The Need for a Philosophy of Liberty
Murray N. Rothbard (1926 - 1995) was one of the foundational thinkers for modern freedom philosophy. In The Ethics of Liberty (1982), he wrote:
"I at no time believed that value-free analysis or economics
or utilitarianism . . . can ever suffice to establish the case
for liberty. Economics can supply much of the data for a
libertarian position, but it cannot establish that political
philosophy itself. Political judgments are necessarily value
judgments, political philosophy is therefore necessarily
ethical, and hence a positive ethical system must be
set forth to establish the case for individual liberty."
--Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (1980)
Bottom line: Liberty cannot be adequately defended from a position of pragmatism. It must be defended by pointing to basic principles based upon the nature of the world and the nature of human beings. Although we can point to the benefits of liberty, we need to consider further the principles of liberty in order to move the argument from specific instances to general principles. The principles of liberty were first expounded by the Natural Law philosophers of the Enlightenment.
The Natural Law
Natural Law is an concept that comes down to us from the Scholastics of the late middle ages. The concept is that there exists a law that applies everywhere because it is based on the facts of nature. This differs from the positivistic nature of the legislation of a particular political entity. Therefore, natural law may be used to criticize and judge among positivistic laws that may or may not be ethical. In this respect, the natural law is the standard by which we can judge the "rightness" of legislation. Since the natural law is based on the facts of nature, then right conduct according to natural law can be determined by reason alone, and does not require an appeal to the supernatural. The natural law, therefore, provides a human-referenced basis for the rule of law and the establishment of justice. It was the assumption underlying English Common Law, and was explicitly the basis for the United States system of government. As such, it was referenced in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.
Self-Ownership as the Basis of Liberty
Scots and English Enlightenment Philosophers wedded the concept of natural law with the ideals of individual liberty. One of the greatest of these, John Locke, said that the basis of human liberty is derived the fact of personal sovereignty. He wrote:
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then, that he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property."
John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Origin, Extent and End of Civil Government, as cited in Murray N. Rothbard (1980) The Ethics of Liberty.
Essentially, if a person owns his own self, then no one else may own him, and thus he has a right to Liberty. To remove his life from him would be an ultimate theft of his own self, and thus he has a right to Life. Finally, as Locke stated, if he mixes his labour with things in nature, he has the right to keep and control them, the right to Property. These rights, Life, Liberty, and Property, derived by John Locke from the natural law, were the basis of the Declaration of Independence. Further, the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were adopted specifically to protect those rights.
These rights are endowed to human beings by virtue of their very nature and are therefore based natural law. They are, as Jefferson wrote, "inalienable." They are not given by government, and government cannot take them away. Neither do they accrue to a collection of human beings as a group; rather they belong to each individual as an individual. Thus no group may lawfully (in the sense of the Rule of Law) or morally do anything that the individual does not have the right to do. No group may violate the rights of the individual simply because it is a group. (That is the essence of democracy, mob rule by the will of the majority, legislating away the natural rights of the individual).