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What I Really Think about Libertarianism
My libertarian friends may be surprised to hear this, but my respect for libertarianism has grown quite a lot since my introduction to Ricochet two years ago. Admittedly, my estimation at the time was pretty low. I had lots of libertarian undergraduates, and I also encountered a handful of professors and grad students with broadly libertarian views, so I was well familiar with that “I’m-conservative-but-not-a-moral-nag” snobbery. That bothered me only a little bit. My real reasons for dismissing libertarians were twofold.
First, libertarianism struck me as reactionary in broad sense. It presents itself as a universally applicable theory about the relationship between the individual to the state, but on that score, I found Ayn Rand far less insightful than Thomas Aquinas, Plato or Aristotle. Her influence, I saw, related to more idiosyncratic conditions of her time: the rise of the administrative state. That was, I supposed, a real problem in our time, but in historical terms it was still contingent; not every society has these same problems. As a political theory, then, it seemed to me that libertarianism drew unjustifiably broad principles on the basis of historically distinctive challenges.
Second, libertarianism seemed morally lazy to me. You can see this especially clearly when you watch undergraduates learning ethics. We spend a lot of time working through the ins and outs of an Aristotelian-type virtue ethics. That means we’re discussing lots of detailed questions about what the good life involves and what it takes for human beings to be excellent. Some of the students get into it. Others become irritated by all the nitty-gritty details and also by the general sense that a virtue-based ethics reaches into every nook and cranny of their lives. It has things to say about their dietary and sexual habits, what they read, what they watch on television, and what they do with their friends. Of course we’re only talking about ethics here and not politics; nobody’s suggesting that we hire virtue police to ensure that everyone behaves well. But even on that score, some people yearn to escape from all the complication, and to find some area of life where the only ethical mandate is, “do whatever you want just as long as you’re not bothering anybody.”
Then we get to modern moral philosophy, and you can watch the relief spreading over their faces. We knew it didn’t have to be that complicated! Being good can’t possibly require us to wrangle with all those messy details! This is the appeal of utilitarianism, for example. If you want to know what to do, just add up the relevant pleasures and pains associated with the various alternatives, and see what makes people happier. There’s no need for all this complicated stuff about virtues and human nature and detailed analyses of the common good. And on an individual level, the fact that an activity makes you happy is a good enough reason to do it, provided of course that it doesn’t make someone else sad.
Libertarianism is not explicitly an ethical theory, but for many it has a similar sort of appeal. It dispenses with troubling moral and political questions by pushing them all under the convenient heading of “not the state’s business.” Undergraduates love this. It gives them that air-clearing feeling that they’re craving after wandering through the intricacies of Aristotelian moral theory. It feels to them like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and friends come out of the woods and look out over shining fields of poppies. Free at last!
Like the poppies, though, this shining simplicity is deceptive. One way to realize this is by reflecting on the complexity of the concept of “freedom”. From what do we need to be free? For what do we want to be free? When humans live together in society, one person’s exercise of freedom can obviously impinge on another’s in a wide variety of ways. My neighbor blasts his music at top volume, and I can’t sleep. Another family up the street starts feeding the squirrels and before I know it my porch pumpkins have fallen victim to the little monsters as well. Advertisers want to put up pornographic billboards, but then I’ll have to drive by them every time I grocery shop. My state legalizes pot, and now I don’t like going to the local park because I don’t want my kids running through clouds of sweet-smelling smoke.
Now, I said that my respect for libertarians has increased. That’s true. Some of them have arguments far more sophisticated I had encountered before, and some are extremely interested in promoting the good through private means. They persuaded me to take the problem of administrative bloat far more seriously. Their relentless focus on size-of-state questions has led them to some very astute insights on the nature of the technocratic state, and they make excellent watchdogs (or gadflies?) against the constant temptation to take advantage of administrative bloat. But in the end, I think my two original criticisms still stand. They’re enormously clever about suggesting ways for us to accomplish communal projects without the help of the state. That can be quite useful in its way. But they’re still elevating a theory of government beyond its contextual importance. And they still provide a large haven for the morally lazy at precisely the time when we need to be morally energetic.
