Book Review: If You Can Keep It by Robin Koerner

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The full title of Robin Koerner's book is If You Can Keep It , Why We Nearly Lost It & How We Get It Back. The first phrase, of course, is Benjamin Franklin's famous line when he left Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. A woman asked him, "What have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?" Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

Historian Richard Beeman elaborated on this. "The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health."

Koerner's book is a call to arms for libertarians as well as for those disenchanted with conventional partisan politics. It draws attention to the common bonds that unite Americans of both the moderate left and the moderate right, Republicans and Democrats. And those bonds are a shared ideal of liberty.

The essence of the American ideal, he argues, is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the idea that all men have certain unalienable rights, including the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The constitution was devised to protect the individual citizen against his government, not to enable government to push people around. Individuals are free. Governments are there to protect our rights, not to infringe them. And this ideal applies to every individual.

Moreover, in a pluralistic society, individuals are bound to have different ideas and beliefs. The essence of the American ideal is to respect those ideas, even if we don't agree with them. It is an ideal of tolerance and good will.

Possibly the most important conclusion Koerner draws is this: "Make cause not with those who would impose a will similar to yours on American society, but with those who would balk at imposing anyone's will, including their own, on anyone at all." (page 292)

I first met Robin Koerner when he addressed a meeting of the B.C. Libertarian Party on Oct. 28, 2017. He was the keynote speaker and the topic was The Art of Political Persuasion. I wrote about his talk in a previous essay, Paradigm Shifting. Much of that talk is included in the first two chapters of the book.

Koerner writes about paradigms and their role in politics. We see things according to a blueprint or basic outlook that colors our perceptions. But the paradigms that separate us are peripheral. They are not as important as the paradigms that bind us. And it is by understanding a philosophical opponent's paradigm, and relating to him on his own terms, that we can bring them around to the shared paradigm - and thus find common ground. And he writes about the media and how it too manifests its reports through paradigms. I covered this in some detail in a previous essay, The Origins of Media Bias and Fake News. In a very broad sense, all news reports on political subjects are "fake" news to the extent that the reporter's views impose his own paradigm on the report. Some are more overt than others. In order to get a clear understanding of events, it is incumbent on the news consumer to consider various sources of information, including the foreign press.

Koerner goes on to discuss the many ways in which the American Republic has strayed from its ideals, never more so than since 9/11 when the government introduced the Patriot Act which strips citizens of security of property and free speech and the National Defense Authorization Act which strips citizens of their privacy. Habeas corpus has been abrogated. People can and have been detained without charge or legal recourse. The politics of fear has replaced the politics of freedom and our police agencies have been militarized.

Koerner devotes a chapter to deconstructing the debauching of our money and the effects of crony capitalism - government in the pocket of business interests.

In Chapter 5, We the People: Culture Precedes Politics, Koerner makes the case that America's history goes back a lot further than 1776. Our rights and freedoms were long established under British common law. They go back a thousand years and include such notable events as the Charter of Ethelred in 1014, the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, and the Petition of Right in 1628. All of these acts put restraints on the power of the monarchy. They limited the crown's authority.

Significantly the English revolted in 1649 and overthrew the monarchy, beheading Charles I. That monarchy was replaced by the government of Oliver Cromwell who proclaimed himself Lord Protector. " He ruled without any of the customary restraints under which all monarchs had been forced , with various degrees of success, to rule," he notes. He became, in fact, a dictator and oversaw "a massive curtailing of individual liberties". In a nice turn of phrase, Koerner notes that the British saw "political power dispensed through the barrel of a musket".

The dead king had been unable to raise taxes without consent of the legislature. "Cromwell ignored that stricture and started imposing taxes under his own authority".

His predations became so great that parliamentarians petitioned him to do the unthinkable - to become King!

Koerner elaborates that "whereas monarchy (small m) as the rule of (any)one, in this case the Lord Protector, was unlimited because it was new, defined in the present by the one who was ruling, Monarchy (large M, referring to the institution) was profoundly limited by a culture and a historical tradition - including all the fights that the People had fought throughout the history of the nation - to win Constitutional constraints that had to be jealously guarded. In short, the power of kings were known and limited: King Oliver, the parliamentarians thought, would have much less power than Lord Protector Cromwell."

Koerner uses this story to make the point that the modern Presidency is like a Monarchy - vesting great power in one man. The President, like Cromwell, "rules as a monarch more powerful than any British Monarch since the seventeenth century."

It was cultural norms imposed on the monarch through many years of struggle that restrained his power. "Customs, or more broadly culture," Koerner argues, "precedes politics." (italics in original)

The myriad abuses that the American government has instituted since 9/11 - the loss of civil liberties, rights to due process, asset forfeiture based on mere suspicion, elimination of privacy and so on - have been tolerated because they have gone largely unnoticed by people in their everyday lives. The government may be spying on me right now as I write this, but I don't know if that is happening for sure or not. And if it is, I wouldn't know in any case.

