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Mere Libertarianism
Libertarianism is the subject of regular debate on Ricochet, both between conservatives and libertarians and — if you really want to see heated debate — among different kinds of libertarians. Taking inspiration from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, member Sal Padula and I recorded a conversation in which we attempt to distill libertarianism down to its essence and explore some basic questions about it, including:
What is libertarianism? What isn’t libertarianism? What is its relationship to conservatism (both in America and abroad)? How do contemporary politicians fare under a libertarian analysis? The results may surprise you (and are largely free of references to Rand Paul!).
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Resources: Hayek’s essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative.”
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Like a lot of American voters, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have a cohesive political philosophy. He’s flying by the seat of his pants. Within our bubble, we tend to think that everyone has an ideology of some sort, but many people do not.
I know what you mean. Still, his ideas about economics seem to be appealing to many conservatives at the moment.
So who besides Giuliani is there?
Perhaps Mark Kirk would qualify. His constituents have always wanted someone they believe will be careful with their money, but not someone too libertarian, I’m pretty sure.
This may not hold-up to scrutiny, but … Dick Cheney?
Dick Cheney and fiscally conservative in the same sentence. He of the infamous deficits don’t matter quote.
Interesting discussion. For many libertarians – the first issue is the Non aggression principle. That decides the relationship between the individual and the state (which comes second).
Good point
I don’t think the harm principle is at all useful but I’m not sure it’s a sine qua non of libertarianism. I mean, given a sufficiently nuanced understanding of “harm”, sure, it’s obviously true, but the closer it gets to being true, the further it is from having interesting content. I think it’s really pretty hard to define libertarianism, though the reasons why I don’t consider myself one would take awhile to write out.
The infamous, but probably false, quote, for which our only source was a revenge driven Paul O’Neill trying to pretend that his opposition to tax cuts stemmed from everyone else in the White House being nuts. Cheney helped push through the spending cuts that started to be more prominent from, well, from about the time he’s alleged to have said that.
Edit: Also, Cheney’s pretty deeply pro-life, strongly supports religious liberty, and supports school choice and home schooling. He seems reasonably socially conservative to me.
The podcast was well worth the 44 minutes and 23 seconds.
I like the point that Santorum’s and Huckabee’s non-libertarianism is unrelated to their social conservatism. Unlike those gentlemen, one can be be a social conservative and a libertarian.
Kasich’s problem is simpler than described here. He just isn’t very bright.
I’ve always considered Cheney a staunch social conservative. I think where people consider him differently is his support for his gay daughter and gay unions.
Additionally Kasich isn’t very conservative or libertarian.
Cheney rocks. Wish he were healthy and running.
I agree that that was likely where Tom was going. I was just disagreeing with Tom. I think an 80% ally of SoCons and an 80% opponent of social liberalism is a problematic candidate for the claim that respectable and fiscally conservative social liberals exist.
I hereby retract the Cheney claim.
I shamefacedly retract the more rambunctious and unsustainable parts of my rebuttal.
I think the description of conservative in use in the podcast was flawed. Conservatism got its name by opposing the progressives in the early 20th century. The first first really conservative President might have been Taft in that he denied Teddy the Republican nomination and another crack at the Presidency. The first President to really articulate conserving the Constitutional order was probably Calvin Coolidge. Four years after he left office Progressivism swift the country and changed the the whole nature of the country and our relationship with our government.
In the fifties there was reason to believe that we could conserve some of the old order but I think Lyndon Johnson put a complete end to that with his Great Society which destroyed so much of the country’s foundations. At that point there was finally a massive backlash which lead to Reagan and then to modern politics as we know them today.
The point being here that Conservatism is not conserving anything. Now we are trying to apply and re-enact evident truths, that our Founders well understood, in our new modern society. Progressives are the ones trying to conserve the new order they enacted staring in the 30s and stopping in the early 70s.
My point being it is unfair to say either that Conservatives want to stop things in 1789 the conditions of 1789 will never be recreated in a modern society. No conservative thinks that a cabinet of four people can administer the modern government of the United States. At the same time it not fair to say that only Libertarians are the only people that are trying to apply Classically liberal principles to the modern age. That is whole purpose of the Conservative movement. That Conservatives and Libertarians disagree about how to apply and or enact Classically liberal principles is the source of tension between the two camps.
It seems to me that main difference between Libertarians and Conservatives is that Libertarians have a “utopian impulse” that pushes for the ideal on principle while Conservatives are more focused on what works in the grubby reality what works and can endure with the facts as they are on the ground.
