Whiskey by no means signed a treaty; neither did cocaine, nor did covid. But, for over 100 years, American politicians have declared “wars” on these abstractions with the identical certainty that they declared wars on international nations. However, in contrast to wars towards precise enemies, these crusades can by no means finish in a victory as a result of they’ve failed to comprehend that nouns can not give up.
That is the logic of what I name the noun doctrine: when governments body their campaigns towards abstractions like poverty, vice, threat, and so forth, they create interventions that haven’t any pure conclusion. Every failure justifies a bigger finances, broader powers, and deeper interference into on a regular basis life. The lesson is evident: wars on nouns are designed to be everlasting.
Doctrine Defined
The noun doctrine begins with a easy reality: governments like enemies who can’t give up. Armies could be defeated, treaties could be signed. We will even overthrow a regime 6,000 miles away from us if we put our minds (and sufficient borrowed cash) to it. However poverty? Medication? A virus? These foes won’t ever give up and might’t be overwhelmed, as a result of abstractions don’t wave white flags.
This design produces three predictable outcomes. First, it produces goalpost drift. One thing comically modest—“flatten the curve,” “scale back drug use,” swells right into a pipe dream: “zero COVID,” “a drug-free America,” and many others. Second is efficiency substitution. You don’t cease one thing by shutting it down; you make it worse. Prohibition pushed beer apart for moonshine. The Conflict on Medication turned weed into fentanyl. Third is the enforcement ratchet. Sarcastically, each failure justifies extra intervention—extra money, extra brokers, extra guidelines—all the time within the identify of chasing the abstraction only a bit longer.
Mises and Hayek warned us of this sample. Any intervention launched to motion creates unintended penalties in opposition to the motion and targets of stated intervention. Central planners lack the information to handle advanced social conduct. And, on the root, poverty, vice, and threat aren’t hostile armies however the product of human conduct. Categorizing them as enemies ensures one factor: the warfare by no means ends.
Instance #1: Prohibition
The primary nice experiment in preventing a noun was prohibition. One of many deepest thinkers of his time, Congressman Andrew Volstead, provided each the identify and logic of the legislation. His logic sparkled with simplicity: ban alcohol and drunkenness will disappear. It was political chemistry: take away the liquid, dissolve the vice. Regrettably, actuality was much less cooperative. Murder charges soared through the Twenties, organized crime reached industrial scale, and unusual residents had been now criminals.
Entrepreneurs didn’t vanish; they tailored. Authorized breweries failed, whereas bootleggers prospered. The courts now not enforced contracts—gangsters with submachine weapons did. Beer and wine—too cumbersome and delicate for a black market—gave option to moonshine and bathtub gin: compact, potent, and harmful. On the middle of this new economic system was Al Capone. Washington thought it was preventing alcohol; as a substitute it had made a star gangster. Whereas politicians promised sobriety, Chicago grew to become a battlefield.
That’s Prohibition’s actual legacy. Outlawing a vice didn’t remove it; it restructured it round violence and revenue. The dream was an America, secure and sober. What we acquired was speakeasies, shootouts, and an enforcement paperwork that grew fats on failure. The noun doctrine had already been established: transferring goalposts, stronger substitutes, and each setback answered with extra power.
Instance #2: The Conflict on Medication
If prohibition was a dash, the Conflict on Medication grew to become a marathon and not using a end line. President Nixon launched it in 1971 with nice readability: medicine had been declared “public enemy primary.” Half a century later, the “enemy” nonetheless hasn’t surrendered, however the authorities has its very personal, model new, home military.
Not like Prohibition, which merely handed Chicago to Capone, the Conflict on Medication has reshaped whole nations. Colombia and Mexico each grew to become theaters in America’s warfare on a noun. Overseas coverage blurred into narcotics coverage; allies had been armed and enemies had been created. Cartels grew to become mini-governments—levying taxes, operating welfare packages, and fielding militias—exactly as a result of their product had turn out to be unimaginably worthwhile.
At residence, the results had been simply as damaging. The variety of People behind bars multiplied tenfold, civil asset forfeiture grew to become routine, and native police departments got here to resemble paramilitary models. A technology of residents grew up understanding {that a} no-knock raid may arrive in the midst of the night time, not for homicide, however for marijuana.
That is the distinctive legacy of the Conflict on Medication: not simply crime and corruption, however the normalization of a everlasting state of exception. It taught the federal government that preventing abstractions is the proper justification for constantly increasing their energy. In that sense, it’s not a failed coverage in any respect—it’s a profitable paperwork.
Instance #3: Covid
Covid marked the purpose at which governments realized they may cease life with a slogan. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” changed into months of lockdowns, curfews, and closed colleges. The goal saved dancing—“sluggish the unfold,” “zero covid,” till it was clear that the goal itself was the coverage. A virus that mutates eternally gave politicians the proper enemy: one that might actually by no means give up.
The financial harm was staggering. Trillions in output misplaced, tens of millions of small companies gone, jobs had been erased. However the deeper wound was cultural. Folks realized that their “unalienable” rights may very well be taken away, not for violating a legislation, however for disobeying a mandate. Refuse a vaccine and also you weren’t simply unemployed—you had been branded as reckless, egocentric, unfit for society. Dissent wasn’t debated; it was smeared. Compliance was the brand new civic faith, and non-believers had been excommunicated.
This was the noun doctrine at full maturity. It was now not about preventing alcohol or medicine. It was about disciplining folks themselves—making so-called “public well being” a everlasting option to police conduct, speech, and even your employment. For the primary time, tens of millions noticed that freedom was now not a assure, however a conditional privilege.
Synthesis and Conclusion
A century aside, these experiments inform the identical story. Prohibition created Capone, the Drug Conflict created cartels, and covid contributed to the normalization of emergency. The objects change—alcohol, narcotics, pathogens—however the construction stays fastened. When the state declares warfare on an abstraction, it discovers the components for perpetuity.
Step one is the goalpost drift. Guarantees are modest at first—scale back ingesting, “sluggish the unfold”—however abstractions are bottomless. What can’t be measured can’t be completed, so the goal inflates till the campaign justifies itself.
The second is efficiency substitution. Suppression doesn’t remove conduct; it redefines it into sharper kinds. Beer yielded to moonshine, marijuana to fentanyl, and “precautions” to firings and passports. The try to extinguish vice or threat as a substitute concentrates it into its most corrosive expression.
The third is the enforcement ratchet. Each shortfall produces its personal remedy: extra brokers, extra prisons, and extra mandates. Every failure turns into the proof for escalation. This isn’t malfunction, it’s design. A warfare with out an enemy that may give up is a warfare with out an finish.
That is the essence of the noun doctrine. Abstractions should not chosen by chance, they’re chosen as a result of they can not yield. The impossibility of victory ensures the permanence of command. Failure just isn’t the barrier, failure is the system.
Wars on nations can finish with treaties, however wars on nouns by no means finish. A century of experiments present the identical sample: when the state chooses enemies that can’t give up, it chooses wars that can’t finish. These had been by no means failures of coverage; they had been shows of energy. Every collapse justified enlargement and every defeat assured escalation. The slogans modified, the objects shifted, however the lesson endured: failure just isn’t the other of success, failure is the technique. Thus, freedom isn’t stolen in a single blow. It’s eroded noun by noun, mandate by mandate, till disaster turns into unusual life. The one remedy is recognition: abstractions can’t be conquered, however as a substitute, liberty could be achieved.
