What if there are huge fires? What if there are a lot of huge fires? Can a bona fide free society, with its limited government, manage such calamities?
In a recent book I edited, "Liberty and Hard Cases," for the Hoover Institution Press, it is just this topic that is taken up by the contributors. A free society has a government so as to secure our rights, basic and otherwise. The legal system has no business helping out with calamities – earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and, yes, fires. So, then, what is to be done when such disaster strikes in free societies, ones that have a properly limited government? Since there are occasional calamities, the question is important and shouldn't be evaded even in the midst of a calamity.
Of course, in our society, governments have nearly monopolized disaster control. So most of us expect the likes of Gray Davis and George W. Bush to appear when disasters strike. Government has indeed habitually stepped in with all sorts of measures whenever and wherever disasters have struck.
Flood control, fire fighting, hurricane clean-up and the like are all routinely deemed to be its business. Few batted an eye even when the U.S. Army was called out to battle hurricane Andrew in Florida. And the current fires in Southern California immediately call to mind massive government infusion of resources and help.
So, shouldn't those who fight for a free society admit that, well, limited government just isn't going to cut it, after all? What is government for if not to come to the aid of citizens in such circumstances? Even in personal affairs, using physical force can sometimes be justifiable – for example, when one needs to yank an unsuspecting person from the path of imminent deadly danger.
Yet, despite the charge of thinking "ideologically" – for which read: "dogmatically" – one doesn't have to chose between liberty and proper disaster control, any more than one should have to choose between security and liberty. Sound politics requires both principled thinking and proper flexibility in applying those principles to the relevant context.
So, the conclusions is inescapable that even in catastrophic cases, the free society must leave matters to be dealt with to the society and confine government to do its proper business.
What if a fully free society were battered by calamities? Could it preserve its liberty while also handling the emergencies promptly and well? There is no escaping the fact that even calamities, disasters and catastrophes – not, however, wars or massive crime sprees – must be left to private and community efforts to manage, which is why insurance companies and various emergency provisions would handle them, not government, in a free society.
Sure, this would require radical rethinking and restructuring of politics, but that is just what we are taught to do by the American founders, so we should continue their trend and strive to handle such matters without sacrificing liberty, at least eventually.
Just as the South had to get used to carrying on with its economy without the evil institution of slavery, even though this required massive rethinking and restructuring, a fully free society needs to give up reliance of the state's typical method, confiscatory taxation, wealth redistribution and other types of coercion to meet the challenge of disasters. With such rethinking in place, free men and women would readily use their creativity and innovation to meet these challenges, just as they have met so many others throughout human history.
Would I then refuse to call government help if the fire or some other disaster touched me? Not now, I wouldn't. But I would also continue to work ceaselessly to change matters so that such a move could be completely avoided by us all and we could leave government to its proper functions while dealing with our problems effectively.
Tibor Machan teaches business ethics at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. His
latest book is "Putting Humans First" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).