Advances in science and technology have massively increased the state’s power to rule us in every minute detail of our lives. It’s also increased our ability to hector and impede one another. Advances in technology allow us to spy on one another every minute, to redistribute wealth on a massive scale without sending a tax collector door to door, and to manipulate life (plant, animal, human) on a very fundamental level. We’re wrestling now with new and sometimes terrifying questions about justice and obligation and what kind of society we want to build. Libertarianism seems like something of a haven in this storm, because its prescriptions seem so fundamental and principled, and because it doesn’t demand consensus on most of these challenging questions. It seems like a good out.
But ultimately, that’s just a dodge. Small-state principles can’t save us from working through these issues. Suppose we could achieve political victory on a “morality-free” limited-government platform, legalizing drugs and prostitution and abandoning any efforts to recognize traditional marriage or protect the unborn. None of that would deconstruct the technocratic state. Meanwhile, social breakdown would continue apace, and eventually (probably rather soon) people would cry out for government to step up its efforts to save them from themselves. We’d end up with more statism than ever. But actually, I’m not even very worried about that, because I don’t think such a platform has any chance of winning the country back in any case. If we want to win America back, we have to show real insight into the problems they’re actually facing right now. Americans think that the GOP has failed to understand or “care about” them, and to some extent they’re right. We haven’t given them any good answers to the deep social and spiritual problems that have arisen in our modernist, technocratic, democratic state.
We need to return to core principles, but not Ayn Rand’s. She doesn’t have the insights we need at this juncture. Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas all reflected on a much more sophisticated level on the relationship between humans and their neighbors and their communities and the state. That is the level of complex, careful analysis that we need to diagnose and respond to these intense challenges. And insofar as I’m hard on libertarians, it’s not because I think they have nothing useful to contribute to this effort. They do have things to contribute. But often I see conservatism’s relentless focus on small-state advocacy as something of an obstacle to the kind of conversations we really need to be having right now. That’s not because I doubt that we need to shrink the state. It’s because I don’t think we can do it without answering the bigger questions about human excellence and human community, family, life, and the complex relationship between political freedom and virtue. And regrettably, libertarians frequently use their small-state principles as a kind of excuse to avoid those conversations.
Mike H asked yesterday: what do social conservatives want? I would answer: human excellence, happiness, virtue and a thriving society. Those are my highest goals. And while I do have some interest in the thriving of the state, that’s only about the eighth or ninth question on my list of concerns.
Published in General
This could be the clarifying moment. Instead of a plan of action, how about identifying the who? Who would do the diagnosis, who would develop the plan of action and who would implement it?
The who is very important here.
If she addressed the difference in understanding, I wouldn’t come to that conclusion. If I posted something like this, and was repeatedly told “You’re mistaken, you don’t understand this topic at all”, I’d stop, start asking questions, and start reading to determine if those criticisms of my understanding were accurate.
I’ve not seen any evidence that she has the least bit of interest in doing anything other than promoting her view of how we all should live.
Why, the royal “we”, of course. LOL.
Larry’s frustration with my “refusal to answer” his queries had me laughing to myself about making a Q&A for the totalitarian state I’m aiming to build. Something like this:
Who gets to decide what is right?
Ultimately, this is up to the Grand Pooh-Bah (appointed, naturally, by me, your humble statist). But he is permitted to delegate, to committees or individuals as he sees fit.
How do we enforce the True Good of Human Beings?
Execution will be left on the table as an option, but normally whips and chains are the preferred methods of enforcement.
What sorts of vices will fall within the state’s purview?
Obviously the range will be wide, but sexual sins will be the primary focus. Citizens will be expected to keep diaries of their dirty sexual thoughts, to be submitted to the Ministry of Sexual Purity for review and correction.
I’m going to take a break from arguing with Rachel to make an observation. Broadly speaking there are two kinds of Social Conservative. The Reagan-style social conservative and the Huckabee-style social conservative.
Mike Huckabee’s hostility to free markets is well known. It isn’t because he doesn’t believe they work, but because they work to0 well. The resultant growth in wealth encouraging greed and selfishness. Sound familiar?
I’ve always wanted to ask Mr. Huckabee what is so Christian about bad economics? What is so moral about a government that would impose economic hardship on its citizens, even in a small way? Sounds like a very un-virtuous government to me.
