Does Our Weakness Matter?

by Robert Higgs

Thucydides tells us that "the strong do what they will, while the weak suffer what they must."

We recall these words even after 2,400 years because they have the ring of truth. And a hard truth it is, especially for those of us who cannot but regard ourselves as ensconced among the weak. As we look about, we see that the strong, who control the state, are rampaging in every jurisdiction and, sure enough, in countless ways the weak are suffering the consequences of these destructive rampages.

Libertarians habitually indulge in wishful thinking. We live in a country where freedom is under relentless attack in ways too numerous even to categorize easily. Governments at every level seem determined to crush each remaining molecule of liberty, and, worst of all, most of the citizens readily accept, when they do not affirmatively demand, the suffocation of freedom wherever it dares to raise its head. Schumpeter foresaw our present situation with clear eyes when he wrote in his diary: "Humanity does not care for freedom. The mass of the people realize they are not up to it: what they want is being fed, led, amused, and above everything, drilled. But they do care for the phrase." Ah, yes, "land of the free"―try to utter that phrase three times without breaking down in laughter or weeping. Yet libertarians are constantly seizing on some little tactical retreat by Leviathan or some little endorsement of liberty and describing it as the beginning of an imagined "revolution."

What are they thinking? Few friends of liberty are willing to recognize forthrightly just how formidable are the legions that oppose us and therefore how close to hopeless is our cause. In the United States today the enemies of liberty have both the big battalions and the big bucks.

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