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I want to point out that Rand hated libertarians and never claimed to be one; and many will argue that she was not a libertarian. And Friedman, even though instrumental in introducing libertarian concepts to many Americans, is not an ideal libertarian at that.
Also, not all libertarians are for small government. A large portion are for none.
Hence, “resemblance concept”. Rand is in the family whether she likes it or not. Families are like that sometimes.
Interesting, and thank you for the response. I’m reading and thinking.
Libertarianism seems to be more of a paradigm than a philosophy or political school. I suggest the
definingidentifying trait of the libertarian orientation is reliably choosing the course or alternative that maximizes individual liberty. That’s a derived characteristic, not a directly observed one, but I think it captures the distinction and is close to the psychological root.Some libertarians might reliably choose courses that maximize their own liberty, perhaps at the expense of others’. These libertarians are also libertines.
The great tension of society, which both stresses it and holds it together, is the balance of liberty and responsibility. Libertarianism is nothing more than a tight focus on one side of the scale.
I don’t think this is an apt comparison. Sal and I weren’t attempting to offer a holistic explanation of our philosophies, but were addressing a specific aspect of them (in this case, our political philosophy). As such, I’m unmoved that “Catholic Asistotelianism” is a richer, deeper, more comprehensive ideology than what we discussing, because that’s almost a tautology.
Now, it’s an interesting challenge whether, if pressed, the average libertarian has a thinner metaphysics than the average conservative. You may well be onto something there, though one could argue whether this (to be tedious) is a causation or correlation matter.
But I don’t think Sal and I failed in this regard any more than an investigation of “Mere Conservatism” would have failed for largely ignoring things outside of political philosophy.
Ms Lu is quite right about Rand. Rand reminds me of Debussy who hated being compared to the Impressionists. Get over it, Claude. Your music is impressionistic and Rand’s a libertarian.
To be fair, I’ve always thought Rand was nuts on that point (among others). I gather Sal has somewhat different thoughts on the matter.
1. Libertarian is an ideology first, not a party, and like all ideologies, it has as many definitions as it does believers. Try getting 4 conservatives to agree on the details of what conservatism is…
2. the glaring difference between the definition of an American conservative and a libertarian is the willingness of conservatives to use the power of government to coerce (or prohibit) citizens to make certain personal choices conservatives consider either moral or ‘good for society’. Libertarians trust government far less than conservatives, so while conservatives marginally agree that smaller government is better, it is a principle they abandon if they see it as for good cause.
Libertarians, at the core, think that legislation creating victimless crime is too dangerous and will open the door for expansion of power far beyond the ‘good cause’ that started it. A couple examples today are drug, gambling, and prostitution prohibitions. The conservative says ‘those things are too terrible to allow’, and the libertarian says ‘its not the governments place to make those kinds of judgements, that belongs to the individual’. The conservative says that lack of prohibition is tantamount to endorsing the activity, libertarians don’t look to government to endorse or prohibit individuals activites.
3. Conservatives and libertarians are aligned today by their mutual aversion to the third ideology prevelant in American politics, American liberalism (totalitarian socialism). If liberals dissapeared tomorrow, Libertarians and Conservatives would have much less common ground, and their differences would be more pronounced.
If it helps, Tom, I’m not much into “mere” anything. “Mere Christianity” is my least favorite of Lewis’ books.
There are occasions when it’s useful to define identity conditions, but often that’s just a fool’s errand (and maybe even a way of avoiding more important questions… for instance, in Lewis’ case… why he was not a Catholic.)
Maybe I should add to the above: what’s the purpose of the exercise of distilling “mere libertarianism”? Most of us know the most obvious defining characteristics (I think?); a more precise definition may not (if I’m right) be possible. If that’s true, the questions I pose may really be the more interesting ones. What’s the deal with libertarianism? Why do people identify with it, or not? What does it add to the conservative conversation? What would be its characteristic blind spots, for which other conservatives may need to compensate? Etc.
Welcome back.
I see you’re still not up to speed on the topic.
Unless by Modern State you mean State, period, as the direct lineage of the ideas behind what’s today called Libertarianism and what used to be called Classical Liberalism and then Whiggism can’t really be considered “Modern”.