I prefer Reagan-style social conservatism. It is by far the more virtuous.
After which they will be suitably chastised with the whips and chains. Hmm… I foresee people making up naughty thoughts that they didn’t really have…
More seriously: when you ask “who decides what’s right?” the only answer is to describe the systems by which humans are ordered and governed. There are all sorts of “forces for order” in the world, including politicians but also other forms of authority: magisteria, family patriarchs, military generals and on and on. Of course everyone ought to discern the good as well as he can, and people in authority (of whatever kind) have special obligations in this regard, requisite to their opportunities for influence.
We already have a democratic system of governance, along with many extra-governmental forms of authority. Conservatives are in my experience pretty attached to it. Once we shed these odd ideas about small state governance necessitating some odd, unnatural form of “value neutrality”, I think we’ll probably get on just fine with the foundational structure we already have.
Where are the limits to intervention in the freedoms of others?
This is always a difficult question because one person’s exercise of freedom can be burdensome on another in all sorts of ways. As in so many other areas of life, we have to balance the various goods and claims of justice to the best of our ability. I have already said that I place a high value on moral freedom, and (in a similar vein) personal integrity. I have far less concern about preserving the “freedom” to indulge in depravity and vice, but of course it’s not always a good idea to interfere in that either, because the effort is often too costly, and also citizens reasonably want some measure of privacy from prying supervisory eyes. But things like shutting down brothels (which doesn’t impinge either on privacy or on personal integrity) don’t seem to me like a violation of anyone’s natural rights.
In short: I don’t throw out pat answers to these questions because there aren’t any.
(Edit: I should explain that when I reference “the system we already have” I mean our Constitutional foundation, not the modern administrative state.)
Glad to see you’re still here and still have your sense of humor. Where do I sign up to be a reviewer?
Now would you take a moment to answer the question in #155?
Well, how do you think they are failing us?
Evidently, you consider anything resembling a market in babies (whether through ART, surrogacy, or adoption) to be failing humanity. But what else?
Most of the failures I see are where markets are prevented from working freely, though I admit it’s easier to see what you’re looking for than what you aren’t.
Alienation is a big problem in the modern world, which large markets exacerbate to a significant degree. They incentivize a sort of specialization that puts us at particularly great risk for alienation and all its attendant ills. Also, human dignity can be attacked when we generate markets in things that can really only properly (and ethically) be appreciated in a certain sort of context. Sex and marriage are the most obvious examples, and our appreciation for and understanding of these is already muddied and debased on a large scale. But I worry about the baby-purchasing because I think it threatens to undermine parent/child relationships in a relevantly similar way. Sometimes it’s bad when markets give us things “a la carte” that should be enjoyed as part of an organic whole. It’s quite hard for people to develop the wisdom and maturity to see this at the ages at which it matters.
Finally, I think our society is having a really hard time grappling with the tension between our egalitarian social ideals, and the sizable inequality that free markets create. I don’t necessarily say that the inequality is per se unjust, though I think societies are obliged to find ways to “mediate” the natural tensions that arise when we try to recognize the infinite worth of persons *and also* allow some to enjoy far greater privilege than others. That mediation should primarily be cultural, and doesn’t need to involve Draconian redistribution or anything of that sort. But it needs to address the relevant challenges, with something more useful than just warnings against envy.
Was the answer to #155 somewhere in #161? If so, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to see it.
In this thread I have asked Rachel two questions: If the state is going to undertake the task of enforcing morality, who will be in charge of deciding what is moral? and Where would you draw the line between virtues which will be enforced by coercive state action and vices which will be allowed?
Leaving aside the answers offered in Rachel’s comment #158, which I can only hope were meant as sarcasm (although I suspect that they are closer to the truth than Rachel would care to admit), Rachel’s answer to these questions have been something along the lines of “I don’t throw out pat answers to these questions because there aren’t any.” @ #161.
Fortunately, Rachel has assured those of us who worry about such questions that we are “paranoid,” and she has told me to stop being so “dramatic.” I find that ironic, coming from someone whose stock in trade on Ricochet has been apocalyptic predictions about the fall of civilization if two gay guys get a marriage license.
I find it even more ironic that the OP accused libertarians of sophomoric ethical thinking, and of failing to grapple with the difficult questions.
