Are We Too Stupid to Be Free?

I read a lot of libertarianish blogs and am gung ho for freedom myself. One thing that troubles me, though, is how the free society is supposed to work when we are such idiots. I know from my anthropological studies that mankind lived without much government for most of our existence, but it does not take much to run a foraging band or a smallish group practicing subsistence agriculture.

But in our complex world, are we smart enough to govern ourselves? Half of us are below average in IQ. And average folks and those in the first standard deviation clustered around the average don't really strike me as rocket scientists or philosophers. I fear that we could have a free society on Sunday and by Wednesday some wicked operators will have worked up my idiot conspecifics into recreating a powerful state. Propaganda travels fast, and we are so used to turning to the state to solve our problems, that it would take the slightest overexaggerated threat to get us to vote ourselves into subjugation.

The first problem libertarians should address then, if they ever hope to live in a free society and to keep one if they can create it, is to come up with a set of libertarian memes that even the stupidest of us can work with and act upon. I would place my bets on a religious basis for libertarianism as the most likely to succeed and sustain itself. If it's what God wants, the sheeple will at least pretend to go along with it out of fear of hell mainly.

So all you atheist and anti-religious libertarians out there should adopt Christianity as an example to your inferiors and work with the Christian libertarians to figure out a way to tie libertarianism to Christ. Remember how the Israelites clamored for a king even though God warned them against it? That was God announcing his libertarianism. Remember the Commandments against stealing and killing? That was God for private property and non-aggression. Remember God telling the Israelites to kill the Canaanites? Forget that, we have the New Testament now, and Jesus was firmly in the non-aggression, property respecting libertarian camp.

Even wingnut fundamentalist Christians can be won over. They can hate homosexuals and secular humanists to their hearts' content in the free society. They can coalesce into compounds of like minded wingnuttery and live their version of the righteous life in peace. And they won't have to worry about teaching evolution in public schools-- there won't be any public schools!

And liberal Christians will get on board when they realize that they will have so much more disposable income thanks to low taxes that they can fund the good works and charitable concerns they care so much about.

I have convinced myself, and perhaps some of my imaginary readers, that a Christ based libertarianism is a must if we are ever to achieve and maintain liberty. We will never be able to make a convincing intellectual argument for libertarianism because there is insufficient intellect to engage.