University of Virginia Library

"Less" Is "More"

Liberal Republicans however
can still aspire to programmatic
efficiency - to govern according to
the dictum of the architect Mies
Van der Rohe that "less" is often
"more." The genius of a guaranteed
annual income, for example, is that
it can be administered according to
set standards and merely by the
writing of a check. Ditto for many
programs in the private sector.

In foreign affairs, Republican
liberals should carry forward the
idea of equal opportunity - for not
just Americans but all men on
earth. Under a program perhaps
called (after Theodore Roosevelt)
"The New Internationalism" liberal
Republicans would vastly expand
foreign aid - to at least one per
cent of gross national product, and
distribute it through regimes - on
the left and right - committed to
distribution and modernization.

Above all, perhaps, a liberal
Republican would try to preserve -
as did John Stuart Mill - the best
of liberalism and socialism - to
preserve Hobbesian freedom (the
absence of external "impediments"
of motion) and Lockean freedom
(freedom as "power" or capacity).
A liberal Republican would give
money ("power") but never force a
man to take it (an "impediment").
A liberal Republican therefore still
yearns for a voluntary Social
Security and Medicare programs.
He would bitterly protest the law
that requires motor cycle riders to
wear helmets, as such action is
clearly an abridgement of
Hobbesian freedom, and, as Mill
wrote, clearly a "self" and not an
"other-regarding" action.