The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographic Essay: Forrest Mcdonald, a Founding Father's Library
• Bibliographic Essay: Murray N. Rothbard, Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution
• I: Paradigms of Freedom
• Conflicting Paradigms
• Paradigms As Procrustes' Bed
• Interest and Ambition
• Thesis and Antithesis
• Freedom and Authority
• Sin and Society
• Autonomy and Authority
• Virtue and Status
• Utility and Progress
• Diversity and Equality
• II: Nonspontaneous Order
• State Vs Society
• The Therapeutic State
• Order and Elites
• Order and Virtue
• Self-perfection
• Socialism and Freedom
• Market Socialism
• Centralism Vs Decentralism
• Voluntary Servitude
• Authority and Obedience
• Social Control
• Power and Ideology
• Hegemony
• III: Spontaneous Order
• Freedom and Knowledge
• The Case For Government
• The Case Against Government
• Community Vs. State
• State and Morality
• Freedom and Creativity
• Order Without State
• IV: Individual and Social Good
• The Right to Privacy
• Autonomy and Psychiatry
• Personal Choice
• Individuals, Groups, and States
• Social Dynamics
• Social Engineering
• Individuals and Groups
• Personal Vs. Social Goods
• Individual Rationality
• Self-interest and Social Good
• Self-interest Vs. Slavery
• Art and Autonomy
• Radical Individualism
• V: Ethics, Rights, and Freedom
• Objective Values
• Natural Law
• Preambles to Freedom
• Social Sciences and Values
• Reason and Change
• Reason and Choice
• Economics and Values
• Legal Naturalism
• Justice As Restitution
• Justice As Punishment
• Rights and Contract
• Virtue In the Market
• Justice Under Capitalism
• Profits and Choice
• Social Framework and Prosperity
• Ecology and Rights
• Business' Social Ethics
• VI: Equality
• Problems With Inequality
• Equality, Power, and Values
• Unequal Income
• Equal Opportunity
• Equal Liberty
• Equality of Condition
• The Egalitarian State
• Sexual Equality
• VII: Power
• Empire, Equality, and Envy
• Imperial Presidency
• Empire and Inflation
• Watergate As a Symptom of Empire
• The Pragmatic Presidency
• “absolute Power” and Corruption
• VIII: Planning Vs. Choice
• Origins of Planning
• Bureaucratic Growth
• Prediction and Control
• Government Planning
• Government Experts
• Useless Usury Laws
• Wartime Regulation
• Government Inflation
• Neomercantilism
• Compulsory Schooling
• Planning In Nonprofit Agencies
• Private Capital and Education
• Choice and Spontaneous Order

“Absolute Power” and Corruption

Ravenal, Earl C.

• Institute for Policy Studies

“Nixon's Challenge to Carter: No More Mr. Nice Guy.” Foreign Policy (USA), 29(1977): 27–42.

We need a critical analysis of the conventional liberal wisdom on the origins and implications of the “Watergate crisis” during President Nixon's administration. By personalizing and criminalizing Nixon's motives, liberal critics avoid confronting some of the deeper lessons offered by the Watergate crisis. These center around the necessary relationship that exists between an administration's foreign policy and the domestic policy which it pursues. In fact, many of Nixon's critics strongly supported the major foreign policy objectives of the Nixon-Kissinger administration (energetic diplomacy in the Middle East, the opening to China, detente with Russia, and extrication from Vietnam), decrying the administration's systematic violations of political and civil liberties at home.

A certain diplomatic and domestic political style is a necessary concomitant of foreign policies. It is at best inconsistent for Nixon's critics to support the basic outlines of the Nixon administration's foreign policies while focusing their criticism on its domestic policies. Nixon's pursuit of a global, interventionist foreign policy necessarily generated manipulative, repressive internal politics. In order to wage a tough, effective foreign policy, he had to maintain social discipline to pacify the silent majority and to suppress the articulate minority. As Nixon stated in his T.V. interview with David Frost:

The actions I took with great reluctance, but recognizing I had to do what was right, the actions that I took in Vietnam: one, to try to win an honorable peace abroad; and two, to keep the peace at home, because keeping the peace at home and keeping support for the war was essential in order to get the enemy to negotiate. And that was, of course, not easy to do in view of the dissent and so forth that we had.

We must challenge the fundamental liberal tenet that one can pursue the same substantive policies by replacing “bad” people with “good” people in an effort to avoid the same excesses in the domestic sphere. The underlying problem lies not with the moral rectitude of specific individuals chosen to lead America, but with the assumptions and objectives chosen to guide our foreign policy. As long as liberals refuse to systematically reevaluate these assumptions and objectives, it will be futile to oppose the fruits of such a policy. Therein lies Nixon's basic challenge to Carter: how long can Carter remain Mr. Nice Guy if he insists on pursuing essentially the same foreign policy objectives that the Nixon-Kissinger administration pursued?

A global, interventionist foreign policy necessarily results in a major expansion of state power domestically. Strenuously opposing interventionism in both the domestic and foreign spheres will banish future “Watergates.”

VIII

Planning vs. Choice

The concluding set of summaries surveys the nature and consequences of abridging human liberty through regulation in various spheres of human action (e.g., economics, education, and ecology). Regulation and centralized government planning are set in opposition to individual voluntary choice. The series ends with the benefits of private “planning” over public planning based on bureacracy and master plans. This set of summaries concretely recapitulates the contrast between spontaneous and nonspontaneous order and the conflicts in paradigms of human freedom.