Max Borders, program director for the Institute for Humane Studies, writes in TCS in favor of war on Hobbesian grounds: “freedom does not drop like manna from heaven, but is earned drop-for-drop and coin-for-coin by the sacrifices of blood and treasure.” IHS was founded by F.A. Harper who wrote a sweeping defense of peace and liberty in 1951: In Search of Peace (Menlo Park, CA: IHS, 1970; reprinted in Writings of F.A. Harper, V.2, IHS, 1979, pp. 376-99).
Some selected quotations:
Many persons consider war to be an evil, but they support it on occasion as necessary “for the long time good.” But how can good beattained by means of an evil? That defies simple logic. A review of the historical consequences of war, so far as its effect on liberty is concerned, supports the belief that war is an evil and that no long time good results from it. Why, then, do we keep getting into war? One study reports that war has engaged the major countries of Europe for about half the time since the year 1500. What mistakes are made in preserving the peace and the liberty of man? War is conflict on its largest scale. Conflict in all its forms— murder, rebellion, riot, insurrection, mutiny, banditry, war— has caused the death of 59 million persons in the world during the last century and a quarter. Of this number, four-fifths died as a direct result of the larger wars, which are by all odds the major cause of death from conflict. Murders and all the other lesser forms of conflict, though highly numerous, have accounted for only one-sixth of all the deaths from conflict in the world during this period. Conflict probably never can be wholly eliminated, because man is imperfect. But these figures suggest the importance of preventing it from growing into wars.
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There is no escaping the fact that some men have a lust for power. And war or the presumed threat of war seems to surpass all other devices by which a ruler can induce the people to thoroughly enslave themselves under his “leadership,” to lose their liberty and all rights of choice, to answer to his beck and call. Power becomes concentrated at one end of a long line of authority, which at the other end terminates in complete subservience on the field of battle. Edmund Burke said that loss of liberty always occurs “under some delusion.” By some strange twist of reasoning, fear of losing liberty drives persons to enslave themselves and surrender their liberty in the hope of keeping it. It is argued that this is necessary “to protect the people.” How can slavery make them any more brave? This presumes the people to be too ignorant or cowardly to act voluntarily in their own behalf, that they must be forced to protect themselves. It is indeed a strange notion that I should be compelled by others to protect myself. This “self protection” then becomes labelled “sacrifice,” and tribute is paid me, my dependents, and my descendants by those who forced me to “defend myself.” Something is wrong there, somewhere. Power is grasped by the dictator because of the urge to be “great.” Lord Acton, the British historian, said: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”5 He was speaking here of “great” in the sense of a Caesar or of a Napoleon—whose moral degradation was reflected in one of his remarks. After hurrying back to France from a campaign in Russia that cost the lives of over 500,000 of his countrymen, he rubbed his hands before the fire and said: “Decidedly it is more comfortable here than in Moscow.” Perhaps dictators are evil because power corrupts them, as Lord Acton said. Or perhaps evil men gravitate to the administrations of power, as Hayek said in one notable chapter in his book, The Road to Serfdom.6 I do not know which, but it seems certain that a part of the strategy of maintaining “leadership” in this sense is to keep up a series of crises and emergencies and a confusion that seems to demand the action of a strong and ruthless autocrat. “Greatness” may even be acquired by chasing a series of one’s own mistakes, as “leader,” into eventual war— backing into “greatness,” so to speak. It is no coincidence that large-scale wars are the product of dictatorships or of the acts of aspiring dictators. Power is first grasped in internal confusion and conflict; then later it bursts into an external conflict, and the dictator calls for national unity.
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It is frequently said in defense of wartime controls and centralization of power that liberty is a luxury to be enjoyed in peacetime when things are normal, that we cannot afford the luxuries of liberty during emergencies like the present. One who makes such a statement, if he makes it seriously, does not really understand and believe in liberty. He is one who cannot be depended upon to act in its behalf. He is one who will willingly enslave his fellowmen “in order to defend their liberties.” His devotion to liberty is a sham, and he can be expected to conclude later that, if controls and centralized power are desirable in wartime, they are also desirable in peacetime. One who believes in liberty and who understands it enough to act in its defense does so because he considers liberty to be superior to its alternative—slavery in its various forms. Why does he believe it to be superior? Because it is more just, more in harmony with the design of a good society, more productive. This makes it stronger because it embodies justice and those incentives which bring out the best in man. If, on the other hand, he believes liberty to be less just, less strong, and less productive than slavery, he is on the other side of this great issue even though he salutes the same flag and is one’s friendly neighbor. Relinquish liberty for purposes of defense in an emergency? Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness, liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford to be without it—least of all during an emergency. Suppose that a clergyman were to admonish the members of his flock to abandon the practice of Christianity during every emergency because it is a luxury, good only for normal times. If he were to say that, we would certainly believe him to be a religious quack and of negative worth. We would conclude that he did not really believe justice, goodness, and strength to be embodied in religious faith. It is the same with all self-styled lovers of liberty who call for its abandonment during every emergency. They must be counted out of the forces for liberty. Indeed, should they not be counted among the enemies of liberty? The only person who can effectively defend liberty is one who believes in it and considers it to be the embodiment of strength rather than of weakness. All others will do the wrong thing and support the wrong cause when the chips are down. If by this test the defenders of liberty turn out to be few, then the cause of liberty is that much more desperate than we had assumed.
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So the nation goes to war and, while war is going on, the real enemy—long ago forgotten and camouflaged by the processes of war—rides on to victory in both camps. The real enemy is, in fact, immune to the weapons of physical combat used in war. Further evidence that in war the attack is not leveled at the real enemy is the fact that we seem never to know what to do with “victory.” When guns are silenced by the white flag of surrender, what is to be done with the victory? Are the “liberated” peoples to be shot, or all put in prison camps, or what? Is the national boundary to be moved? Is there to be further destruction of the property of the defeated? Or what? The fact that those responsible for the settlements of “liberation” have themselves acquired the disease while administering the processes of war, makes any logical solution even less likely. False ideas can be attacked only with counter-ideas, facts, and logic. There is no other way. It is necessary to realize that an idea cannot be forced into submission by kicking it in the shins or by beating it over the head. Nor can you shoot an idea.
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When at war or in preparation for war, the pattern of affairs in any nation includes all the devices of the socialist-communist state. A centralized power gains control of the economic affairs of the nation and of the acts of the citizens. The armed forces, and perhaps others, are conscripted. Priorities and subsidies, and all such authoritarian devices, become “tools of defense.” Capital and its uses “must be controlled, else the selfish interests of the capitalists will sap the defense of the nation.” Intellectuals and high executives are drawn into the program of administering socialism in the form of these powers and controls, as a “patriotic duty” and amid great fanfare of flag waving. Power, which first was granted reluctantly in the belief of its necessity during an emergency, soon becomes thought of as a virtue in itself and at any time. All this is financed either by taxes drawn from the smaller and smaller remainder of private enterprise of the nation or by money counterfeited by means of inflation by those in control. The entire process of war is always the direct antithesis of liberalism.
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If power be an evil, how can the employment of this evil possibly beget a good? Power can, to be sure, be used to displace one power with another that is greater. Displacing one power with another in this manner does not destroy power; it increases the scope of illiberal power. And if power be evil, this process merely increases the magnitude of the evil. The records of history show how great dictatorships have been built on pleas for defense against some vague, external threat or “enemy.” I see no reason to assume that the eventual outcome of now pursuing similar ends can be expected to be any different here. Democratic processes as such are no protection, as Ballinger so well proves in his book.8 That we possess no miracle of protection against the evil conduct or misuse of power should by now be clear to any person capable of observation. The fact is revealed in a growing and entrenched bureaucracy. It is also revealed by our increasing participation in distant wars—wars sanctioned under the cloak of national defense, but nonetheless the handmaiden of dictatorial power and a factory for the collectivized state. It is frequently argued these days that force must be used to stop aggression before it starts. That is an untenable position. It is impossible for anyone to tell a future aggressor from one who is not going to be one. Such use of force is never justified, and in engaging in it there will have been opened a floodgate of mayhem which, in its release, can be followed logically to the ultimate obliteration of the human race.
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The theme of this analysis has been that liberty and peace are to each other as cause and effect; that war is an evil; that good cannot be attained by evil means; that war is the cancerous growth of minor conflicts, which would remain small if dealt with as issues between the individual persons concerned but which grow into the larger conflict of war as a consequence of amassing forces by means of involuntary servitude; that a person has the right to protect his person and his property from aggression and trespass and to help others if asked and he wishes to do so; that liberty is lost under guise of its defense in “emergencies”; that in emergencies, of all times, the strength and vitality of liberty is needed; that concentrating power in wartime is as dangerous as at any other time; and that power corrupts those who acquire it. Perhaps these are the reasons why war always seems to demoralize those who adopt its use; why human reason seems to go on furlough for the duration of serious conflict, and in many instances thereafter; why liberty seems always to come out the loser on both sides of war. Bentham’s definition of war as “mischief on the largest scale” then comes to have a deeper meaning.
