April 22, 2016 Show with Norman Horn on “Christian Libertarianism”

Iron Sharpens Iron and the Meaning of Christian Libertarianism

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We've got room for about 20 more men, so register as quickly as you can. Well, today we're going to be talking about something different than the normal theologically driven type of program that we typically do on Iron Sharpens Iron, but as with everything in life, I think it does reflect to a degree on Christian theology, but we're going to be talking about Christian libertarianism.

Perhaps some of you who used to listen to the old Iron Sharpens Iron years ago used to remember that I would have quite frequently on the program my good friend William Norman Grigg, who is a Christian and a libertarian as well, and an author, a former Mormon who converted to biblical Christianity, and today we have a new gentleman on the program, a new guest I should say, who's never been on the program before, Norman Horn, who is the president and editor-in-chief at the Libertarian Christian Institute, and he is the founder and editor of LibertarianChristians .com, the premier website exploring libertarian theory from a Christian point of view, and the main organizer of the Christians for Liberty Conference.

Norman holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Master of Arts in theological studies from the Austin Graduate School of Theology. He also has earned an MS in chemical engineering, a BS in chemical engineering, and a BS in chemistry.

He has won numerous awards for his writings and research in both engineering and theology. Norman is the author of multiple peer-reviewed publications in science, economics, and political theory, and he has been published in many popular venues, including Young American Revolution, Students for Liberty, the LewRockwell .com, and the Washington Post websites, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron.

Sharpens Iron, Norman Horn. Hey, thanks Chris for letting me be here. It's really a pleasure.

Defining Libertarianism as Non-Aggression and the Golden Rule

Yeah, one of the reasons I like to get a Christian libertarian point of view on occasion on this program, I am not personally a fully committed libertarian, but I am very intrigued by libertarianism, and I'm not saying that I would totally continue to reject libertarianism either.

Who knows? He may be speaking to a future libertarian. It's one of those things where I am still investigating and studying through the issue, and I definitely see positives, many positives on the side of libertarianism, especially when you consider the history of the United States and what the founders really were trying to achieve as a government of this country and so on.

So it's good to have you on this program since the vast majority of time during a presidential race like we are going through. We are not hearing too much of a libertarian point of view, especially since the one libertarian candidate who, I guess, even in his own words, describes himself as libertarian-ish, Rand Paul.

I think his father was more outspoken about being a libertarian, Ron Paul, or should I say, I think is, I should say, rather than was. He's still with us. He just wasn't running for president this time around.

But I wanted to talk to you about this. But first, let me also introduce to you my friend and co-host as of late, Reverend.

Buzz Taylor. Hello, Norm. Hey, Buzz. Good to be with you, too. Thank you. I always start out like the nut, okay? I'm here for the comic relief, and I can ask the really stupid questions, okay? But I try to think from the standpoint of listeners around the world that aren't as versed in everything as Chris is.

So if you could first give us a definition,.

What do you mean by libertarianism? So libertarianism is simply a political philosophy that says that we should not initiate aggression against other people. Now, aggression is essentially defined as the initiation of force against other people.

So when we say we abhor aggression and we don't want to have that in our society, what we're suggesting is, for the most part, what other people want to do with their own lives. So what that means for Christians, especially, is that it actually follows very much along the lines of the Golden Rule, and you might say it's kind of the other half of that coin, in a sense.

Whereas we want to treat others in the way we'd like to be treated, as the Golden Rule says, the other side of that is that we don't treat others in the way we don't want to have ourselves treated, as well.

And so that is the prime political value that we espouse. And we think that as Christian libertarians, that that coincides very much with the Biblical principles of how society should operate. Now, that may come across to some people as being a little weird, because we're typically, as more than likely all of us here on this program, are fairly theologically conservative individuals.

And we're used to, as well, kind of meshing that with politically conservative values, as well. But in many respects, try to mesh with those political conservative values, we end up to get that moral code that maybe this isn't the right way of accomplishing, of building a good, there's going to be people who are bad, who are going to do evil, violent things, and we have to deal with that.

But when it comes to a lot of the other things in our society, how should we take care of the poor? How should we take care of economic issues, and health issues, and all of these things regarding business, and just day-to-day life?

We don't need to use a government to make sure that people are moral leaders. And why, of course, take a look at it very closely, and think about it in terms of whether or not maybe this is the better way of thinking.

And obviously, there are different kinds of libertarians.

Sure.

We have the notorious atheist, Penn Jillette, of the magician comedy team, Penn and Jillette. Well, actually, no, it's Penn and Teller, I'm sorry.

That's right.

And quite a brilliant individual, but one who does not believe in Christ. Although I saw a very amazing, I don't know if you have seen it, but did you see the video of him taking a totally different view from the point of view of somebody who is known for liberalism when it comes to social and moral values, and from being an atheist as well.

But he actually highly respected a Christian man who gave him a Bible after one of his Vegas acts. Did you see that video?

I don't believe I've seen the video, but I've heard of that incident that you speak of.

Yeah, you can see that right on YouTube. Sure. But he is an example of a libertarian who might have a lot of views that would reflect yours fiscally when it comes to government spending and all that, and perhaps even involving the United States' role in conflicts overseas and things like that.

But he is a man who has moral and social values that we would abhor, because we think that God abhors them. He believes in basically there should be little or no rules at all with one's sexual conduct.

I'm assuming perhaps he would draw the line with anything involving children or anything of that nature. But he has said pretty much that he believes that libertarianism is the perfect choice for someone who wants the total sexual freedom in his life.

But other than that, there would be some similarities, obviously, because there is a libertarian root here. But tell us about the different philosophies of libertarianism. What would make a Christian libertarian different from a pendulet?

Well, the thing is about libertarianism is that it requires a comprehensive worldview in order to be a libertarian on a lot of different types of value systems that would work alongside it. What it does say is that society is what you want.

And that has a limitation, though, as well. Obviously, if someone is initiating force against you, that's a different story. I am not to force you to do what I want. Libertarians, just as there are Christians who are conservatives and there are Christians who are not conservatives, and there are Christians who are liberals and Christians who are not liberals, non-Christians who are liberals, I mean.

And so there's lots of ways in which you can imagine different people of different types of backgrounds being involved in the libertarian movement. And there's other religions, in fact, who have organizations in place to try and promote libertarianism amongst their adherents.

As much as I disagree with those religions, obviously, I'm not going to be a fan of Mormonism just because there's a Mormon libertarian group. Just an interesting thing about a philosophy such as this is that you can have differing values and yet agree that we need to let each other alone with respect to, we're not initiating force against others, we should be permitted to engage in peaceful activity.

Police, Self-Defense, and the Difference Between Libertarianism and Pacifism

Well, now, it seems like there has to be some kind of boundaries to that, though. I mean, you said not initiating force. That sounds like, well, do we need a police department? How far do you take that?

It's between initiatory force and responsorial force. So if I walk up to you and say, you're going to give me your wallet or I'm going to shoot you in the face, I'm initiating force against you, right?

And I have the right to respond to that in accordance to that threat. However, what happens in a lot of liberalism is that, well, as long as it's the government saying that through taxation or something, well, then that's fine.

They can do that because that's what the government's there for. But that's the difference, though, is that in the libertarian conception of society, we say that you should not be allowed to initiate aggression.

We say that that applies to everyone equally. There is no special moral position whether or not you initiate aggression in this regard. It is a modern police department.

So that would be the key dividing point between that libertarian philosophy and a pacifist. You would not be pacifist because you would believe in appropriate retaliation and also appropriate measures for defense using weaponry or whatever else you might find.

Yeah, that's entirely possible. And as a Christian, I think we can justify that as well. But we also, you know, maybe we have to take a slightly different approach on certain things and be very careful in how we apply that even responsibly.

So it seems that there are a lot of people who are professing conservatives who they have never really been acquainted with libertarianism. And they've become accustomed to dividing things between conservative and liberal and adopting certain ideological concepts that they think historically have always been held by conservatives.

But sometimes they naively or through ignorance are adopting things that were never a part of a conservative minded politically active Christian in earlier years. One of those things would be a political conflict and military conflict overseas, the involvement of the United States in foreign wars and things like that.

And people who are more towards a typical Republican or conservative bent today would view that as liberalism. You would very frequently have that equated with being liberal, if you could comment on that.

Well, sure. And I think we need to point out here as well that what we call libertarianism is considered the liberalism of old and classical liberalism, not the neoliberalism. I think that's a worthy distinction to make.

They absconded with the word liberalism because someone who is liberal is one who is supposed to love liberty. That's the core of what that word originally meant. The classical liberals were those who tried to enhance human liberty across the board.

And so when the modern liberals of the Democratic Party, in particular, scattered away with that, we lost something great. Conservatism, in many respects, what we're talking about is the old right, the J. Gresham and Hitchcock might be considered.

