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Why I Am Not a Libertarian
I recently listened to Tom and Sal’s podcast on libertarianism, but didn’t quite get in on the follow-up debate. So I thought I’d offer my critique in a separate post, as a non-libertarian who’s been trying to define libertarianism for years, with a little help from my Ricochet friends.
Here’s my current view on this. Libertarianism is best understood as a school of thought. It’s not the sort of thing for which it would be appropriate to draw up clear-cut identity conditions (as Tom and Sal were endeavoring to do). It has its own tradition, complete with revered thinkers such as Rand, Hayek, and Friedman. It has its own lingo and established relationships to particular disciplines (notably economics). But the difference between a libertarian and, say, a small-government conservative may have more to do with background and influence than with actual content.
In the podcast, Sal compared libertarianism with Christianity, making the point that there can be a broad range of perspectives that still meaningfully fit under one big tent. I see what he’s driving at, but the analogy is problematic, not only because Christianity involves explicit admission rituals (e.g. baptism), but also because Christianity is defined by some rather striking claims that non-Christians are very unlikely to affirm. To claim with any plausibility the title “Christian,” you must believe that a man lived in Palestine two millennia ago — and was God. You must believe that he literally died and came back to life again. And you must believe that there is a holy book that records these events, which was divinely inspired. These are weighty claims. You won’t find many people who declare, “Oh, I believe all of that of course, but I would never consider myself a Christian.” We can quibble about the dirty details, but that’s insider baseball. For most normal purposes, the sheep and goats aren’t so very hard to separate here (particularly in a world where Christianity is becoming more counter-cultural, which is steadily minimizing the incentives to pretend to believe.)
I can’t see that libertarianism has any equivalent claims that would enable us to neatly separate members from non-members. Libertarians want the government to be smaller, and they value individual rights and autonomy. But plenty of people share those views without regarding themselves as libertarians. I don’t believe it’s possible to tailor a definition that is specific enough to exclude all non-libertarians, while including everyone who plausibly claims the title.
This really shouldn’t bother us too much, because we’re constantly using loosely-defined terms in meaningful discourse. “Conservative,” for instance. Or “patriot.” Or “educated citizen.” We deal with somewhat-imprecise terms all the time. Why is it a problem here?
I think it seems like a problem to many people because for many, the appeal of libertarianism lies in its appearance of being highly consistent and principled, without relying on a complex metaphysics to press its claims. Libertarianism is very similar in that respect (for non-accidental reasons) to the branch of ethics known as “utilitarianism.” Like libertarianism, utilitarianism can hang its flag on some beguilingly simple and reasonable-seeming claims. (“Individuals should be permitted to do whatever they like, so long as no one else is harmed.” “The right thing to do is whatever brings the most happiness to the greatest number of people.”) Like utilitarianism, the devil ends up being in the details, and the more we try to work out those details, the more we find ourselves hamstrung between 1) a distinctive philosophy with meaningful content, which most people nevertheless find implausible and unattractive, and 2) a philosophy which is reasonable and probably true, but so flexible as to add virtually nothing to pre-existing theories.
My point isn’t that we need to abandon libertarianism. I have benefitted greatly from my interactions with thoughtful libertarians. I would suggest, though, that we should probably abandon the goal of defining “libertarianism” in some very precise way. At the same time, we may need to give up on the idea that libertarianism can live up to its appeal, on the surface, as a philosophy that ostensibly justifies the demand for small government without needing to rely on metaphysically complex claims about human good.
If libertarianism is more of an intellectual tradition, or school of thought, then identifying with it doesn’t clearly commit you to very much, although it will be suggestive of many things. Because metaphysical minimalism is a noteworthy characteristic of this school of thought, it is probably highly misleading to say (as Tom and Sal both did on the podcast) that their lack of religious faith “has nothing to do with” their libertarianism. There may not be a direct and obvious connection, but there are good reasons why libertarianism and atheism tend to overlap substantially. Libertarians like Mollie Hemingway or Midget Faded Rattlesnake would then be unusual libertarians in noteworthy respects, which in fact I think they are. But that doesn’t mean they’re fakers! They do have some meaningful relationship to the libertarian intellectual tradition. They just bring an unusual set of external commitments to the table, which make them atypical but also interestingly distinctive.
