Rushdoony Speaks From The Grave; “Theonomy/Reconstructionism Is Opposed To Movement Libertarianism”

 Lately, in some quarters (like the Natural Law fanboys) there has been a ear worm that has been issuing forth. The complaint they have been ginning up is that Theonomy is inherently Libertarian. Upon making that accusation they then turn a use that accusation as a foundational attack on the whole theonomic movement.

Now, this accusation suffers by being half true and so therefore totally false. It is true that some of those called “theonomists” did indeed embrace what I will call movement Libertarianism. Gary North is the most obvious example. Others, who were originally in Rushdoony’s orbit, include chaps like Andrew Sandlin, likewise had the fault of being more Libertarian than Theonomic. This would include Doug Wilson. We even see some of this in Greg Bahnsen.

However, what might be true of Rushdoony’s Lieutenants was not true of Rush himself. As we will see below by quoting Rush, Rush made distinctions between movement Libertarianism and the Libertarianism that he was championing. Rushdoony, and so Theonomy, is not necessarily Libertarian, though it is true that the 2nd generation Reconstructionists have twisted it to make it so. Because that is true, it is understandable that people would accuse theonomy as being “Libertarian.” Understandable, but still not true.

Part of the problem here is the greater project of Fusionism that occurred in the post WW II conservative movement. The post war conservative movement, in order to build heft, sought to meld together several ideological disciplines into one cohesive whole in order to resist the New Deal Liberal phalanx.  One of those ideological disciplines that Fusionism fused into this “Conservative” movement was Libertarianism. What can we observe here except to say that “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Anyway Rushdoony agreed with the Libertarian principle of limited, diffuse, and decentralized government but Rush did not agree that the Libertarian idea of the Free Market should govern all. Such a conviction would have completely overturned the idea of theonomy.

Indeed, so opposed to movement Libertarianism was RJR that one of Rush’s main foils when he lectures on movement Libertarianism is a chap named Max Stirner. Stirner was an early opponent of Karl Marx, and that because Stirner took Marx’s principle to their logical conclusions — Libertarian conclusions that contradicted Marx’s unitary state. RJR says that Marx hated Stirner more than any of his opponents. Rush demonstrates how Stirner’s ultra Libertarianism (Anarchy) was correct vis-a-vis Marx given Marx’s presuppositions. For that reason, Rush was opposed to both Marx’s collectivism and Stirner’s Anarchy since both reasoned from shared core principles. In brief Rush was not Libertarian except in a very definite limited sense.

One can go to the pocketcollege.com website and find all this out for themselves by searching for “Max Stirner Libertarianism.”

Having laid this foundation, I will give one RJR quote on Libertarianism that demonstrates that the accusation that theonomy is inherently Libertarian is just a unlearned statement though I do concede that many of the latter day Theonomists are more Libertarian then they are disciples of Rushdoony.

Was RJR a Libertarian? You read this quote from Roots of Reconstruction and tell me.

“Reality, in brief was reduced to a particular institution or discipline of which men were the governors or interpreters.

This same fallacy has marked economics, in that all too many free market advocates under the influence of the philosophy of immanentism, have taken this one sphere of law and absolutized it as the only law. We do agree with classical economics as economics (this is a reference to Libertarian Economics of the Misean school), but not as a religious philosophy. When it is converted into a religious philosophy of immanence, it denies validity to any transcendental law of God and to all other institutions and orders of life unless they pass the test of the free market. Free market economics then becomes totalitarian and absolutist: it becomes idolatry. Some hold that the family and prostitution, and normal and perverted sexuality, must compete on a free market basis. Narcotics and good food are reduced to the same free market test. In brief, anything and everything goes, because there is only one law, the free market. (0ne person contends that there should be no title to property, but only the right of access by everyone who is able to command the power and money to take the property, in other words, a free market to power and violence as well.) Any value derived from any other sphere, or any principled judgment derived from a transcendental order, from God, must compete on a free market basis it is held. This is simply saying that the free market is god, and that it is the absolute and sole value in the universe. It assumes there is no God beyond the market, no other law, no other value, than the free market. Moreover, because the free market has its truth in the economic sphere, they sit back smugly, satisfied that they have the key to life. The Marxists no less than other Totalitarians stress one or two partial “Truths”, which they use to exclude all truth and God, and the same is true of those who reduce the world to matter. The free market religionists are really great enemies of free market economics, in that they pervert an instrument of freedom into a form of totalitarianism. It is not surprising that many free market religionists have in recent years been very congenial to the New Left; both are alike in their strident totalitarianism.”

R. J. Rushdoony

1972

Elsewhere in his lectures Rushdoony could say of Libertarianism;