A Strange Liberty
Jeff Deist shows us how to dispense with politics and address issues that matter most.
Atlanta, GA
July 20, 2023
Il faut cultiver nôtre jardin.
- Voltaire, Candide
In a speech re-printed in his wonderful anthology, A Strange Liberty, Jeff Deist recounts the story of philosophers David Gordon and Ronald Hamowy leaving a conference at Stanford University.
A “scraggly-looking person”, hoping for a ride, approached them and asked, “which way are you going?”
Without hesitation, Hamowy replied, “The other way. We’re going the other way.”
It’s easy to empathize as we encounter our current culture.
After non-stop servings of sham “science”, ersatz “economics”, racial browbeating, climate catastrophism, nuclear brinkmanship, pronoun police, and purchasing power disappearing like a bad friend in a bar fight, most of us can relate.
But how should we react? Much as we’d like to go “the other way”, how do we get there? Throughout his thoughtful compilation, Deist recurs continually to this question.
I don’t know Jeff Deist. But like many writers and thinkers who’ve influenced me over the years, I consider him an intellectual mentor and a philosophical friend.
For ten years Deist was president of the indispensable Mises Institute, which I’ve supported for decades and try to visit each time I’m in Auburn. He recently became general counsel for Monetary Metals, an innovative company helping investors earn interest on gold.
Earlier this year, he released A Strange Liberty, an assortment of his speeches and writings from the last decade. This compilation resuscitates a welcome worldview in a tumultuous time.
With this selection of essays, Deist weaves an array of threads into enduring themes. Inspired by libertarian theory and Austrian economics, thoughts on money, culture, history, and government are sewn together into a cohesive quilt.
The seam binding the compilation is the notion that politics is poison. Most normal people know this. But they can’t get away from it. Politics infiltrates everything.
The wrong opinion can end friendships, separate families, or cost a career. We can hardly watch a game, go to a movie, drink a beer, or buy a burger without some political fad being foist in our face.
But one of Deist’s interesting insights is that purveyors of this toxin no longer pretend it’s an elixir. Politics, as the book’s subtitle asserts, has dropped its pretenses.
The notion that politicians “work for us” was always a farce. But once upon a time, most of them at least tried to convince us they cared what we thought.
Not any more.
We see this in the ways our rulers speak to us. It’s like a prison warden scolding the inmates.
Regardless the political party or branch of government, officials (whether elected or appointed) rarely hide their sense of superiority or pretend they don’t detest us. Their imperious pronouncements often drip with disdain.
Yet Deist’s point isn’t that we should elect new rulers. Most politicians are ornamental anyway, mere puppets dangling from Deep State strings. The system itself is out of control, and won’t be harnessed by switching the saddles that burden our backs.
But if there’s limited value replacing rulers, Deist does think we need new elites.
Elites are inevitable. Every civilization has them. It’s just a matter of who they’ll be and how they arise.
Are they the “natural aristocracy” Jefferson envisioned, who ascend thru merit and talent? Or is it an anointed nobility of conniving mediocrities, rising like sticky scum thru lukewarm milk?
Our current crop is deeply unserious, thoroughly unimpressive, and eminently embarrassing. They speak in trite talking points, rote sound bites, and stale clichés…repeating what they’re consulted to say rather than what they truly believe.
Which is nothing.
They cause enormous problems, then demand praise because things aren’t worse. It’s like a smoker surviving cancer and then giving credit to the cigarettes.
But it doesn’t matter. We live in what Deist calls “post-persuasion America.” Political leaders and electoral victors once paid lip service to “uniting the nation.”
Now there’s no pretense of representing everyone or conciliating opponents. It’s about vanquishing them. Elections are about which side will lord it over the other.
Despite tired platitudes, Americans aren’t “represented”; they’re ruled. Voting (at least at the “national” level) is a distraction, a secular sacrament designed to convince the anvil it’s actually the hammer.
But while it might be impossible to avoid being nailed, there are ways to not get screwed. Deist suggests subtle steps to separate from the system. Or, at the very least, to shield ourselves from its most pernicious effects.
The way to do that isn’t to concoct grand crusades, bold initiatives, or big plans. We shouldn’t hope some meddling world-improver salvages “the economy” or saves the planet.
Thinking any one person, or group of people (especially these people), can control such enormous complexities is the height of hubris.
Most of us can’t control (or even know about) what happens across town, much less fix incomprehensible messes around the world.
Our task is humble: to tend our garden, and focus on our own affairs. As historian Brion McClanahan puts it, we should think locally and act locally.
This doesn’t mean we should neglect our neighbors. It means we should fortify our families and concentrate on community to help us sustain the place we live.
When real problems arise, this happens anyway. As Deist noted regarding the responses to covid, “When it comes to a crisis, things really get local very, very quickly.”
Deist regularly references the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, that matters should be managed at the most local level possible. As on a depressurized plane, we must affix our own oxygen before we can hope to help others.
This seems like common sense. Not long ago, it was. It’s the basis of the federal system upon which the United States were founded. But the old republic is long gone.
Replacing it is a degenerate empire with deep divides among incompatible cultures. Most won’t be persuaded by appeals to liberty, free markets, or natural law. Such an effort would be a waste of time.
“The task”, according to Deist, “is to reach some people narrowly and deeply, not a majority superficially….[M]obilizing the few is far more important and effective than foolishly trying to persuade the many.”
Deist rightly identifies future-orientation as the indispensable ingredient of human flourishing and a prosperous civilization. Reduced time preference is how robust cultures continue to thrive.
Democracy is the antithesis of this. It’s inherently present-oriented, with voters and politicians incentivized to sacrifice tomorrow for today, to consume the present thru taxes and squander tomorrow by debt.
As Deist said, “It’s been a great party, ladies and gentlemen. Good luck electing someone who’s serious about the hangover.”
Each election, as if to make the point, voters return or recruit a pliable bartender to pour another round. But before long, our parents’ liquor cabinet is bound to run dry.
People in healthy societies build things to last beyond their lifetimes. Often, as with the great cathedrals of Medieval Europe, beauty is crafted knowing only unborn descendants will enjoy the creation.
The overriding economic myth that plagues us today, says Deist, is “the notion that society can do collectively what we cannot do individually: get rich by living today at the expense of tomorrow.”
To take one example among millions, “How many economic decisions”, Deist asks, “are subtly influenced by the knowledge that at least a portion of one’s retirement costs will be borne by others?”
At the starting line of life, we used to think good parenting acclimated children to the prevailing culture. Now it protects them from it.
Throughout these pages, Deist reminds us of the need for truth and beauty. Both have been immolated on post-modern altars, as if ugliness is advanced as a matter of principle, and truth doubted as an article of faith.
Architecture, philosophy, media, music, money, literature, fashion, food, and film have deteriorated to such a dehumanizing degree that we can only assume deliberate intent to demoralize the audience.
It’s like these purveyors of repugnance decided we’re no longer worth beautiful things. These cultural vandals are the scraggly-looking people who keep demanding we give them a ride…while they keep taking us for one.
It’s our job to lock the door, roll up the window, and go the other way.
JD
Thanks for this one as well, JD.