I just expressed my “worry” on this thread. Is that not okay? Why the snarky “free to a post on it?” Frankly, I don’t have the time. But I am free to comment, non?
Further, if this post alone is any indication, cooperation between SoCons and Libertarians is too far a reach and we will end up with Hillary winning easily. Great, just great.
Just to clarify one thing about my last comment: I recognize that Rachel has offered a fair number of “On the one hand…, on the other hand…” observations. That is not particularly helpful. We all understand the competing values at issue. The point is that the Libertarians on this thread have offered answers as to how we ought to resolve those competing concerns, and an explanation of how they reach that answer. Rachel does not. Leaving many of us with the impression that the answers will be whatever Rachel, on an ad hoc basis, decides they should be.
To the average member, who frankly doesn’t have such strong views on this topic, but, as I stated before, just primarily wants Republican control of Congress in 2014 and a Republican president in 2016 so we can fix the stuff the Democrats are ruining, your comment really sounds condescending. I don’t get it. Gheesh. Frankly, Rachel Lu seems like a really bright woman offering some interesting posts. To attack her like this accomplishes what, exactly?
D.C. McAllister has written an answer to this issue if you’d be interested in reading it. I wish she could be here to add to this discussion because I think her insights are needed. Her understanding of the Founders, libertarianism, classical liberalism, and conservatism is spot on.
The True Good has come up on this thread. The question being asked is how do we know it and how should it be supported.
When we compare the average family which has a husband and wife with their children against the single-parent family, we find we are paying a lot more for the single-parent family than we are for the husband and wife version of the same. It would appear that one is much more desirable than the other, at least fiscally for the libertarian who seems to have pretty limited means of otherwise identifying what is worthy.
Should good governance find a means to recognize the best good for the most people? I think it should because the law is a teacher and right now it is teaching the wrong thing due to what seems a hostility to the husband and wife family.
There is more but this item seems like a good start, especially given the fact that the controllers version of what is good is often at a tangent (at best) against the moral law.
So you are proposing, what exactly? Throwing single mothers in jail? Taxing them? If you think single mothers are too expensive to society, I would suggest that society stop spending so much.
“Should good governance find a means to recognize the best good for the most people?” I say yes. I say that can best be done by allowing people to determine their good for themselves, rather than having a Goodness Czar impose it from above.
Well, as some words of hope, I don’t think all libertarians are as peevish about this as Larry. We have lots of libertarians over at The Federalist with whom I get on very well. I do actually believe that those folks, your sort of libertarian populists, as well as your Reform Conservatives (so people like Ross Douthat and Ramesh Ponnuru and our own James Pethokoukis) are tapping some much more productive veins. I think the Tea Party did some good work in its time (and has changed the face of the Republican Party accordingly) but now I think it’s time to work out a more complete conservative vision that voters will find appealing. I don’t think we’ll get there just by banging the limited government gavel repeatedly. But again, I think some of the folks I mentioned (some of whom self-identify as libertarians, some not) are working along the right lines. They’re limited government people, but just a little broader than your classic Tea Party supporter.
Ah, Denise! We don’t see eye to eye on this. I was a little frustrated with the way her column jumped from “Madison didn’t want to support the establishment of a particular religion” to “government must be amoral”. That’s a leap the size of the Grand Canyon, which the Founders never made. And it doesn’t make sense. Why have government at all if it’s not going to be focused on the good of human beings? That’s a false-security, oversimplified answer, to my mind.
Larry, I’m sorry I just can’t help you more, but some questions just don’t have easy answers. It’s not “helpful” to give quick and oversimplified answers to complicated questions just for the sake of instilling a false sense of confidence. Which, in my view, is what these appeals to “governmental neutrality” are really doing.
Well unfortunately we’re not the only players in this game.
I’d be happy to agree with you, and rely on “unofficial” moral persuasion as the means to promote virtue in society. But liberals have captured the two key institutions in society that control social attitudes: the media and the courts.
The biggest problem is the courts, and that’s because the courts have the power to declare rights. As soon as something is declared a right, that removes it from possible persuasion. And what have we seen from the liberal side? A relentless march of deciding every moral issue by declaring one side to be a right. They declare liberal social positions to be “civil rights” because it shields them from debate and persuasion.
