RALEIGH – One of the key dividing lines between the Right and Left involves the question of intent.
Modern-day liberals tend to evaluate proposed policies on their intended outcomes. Take the Endangered Species Act, for example. Recognizing the potential value of keeping certain plants or animals from extinction, the Left proposed a law that imposed significant restraints on development when an endangered species was detected on someone’s land. Problem solved, right?
Not at all. Once it became known that the discovery of an endangered species on your land resulted in costly regulations, landowners rationally took steps to ensure that such a species would not be discovered. They were being asked to shoulder privately the cost of a policy purported to confer public benefit. Many refused the “honor.” As JLF’s Roy Cordato explained in a Wilmington Star-News piece the other day on the Endangered Species Act, “Instead of creating incentives for people to do the right thing, it does the opposite.”
Classical liberals – who in modern American parlance are called conservatives or libertarians – don’t evaluate proposals simply on the basis of their intended consequences. Instead, they argue for policies that make it more likely people will keep and expand their liberty and prosperity, based on past experience and timeless insights about human nature.
In the case of endangered species, the evidence is persuasive that current federal law is counterproductive. A better policy would be to offer compensation to landowners with rare plants or animals on their property, seeking to make sure they can still make productive use of the property without destroying the species.
The debate about the ESA involves adverse, unintended consequences. That’s not the only way that the Left and Right demonstrate their disagreement about intent. Another involves the question of means. For many modern-day liberals, it is axiomatic that if there is a human need – be it for food, clothing, shelter, education, or economic opportunity – that the proper response is to craft a government program.
But what sets government apart from all other social institutions is its use of physical force to perform tasks. Taxes aren’t gifts. They are confiscated by force or threat of force. Regulations aren’t suggestions. They are commands, enforced by force or threat of force.
Conservatives and most libertarians aren’t anarchists. They believe that there are tasks that require physical force to perform, responsibilities that government should fulfill. But the list of such tasks is pretty short, and good intentions do not constitute a sufficient justification to put a task on the list.
When discussing public policies, the Left typically asks whether the goal is just or noble. The Right asks whether the goal is likely to be accomplished, and whether physical force is a just or noble tool for accomplishing it.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation