In defense of big government

The following is an exceprt from "The Folly of Exporting Democracy" by Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman. Before you dismiss this as beyond the bounds of reason based on the title alone, I should point out that the authors see democracy as a good and necessary thing, but not one that can necessarily come quickly to a given region just because the people want it badly enough.

The founding document on which the moral philosophy of America’s approach to the world over the past 60 years is based is Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech of 1941, setting out the great principles which inspired the Western allies during the Second World War. Those who haven’t read them often assume that they must include the freedom to vote. Wrong. The four freedoms are freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Democracy as such is nowhere mentioned.

Of course, none of these freedoms can exist under a totalitarian state but they can all exist under a moderately authoritarian one—as they did in several states of Europe before 1914. Freedom from want and freedom from fear both require states that respect their citizens, but are also strong enough to protect them.

Also required are the rule of law, a reasonably independent and efficient judiciary and police, a law-abiding, honest and rational bureaucracy and a population that enjoys basic rights of labor, movement and free discussion. All of these rights can and often have existed in countries where the executive has been unelected. None exist in rotten contemporary “democracies” like the Philippines. All of these things require that the state be strong enough to protect its citizens from outside aggression, internal rebellion, uncontrolled crime, and oppression and exploitation by predatory elites, including the state’s servants acting on their own account and for their own profit, like the police in so many countries. Francis Lieber, adviser to President Lincoln, put it simply: “A weak government is a negation of liberty.”