WendyMcElroy.com

I start with the definition of political office as "a position of power over the lives of others which is usually attained through the electoral process; sometimes the position is appointed by another politician who was elected." So far, it is not clear if the position described is one of just power or not. That evaluation rests on questions such as "over whom is the power wielded?" and "how is it maintained?" If the politician claims jurisdiction only over the lives of those who voted for him or who agreed to abide by the outcome and if his office is financed only by voluntary payments, then there is no libertarian objection to the politician's power. It would be akin to a power-of-attorney through which you transfer some control over your life to someone else. Of course, like a power-of-attorney, you would have the right to cancel the arrangement. The ability to rescind consent is part-and-parcel of what it means to have inalienable rights: the rights belong to the individual, to exercise or not, to assign or to reclaim. The 19th century American anarchist Lysander Spooner explained this limitation: “No man can delegate, or give away his own natural right to liberty . . . or to give to another, any right of arbitrary dominion over himself; for that would be giving himself away as a slave. And this no one can do. Any contract to do so is necessarily an absurd one and has no validity.”

The foregoing description of a "just" politician doesn't describe any currently existing one. All politicians today assume office with the claim of having jurisdiction over the lives of people who did not vote for them, of people who opposed them or did not vote at all. The question for libertarians is: how can one human being properly assume immense power over the freedom and person of unconsenting others. If rights, like freedom of speech and association, are inalienable and equal-to-all, then how can you cast a vote that transfers control over my rights to another person? Especially, how can you do this against my will and over my protest? For a libertarian, the answer is clear. You cannot transfer or nullify another person's rights by making an X on a ballot. All you can do is enable a power-seeker to assume a patina of legitimacy when he claims jurisdiction over and uses force on the unconsenting.

That patina is the consent of the majority, or democracy, which is the sworn enemy of individual rights. In his treatise No Treason, Spooner explained, A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, ... or by millions, calling themselves a government. The “principle that the majority have a right to rule” merely divides society into “two bodies of men” – masters and slaves – and, so, both negates individual rights and cements conflict into society.

Every person who is a politician or who seeks political office is a threat to my freedom and safety. It does not matter whether the power-seeker is a Republican or a libertarian, a Democrat or a tea-bagger. It does not matter whether he whispers reassurances of "good intentions" or crosses his fingers while taking a public oath of office to uphold laws that violate my rights. (With the exception of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution that politicians vow to enforce authorizes extensive governmental powers like taxation.) All that the whispers and insincere public oaths prove is that the politician is a bald-faced hypocritical liar and, so, even less worthy of being trusted with power. The libertarian truth is that no one has a right to assume power over my peaceful actions; such positions of unjust power must be eliminated, not reformed, because they are inherently and systemically wrong.

At this point, an objection often returns -- "but the power-seeker's intentions are good!" Putting aside the bald-faced liar problem, I put no trust in those intentions. A power-seeker's intentions are invisible (I have no window into the hypocrite's soul to verify their presence) while his actions of seeking power over me are on public display. Moreover, the power-seeker is reaching out for a plush tax-paid job with huge tax-paid benefits as well as the elevated status of being a "master." The very fact that he wants to enrich himself by swilling at the public trough should raise alarm bells. Further, power corrupts even well-meaning people. The corruption is an inevitable consequence of holding a position of unjust power: accommodation with injustice changes people for the worse.

Pulling a lever or marking an X may seem to be a relatively benign act but libertarians must ask themselves how a small group of people -- politicians, the political elite -- are able to control and oppress hundreds of millions. The use of force is part of the answer. But, overwhelmingly, their control depends upon the legitimacy that is provided by people who vote and, so, who give the masters "a mandate."

The libertarian solution to government oppression is to NOT to give your consent but to withdraw it, NOT to participate in your own oppression but to withdraw co-operation. In his classic work "Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" Etienne La Boétie advised the average man, "I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces." (For my analysis of La Boétie 's Discourse, click here.)