It is apparent that dark-skinned Africans have no especial gift for government. Governments headed by blacks in America as well as in the “Dark Continent” are almost (but not quite) universally corrupt, violent, tyrannical or just plain crazy.
And their people are the poorer for it.
And, sadly, nastier — it has gotten quite bad even in the once-rich South Africa:
Racist whites extrapolate a lot of very racist conclusions from all this. But perhaps we should draw a very different kind of conclusion. It seems clear to me that folks of African descent thrive best on limits, sure — but what if those limits were to become the limits that liberty provides . . . that is, real freedom and individual responsibility? Instead of tyranny, authoritarianism, and cruel exploitation, swap the harsh limits set by common forms of outrageous force with the civilized use of defensive force, rigorously limited by the limits that liberty itself prescribes.
Might not it be from Africa that the libertarian future shall proceed?
After all, a gift for government is not a univocally good trait. It implies both soft tyranny and chilling servility, an irrational willingness to accept deep hierarchies and jury-rigged ideologies. So if Africans seem ill-adapted to modern society, maybe they are telling us something about our own institutions. Perhaps they corrupt modern “democratic” forms of governance so completely not merely because they themselves are so susceptible to violence, corruption and tyranny, but because our forms of governance are so readily corruptible.
Blacks are ill-served by modern government because it is so statist.
The Molinarian vision of contract-based government, with its competing institutions of protection, insurance and adjudication, might find its most fertile ground in black-majority societies. And from there the ideas and institutions might spread.
Wirkman Comment 