“Who died and made you king?” is a wonderful expression, and one that many people have heard over the years. I grew up in a libertarian family, and have heard the expression since I was a small boy. (Typically for many libertarians of that time, no one used the term, “libertarian.”) Growing up in a libertarian environment is a wonderful, rich, and fulfilling experience.
My maternal grandmother would use the question, alternatively, as either serious rebuke and teasing inquiry. If, as small boys sometimes do, I would tell my grandmother what I would do if I ruled the world, she would teasingly ask me, “Who died and made you king?” Her point was clear, then and now: no person should want to rule the world, or imagine himself worthy of it.
We were a robust, vigorous family, that favored debate, feisty discourse, free markets, and personal liberty. It was a childhood steeped in love of liberty, free expression, underdogs, and a conviction that a person could do great and exciting things in private life. The state was merely a necessary evil, and viewed with healthy but level-headed skepticism.
Public service was, at best, a temporary pursuit before a return to private life. Every man in our family from my father’s generation served in the military during the Second World War. Each volunteered; no one wanted to be drafted. There were two reasons for volunteering: (1) they wanted their service to be a free choice, and (2) they all had a deep dislike of everything connected to German ambition. Decades after the war, there would still be debates about who in America or abroad had been soft on the Germans or Soviets in the 1930s. (If you mentioned — even as an obvious provocation — Beatrice or Sidney Webb, for example, you were guaranteed to hear at least a few choice epithets directed toward the Webbs.)
No one conceived of a career as a bureaucrat or civil servant; the vigorous, the bold, and the adventurous did not work in government service. I know there are fine people in that work, but the work itself always seemed confining to us.
No one ever worried what our neighbors were doing. That was their concern. God Himself would have to help the neighbor who pried too closely into what we were doing.
Libertarianism is — traditionally — a limited philosophy about the role of government. It doesn’t directly address theology, for example. Some libertarians are religious; some are not. We were certainly religious, and I grew up in family with a traditional, ‘high church,’ orientation. Scripture was far more than politics, but like many families with our politics, parables and passages that recounted God’s love for individuals were always special favorites. (Matt. 18:12-14).
A religious life meant first the gift of faith, and thereafter a desire to help others through private, charitable works. That’s true for me, and for my family, today.
There were no stuffy rules growing up, and no overly mannered requirements for discussion or demeanor. You were expected to be able to take a position and advocate for it; prissy concerns about taking the proper, socially acceptable position meant nothing. Squeamishness was disapproved. In cowboys and Indians, the Indians were always slight favorites, the popularity of their underdog cause being lessened only by their apparent dislike of private property. (That’s a joke, by the way.)
A science project or scale model could be constructed anywhere in the house that didn’t obstruct traffic. Pets could be anywhere, too, so long as they didn’t get underfoot, or threaten to devour another pet.
A good education meant the world. There was no one in the family who didn’t want and didn’t commit to academic success. Everyone was reading, all the time. There were working class families nearby, outwardly like ours, who disparaged academic life; aside from Nazis, communists, and anyone who thought wage and price controls were a good idea, they were targets of our particular scorn. It was always a good, not a bad, thing to be a student. The idea that students were wrecking a community would have seemed crude, and ignorant. Scholarship was evidence of personal and social fulfillment and success. Schooling was not the end, but merely the formative ground of education. You were expected to read all your life, so long as you could see the page.
An adult man or woman might be happy, sad, or angry, but never shocked. We often heard — and I believe it was true — that the twentieth century mostly took away our right to shock or surprise.
Other than small children, I cannot recall anyone crying; by contrast, we laughed often, and did not take ourselves too seriously, even if we took our positions seriously. There was a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor in our family.
I know of other libertarians who had childhood experiences like this, and it was just a wonderful way to grow up, with clear commitments, but free from worry about stuffy, hide-bound social demands and pressures.