Does Natural Law Lead to the Conclusions of the Tea Partiers and Libertarians like Ron Paul?

The Tea Party bases all of its core assumptions on the idea of natural law. “We hold, as did the founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual.” See the Tea Party Principles.

What is natural law in the minds of the Tea Party? They don’t ever spell it out very much. When they do they refer often to the Declaration of Independence. “We hold that that United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted "unalienable rights" by our Creator. Chiefly among these are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

This all sounds good. After all who can question the Declaration of Independence and the language of Thomas Jefferson?

I’ve been poking at the Tea Party idea of natural law already and there is much to poke at. Here I want to show that even if you did accept natural law as a foundation for a good society (and I don’t for reasons I’ll blog about later), you still wouldn’t necessarily draw the conclusions that the Tea Party does. In other words, the foundation the Tea Party philosophy in natural law does not necessarily lead to the understanding of “Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets” and all the other core principles that motivate them. This means that their founding assumption and philosophical premise does not lead to the conclusions they derive from it.

The point is easily proven simply by noting that thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes endorsed a notion of natural law and came to the very opposite conclusion. Starting from ideas of natural law and natural rights he argued that government in the form of a sovereign should be all powerful and have absolute control. The notion of natural law, by itself, therefore does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that government must be small and individual rights must be maximized. Interestingly enough, Thomas Hobbes is often credited with initiating the modern notion of natural rights which ultimately culminates in the writings of John Locke and even the American Founders.

Tea Partiers might say that the Hobbesian view of natural law is wrong. The Declaration endorses a different view of natural law, put forward by someone like John Locke in the Second Treatise on Government. Indeed many people say that Thomas Jefferson’s language in the Declaration was dependent on John Locke ideas. (I’ve taken up this discussion in my recent book, Liberty in America’s Founding Moment.)

It is true that starting from the idea of natural law, John Locke arrives at different conclusions than Hobbes. Locke argues that government cannot infringe the natural rights that individuals have in the State of Nature. The Lockean view on the face of it looks like the Tea Party and Libertartian understanding of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” But that initial assumption is misleading. In fact, it is not true that Locke ends up where the Tea Partiers or libertarians such as Ron Paul do. To begin with, Locke argues that to enter society you have to give up certain rights that you have in the State of Nature. For Locke, the entrance into society and becoming part of the social contract entails a sacrifice and compromise. You have less liberty than you did outside of society. But the sacrifice is worth it because you benefit from being part of a community. Loss of some liberty is the cost of being a social creature. The notion that sacrifice is required to be part of a community has for the most part disappeared completely in the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers, Republicans and Libertarians.

Furthermore, once in society, according to Locke, one has to live by the decisions of the majority. And Locke sees the decisions of the majority as the way in which “taxes” are decided. Locke does not say “government has to be as small as possible.” He says only that government can’t take away the natural rights of people and he clearly thinks that taxes are something that is determined by the majority. This means that what constitutes legitimate taxation is a majority decision. Government can take taxes based on what the community defined as a majority thinks is right. There is no way, without consulting the majority, to say what is by definition constitutes too much spend by government. One may conclude that our government spends too much, but in the natural rights tradition, as formulated by Locke, the way to implement that view is through the election process.

When the colonial Boston Tea Party threw the tea into the sea they did so because they had no vote at all on the taxes that were being imposed on them by Great Britain. They wanted representation in a legislature that would determine what taxes would be imposed upon them. Today’s Tea Party has full participation in the legislation and government. To claim that today’s government compromises liberty is a misinterpretation and even perversion of both the founders’ intent and Locke’s views on which they may have been founded.

Is Natural Law the only basis for sound government and just human relations?

The Tea Party of Montana lists “The 28 Principles of Liberty” . http://www.freedomlibertyteaparty.com/Principles-of-Liberty.html

The first of these is as follows:

1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is
natural law.

The Tea Party of Montana says explicitly that “natural law” is the “only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations.” Not all of the Tea Party advocates say that “natural law” is “the only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations.” But enough do that it is worth making explicit why this claim is not only wrong but an attempt to smuggle in a host of other assumptions about God and religion.

To begin with, the term natural law is itself complex and books have been written about it. Typically natural law is contrasted with the natural rights tradition that emerged from it in the seventeenth century.The natural law tradition is typically associated with Thomas Acquinas and other Christian and Jewish religious thinkers because it places God at the center of the philosophical system. This tradition is known for reconciling Christian and Jewish views of God with Greek philosophical ideas. In this tradition, God’s Reason, as understood by a reading of Scripture, and the Laws of Nature are one and the same thing.

The Natural Rights traditional is typically associated with the emerging modern tradition in the seventeenth century and associated with thinkers such as Grotius, Hobbees, Pufendorf and John Locke who build on but fundamentally transform some of core religious assumptions in the natural law tradition. Typically, when people say that the natural rights tradition is at the heart of the American vision, they are assuming that the American founders were influenced by the natural rights tradition, particularly the work of John Locke among others.

The notion of natural rights is itself problematic and arguably not at the heart of the American founders’ vision, as I detail elsewhere. But the Tea Partiers who claim that natural law is at the heart of the American vision are attempting to smuggle in a very traditional Christian and Jewish view of God that clearly was not at the heart of founders’ writings. So when they say “natural law” is the only reliable basis for sound government lets not be mistaken. They are claiming that only a society with a religious conception of God can have a sound government. To this I say, give me liberty or give me death!