Tyranny, Natural Law, and Secession Geoffrey Plauche Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2004 Tyranny, natural law, and secession Geoffrey Plauche Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Plauche, Geoffrey, "Tyranny, natural law, and secession" (2004). LSU Master's Theses. 4275. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4275 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TYRANNY, NATURAL LAW, AND SECESSION A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Political Science by Geoffrey Allan Plauché B.A., Louisiana State University, 2002 August 2004 Acknowledgments Until I undertook to write this thesis, I had never written a paper over thirty pages long. Needless to say, this has been a learning experience for me. Though the usual disclaimer regarding any and all errors remaining in this thesis applies, I could not have completed it without the advice and support of my major professor, Dr. James Stoner. I have also benefited immeasurably from the advice and expertise of the other members of my thesis committee, Dr. Ellis Sandoz and Dr. Cameron Thies. Despite our many differences, Dr. Kevin V. Mulcahy has become a loyal friend and I treasure our spirited debates on matters of the mind. I must also acknowledge my parents, family, and friends, without whom I would not be who I am today. Last but certainly not least, my lovely fiancée, Sajida Begum, has been my island of sanity while writing this thesis, especially during those times when it seemed I was in over my head. My deepest thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support, and for putting up with an intransigent wild- eyed radical such as myself. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………...ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...iv Chapter I. Introduction…….………………………………………………………………1 II. Natural Law and Natural Rights……………………….………………………5 III. Étienne de la Boétie on Tyranny, Voluntary Servitude, and Civil Disobedience…….………………………….25 IV. The Role of Religious and Political Ideology in the American Revolution and Founding..………………………………….49 V. Post-Founding and the War of Southern Secession…………………………108 VI. A Radical Libertarian Critique of the State …...……………………………138 VII. Conclusion………...………………………………………….……………..160 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………162 Vita…………………………………………………………………………………......167 iii Abstract This thesis is an examination of the problem of tyranny from the perspective of radical libertarianism. History is to be seen as a race and conflict between liberty and power. After a brief introduction, the second section of this thesis is devoted to sketching out a natural law and natural rights theory. With this as the foundation, the third section analyzes the seminal work of Étienne de la Boétie’s The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude in which he elucidates the nature of tyranny and the psychology of subjection. All governments, even the worst tyranny, rest upon general popular acceptance. Religious and political ideologies serve as the justification and motivation for resisting tyranny. The role of ideology in revolutions, and the perennial conflict between liberty and power, are illustrated in the fourth and fifth sections in the context of the American Revolution and Founding, and Civil War. The sixth section sketches a radical libertarian critique of the State as inherently tyrannical and counterproductive to the goal of securing individual rights and social prosperity. iv I. Introduction But O good Lord! What strange phenomenon is this? What name shall we give it? What is the nature of this misfortune? What vice is it, or, rather, what degradation? To see an endless multitude of people not merely obeying, but driven to servility? Not ruled, but tyrannized over? These wretches have no wealth, no kin, nor wife nor children, not even life itself that they can call their own. They suffer plundering, wantonness, cruelty, not from an army, not from a barbarian horde, on account of whom they must shed their blood and sacrifice their lives, but from a single man; not from a Hercules nor from a Samson, but from a single little man. – Étienne de la Boétie, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, c. 1552- 531 WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. 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. – Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776 1 Étienne de La Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, translated by Harry Kurz with an introduction by Murray Rothbard, (New York: Black Rose Books, 1997), pp. 47-48. Boétie is pronounced “Bwettie” with a hard t. 1 Lord Acton once said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”; he continued, “Great men are almost always bad men.”2 This last might strike one as a curious statement, until one remembers that even Nero and Julius Caesar were deeply mourned by their people. Tyrants are not always recognized as such by their own people or even by subsequent generations. This can be explained by a failure to understand the nature of tyranny and the value of liberty, which brings us to the underlying theme of this essay: the problem of tyranny. To quote Murray Rothbard, “why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?”3 For this is the fundamental insight of the sixteenth century Frenchman, Étienne de la Boétie, and the driving concern of his Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, that all governments are grounded on the consent of the governed, on general popular acceptance, even the worst tyranny.4 Tyranny is a perennial danger for mankind, recurring again and again throughout history, and it has been a subject of discourse for many great thinkers from the ancient Greeks to the present. The traditional conception of tyranny is twofold; it is either 1) the usurpation of rightful power (typically the usurpation of a republic), or 2) government against the “laws” (defined variously as customary law, divine law, or natural law), or both. This traditional conception of tyranny focuses on the means by which the ruler 2 Lord Acton, letter, 3 April 1887, to Bishop Mandell Creighton (published in The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton. Louise von Glehn Creighton, ed. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913). 3 Murray N. Rothbard, “The Political Though of Étienne de La Boétie,” in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, p. 13 (emphasis in original). I tend to agree with Rothbard that La Boétie cuts to the heart of not merely the central problem of tyranny, but “of what is, or rather should be, the central problem of political philosophy: the mystery of civil obedience” (Ibid.). 4 David Hume independently discovered this principle two centuries later: “Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.” (David Hume, “Of the First Principles of Government,” in Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (London: Oxford University Press [1966, c1963])).