Yellow Communism

Sorry, Libertarianism is not right-wing.

Libertarians believe in maximising freedom for every person, and define it as the ability to do whatever you want, “as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else”. This might sound like a noble goal at the first glance, but in fact, it is not only left-wing but also an incredibly wrong thing to believe.

The premise of Right-wing thinking, as I have outlined in an essay in February, is belief in human inequality, imperfection and inferiority to God. Humans are not the same. Humans are not perfect, some are more perfect than others but no human is completely perfect. And no matter how perfect you are, you will always be beneath the Lord who created you in His image. Humans have their failings, they regularly succumb to the temptation of sin, they have varying levels of intelligence and agency, which ultimately results in suitability for different positions in the hierarchy, in the Great Chain of Being.

What most think freedom is - the ability to make individual choices and to take responsibility for your life, to own and manage large assets, is like a gun. An intelligent man who is given a gun will use it for virtuous purposes, and, most importantly, sparingly and with restraint, he will never shoot for “fun” except in safe conditions at the shooting range. A dumb man who is given a gun will only hurt himself and others. Even in a country like America, where the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, society understands that certain people should not have guns: children, imbeciles, convicted felons, drug addicts and so on. A person who is intellectually impaired should not have a gun because of the conditions of his birth. It might be “unfair” in the eyes of egalitarians but it does not change anything about the fact that he should not be given one.

Some people are more fit to be free, in the sense of the law. They can take responsibility for themselves, they preserve and multiply anything of worth they are given, they can lead other people, which they have to do as their qualities may help them obtain high office or start a successful business. They are natural leaders. Some can even become Great Men.

But the vast majority of the people are natural servants. They must not command but follow. If you believe that intelligence is the primary factor defining hierarchies, this includes people with average and slightly below-average intelligence. It also includes midwits who can be entrusted with simple managerial tasks but should be categorically kept away from any strategic decisions because they can repeat and apply complex knowledge but not truly comprehend it or produce their own.

Some people can not even manage their own lives. They can be productive members of society if somebody constantly watches over them, tells them what to do, what to eat and drink, when to sleep and wake up, but they will become alcoholics, drug addicts or criminals if given any measure of freedom. And yes, intelligence and many character traits are hereditary, and it is more likely that a person will be suitable to be free if his parents were.

Why should they have any freedom if paternal guidance is what they need to live a virtuous and productive life, if freedom only causes them to suffer and make others suffer? What is the point of allowing somebody to do anything he wants under the pretense that he does not hurt anybody, if he will inevitably hurt himself and others once allowed personal agency? Why should society as a whole incur such incredible costs, just in the name of allowing these people “self-expression”?

Photo by Matt Popovich on Unsplash

Why should the hedonist not be allowed to drown his life in drugs, the libertarian asks. Why should the pervert not be allowed to watch disgusting pornography? Why should the satanist not be allowed to poison his soul and go to hell? After all, it’s their choice, and they will have to bear the consequences themselves.

The key value of the Right is Order. An orderly society is structured according to Natural Law, the Law created by God, the Law that is derived from how nature works. Nature is unequal, humans are unequal, so natural law must enshrine inequality and give different people different rights and obligations. Natural law must give different people different measures of freedom.

This, of course, offends libertarians. They believe that Liberty is the key value of the Right which they claim to be part of. The libertarian version of the political spectrum puts all collectivist, authoritarian regimes on the left, and makes no difference between a communist regime that restricts the freedoms of its subjects in the name of a satanic ideology and a Christian state that restricts the freedoms of its subjects in the name of Virtue and Salvation. The libertarian mind, just like the mind of the degenerate pervert you can see at pro-abortion or anti-police rallies, believes that humans are naturally perfect at leading themselves and naturally always unable to lead others, and that thus, every human should be given as much agency over himself and as little agency over others as possible. This is the left-wing definition of freedom, and this freedom the libertarian wants to distribute equally just like the communist wants to distribute the means of production equally.