And these rights are created by invoking vaporous principles like “privacy” and penumbras.
That’s why SoCons are so court-focused.
Fair enough. If the “complicated questions” can’t be answered without “oversimplifying,” then let’s take a more specific example. As I recall, you have argued that humans have a moral obligation to procreate and increase the size of the population. Many people, myself included, believe humans have a moral obligation to limit population size. In my case, that is because I have my doubts that technology can improve enough to sustain a population very much larger than the current 7 billion in comfort.
Governments have intervened in this in all sorts of ways, from outlawing contraception on the one side, to China’s “one child policy” on the other extreme. Me, I would keep government out of this. I would leave it to individuals to decide whether to have children, and how many.
Would you want government to intervene in this choice? And how?
1. Ayn Rand was not a libertarian. She understood that right and wrong are absolutes. Objectivists often align with libertarians because republicans are just so awful, but they are decidedly not libertine or libertarian.
2. I’m a bit appalled that the author appears to be a professor of philosophy and yet seems to have only learned about libertarianism and objectivism from college freshman. I would have expected more. If I were teaching geometry I would expect that I should also know algebra and calculus at a minimum as well so that I would know more about the entire field of study. So should a professor of philosophy know more than a shallow and incorrect understanding of major American ideologies.
–I apologize, I don’t know how to do the quoting tool and my comment wasn’t separated from the original quote.
The timing of this is extraordinarily bad. What has the government been doing lately?
It has been trashing the economy, auditing its enemies, denying the inflation that everyone sees and stirring up racial animosity. And it imposed Obamacare. Government has gotten so out of control that even the apolitical have noticed. People sense that they are less free than they used to be and that opportunity is disappearing.
People are worried about their pocketbooks and are scared of the government. That’s what we need to be talking about in the coming campaigns.
Government is coercion by lethal force (once things go far enough.) That makes it well suited to improve the moral fiber of Al Qaeda and ISIS, but not the American people. The people have had enough.
As wearying as the OP’s evasions and diversions are, there is no doubt of her credentials as someone who has thought long and deeply about virtue of a particular type.
I have found this thread valuable for the many thoughtful contributions by small-government advocates.
And for the reminder that there are those who self-identify as “conservative” who are not concerned at the unprecedented size, reach and ambition of the modern administrative state.
Larry3435: #171 “So you are proposing, what exactly? Throwing single mothers in jail? Taxing them? If you think single mothers are too expensive to society, I would suggest that society stop spending so much.”
Why Larry, how clever! I note that families with the parents intact work better, more efficiently and are less costly to us than are single parent families and you respond with a straw man. If you actually have an idea, you might cite it rather than sounding like a liberal or a Democrat. Try again?
I don’t mean to snipe at Denise or others who still want to stick to a basically Tea Party platform. She can selling if anyone can, that’s for sure. But I have to ask: how popular is th Tea Party right now? I understand the yearning to throw off the administrative state but we have to stop fooling ourselves about America being with us. Th majority aren’t. And I don’t think we can fix that just by beating that drum louder. We need more complete answers to deeper problem. The worst thing about your small government purists is that, from offering adequate answers to these questions, they get prickly when others try. That’s not a good formula for success.
Sorry for typos. Phone typing.
In what way are Libertarians actually helping to win elections? And don’t tell me voting for the Libertarian candidate is the answer. All that does is give us more Liberals in government, more Hillary Clintons, more Harry Reids, more Nancy Pelosi’s and on and on. How are Libertarians actually helping to strengthen the one party that has any chance at all of defeating the Democratic Machine?
It seems Libertarians contribute very little to the actual get out the vote effort we need to win. Where are their boots on the ground locally to support the Republican candidates across this country? The Dems are united. In fact Jim Gerhahty this week sounded some alarming stats about the strength of the Democratic efforts locally.
When I see Libertarians willing to give up their high minded “principles” and join forces with Republicans (we are not the enemy, remember; its the Liberal Progressive Machine Democrats who are ruining this country for our children, not Republicans) then maybe I will care a little more about what their ideological defining principles are. Right now, all I see is them carping from the sidelines and doing NOTHING to win back our country.