On Ideographs, Individuals, and Freedom: Henry David Thoreau Meets F.A. Hayek

The national government is embroiled in political gridlock over the federal budget, while the federal bureaucracy struggles with the automatic, and rather draconian, across-the-board cuts mandated by the so-called sequestration initiative. This drama is widely interpreted as the most recent evidence of a more fundamental problem created by the willingness of various political actors to adopt an overtly confrontational posture rather than attempt to build compromises. The argument presented in this essay is an alternative explanation. Working with the writings of Henry David Thoreau and F.A. Hayek, it argues that our current acrimony requires consideration of the possibility that obstructionism should be understood as a form of political freedom within the context of a fully developed and entrenched purposive state.