Things are different for on the true Right. The leftist definition of freedom is a nihilist one, it denies that living beings can be given a higher purpose which defines their lives. The Left offers every human the choice of a personal telos which is, for those not characterised by a high level of virtue, usually simply maximising pleasure. This is a consequence of the atheistic nature of the revolutionary belief system: if there is no God and nothing happens after death, then surely it is pathetic to accept suffering in this life for some feigned rewards on the other side? The traditionalist view of freedom could not be further from this…

Natural Law, the Law of God, gives all humans a purpose. Every human is to live a life that is virtuous and in accordance with the wishes of his Creator. Freedom in the negative sense is not the freedom to do as you want without being pestered, but freedom from degeneracy, from the temptation of sin, from anything that harms the soul. Freedom in the sense of agency does not mean absolute choice but rather the choice between several paths when attempting to live virtuously.

Humans are infinitely inferior to God, and His infinite superiority over us means that we cannot always comprehend His exact will and know which option is the best and most virtous one. Freedom is the uncertainty that arises from this, the responsibility of every man to try to understand what the Lord wants from him, and to try his best to satisfy God and get closer to Him. The better a person is, the less freedom he has: a more intelligent and virtuous person will be able to determine God’s will more precisely and will have less choices to make because he is closer to the truth. Monks are less free in earthly terms because they strive to orient their lives towards God and spend their entire lives studying how to do so. In Heaven, there is much less freedom, because those who go to Heaven assume a different state in which they are much closer to God and can comprehend Him and His will in better and more manifold ways than those living on Earth.

A perfect man would have no freedom at all because he would know which one of the infinite number of paths that are available to him is the single most virtuous one, and he would be compelled to choose it and no other.

Thus, freedom in the sense of having agency is in no way desirable to the Right. A man of the Right seeks to minimise his freedom by embracing and comprehending the divine Order created for him by God. Freedom is not a goal, it is a necessary evil. Freedom is the absence of sufficient Order. It is, in fact, the opposite of Order!

Photo by Ben Vaughn on Unsplash

Libertarianism denies all of this. There is no place for God in the soul of somebody who only wants to do as he wants. Libertarians want the “right” to live in sin, to succumb to temptation, and moreover, they are egalitarians because they want to distribute this “right” to people equally. Libertarians are egoists because they believe that every man should fend for himself and that it is weak for humans to help other humans, be it by caring for the sick or by trying to save those who live in sin. How can any of this be right-wing? How can the denial that there is universal virtue, an universal telos that should keep society together, have anything to do with Order? How can libertarians stand anywhere but on the Left, in the tradition of the revolutionaries, the murderers of kings, and the godless degenerates who worship “progress”?

Now, of course, you might remind me that not all libertarians are degenerate: didn’t Hoppe speak out against sodomy and such? Sure, there is more virtue among these people than among the average “economically and socially liberal” crowd, but Hoppeans only speak out against sinful acts insofar as they harm society materially, and still speak about “victimless crimes” that must be abolished. Some even want to accommodate the degenerate by finding ways for them to live out their desires while causing minimal harm to society - think AI-generated child pornography or synthetic drugs that bring pleasure while minimising side effects. But there is a difference between the material cost caused by an act and its inherent sinfulness. Sins are, first and foremost, crimes against God, they offend Him no matter whether they also offend or harm another human (this, however, they usually do, even if you think they don’t). Sins are not “victimless”.

To become right-wing, the Hoppean must recognise transcendent morality, and accept that he must pursue order and virtue, not freedom. And at this point, he will cease to be a libertarian, because he will understand that the fight against sin requires the freedoms and responsibilities of those who are more prone to sin to be curtailed and their lives to be put in the hands of the more virtuous.

Not all men are equally virtuous, and assuming that the more virtuous are more likely to make decisions that are closer to natural law, society must be ruled by the virtuous, and must, first and foremost, create virtuous leaders. It is the purpose of society to help its members live a pious Christian life, even against their will, and to save those who are sinful. Those with low ability and virtue must subordinate themselves to their superiors. Those with high ability and virtue, especially the noble, must lead, and not only by example but also by actively making decisions for those who can’t. It is an obligation both towards your superiors and towards your inferiors.

Everybody must recognise the limits of his virtue, so that he can lead those who are below him and obey those who are above him.

And even if you are among the highest men, if you are a king, do not forget that you still have God above you.