The Dark Ages And Libertarian Dinosaurs
A few hundred years into the Christian era, the merger of the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church blurred the lines between church and state; it corrupted both, injured one and killed the other. Thomas Jefferson didn’t have to be genius to figure this one out; he just needed to be moderately well-read.
The consequence of secularizing the Church while sanctifying the State back in those three-digit years plunged the world into a millennium of misery, ignorance, and oppression – the Dark Ages. I often wonder how far advanced our medical technologies would be today if we had not hit the pause button on science for a thousand years. The medical miracles of 3012 would have been with us today – just think about that for a moment. How sad.
The Church/State monopoly on authority was broken in 1517 when Martin Luther’s theological differences with the Roman Catholic Church caused him to leave it. He did not lobby the State to force the Church to conform to his beliefs, he simply confessed his own faith and left it to individual conscience and belief to follow him or not. Was Luther the first libertarian? Perhaps – his notion of Free Will is indistinguishable from our idea of Volition, save for Divine authorship.
Luther’s protest in Wittenberg ignited the Protestant Reformation, which introduced choice and competition to the practice of faith, revolutionized Western thought, and lifted the world out of the Dark Ages. As it turns out, choice and competition even makes religion better, although my Roman Catholic friends may not agree with me on that.
The Protestants gave us our modern understandings of free will, work ethic, commerce, equal individual rights, and self-evident truths. They also gave us universal literacy, accessible books, the industrial revolution, democracy, private property, private charity, the abolitionist movement, and this great nation we all love.
And this great nation’s first important contribution to the development of civilization was the separation of church and state, the thing that allowed all other freedoms to flourish. Freedom of religion – specifically freedom from government regulation of religion – is the very reason our nation exists. The Pilgrims did not come here for the benefits; they came to free their religion from their state.
The wisdom of separating church and state seems obvious – government is a collective enterprise, while salvation is a personal relationship. The need for both church and state seems obvious too; one without the other has proven to be extremely hazardous to humans.
In the last century, the communists thought religion to be the “opiate of the masses” and banned religious practice outright when they seized power. Wherever it was practiced, atheistic communism imposed localized Dark Ages upon its own people before it started killing them by the millions.
At the other extreme, theocracies like the Iranian clerics and the Taliban banned secular government when they seized power, and the oppression they delivered in the name of God was every bit as harsh as that meted out by the communists who denied His existence.
Humans thrive when secular authority and spiritual authority both exist but are separated from each other; render under Caesar and all that. The President’s decision to regulate the Catholic Church, no matter what other words he uses to disguise his intent, ignores the lessons of history and imperils our liberties unnecessarily. The dispute over contraceptive “rights” is a contrivance intended to divert attention from the Constitutional challenge he has (again) laid down.
Libertarians are purists who believe in complete freedom of choice and complete responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Conservatives balk at the former and liberals gasp at the latter; that’s how you can tell us all apart. We are also purists when it comes to Constitutional constraints and the separation of powers that keeps us free.
We don’t apologize for those “extreme” positions. The big lie of the progressive century is that group entitlements and group consequences have made us a better people than we were when we were individually free and personally responsible – i.e. when the libertarian dinosaurs still roamed the nation in large herds.
We are not better; we are less giving, we are more violent, we are less tolerant, we are less educated, and are weaker of mind and lower of character. We have denied spiritual truth and then demanded government fill the void we created for ourselves. Our attempts to sanctify the state have only proven that righteousness cannot be legislated and that government is an inadequate substitute for virtue.
It is consequence – not law – that moderates the human appetite for self-destructive excess. Socializing consequence invites destructive choices, whether personal, economic, moral, or political. If I could force you to share my bar tabs, I would probably still be drinking; if I could force you to share my hangovers, I know I would.
I’m not a Catholic, so it is not my place to tell Catholics what to believe, how to practice their faith, or how to run their charitable institutions. That is the difference between libertarians and liberals – we lack that gene that incites random acts of tyranny passed off as humanitarian do-goodery by people who coo and purr and admire themselves for telling someone else what to do.
But I am a citizen, so it is my place to tell my elected representatives to back off. Government has no authority to regulate church teachings or practice; it is the only duty of government to uphold the Constitution and defend our individual rights. Fix a bridge and go lay by your dish…and leave those Catholics alone.
There are over 600 identified religions, denominations, and sects in this country; the U.S. Government is not one of them. If the Catholics want President Obama to be their Pope and tell them how to run their schools and hospitals, they know where to find him. And he should be available to report for work in less than a year.
But in those few months that he has left, the President should stick to running the government and let the Pope run his Church. And leave the rest of us out of it.
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