We would definitely say that that old school thinking of liberalism was very against the idea of going abroad in order to believe that if we're going to export our values, we should do it diplomatically, we should do it via trade, and we should do it via mission.

And the last being, of course, the Christian way of thinking about such things. Instead of exporting bombs as our primary way of getting our values out there.

And obviously the Founding Fathers, one of the core principles of the founders of our nation, was a vehement opposition to imperialism. Absolutely.

Go ahead. That's a very poignant point from today. We watched even as the British Empire dissolved amongst itself. Adventurism is bankrupt.

The War on Drugs, Unjust Laws, and Government Overreach

Now, another one of the things that a typical conservative may get upset or may think that a libertarian is just another name for a classic left-winger or liberal today is the fact that libertarians typically are against the quote-unquote war on drugs.

They are, in fact, typically in favor of the legalization of drugs, not because, especially if you're talking about a Christian libertarian, you're not talking about because you are advocating the use of recreational drugs or drug abuse of any kind.

It's just the fact that you believe people should have individual liberties even to make stupid mistakes, and you don't believe the government should be wasting time and our money in that battle. Am I correct?

Or do you have a.

Better way of describing that? Absolutely correct. Yeah. The war on drugs is something we are categorically 100 against. And I would explain it just very slightly differently than the way all of the things you said are true.

But primarily, the reason we oppose the war on drugs is that it is an absolute abrogation of personal liberty, and that in order to influence, you are required to initiate aggression against other people to do it.

And if we abhor aggression, if we believe you should not be allowed to initiate force against the peaceful action of other people, then we obviously must reject the war on drugs. And we should reject the war on all sorts of things that the government says we ought to be at war against in that respect, whether it's the war on large soft drinks, like New York tried to do for a little while, or other things that those things might be rather benign.

But we also have to say, liberty needs to be equal for all in this respect. We don't have the right to tell people, you know, just because I believe it's immoral means that I have the right. And when you see other types of moral busybody laws like this, we have to go because of how destructive it is to people's lives.

We make sure that that is added. So would the terms just and unjust laws.

Then be in your vocabulary? Absolutely, yeah. And could you give me some examples?

Well, sure. I mean, unjust laws would be something like laws against the recreational use of marijuana, for instance, or even in the the one of my favorites is the imposition of the TSA. You know, again, that basically restricts your right to travel unencumbered by government regulation.

And that's another one that would be considered unjust laws. I think a lot of immigration laws are very unjust in how that they in how that they prevent people from traveling, either from getting in or getting out for that taxation is unjust law.

Whether it's the income tax. And so basically anything that requires a forceful action against someone else that is initiated by the government, I believe is an unjust law. And let's have some just laws.

Well, I mean, certainly we would say that a prohibition against murder is a just law. It's pretty obvious prohibition prohibitions against against aggression are just fine. We don't have any problem with that.

You know, but that those those laws that are.

Abortion, Federal Power, and the Limits of the Constitution

This is this is actually where where a lot of Christians became angry with Rand Paul, because because obviously I'm hoping that as a Christian, you believe abortion is murder. And he believed that that should be a issue left up to each state to decide on whether a woman should have the freedom of having an abortion.

And as we were saying, Rand Paul was is a self-described libertarian ish conservative, as opposed to his father, who is more perhaps fully libertarian in his ideology and political views. Whereas most conservative Christians in the pro life movement see this as something one of the few areas where the federal government should be outlawing abortion as murder because it's murder.

And we wouldn't have states deciding individually whether a husband can murder his wife or a wife can murder her husband or anything like that. We would consider murder murder or, in fact, murder their children after they're born.

We wouldn't have states choosing individually whether that should be legal. Why would we choose? Why would we want that to be chosen or legalized that way on a state by state issue if we consider it just as much murder as those other things I mentioned?

So if you could.

Comment on your view. Sure, I think there's a lot of nuance that needs to go into that. And who knows if we'll have the time to hit every little part of it. But first off, I think that Rand and Ron, Paul, for that matter, are correct insofar as that it's not within the purview of authority of the federal government to regulate that.

And here's the reason why. I mean, you don't have all sorts of various laws like that that trickle up into the federal purview. Murder is essentially is dealt with by the state as are back and they're not under the purview of the government.

It literally would need to take a constitutional amendment in order to deal with that. And if that came to pass, then you would hear them comment upon a constitutional amendment for it. They would argue that that is not within the purview of the federal government's powers and therefore should not be ruled upon.

It also opposed Roe v. Wade for the same reason, because that's an incursion and doesn't need to exist. So that's why that Rand and Ron have said that in the past, even though both of them are very much pro-life.

