I would first like to thank Steven Smallpage for his thoughtful criticism of my first column.
I would also like to address his concerns, because it seems as though he has mistaken Libertarianism with Anarchism. On his first point, that the state arose to protect our rights and that in the state of nature those rights are not protected, I am in complete agreement. It is the proper role of the state to protect our negative rights - that is, those rights that do not require action from others in order to be realized. These rights include, as Smallpage pointed out, the right to liberty and property. It is the state's enforcement of positive rights, which provide for some citizens by forcibly taking from other citizens, which I protest. Limiting the scope of government to the protection of negative rights would not lead us back to the state of nature, as Smallpage implied.
The idea that the state grants rights and freedoms as opposed to protecting natural rights that are intrinsic to humanity is a philosophical debate that I do not have time to address. I would, however, imagine that few people think that rights are "the property of the state to wield with absolute power" as Smallpage states. As far as Smallpage's concerns with economic liberalism, he is again correct when he asserts that the government has the right to tax the citizenry in order to finance the public good. However, the public good refers to things that must be owned in common. Therefore, the state cannot, in the libertarian view, redistribute wealth between citizens. I hope that this response has set the record straight. Libertarians believe in a limited government, not no government at all.
Erin Wildermuth is a libertarian columnist for The Eagle. This week she writes a response to a letter to the editor that The Eagle printed on Sept. 21.