"The historical and psychological truth is that people - and the culture that comprises their attitudes and actions - react to protect or reclaim their liberties only when the abuse of power has become so great that it reaches beyond politics into their everyday lives in directly experienced ways," writes Koerner.

At that point," Koerner continues, "the People feel  violation: the feeling that something that is already theirs is being taken from them, because they are no longer freely permitted to do today what they innocently did yesterday."

Koerner notes that people on both the left and the right have "sat relatively silent as our rights to due process, privacy, and free speech have been removed by such legislation as the Patriot Act and the NDAA, and yet become very vociferous over our right to smoke weed (on the Left) or own guns without restriction (on the Right)." Marijuana smokers and gun owners recognize the government's attempts to control, regulate and restrict their lives in those areas. And those are substantial subsets of the population.

Similarly, the registering for the draft is an imposition, but one little noted now while service is voluntary. During the Vietnam War when people were actually drafted and forced to fight, resistance to the draft grew significantly. (See my earlier article, Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came).

In this respect, Koerner recognizes Edward Snowden, to whom the book is dedicated, as a true American hero for changing "the everyday American experience of sending an email or making a phone call from one of privately communicating with a loved one to one of sharing one's life with the State."

"He has turned our government's violation of abstract or theoretical political liberties, which most of us know only as words on a document, into a felt violation of our experienced, cultural freedoms."

There is, Koerner argues, a threshold beyond which government intrusion starts to affect cultural freedoms, not just abstract political freedoms.

"When Power's abuses against Liberty remove from us not just the rights that we have (political). but the rights that we actively enjoy in our daily lives (cultural), we take them personally and respond to them more viscerally," he continues.

Koerner goes on to defend democracy - from the Greek words demos, the people and kratos, power. Real power rests on the consent of the governed. This same point was made by Ludwig von Mises in Liberalism: A Socio-economic Exposition: "In the long run no government can maintain itself in power if it does not have public opinion behind it, i.e. if those governed are not convinced that the government is good. The force to which the government resorts in order to make refractory spirits compliant can be successfully applied only as long as the majority does not stand solidly in opposition."

"To respect the importance of democracy," argues Koerner, "is to respect history and to embrace the tool without which liberty has never been won back from the Power that would trample on it."

The reaction against state power must be visceral - it must be felt where you live, "as offences against our person, unmediated by political ideology."

The question is, "how do we accelerate this reaction, and harness the kratos of the demos to get back the Republic?"

Koerner answers that question in the next two chapters. Chapter 6, Liberty is the Politics of Love, argues that polarized politics, an us-versus-them approach is self-defeating. In fact, he notes that one of the fastest growing groups in American political life are Independents, those who swear fealty to no political faction.

He advocates bridging the gap between ideologies by recognizing that many of the issues facing us are not, in fact, political at all. It's more a question of heeding the words of the old Joe South number, Walk a Mile in My Shoes. He recommends engagement. If an anti-gun person spent some time with gun lovers, or religious conservatives spent some time with gay people, trying to understand their perspectives and seeing them as people, then the hostility towards gay rights or gun rights would fade away.

As an ex-Pat Brit, Koerner had a natural antipathy towards guns. They are not part of the British psyche the way they are in America. He also is culturally conservative. He sympathizes with the view that children are better served by having both a male and female role model. But he went out of his way to engage the gun crowd, even taking to the range to fire off some weapons. And he also has among his friends a gay couple who have an adopted daughter. Knowing these people gave him a better perspective and understanding of their values and lifestyles.

"I see both groups as doing essentially the same thing when they defend their rights," he writes, "insisting on being allowed to be themselves, and defend the validity of the way they experience the world - as long as they harm no one else."

"If we can challenge ourselves by focusing as much on nurturing our human connection with our political opponents by relating to them as people, we'd discover a wonderful paradox," he continues. "We'd all feel, from our opposed initial positions, increased success in getting our opponents to see the world our way."

Why is that? "Because collapsing the sub-cultural divides in our society through actual human relationships does something bigger and better than  resolving our political differences. it dissolves them."

He continues by talking about the power of love to change our perspectives. "Liberty," he says, "is the politics of Love."

My first reaction to this was negative. Love? Really? But as he explains it:

• Love is inherently humble.
• Love shuts up long enough to hear. Love listens.
• Love is empirical. 
• Love recognizes that it has various manifestations, flavors and expressions. 
• Love is unifying.
• Love is respectful.

I think the best way of understanding this is through an example. In  August I wrote a music column for the Guardian website on Songs About Flags. One of the songs I picked from the hundreds suggested was Accidental Racist by Brad Paisley and LL Cool J. It is germane to the conflict over Civil War statues and Confederate flags. Paisley and LL Cool J sing from their own perspectives - Paisley as a proud Southerner, Cool as a black man. 

The song created some controversy as some on the left criticized LL Cool J for trivializing slavery and the black experience. He explained his position on the Ellen Show in language that could have been written by Koerner. Two embedded links follow - one for the song and one for the Ellen interview. You can skip by them if you wish, but I do recommend coming back to them after you finish this article. The Ellen interview in particular exemplifies exactly what Koerner is all about. 