They're categorically against.

Abortion. In fact, I know that Ron is a gynecologist. I'm not sure what kind of a fact was it kind of abortion Rand is, but they both never have ever been involved in abortions.

Yeah, well, yes, that's correct. And Ron was a gynecologist at OBGYN. Rand is an ophthalmologist, so both of them have been involved in the medical field for quite a while, obviously.

So my understanding is that you're talking primarily then about the limiting of.

Federal government. That's correct, in that respect, yes. Not states. Yeah, and so the federal government is empowered to do. It is not within the federal government's power.

Well, how do you think this abuse, when do you think this abuse started from the federal.

Government? Well, pretty much from about, oh, you know, the Constitutional Convention. The original Constitutional Convention.

You're talking about. Tell me a little bit about that.

In fact, if you could tell him more about that when we come back from the break, we're going to be looking for a commercial right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Norman Horne on Christian libertarianism, our number is, our number.

We used to be a call-in show, so that was kind of an old knee-jerk reaction there. Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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The Constitutional Convention and the Growth of Centralized Power

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Norman Horn. He is the founder of the Libertarian Christian Institute, and we are discussing libertarianism and, more specifically, Christian libertarianism, and we're going to be getting his assessment very soon on the current presidential races, both involving the GOP and the Democrat Party.

But before we go back to Buzz's question that he had before the break, I just want to remind you of PNR Publishing, Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, our newest sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals wanted me to remind you of the Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat, May 9th through 11th, at the Harvey Cedars Conference Center on the beautiful Jersey Shore in New Jersey.

That's May 9th through 11th. Two of the speakers are Dan Doriani and David Powelson, who both have been guests on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program. If you'd like more details on attending this Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat, their website, I should say, is alliancenet .org.

That's alliancenet .org, and then click on Events at the top of the page, and there's a lot of events that they have listed. So scroll down to the Faithful Shepherd, May 9th through 11th, or if you just want to go to alliancenet .org forward slash the-faithful-shepherd.

That's alliancenet .org forward slash the-faithful-shepherd. And we hope that you can attend that retreat, and please let them know that Iron Sharpens Iron radio sent you if you go to the retreat. And Buzz, before the break, you were asking our guest Norman Horner a question, and we had to break for a statement.

Well, I was expecting his answer.

About ever since the Constitutional Convention, that's when the problem started. My guess is that what I'm going to hear from you then, with a little bit more detail perhaps, is that the legacy we have today, their legacy is what we have today, in an ever-encroaching, top-heavy, messianic government.

And you're saying this was the result of the first Constitutional Convention.

I think what's really interesting about the Constitutional Convention and the way that.

You know we've Yes. You're breaking up really bad, Norman. I don't know if you can go to a different place with your cell phone, but it's No, you're getting really bad. I don't know if you're in a car or where you are, but you're really breaking up.

Can you hear me now? Yeah,.

Now I can. Good. Okay, I'm very sorry about that. I'm trying to do a different area of the room. All right, let me start that over. The thing I find very interesting about the Constitutional Convention and the way that conservatives often view it, because we want to extol the virtues of limited government, the Constitutional Convention was in many respects a means of trying to consolidate power and expand the power of a centralized state.

The American government initially was formed under the Articles of the Confederation. And what's really funny is that the rationale, even what was considered to be standard in accepted history textbooks, is that it was

So ironically, maybe we should retake a look at that. George Washington, the famed Whiskey Rebellion, was essentially the whole revolution and the events that took place under them, the things that they did in order to control the federal government itself.

And so from the very early days of the American experiment, in many respects, was not nearly as successful like that, although we can expand that experiment, and we can do better, and we can go to our Christian faith and say, maybe we're standing late, you know.

So we went Am I coming.

Across. Okay there? Yes. I'm not hearing myself in my headphones, so I don't know. Yeah, you're coming across So just again, like I said, I'm the nut trying to get perspective on all of this. That was when we went from being these United States to being the United States.

Okay, I'm getting the picture now. Okay, we do have a question from a listener in Mastic Beach, New York. Tyler, his question is, since libertarians believe in personal and individual liberty, would you as a Christian libertarian say it's not the government's job to enforce.

Biblical morality on the issue of homosexuality? I would agree with that. That is not part of our mandate as Christians to go off and be that type of enforcer. As much as I disagree with people who've practiced that lifestyle, I can't go off and do that.

Marriage, Homosexuality, and Government Licensing

Now, here's what I have been saying.

