come to totally different conclusions on this matter. Personally, I don't see how a conservative Christian who truly understands the nature and being of God can be anything but a libertarian. I have never found true libertarian principles to be at odds with any Christian principle. This is because, as I my brother correctly stated in his post, that the foundations of freedom and liberty are rooted in the word of God. Our Founding Fathers, true libertarians and true students of the scriptures understood this very clearly. It is no accident that the Declaration of Independence declares that,

"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."

All Christians should understand that life was created by God and all life comes from God. When God created Adam and Eve He made them master's of their own destiny. God could easily have removed the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil from the Garden or in some other way prevented Adam and Eve from eating of it. However, without the ability for them to choose to follow God's rules, they would not be people freely serving Him, but no more than slaves. God didn't want slaves, but sons and daughters. So, God gave Adam and Eve stewardship of the life He created to them. (cross reference this thought with Jesus' parable of the Stewards in Matthew 25:14-28)

This is an important concept because out of that stewardship of the life God gave us, all other Rights can be derived. First, man has a Right to defend his life from being taken from him through the use of force or fraud. When a person takes a man life through the use of force, we call that murder and everyone with sense understands that murder is morally repungnant. Secondly, man exchanges part of his life for wages; therefore his money and those things he purchases with his money (his property) are representations of his life and thus man has an unalienable Right to pursue and protect his property. If somebody has their possessions forcefully taken from them, we call that stealing and most people understand that stealing is wrong. It is never truly justified to take that which doesn't belong to you. This is philosophy is what makes slavery so awful. Slavery forces one man to work (i.e., exchange a part of his life for some other resource/property) but the gains from that work (the resource or property he would have earned) are given to another person. This philosophy is where I make my moral stand against the income tax. The income tax uses force (the threat of jail) to remove wages you have earned by exchanging a portion of your life for some money from your paycheck.

It is important that I note here that I believe (like many liberals do) that is absolutely morally imperative to aid the poor, help the needy, take care of widows and orphans, et.al. However, that is my own personal duty. I must choose to live virtuously by giving my time and my money to helping others. However, if I were to try and force you to give your money and time to help someone else, that would not be a virtuous (I would be stealing from you) act on either my part or on yours. Christian compassion is all well and good, but using the State as means of accomplishing this removes the virtue from the help AND prevents the Christian and the Church from fulfilling their obligation. Government (because it is an entity that uses force to accomplish its goals) is not society. Families, churches, and community groups are society. They are morally obligated to make conscious sacrifices to ensure that people's needs (physical and spiritual) are met. The Government may be able to meet physical needs, but it can not meet spiritual needs. Without meeting the spiritual needs the source of the problem causing the physical needs can never be truly fixed. Thus, by fixing the physical needs, the symptom is treated, but not the cause.

Anyway, that was a tangent. Back to the subject on hand. Libertarianism is not anarchy. Libertarians understand that a small, well-defined government is necessary to protect man's Rights to his life and his property. Our founders articulated this principle in the Declaration of Independence as well:

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 Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"

All my political beliefs start with these two axioms. Any supposed conflict between my political philosophy and my Christian philosophy shows a lack of comprehension of one of the philosophies. In my mind, a Christian can not separate his politics from his Christian life. There can be no separation of church and state in the heart of man...therefore, there can never be a separation of church and state in the entity that derives its powers from man.