Koerner continues by reprinting the entire Blue Republican article from The Huffington Post where he drummed up considerable support for Ron Paul in 2012 by condemning both Bush and Obama as failures and a discredit to America. Bush for his war on Iraq, the Patriot Act and so on, and Obama for belying his promise to change things and continuing with Bush's interventionist foreign policy. 

And he lists his prescription for effecting change, including seeking common ground, getting past left-right paradigms, valuing principles over partisanship, understanding that culture precedes politics, believing in liberty and one that he devotes the next chapter to - pragmatism over purism.

Things do not change overnight and to expect such change or take an all-or-nothing approach to change is self-defeating. "Principled compromise," reads one sub-heading, "is not a compromise of principle." 

He considers the purist position that voting for or supporting the lesser of two evils is still evil. This, he maintains, is an ass-backwards way of looking at things. 

Consider the political spectrum as ranging from Tyranny (evil) to Liberty (good). Politicians who "want more Patriot Act, more state killing without due process, more NDAA, more curtailments of speech, more invasions of privacy, more welfarism - especially corporate, and more miltarism" are indeed somewhere between where we are and the evil end of the spectrum. And supporting one of several candidates that are on that side of the line can indeed be called supporting the lesser of two evils.

However, "consider two imperfect candidates", both of whom stand somewhere between where we are and Liberty or the good. Making a pragmatic choice for a Gary Johnson, say, over a more purist candidate for leader of the Libertarian Party, isn't supporting an evil but supporting the lesser of two goods. Anyone who is on the line between where we are and Liberty is good, insofar as he or she is moving us towards greater liberty. Koerner doesn't use this particular example but focuses on the politics of Rand Paul to make his case.  

Elaborating, Koerner writes that "while the unapologetic statement of principles is a critical component of cultural and political change, principles that never become more than statements are worthless."

To effect change, libertarians must play to win. "Winning means being in the game. It also means collecting enough good cards throughout the game to be able to play a strong hand for liberty when the opportunity to make actual change arises."

So a politician like Rand Paul may occasionally make a compromise. It is part of the game. Some, of course, denounce this position and eschew politics altogether.  Koerner's rejoinder to these puritans is this: "If you are of the 'no good can come out of politics' mindset, please be careful about taking a position whose logical consequence is that all who fight for liberty within the political process are irredeemably compromised - for that position is denied by history time and time again. Throughout a thousand years of Anglo history, the established political process, with all its flaws, has been the arena in which hard-fought improvements in liberty, won by the People, moved first in the culture, have been secured for future generations. In times and places where it hasn't been, change has typically been violent (think of the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution), and less successful in securing liberty at all." 

Koerner goes on to argue that humility, tolerance and civility are the hallmarks of liberty. Humility in that it rests on the notion that "one human being cannot know what is best for another than  the other person himself," and tolerance in that it is manifested as "lack of aggression". And civility is an essential in that liberty relies on civil society, individuals acting together or alone of their own volition, to overcome problems of social and economic justice, rather than relying on the guns of the state. 

He cautions against the dogmatic libertarian. "The attitude of the intellectual dogmatist, libertarian or otherwise, is more like 'I have found the truth that matters, and from this position of 'having arrived', I can see that those who are not here are intellectually or morally flawed.' This is the very opposite of the humble epistemology of robust libertarianism, and plenty of libertarians behave this way."

He goes one step further and says something I profoundly agree with and which maybe sets us apart from many mainstream libertarians: "If I had to choose, I'd rather inhabit a world of civil, open-minded statists, with whom I profoundly disagree, than one of dogmatists of any stripe - even libertarian." 

Why? Because open-mindedness means openness to change. Dogmatism (and this is my thought, not Koerner's) is essentially Rousseauian in its implications. It leads to the tyranny of the righteous libertarian who will brook no dissent ("There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society." - Hans-Hermann Hoppe) even to the point of exterminating dissenters. Many of those flirting with the alt-right openly call for eliminating liberals by dropping them from helicopters - modern Robespierres who would replace the single blade of the guillotine with the four whirling blades of the appropriately named chopper.

Koerner's libertarianism is my kind of libertarianism. It is what I have been writing about for the last two years on this blog. A humane, tolerant, peace-loving, reasonable and essentially humble philosophy. It is a much-needed antidote to the vitriol and emotionalism I see all too often.

The book could have done with a good proof-reading as there were a number of typo and grammatical errors. And an index would be a good idea, though the chapter list is almost an index in itself. Maybe in the second edition!

This book is a gem. Highly recommended to libertarians who actually want to make a difference rather than vent their spleens.

Related Articles

• Paradigm Shifting (on Koerner's presentation on the Art of Political Persuasion)
• The Origins of Media Bias and Fake News
• Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came 
• An Alternate View of Democracy
• What is a Corporation?  
• Songs About Flags

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