In a previous post, I found myself saying something I may not have said or thought before. It seems almost trivial or obvious. It could be deep, though. I remarked that Americans had more than enough technical knowledge, organizational knowledge, legal and financial knowledge in order to fashion solutions to the problems being caused by government or supposedly addressed by government. And these solutions by lowering government’s presence and/or redirecting it would involve greater freedom. The obstacle to this I suggested was a lack of goodwill in Washington, not ignorance. This doesn’t mean goodwill between the two major parties, but goodwill directed at Americans in general and goodwill directed at free market solutions and ideas. Washington is hostile to freedom.

Goodwill means having friendly, helpful and cooperative feelings. In the same way that the government at this moment is hostile to Russia, it is also hostile to libertarians, their ideas, to freedom and really to most Americans who could implement free market solutions and benefit from them. Hostility covers a range from unfriendliness and antagonism all the way to malice, malevolence, venom and hatred. It ends up with warfare of one kind or another.

Actions speak louder than words, and it’s my judgment that Washington’s actions are generally very hostile toward free market solutions and thus to freedom generally. This is not going to be news to many libertarians, I’m sure. But stating the obvious has a benefit of bringing it to the foreground and inducing a deeper question. Why? Why is Washington hostile to freedom? By Washington I mean the general drift over decades of the laws that Congress passes, the laws that the Supreme Court says are constitutional, and the great scope that the Executive has in shaping those laws. The hostility is not present in every politician all the time. On occasions that are relatively rare, moves are made that enhance freedom. But the general tendency is toward government actions that reduce freedom and destroy free markets, or hamper them as von Mises would say. Why?

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