Very engaging podcast and I salute you giving us this podcast as gift. The work you did here is exactly the kind of thing that Ricochet was meant to do. In my opinion anyway.
I’m for all Liberty commensurate with Civil Society and I know that is a standard that is impossible to define globally. Each person will draw the lines a little differently. Still it’s the best I can come up with.
I do believe the best way to approximate achieving this goal is to limit government with, I don’t know, maybe, a written Constitution, defining limited powers, adhered to by Congress and Executive branches and supported by the Courts?
I agree – the take-away I got was that supposedly conservatives are just traditionalists, but anytime they espouse a classical liberal viewpoint they’re channeling libertarianism. That doesn’t seem right – maybe they’re just a different sort of classical liberal than a libertarian?
I hope a future podcast can address the issue in more detail, because I really did enjoy this.
I agree with this narrative.
I think we’re having a semantic disagreement here. I agree that the conservative project is largely one of re-building much of what the Left has torn down.
I don’t think that was Sal’s point and I wouldn’t agree with him if was. However, I took him to mean that conservatives contend that — in terms of political philosophy — things were basically figured out by 1789 and that the project since then has been to complete and preserve the Founders’ vision. With the exception of slavery and race relations, this has largely been a matter of applying some polish.
I concede we weren’t wholly consistent on that matter (as Sal said, it’s easy to fall into the trap of claiming people who you esteem as one of your own).
To expand on my last comment — and on something I said in the podcast — I see libertarians and American conservatives as half-siblings: they’ve got the same mother (classical liberalism) but different fathers.
Indeed. If the founding is the epitome of classical liberalism, then I’ve long argued that libertarians are not as close to it as they think they are. As Sal has said in the past, libertarianism applies to all government regardless of level, to town just as much as to federal. The founders manifestly did not share that belief, or at least they did not think that that belief necessitated minarchy or anarchocapitalism. Even if every one of them would have chosen a minarchist government for their own towns, it seems that few if any of them thought that a more involved local government would be an inherent affront to liberty.
There definitely is a streak of utopianism among libertarians — or, at least, some libertarian strains — but I wouldn’t quite put it that way. Rather, I’d say that the more conservative one is, the more likely one is to be focused on rebuilding the social institutions ruined by progressivism. In contrast, I don’t think libertarianism connotes a similar preference for what kind of society should reemerge, which is why you get some libertarians who are conservatives who really hate the progressive state and others who are much more radical in a let’s-buid-a-new-society kind of way.
BTW, thank you all for the comments. For our next episode, we’re considering a taxonomy of libertarianism — i.e., describing the various tribes under the label — but what would you folks like to hear?
Perhaps. I could agree with that to the extent that anarchocapitalism is not libertarian. Once that gets thrown into the mix, though, we have unrelated things. I think the same could be said for many modern-day liberals; they too share common ancestry to the extent that progressives, socialists, and communists are not to be considered liberals.
I’ve always wondered how I would answer the question: what is a conservative? As with anything else there are multiple senses of the word along with multiple varieties, and I’m not sure I could adequately identify a common thread through it all. More and more lately I’ve come to think of my conservatism as de facto: I know I’m not of the left and I know I’m not a libertarian.
I am somewhat of a traditionalist. Deference to tradition makes sense; it’s not some blind adherence but there is wisdom to slow change and keeping things of value.
I am a conservative in the sense of actually wanting to conserve something. In this case I’d like to conserve the system we inherited here in the US. More accurately, I’d like to restore it.
I am somewhat of a reactionary. The 20th century was the liberal century. Much of modern American conservatism is about opposing and trying to roll back those victories. That primarily means returning these issues to more local control and reimposing the limits on federal authority and activity more in line with the founding documents.
I’ve always mostly just nodded along in agreement with this framing, but I’ve been coming to the conclusion that it’s inadequate at best. It seems to me that both individuals and “the state” (in quotes because that term itself is subject to meaningful variety and diverse interpretation) are part of some larger whole.
I think this is where libertarianism has something in common with leftism: for both, the whole is always subordinate to parts of the whole in some way. To leftists it’s the state that is primary while to the libertarian it’s the individual that is primary. Neither of these views are satisfying to me; neither seems to comport with my own observations of the world.
Since returning to Ricochet I am convinced I am not a conservative and probably never was. However, I make no claim to libertarian ideology.
-Manning the far right edge of the reservation and happy out here.
Sal, for the benefit of Flyover Country and this Mere-Libertarianism podcast, I am tempted to start a pool among the Ricochetti to get you a nice gamer headset so you can sit your butt in a chair at a computer! :)
Our stretch goal is a toy to fidget with.