Over the last several years, as we all navigate the surge of the deconstructive radical left and the surge of populism on the right, the meanings of several words and terms—once so sure and so inspirational—have become loose from their moorings. Words and terms such as conservative, classical liberal, libertarian, and even anarchist don’t mean quite what they once did. Even the very directional political terms—right and left—do not mean quite what they once did. For example, would anarchism (properly understood as the absence of governmental control, not as bomb-throwing chaos) be rooted in classical liberalism or conservatism, and would it be on the right or the left?
In his truly insightful and brilliant book, Deleting the State: Requiem for an Illusion, Bridgewater State University philosophy professor Aeon Skoble dives deep into this very quagmire of meaning, looking left and right, up and down, exploring the mundane and transcendent, the humane and inhumane. Coming from what was once a solid understanding of classical liberalism—defined traditionally as advocating free minds and free markets and the dignity of the individual human person—Skoble considers the very necessity or unnecessity of the political order and the political sphere and poses some radical questions. To what extent, for example, does a society need political governance and political governors? Are there things individuals and society, left free to their own devices, simply cannot provide for the public? If not, why, then, do we need the political sphere?
Let’s take, for example, the founding of the American Republic. While not anarchist, it was deeply classically liberal and conservative in the traditional definitions of those words. The Founders were skeptical of political community and coercive power more generally. In every way, they sought to limit political activity. The Founders—all citizen-philosophers and reliant upon history rather than abstract theory—gave us an escape clause in the Declaration of Independence: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Note, it is not just a right, but a duty to throw off such government. Further, of course, the Declaration offered a beautiful but minimalist image of the human person—made in the image of the Creator, endowed with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the blueprint for the republic’s western expansion, represents the most radical limitation on the political sphere during the Revolutionary period. Its Article II notes first that the common law is to reign supreme (thus, a truly conservative aspect of the Founding), but, second, that no association—family, school, business, or church—freely entered into and devoid of fraud may ever, in any circumstances, be limited by the political body or the political will. The Congress, upon being created (or recreated) under the Constitution, immediately reaffirmed the Northwest Ordinance, giving it a status no other law in history has had.
The Constitution, of course, properly understood, is nothing if not a restraining document. In case anyone wondered exactly what the Constitution could do, Amendments 9 and 10 restrict it to just its most minimal functions, demanding, for all intents and purposes, a literal reading of the document. If one has to engage in speculative interpretation of the Constitution, he or she has already failed. Either the meaning is plain, or it cannot be implemented.
Thus, the Founders did everything possible to help civil society flourish by limiting the political sphere as much as possible. Thomas Jefferson, of course, stated what should have been so obvious in his first inaugural address: “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
And yet despite all of these limitations, the federal government metastasized, especially in the century and a half since the Progressive period (1890–1920) began. Under Woodrow Wilson, under Franklin Roosevelt, under Lyndon Johnson, under both Bushes, under Barack Obama, under Joe Biden, and under Donald Trump, the government has become a cancer, uncontrollable and swallowing everything in its path. As the republic became a democracy, arrogance, violence, and imperialism became the norm, with the political sphere a body of locusts devouring all before it. Today, our constitution is entirely distorted (with, arguably, only the Supreme Court serving its original purpose), with government claiming authority over practically every aspect of social life.
And, so we come back to Skoble’s overarching question—just exactly why do we need political authority and authorities? If even the best government becomes Leviathan, through the false gods Demos and Mars, why do we even want such a structure?
Skoble is never crass, and like Socrates, he very intelligently questions himself and others. One important aspect of Deleting the State is its consideration of the various theories proposed by other classical liberal, libertarian, and anarchist philosophers. For example, Skoble wrestles with the ideas of Robert Nozick, Tibor Machan, Randy Barnett, Friedrich Hayek, and others.
Like most of us not on the radical left, Skoble is a better critic than a problem solver. To be fair, though, he never sets out to promote anarchy.
He also realizes, as he’s no one’s fool, that the vast majority of scholars and human beings expect and even demand that there be governments and politics. But, wisely, Skoble claims this comes from what he labels “Hobbesian Fears”: “that without a government, we cannot have society, for we will lack the very thing that makes it possible, namely, a mechanism for cooperation enforcement.” Skoble also realizes, not surprisingly, that the very word “anarchist” is, for most human beings, synonymous with chaos, violence, and disorder. It’s not a word that will easily win hearts and minds.
And, yet, as Skoble points out, governments have been responsible for chaos, violence, and disorder, too. Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that governments and political society are at the root of much of the actual and real chaos, violence, and disorder in the world. Though Skoble avoids specifics, one only has to look at the twentieth century. If scholars such as R. J. Rummel are correct—and I very much believe that they are—governments are responsible for murdering 205,000,000 of their own citizens between 1917 and 1991. Add to this that nearly 50,000,000 soldiers died during that same period, and, unquestionably, the state is the largest murderer of all time.
