Liberal Tyranny

Dear observers,

An essay from a few years back by Donald Livingston makes a point I always have in mind very nicely:

From 1900 until today, nearly four times as many people have been killed by their own governments as have been killed in all wars, foreign and domestic. This destruction would not have been possible without the unprecedented concentration of power available to modern states. Had Hitler and Stalin been 18th century monarchs, they could not have murdered millions because they would not have had the authority to mobilize the necessary resources. They would have been hedged in by powerful independent social authorities (the Church, the nobility, and provincial powers) whose authority, in their sphere, was as good as the monarchs' and who could be expected to resist. The czar, for example, from 1825 to 1905 executed an average of only 17 people a year. With the collapse of the monarchy and all independent social authorities, large-scale corporate resistance vanished, and Lenin and Stalin could murder millions.

The French Revolution gave birth to the first truly modern state. The storming of the Bastille revealed only 7 inmates, none of whom were political prisoners. The king, who was willing to become a constitutional monarch and refused to use force, was executed; the nobility, clergy, provincial authorities, and an independent judiciary were eliminated. The French republic, in the name of the ‘rights of man,' seized half a million political prisoners. Of these, 17,000 were executed with trial; 12,000 without trial; and many died in prison. The republic, for the first time in Europe, ordered universal male conscription. The armies of the great monarchies had hovered around 190,000; the French republic, overnight, placed a million men in the field. By the end of Napoleon's reign, the republic had conscripted 3 million. Other European states followed suit. As a result of European imperialism, world wars, and global capitalism, most of the world was hammered into the form of the modern state.

Universalist liberalism views the destruction carried out in the 20th century as the result of illiberal forms of government. What is overlooked is that liberalism itself first legitimated the destruction of independent social authorities, and concentrating power to the centre. The French republic was the first modern state, the first government legitimated by liberal ideology, and the first totalitarian regime.

Another essay, by Jim Kalb, helps frame the current status of liberal tyranny:

A man who arbitrarily imprisons me or confiscates my property is a tyrant. Ruling elites that destroy the social institutions and relationships that make me what I am, that attack the family and abolish gender distinctions, ethnic ties, and traditional moral standards, that drive religion out of public life and tell private associations what members to choose and why, are also tyrannical.

Best,

Evan