Writing in the Defense of Liberty
by: James A. Roberts, II



On March 28, James A. Roberts, II of the Review interviewed Joseph Sobran. A native of Ypsilanti, Sobran is a sydicated columnist and frequent speaker.

MR: I think that it is fair to say that your columns have gotten much more libertarian and anti-statist over the past year or so. What has caused this change in your views?

SOBRAN: I guess it was that I felt more acutely, almost week by week, how important it is to seek the rationale of the state and hold it to that. You can't just let assume any and all powers. You have to have an enumeration of powers and then that has to be enforced. All the powers of the federal government that are not enumerated, nobody can police, nobody can make it stick. This is what concerns me most of all right now.

MR: You have questioned the Constitution's legitimacy as a binding social contract. Are all social contracts and, thus, all governments illegitimate and at odds with liberty?

SOBRAN: I'm not sure. Let's put it this way: It's pretty hard to see how the state can actually increase your moral obligation. Basically, you have two kinds of obligations: obligations that are a part of natural law, which nothing can change, and then th ere are contractual obligations that we undertake voluntarily. The obligations imposed by the state don't fall into either catagory.

MR: One of your recent columns praises Lysander Spooner, a 19th century anarchic pamphleteer. Do you believe that an anarchic or anarcho-capitalist society - one based upon voluntary contract rather than governmental coercion - is in fact feasible?

SOBRAN: That's another one I keep asking myself. I think we can go a long way toward it. The Constitution is basically, of course, just a revision of the Articles of Confederation. If you picture the spectrum in which the Articles of Conferation represent one extreme, zero, and at the other end, at a hundred, is the kind of government we have now, the Constitution would be about seven or eight out of that hundred. It's very close to the Articles.

MR: You have asserted that both the Republicans and the Democrats disrespect the Constitution, especially the section that outlines the enumerated powers of Congress. How did both major parties become corrupted with statism?

SOBRAN: I think it is in the nature of government to tend toward corruption of that kind, but the great corruption happened in mid-century. I think what you have is the United States following the world wide trend. What used to be called consolidated gove rnment in our time has been glorified as progressive, especially with Franklin Roosevelt, though it didn't start with him by a long shot. The federal government has maintained the same principle of order as in fascism, socialism, communism, and so on.

MR: Do you believe that the American people have accepted the omnipotent state?

SOBRAN: I think they are resigned to it because they don't know the alternative. They are educated in state schools so they don't know that there is another way of doing business. They would be stunned to learn - most of them - that if the Framers came ba ck, they would repudiate this government as having nothing to do with their Constitution, except in the sense that we still have two senators per state, and things like that.

MR: You just alluded to public education. Do you believe that state-run education has played a role in the promotion of statism in America?

SOBRAN: Absolutely. Not so much in the sense of what you are taught; it is because certain questions are simply never raised, and we tend to become conscientious and submissive citizens of the collectivist state.

MR: Many of your columns have condemned the income tax as being coercive and contrary to liberty. Is the income tax any worse than any other type of tax?

SOBRAN: Yes. We have it much worse because your privacy can be invaded now in a way that was impossible before. The Federalist #45, which I regard as the most crucial and telling of all the Federalist Papers, ensures the people of New York that the federa l government will deal with external affairs - that is, foreign policy, primarily. The federal government will not have any particular power over the internal business of the states. There's no chance that that would have been ratified if people had seen that the federal government would turn against the people of the states and the income tax is one of the chief means by which it does this.

MR: Is there a realistic way to return to truly constitutional government?

SOBRAN: Yes, but it does require a lot of effort. People have to be awakened to what the Constitution really means. I don't just mean original intent; I mean the logic and the inescapable meaning of it and the understanding that prevailed until fairly rec ently. They have to have the will to be free too. That's what I see is missing.

MR: Do you view the current Republican Congress positively, despite its tendencies toward statism?

SOBRAN: Very slightly, but I donŐt expect much of them. I don't expect any real reform from them because most of them don't seem to care.

MR: Do you believe that there is an alternative to the Republican Party, as far as protecting liberty is conserned?

SOBRAN: I don't think the Republicans do protect liberty. I think there has to be an alternative because theyŐre not going to do it. What you really have to do is scare both parties into moving in the right direction. You can't presume that one party is t he vehicle of freedom. You have to make sure they both get the message. I was very encouraged by the last election, but the Republicans seem to have taken it as a mandate for themselves rather than a shot across the bow of both parties. The Democrats are definately worse, but the Republicans have been co-conspirators against liberty, shall we say. They're the accessories after the fact of all the socialist coups that the Democrats make, because they've never tried, until now, to roll back the gains of the Democrats. They try to prevent more sometimes, and in that sense they're slightly credible, but it hasn't crossed their minds until the last few months to actually change anything that's been put in place by the other party.

MR: Do you think that the Republican victory is evidence of a rising anti-statist tide within America?

SOBRAN: I think that there's definately a strong libertarian movement. People are sick of the government now; they regard it as their enemy. I think that will continue. The federal government has been like a huge, mean watch dog, and as long as people fel t menaced by the Soviet Union they were willing to put up with it. But now there's no plausible enemy abroad, so they look at it very critically and they say, "What do we need this dog for? It's mean, it's surly, it eats far too much, and it bites the kid s. Let's get rid of it." I think that's sort of the spirit now. What liberals don't understand is that the legitimacy of the welfare state depended on the Cold War. They thought that if the Cold War ended we could just convert to a big socialist state - b eat the Cold War swords into socialist plowshares, as I like to put it. It doesn't work that way at all. People only put up with as much as they did because they thought there was the threat of worse. Now that that threat no longer exists - if it ever did in the first place - the American people's whole attitude toward their own government changed.

MR: The states' rights movement also is growing. In fact, many Republicans are calling for a shift of power from the national government to the states. Will this federalist approach lead to a greater respect for liberty, or will it simply allow tyranny to exist at the local level?

SOBRAN: So far, the latter seems to be the case because it's just the transfer of federally selected funds along with the administration of federal programs to the states. It's not really states' rights. I don't want to idealize state government at all, b ut at least a state government is a lot smaller than the continental government. And you can move out of one state without terrible inconvenience, but it's hard to leave the whole continent if you've got a single tyranny extending over all. The whole idea of federalism is it's ideal to live in a state with a small physical area, because you can leave, because it requires a competition with other states in liberty. There should be a market in freedom, and the more states you have, the more they tend to kee p each other honest.

MR: In many of your columns, you have questioned the role of democracy itself in America. Do you believe that democracy has failed America?

SOBRAN: It depends what you mean by democracy. Ideally, democracy should mean a system in which because everyone is equal, nobody can enslave anyone else. It's perverted when it means that everyone can enslave anyone else, and thatŐs what has happened thr ough the tax system. A huge part of the population can live off the other part. The average American would be much better off if the federal government just vanished. Instantly, most Americans would be richer and freer and more secure. ThereŐs a fraction that lives off the others through the taxing power that would be worse off. I call this the "overclass" because their income is above the level that they can get in a free market system. These people depend, for their income, on government - on the use of the taxing power against others. So we ought to recognize them as a distinct class and isolate them and deprive them of power. Anyone who receives money from the government should not be allowed to vote, whether it's a farm subsidy or a salary. Governmen t employees shouldn't be allowed to vote.

MR: Did you realy speak with President James Madison?

SOBRAN: I frequently do. I try to keep in touch with all of them through my gypsie contact.

MR: Well, the next time you speak with him, tell him I said, "Hi."

SOBRAN: Gladly.