The interview’s worth a listen.
For me, it is completely about government power. All power corrupts. The more power you give to any entity, the more corrupt it will become. With that in mind, do you really want to entrust government with power over ANY personal choices?
Limit the government to the bare minimum powers necessary to protect the people from force and fraud. Allowing any more power than that is tempting fate and ignoring human nature and history.
That is the ‘moral of the story’ in the constitution and bill of rights, is it not?
Well, we were inspired to do the podcast by all the times someone has described (explicitly or implicitly) libertarianism in a way that most self-identified libertarians rejected. Hence, we opened with the common-but-incorrect definition of libertarianism as being “fiscally conservative, socially liberal.” We could just as easily used the “someone who wants low taxes and to smoke pot” axiom.
There does seem to be a good deal of confusion on the matter — even among libertarians — and we thought that worth exploring and clarifying.
A libertarian who enhances his liberty at the expense of another’s liberty is a very illiberal libertarian and a good candidate–if said libertarian is an automaton–to have his head explode if he jumps bad with James T. Kirk. That is, he’s confused. Possibly he’s a libertine, but that’s just a coincidence.
It’s sort of like Bernie Sanders thinking that what they do in Denmark is socialism or even remotely connected with his own ideas on policy.
You use far too many big words for me.
Here is why I am not a Libertarian, though I have some leanings in that direction.
Years ago, as a Microsoft admin type of person, I decided to figure out what all this Linux business was about. So I e-mailed a colleague to ask how best to go about that. He pointed me to a website where I could both download Linux, and get instruction on how to install and run it. When I went to that website, it wouldn’t allow me to get any of the stuff. It had detected that I was running a Microsoft web browser, on a Microsoft Windows computer, so basically told me what a creep I was and to buzz off. That was the end of my investigation in to Linux.
Libertarians are pretty much the same way. The conversation goes like this: “Oh, you call yourself a small-government type, eh? Ok, what about legalizing meth? Oh, you think meth should be illegal? So you are no different than the communists! What a creep! Buzz off!”
Same as you, I can appreciate the general thought of libertarianism, without identifying as one.
I’m a big fan of concise closed-form definitions, and not much for podcasts either. Do you reject the definition I offer in #4 above? What would you change or add?
Rachel,
I feel this is spot on. Thanks.
For me, I feel that there is a strong stand among the libertarians to, in effect, say conservatives just are not all that concerned with liberty. I find that insulting. Reasonable people can have differences on where lines are drawn.
I know from the past, that you are more libertarian in some areas than I am, and more conservative in others. Gosh.
That seems like a laudable goal, but I think it would be better met by an explanation that indicates why (compared to other conservatives) libertarians are more socially liberal and more fiscally conservative… and then perhaps discusses why it’s possible to deviate from that pattern and still be recognizably in the family. I don’t think it’s quite right to say that this is a matter of “correlation, not causation.” The relevant beliefs are more deeply connected than that. Correlation might explain why, for instance, the world’s libertarians are disproportionately white. (I’m sure that says more about the countries and subcultures where the school is influential than it does about the brains of different ethnic groups.) But again, if it’s a school and not a strict belief system, some people might come at it from an unusual background (or with an unusually high level of commitment to other beliefs), and successfully reconcile significant elements of libertarian thought with those other commitments. It might be easier to see how that happens, though, when we aren’t too hung up on membership conditions.
Ha! No, that happens? Really? Maybe even here at Ricochet?
The first paragraph of #4 struck me as pretty good. FWIW, we covered it in the first 95 seconds of the podcast.
Ohh-kayy, I’ll listen to that much.
That can be said in a different way… Conservatives believe in smaller government fiscally and bigger, more powerful government socially. At least as far as it furthers THEIR social engineering desires.
Meaning that in both social and fiscal matters, Libertarians are for smaller, limited government. Its conservatives who are inconsistent in their social vs fiscal principles.
