Setting the Stage for American History: Liberty vs Power in Europe and England
My own basic perspective on the history of man, wrote Murray Rothbard, is to place central importance on the great conflict that is eternally waged between Liberty and Power, a conflict that was seen with crystal clarity by the American revolutionaries of the 18th century. I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.
Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear. And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence: the State. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (2)
jeffrey
This is an amazing article by Rothbard - one of those treasures that would have been enough for one intellectual to write in an entire lifetime and it is represents the tiniest fraction of his output, and probably the least known fraction as well. Amazing.
Published: March 14, 2008 7:53 PM
Paul Marks
Jews were expelled from England in 1290 - rather than in the 14th century, but what Rothbard writes is close enough. When a person is writing about such a long period all sorts of things are bound to come up.
More importantly, there was a reason that Tudor (especially Elizabethian) regulations had much less effect in England than similar regulations had in, for example, Spain.
There was a relative lack of ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE to enforce them in England.
As late as the 1830's local government in towns was a matter of "closed corporations" who were often not wildly interested in enforcing statism (although they did do some damage), concentrating on formal dinners and other such instead (the City of London Corporation, that covers the "square mile", is the last of this sort of government - it exists to this day). Indeed right up to 1875 there was no great statute demanding that local government do lots of statist things (although many of the new councils created by the Act of 1835 choose to do various things).
And national government relied upon unpaid Justices of the Peace to enforce its regulations in most parts of the country (again the formal Civil Service, with its examinations and so on, is a Victorian invention - and there was no English version of the French Prefects in local areas).
This led to a lot of statism being a dead letter - especially in the north of England far from London. As local landowners (which is what J.Ps. tended to be) had other concerns than enforcing the rules and regulations from London - if they even bothered to read such old Statutes.
The admistrative structure in such nations as France and Spain was different.
Published: March 15, 2008 9:38 AM