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The Libertarian with a Guillotine
Opposition to government isn't proof against utopian thinking
Janet Bufton
July 16, 2025
At The Reading Room, I apply Adam Smith’s warning about the “man of system” and public choice’s assumption of behavioural symmetry to Isabel Paterson’s famous essay, The Humanitarian With the Guillotine. Then, I hold it up against the actual dismantling of government humanitarian aid.
I conclude that while there is a core insight in the essay (I don’t say this, but you could get that insight from many other places), Paterson isn’t where libertarians should go for arguments about government humanitarian aid. Instead, Paterson should be treated as a cautionary tale about the temptation to indulge utopian thinking, even (especially?) among those who think of themselves as immune to it.
Paterson falls for both public choice traps: she fails to treat people as people, and her examination of politics is romantic rather than curious or scientific. The reason? She is a woman of system, who sees individuals playing out the parts she imagines for them.
…
Libertarians are not immune to the temptation to act as men of system. They imagine a better world, one without the programs they oppose, where aid is voluntary and everyone can save themselves. They are captivated by this vision. And, with access to power, they might not even bother to move the chess pieces. They might simply release the blade.
Utopian-driven catastrophe is something liberal democracy can guard against (Adam Smith backs me up there), and libertarians’ skepticism of democracy makes them more, not less, prone to this kind of utopianism.
The costs of ending USAID humanitarian assistance are ongoing and not inevitable. The U.S. government will be burning enough high-energy emergency food to feed 1.5 million children for a week, after children who could have received it have already starved to death. The situation is grotesque. No defence of the really-existing U.S. cuts to aid spending should be allowed to pass without a challenge. I think there were defensible theoretical ways to cut or restructure USAID funding, but they did not happen.
What we can imagine is no defence of what was done.
Recs
I was very pleased to see Emily Chamlee-Wright’s defence of Harvard University in its fight against the Trump administration follow my piece arguing that liberalism needs liberals to defend it at Liberal Currents. I skeeted:
What kinds of values should liberals hold? What kind of fights should liberals fight? Here's one: Fighting against arbitrary power on principle, not only out of self-interest—making an act of self-preservation into one also of defiance and persuasion.
— Janet Bufton 🍁🌻 (@janetbufton.ca)2025-07-08T10:27:20.207Z
✨The Discourse✨ this past week reminded me of this piece (brought to my attention by Cathy Reisenwitz) about the already-existing affirmative action for male university students at private universities in the U.S.
Speaking of The Discourse, here’s a great kids’ podcast on the origin story of Superman as a creation of immigrant kids who wanted to talk about the immigrant experience. If you favour eyes over ears, Jacob Grier wrote about this at The UnPopulist, too.
Depressing and important from Justin Ling: Welcome to Post-Extremism, and this look at how comedy can be (and has been) used to undermine the politicalness of our humanity, The Deportation Comedy Hour.
More of this kind of reporting on how the reforms by the Trump administration are actually working seems like it would be good.