My sense of the matter is that Ricochet tends to exaggerate the differences in that we’re all really interested to discuss where we disagree, and (relatively) bored by where we’re in complete agreement. The unfair accusations go both ways, of course; statements that libertarians don’t care about tradition, family, community, or morals beyond the harm principle are pretty commonplace.
It can be said in an even more accurate way than that: all people draw lines according to their view of good, justice, utility, and harm.
Harm principle or NAP included.
Calling it social engineering is a prejudicial, inadequate, and mostly inaccurate way to describe it; certainly it’s a description that doesn’t invite genuine discussion and exchange.
Tom Meyer and Sal Padula: Worth 95 seconds of your time. :)
Yes, but some people wish to use the power of government to draw those lines for everyone else, and some just draw their own lines, and live by their own view of good, justice, utility, and harm.
I don’t mean insult by the term social engineering, but please, tell me why that is inaccurate? Isn’t the point of legislation of individual personal choice fairly described as such?
Those should not be said either.
“In the end it is libertarians who are guilty of social engineering. The earliest defenders of classical liberalism—John Locke, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, or whomever you choose—never dreamed that by opposing mercantilism and protectionism they were promoting the elimination of traditional morals legislation. They knew that a free society depends upon a certain moral character and that law plays an important though subsidiary role in securing that character. Classical liberals were not libertarians. They advocated the free market, not the total market.
It was the utopian socialists of the nineteenth century who were the first advocates of free love, open marriage, and the elimination of traditional morals legislation. Lenin, not Locke, was the first to introduce no-fault divorce to the world. The effects on society were so disastrous that Stalin was forced to shore up marriage by restoring many of the traditional provisions. This has not prevented libertarians from promoting the elimination of legal marriage altogether, despite overwhelming evidence correlating divorce and cohabitation to crime, poverty, failure in school, alcoholism, drug abuse, physical harm, mental and emotional illness, depression, and suicide.
Progressivism is the American version of European socialism, and today’s progressives understand that central economic planning and radical moral autonomy go hand in hand. In buying into the latter part of the progressive agenda, libertarians unwittingly promote the former. In their legitimate fear of Orwell’s 1984, they ignore the lessons of Huxley’s Brave New World.”
–“The Libertarian Double-Face”
PHenry:
2. the glaring difference between the definition of an American conservative and a libertarian is the willingness of conservatives to use the power of government to coerce (or prohibit) citizens to make certain personal choices conservatives consider either moral or ‘good for society’. Libertarians trust government far less than conservatives, so while conservatives marginally agree that smaller government is better, it is a principle they abandon if they see it as for good cause.
Libertarians, at the core, think that legislation creating victimless crime is too dangerous and will open the door for expansion of power far beyond the ‘good cause’ that started it. A couple examples today are drug, gambling, and prostitution prohibitions. The conservative says ‘those things are too terrible to allow’, and the libertarian says ‘its not the governments place to make those kinds of judgements, that belongs to the individual’. The conservative says that lack of prohibition is tantamount to endorsing the activity, libertarians don’t look to government to endorse or prohibit individuals activites.
Number 2: Conservatives believe in smaller government but also live in the real world. Government can be much smaller than today but not as impotent and utopian as Libertarians would have it. Communities have norms and the culture that we grow up in have norms. Cultures can absorb and deal with some things very well and can’t deal with other things at all. A culture unable to deal with and contain alcohol should ban it. A society that has successful dealt with alcohol for several thousand years probably should not try to ban it. However that decision needs to be left to the community that is under threat not just to individuals for obvious reasons. See the Opium wars in China.
Government works best when it is as close to a people and their culture as possible. That is why local control is vital for a nation like the US to work and thrive. With the freedom to move around and join new communities local norms being enforced have a better chance of being beneficial instead of oppressive.
This is grounded in how all societies have functioned for all time. When you try to centralize this function of culture and community you run into all kinds of problems but these problems are minimized when local communities are given wide latitude to live as they wish. People do not live simply as atomized individuals they live as a part of a community a real Libertarian community would do the same. Conservatives admit that but Libertarians do not.
Fair enough. If by social engineering you mean ‘letting people make their own choices as long as they don’t steal from, defraud, or physically harm others’.