We will probably never know the true death count of the courageous Iranian revolutionaries, but what has been shared in graphic detail is the horrific brutality of the Iranian theocracy towards its own people.
In a recent New Yorker essay, “A Massacre in Mashhad,” Cora Engelbrecht reported on one multi-day slaughter of an enormous crowd of Iranian protesters filling the streets, bridges, and highways of Mashhad. Children with their mothers and grandparents were among the dead. One Iranian sharing documentation with Engelbrecht reported, “For three nights, the streets of my hometown turned into a killing field.”
For some, the mindset that gave rise to the Iranian theocracy seems like a different world, thousands of miles away or hundreds of years ago. FA Hayek would say: don’t be so sure.
The Iranian regime is a form of theocratic totalitarianism. Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says, “God speaks through my mouth.” A dissenter is considered an “enemy of God,” which justifies unimaginable brutality and lethal force against them. Foreign mercenary thugs have been brought into Iran to join forces with the IRGC to put down the revolution. They were given instructions to target the face and head of protesters, with the aim of blinding them.
America has its own growing theocratic groups. For now, their actions are tempered by American sensibilities and laws. Yet the mindset of these groups is as destructive and vicious as the Iranian theocracy.
We find one of the roots of America’s growing theocratic mindset in the writings of French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Without irony, in his chapter titled “The Legislator” from his book The Social Contract, Rousseau wrote, “In order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.”
Rousseau continued,
This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next.
Rousseau ended that paragraph, again without irony, “It would take gods to give men laws.”
What Rousseau envisioned would overturn the whole basis of Western civilization’s progress—trial and error and the freedom to grow beyond what doesn’t work.
In The Fatal Conceit, FA Hayek argued that a fundamental error of socialism—and this error mirrors theocratic thinking—is its attempt to impose the morality of the “small band” or “tribe” onto the “extended order of human cooperation.”
He explained how “socialist morality would destroy much of present humankind and impoverish much of the rest.” We can observe that Americans are mostly sustained by a decentralized market, made orderly by people voluntarily cooperating with each other, yet each aiming to achieve their own ends. To replace this spontaneous order with a centralized “moral” plan would collapse the very system that produces the resources required for human survival. Khamenei has collapsed the Iranian economy primarily by directing resources to fund terror all over the world.
Socialist morality is stripped of the supernatural justifications of theocratic morality, but retains a totalitarian soul. To believe “the rules of society” can be discovered and human nature molded to suit that design is to invite a “superior” person to step in and do the molding. Millions of people supported despots like Hitler, Stalin, or the Ayatollahs, believing a “superior” person in the seat of power would create a better world. This is the fatal conceit.
The Iranian regime believes it can design an Islamic society. Western theocrats believe they can design an equitable society, a green society, and on and on, through administrative engineering.
Hayek showed that no “superior intelligence” exists that can grasp the incalculable preferences of human beings. Hayek explains that what is responsible for the miracle of modern life is not an Ayatollah or a secular dictator but “the rules of human conduct that gradually evolved (especially those dealing with property, honesty, contract, exchange, trade, competition, gain, and privacy).”
The rules of conduct generated under totalitarian regimes are vastly different from those generated in a liberal society. In Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Hayek distinguishes between nomos and thesis.
Liberty exists only under nomos—rules that tell us how to act toward one another (e.g., “don’t steal,” “don’t kill”) without telling us what we should achieve. In Hayek’s words: “The Great Society arose through the discovery that men can live together in peace and mutually benefit each other without agreeing on the particular aims which they severally pursue.” Only these “abstract rules… made it possible to extend the order of peace beyond the small groups pursuing the same ends.”
Theocracy operates through thesis. The Ayatollah and, for example, the DEI Dean both use rules as commands to achieve specific social outcomes (e.g., make society more Islamic or make society more equitable).
While the IRGC uses bullets, the American administrative theocracy uses rules as its cudgel to gain compliance with its social designs. The American theocrat attempts to replace nomos with thesis.
Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom, “to undertake the direction of the economic life of people with widely divergent ideals and values is to assume responsibilities which commit one to the use of force.” Because it is impossible for everyone to agree on what a just outcome looks like, the state exercises arbitrary power to impose its own design.
To what extent has thesis replaced nomos in America? In the spirit of Hayek, here is a list of questions for evaluating “laws,” political policies, executive orders, or administrative mandates. When you can answer these questions in the affirmative, the law or rule fosters liberty.
Does this rule apply to everyone, including those who created it and those who currently hold power?
Is the rule defined without a specific “goal” or “end” in mind?
Can an individual know in advance how the rule will affect them, regardless of an administrator’s whims?
Does the rule allow individuals to pursue their own diverse ends, rather than forcing them to serve a common good?
Does this policy assume that the government knows less than the dispersed knowledge held by the people?
Does the rule avoid naming specific groups (racial, religious, or economic) for special treatment?
Does the rule focus on what people must not do (prohibitions) rather than what they must do (positive obligations)?
Is the rule based on a long-standing tradition and “discovered” practice? (A rule crafted overnight by a committee is not a discovered practice.)
Is the policy free of words like “social,” or “equitable” that blur the limits of power?
Would you feel safe if your worst political enemy oversaw the enforcement of this exact rule?
Evaluate today’s rules and “laws” using these questions, and notice that many are commands to mold people to fit an engineered design.
The “superior intelligence” Rousseau sought cannot be found in a person or a bureaucratic state, but rather in the dispersed knowledge of a free people.
Whether the governing force is a religious elite or a secular bureaucracy, the outcome of a totalitarian soul is a collapse of the very civilization required for human survival.