Or, consider a more mundane point. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted so brilliantly in Democracy in America, the more government takes the place of civil society, the more we citizens lose the habit or even the inclination to do good. Rather, we bureaucratize our charity, thus making it mechanical and devoid of love. Further, Tocqueville reflected, democracies are especially susceptible to a soft totalitarianism, a kind of “Big Mother” or “Big Sister” to smother us in “love” through a myriad of overlapping and competing rules, each diminishing our very essence as human beings endowed with free will.
In Skoble’s mind, the burden of proof for government—that is, “the Hobbesian Fear”—should be on those advocating government. It is up to them to prove that government does what is not possible for civil society to do on its own. And, yet, in almost (but not quite) every single case—whether providing domestic or national protection (think a gated community or a Blackwater), providing infrastructure for public works, or providing education—voluntary or civil society provides it better, more efficiently, and more frequently with respect to the dignity of the human person. Even something as massive and vast as space exploration, as we’ve seen recently, is better provided by the private sector than the public sector. And, again, one must take into account that even the best of governments exists only through the threat of violence against its citizens.
Or, take, for example, the provision of law. The Anglo-American tradition has always held that proper law is emergent, not imposed. Law comes from the bottom up, rather than from the top down. When the Christians first met and proselytized the Anglo-Saxon pagans, the Anglo-Saxons already had a form of common law. We do not know the origins of a trial by jury, habeas corpus, or the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishments. These came from beyond human memory. No one person created them—they were the product of experience, custom, habit, and norms of the English people. When Alfred became king, critically, he did not believe that he had the right to make laws. Rather, he could, along with his Witan (or later Parliament and Congress), only pass judgment on laws that he had inherited. This is radically different from the Roman tradition in which Justinian claimed that law came from his will and his will alone. As English-speaking people, we have inherited the common law and believe that law emerges from our experience.
There is a five-mile road connecting my town of Hillsdale to the town just north of us, Jonesville. About a decade ago, the police were deciding what the speed limit should be. Accordingly, they placed radar guns along the run, determining the average speed. Some folks went 15, and others went 50. The average, though, was 35mph. That became the law. It was not imposed by authority; rather, it was ratified by authority. This, then, is the essence of the common law. One could take this even further and argue, as the Old Republicans in American history once did, that legislatures can never create law; they can only ratify laws discovered in experience or nature. It is worth remembering that the great Anglo-Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, condemned the French Revolution because their laws were based on “terrors.” For us, though, law is an expression of the will of a people as uncovered through history.
In the conservative tradition represented by Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Barry Goldwater, the single best scholar on the nature of the state and anarchism was Robert Nisbet. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, Nisbet claimed that conservatives had more in common with anarchists than did liberals (classical or modern welfare). Deeply influenced by Joseph-Pierre Proudhon and Albert Jay Nock, Nisbet argued that in their criticism of Leviathan, conservatives and anarchists understand exactly how dreadful governments can be. Even more importantly, though, rather than merely condemning politics, they each promoted civil society, seeing the essence of life in our families, businesses, local communities, churches, etc.
Indeed, from 1936 until his death in 1996, Nisbet dedicated at least half, if not more, of his academic and public writings to the dangers of the modern nation-state. Though he labeled himself a conservative—with admittedly anarchist sympathies—no respected or respectable libertarian of the past century could match Nisbet’s vitriol toward “the State.” He despised nearly every aspect of it, considering it an illegitimate manifestation of power, undermining intentionally and unintentionally the very fabric of civic life and humane society as best expressed by persons working in community toward some purpose.
Nisbet always maintained that, far worse than anything that existed in the ancient world, the modern nation state claimed for itself the powers of church as well as of state. These new states, he believed, intruded and manipulated in ways never previously imagined, yet each existed today as progressive descendants of ancient Eastern, Neareastern, and Persian despotisms. Though Skoble’s concise study is nearly perfect, I do wish he had considered Nisbet and Nisbet’s claims.
Like most of us not on the radical left, Skoble is a better critic than a problem solver. To be fair, though, he never sets out to promote anarchy. Rather, he effectively demolishes the scholars who embrace the “Hobbesian fear.” He notes, correctly, that civil society provides common goods and serves the common good—the republic—far better, more efficiently, and more humanely than does the state. The state, by its very nature, devolves and devolves, embracing the false gods of Leviathan, Demos, and Mars. Though Skoble doesn’t put it this way, he would rather we embrace the true and better guide in Logos.