To people about these kinds of issues lately, especially on the intrusion of same-sex marriage into the American scene and globally. The issue is not to me so much that people of the same sex want to be married, and even though that's an abomination in my personal religious belief, which I believe to be the truth, and I believe it to be unescapable biblical truth, I think that the main issue is here that homosexuality is a sin that is embraced by leftist totalitarians that are gaining more and more control of our government, and they are forcing everyone as much as they can to celebrate their wickedness.

Like, for instance, most conservative Christians I know don't believe the police should be busting down people's doors and arresting them if they're involved in homosexuality or adultery or anything like that, but the homosexual activists have achieved super rights in this country.

Not equal rights. They have, in many ways, superior rights to us, and, for instance, a homosexual in almost any sphere of employment can get away with a lot more disparaging remarks or opposing attitudes or actions against Christianity than a person of any religion or lack thereof could in regarding his opposition to homosexuality.

I mean, you are literally walking on eggshells in most places where people are employed today, even in Christian-run corporations and non-for-profit organizations, when it comes to the issue of homosexuality.

People getting fired, people getting fined, people getting sued, and so on. And so, going back to the marriage issue, first of all, it's not marriage when two men or two women are involved in a ceremony that declares them married.

No matter what they call it, it's not marriage. And do I believe that a person shouldn't have a legal right to gather with a group of people in their backyard and have somebody wave a magic wand over them and say that they're married or something?

Should they have the legal right to do that? Yeah, I think that they probably should. But when that marriage is forced upon me where I have to accept it as a marriage, that's where I am totally opposed, vehemently opposed to this whole concept.

If you could comment on that, and maybe you disagree with what I just said, or maybe you agree in.

Portions of it. Yeah, I think that there's certainly very much convergent ideas in what I would say about 2010 or 2011 or so. And our position at Libertarian is that the government needs to get out of marriage entirely.

As a recognition of a contract, from a civil point of view, that's potentially acceptable. But it's not within the government's power, and ought not to be, to be able to regulate marriage. In fact, it's fairly well established that a major reason why governments started getting involved in marriage was actually kind of racist, in many respects.

Sometimes there was a desire to prevent interracial marriages and to enforce certain types of those types of values upon people. They're wrong in so far, and you have a government that's able to define things the way that you want.

That means that the same government, when it gets under somebody else's power, is able to define it another way. And so, you know, we have to be careful about that. And the more power that we give to the government to make those types of classes, the more we're going to hurt.

And like you said, if people want to go and do whatever they want, so far as it involves that, you know, that's another story.

Yeah, like these people, these folks, these Christian folks that lost their bakery and, you know, lost their whole life savings over this. To me, it's utter insanity.

Absolutely. And whenever the government gets involved with this, that's when you know that things are going to go haywire. I mean, culturally, we Christians are supposed, and what does that mean? Sometimes we have businesses that fail because authoritarians promote.

We promote the liberty to make those, to have the government.

Well, going to any government involvement with marriage, wasn't one of the reasons that government became involved was because of bigamy, for instance. I'm not talking about polygamy necessarily, but bigamy where a man secretly has more than one spouse in different states and so on and is, you know, basically defrauding one spouse by having a separate life, you know, and that kind of a thing.

What is your comment on any kind of government restriction? And including, you know, I'm sure that there's a lot of pedophiles who want there to be no marriage, no government involvement in marriage.

Consensualness, I mean, any type of contract cannot be engaged in if it is not consensual, and a lot of underage, you know, kids are unable to, and a church would be able to prevent that very well. And otherwise, you know, a contract like that with some type of other entity, government or not, those entities should be able to have the problem right.

With regard to bigamy, you know, yet those problems can be solved.

You mean like the wife's brothers bringing baseball bats to the guy's house or something?

Well, as rare as it is, maybe that's the solution. I don't know.

By the way, I have to ask you a question because I had a second guest lined up that had to postpone the interview, which gave me little time to find a replacement. Can you stay on for the second hour?

I can stay on for a little while, but I do have some other things that are coming up here. I'm actually still at work, so I'm going to have to stay on for another 15 minutes or so.

Yeah, well, that's when you were supposed to be off the air anyway. Okay, well, you got to do what you have to do, because I want to make sure, obviously, you said that you have some events coming up that you wanted to plug.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things I definitely wanted to talk to you guys about is that we have an event coming up in August in Austin, Texas. We call it the Christians for Liberty Conference, and if you go to libertarianchristians .com, you can find out about it very quickly.

The subpage for that would be libertarianchristians .com slash Seaboard University.