BOURGEOIS LIBERTARIANISM COULD SAVE AMERICA: Don't underestimate the civilization-saving powers of respecting private property and generally minding your own business.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: IDEAS

AS THE STREETS of various U.S. cities descended into disorder set off by anger and anguish over police brutality, the domestic tranquility for which Americans theoretically surrender large chunks of their fortunes and freedom to the government seemed out of reach. Some protests devolved into generalized orgies of destruction and even arson--the most fiendishly destructive thing the average person can do in dense cities, and an act committed with careless glee dozens of times.

In the public debate between angry forces on the left and right wings, too many Americans insist on recapitulating the stark choices Germany seemed to offer its citizens between the world wars a century ago: a controlling, decadent left out to destroy private property, and a right embracing harsh, violent authoritarianism and viewing outsiders of all stripes with suspicion.

Each side seems so obviously, intolerably evil to the other that both sides agree the only moral or prudential choice is to come out swinging against the other side. The blood on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where in August a right-wing 17-year-old shot three people during a protest is a small preview of where that path leads. Radicals on both left and right seem to agree that traditional American libertarianism either supports the evil side (wittingly or unwittingly) or, at best, provides a pusillanimous, pie-in-the-sky distraction from the necessary business of seizing state power to crush the enemy. But that old-school, nonrevolutionary, bourgeois libertarianism is, in fact, the only peaceful way out for our troubled country.

It is one of libertarianism's staid tenets that it's a mistake--both morally wrong and likely ineffective--to use government force to solve most social problems. As this year's urban unrest has shown, police power in the conventional sense can't keep cities secure if even a small number of people are unwilling to play by the nonviolent rules. If you actually care about a functioning civilization, it is never enough to have the state controlled by the "right side."

What makes civilization work is people roughly hewing to "live and let live" principles. Fortunately, most of us do so even when we are not governed in a libertarian manner. Most people, most of the time, simply want to live in their justly owned space, work for a living, engage in mutually beneficial commerce, and thus contribute to the web of peaceful interactions that makes our lives rich in every sense.

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