The Mises website ran a piece today on libertarian science fiction, by pipe-lover Jeff Riggenbach. He mentions four sci-fi authors who weren’t libertarian but came across as friendly to the ideas in some way or another: Anthony Burgess, Philip K. Dick, G. William Domhoff, and Carroll Quigley (I was half-hoping to see a mention of Matthew Alexander, but we’re dealing with established heavyweights here). I haven’t read anything by these authors — no, even not A Clockwork Orange, yet — but I’d like to see how they poise, unknowingly, libertarian ideals in their fictional universe.
Libertarian Christians, somewhat coincidentally, has a lengthy read on the philosophy of Mises. So says Edmund Opitz, in a rather bold assertion (italics mine):
Classical liberalism, in other words, is the secular projection of Christian philosophy. The American Dream, as Jacques Maritain put it, kept “alive, in human history, a fraternal recognition of the dignity of man—in other words, the terrestrial hope of man (expressed) in the Gospel.” The thing called “liberalism” today, bears no resemblance whatsoever to classical liberalism; it has nothing in common with the Whiggism of Adam Smith or the liberalism of Ludwig von Mises.
Forming a strong link between classical liberalism with Christian thought is a big chunk of poli-theology. Not that I really disagree with Opitz, but the idea of rejecting the state (to some degree) is a hat too rebellion-heavy for some Christians to wear — especially those of us in “safer” nations, where citizens more observably autonomous, and the atrocious effects of the power the state holds is either well-hidden or simply felt in other countries.
Science fiction lends itself easily to libertarian ideas because the authors needs to conjure up droves of little “what if” scenarios that stretch what we already know about the observable universe. It involves a lot of deeper inductive thinking that libertarians, and particularly Misean libertarians, need to employ when answering critics: we’ve never really had, say, a bonafide anarcho-capitalist “state”, so they’d have to cobble together how things could and would work out, sans civitas. much in the same way sci-fi writers need the “what ifs” with the universe.
Libertarian and sci-fi meet more literally (heh) with dystopian sci-fi, where monopolies on power, taken to extremes, consistently spell out bad news for the world. It seems that at the heart of every dystopian future comes at the hands of the steroidal state, while the hero breaks free from the totalitarianism with some form of freedom. I don’t think it’s necessarily a consciously-made connection made by the authors; I’m sure some sci-fi writers have been huge Commies (Wells comes to mind), or some other devious form of state-adoring ideology. Though, just makes intuitive sense that the entity poised to bring about a dystopia would be the only one that has the monopoly on sanctioned, coercive power.
Okay, so what does Christianity-laced libertarianism have to do with science fiction? If I may be as tentatively bold as Opitz, I would say that a Christian who isn’t ultimately, “at the end of the day”, a libertarian, has some serious flaws in their belief system. I say this because a Christian absolutely must choose God over the state, if faced with the choice — and we must eventually make that choice. It’s God or something else, something lesser, and He’s made it clear that there’s no wiggle room. This is the obvious end of things given the central doctrines of Christianity, but I understand some (most?) Christians, while here on earth, have been socialized with the love of the state and don’t see worldly governments the way libertarians do, so I don’t regard this idea as heavyweight: I hold it in my hand but I don’t close my fist around it.
So, the fiction part: I, armed only with a surface knowledge of sci-fi, haven’t come across any books with a story that links the Christianity part with the libertarian part. At least, to a thorough extent, but it strikes me as a wonderful foundation for a story. There may be something out there, but I have not come across it, and this high-level idea is a story germ for a novel of mine that is quickly growing. I just hope that this idea eventually ends up in a much more capable author’s hands than mine.