Similar claims, I think, could be made of many other characteristics that Tom and Sal rejected as “not libertarian.” They may not be membership conditions for self-identifying as libertarian, but they’re related, for reasons we could explain.
I have never self-identified as a libertarian. I doubt I ever will, even though I realize that there are self-declared libertarians whose views are quite similar to mine on most of the bellweather questions. Here are my own reasons for not being libertarian:
1) Metaphysical minimalism is, if not per se a membership condition, at least a highly characteristic feature of libertarianism. It seeks to justify small government in a way that avoids weighty claims about human nature, or the nature of the universe broadly speaking. As a Catholic Aristotelian, I dislike metaphysical minimalism. I’m willing ally myself to some of its adherents, but I’m not going to wear their colors.
2) Libertarianism is associated with a set of thinkers; for intellectual types, claiming the label tends to signify that these thinkers were highly influential on your in your formative years. (I suspect that has a lot to do with Mollie’s identification, though I haven’t discussed it with her.) I respect Hayek, Friedman, et al., but they were not my formative influences.
3) I see libertarianism as historically contingent. It arose in response to the overgrowth of the modern state. That’s fine and reasonable up to a point, but my own tradition (Catholic Aristotelianism) has far more historical breadth. So I don’t see much point in claiming the additional label; to me it feels like jumping out of a lake and into a stream.
All of these reasons are, to varying extents, personal and idiosyncratic. Libertarianism is an interesting flavor of conservatism, which I’ve come to appreciate more these past few years, but it won’t ever be a good description of me. Figuring out who it does describe might be more fruitful than trying to generate explicit membership requirements.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
You’re conflating two separate issues here.
Marriage is universal in human society, and long predates both the State and legal recognition. The Romans managed quite well with marriage being a private, contractual matter, and until the Emperors got involved had a very strong monogamous system, with case law to handle disputes. So the notion that legal authority for marriage is necessary is just factually in error.
The problems that arise in the second part of your statement come from attempting to insulate people from the consequences of not being married. Welfare and the Great Society is far more to blame for the lack of marriage in black America than is any change in legal recognition. Thomas Sowell has spent quite a bit of time documenting this.
I’m on record arguing that marriage is not one thing and certainly not something that individuals do. In whatever sense, it’s what a relevant authority says or does about others. I also can’t agree that it preceded the state unless by state you mean the modern state. Otherwise we had “the state” the fist time the BSD hunter of the tribe laid down the law to the others or the first time there was a chieftain or council or warlord. Have there been any examples of societies where there wasn’t government right from the beginning?
Chimps and wolves have the same social structure (basically) that we do. Are you therefore arguing that they have government?
I think there’s pretty clearly a difference between social structure and government and a State, although there’s overlap.
So yes, marriage clearly precedes any sort of formal government.
Some animals also mate to varying degrees of permanence and exclusivity. Are you therefore arguing that they are married?
Law and enforcement might be markers distinguishing government from social structure. When the BSD hunter or the tribal council enforces their pronouncements with violence and some degree of acceptance then formal or no, official incorporation or no, I’d say that counts as government.
Perhaps this is best reserved for a different thread though. I just wanted to register the objection to your assertion that marriage predates government or that marriage is even a thing independent of some authoritative pronouncement about the status of specific individuals.
Wolves and chimps enforce their pronouncements with violence. That’s hardly a defining trait of government, again.
If you play fast and loose with terms and definitions, it’s hardly productive to discuss with you. Marriage clearly predates government, as government is understood to have arisen along with agricultural society after the end of the Paleolithic.
What is the difference between human marriage and monogamous animal mating?
Humans. Now I’ve got one: what is the difference between monogamous human mating and human marriage? Authoritative sanction and status conferral.
Wolves and chimps don’t pronounce anything. Comparisons to animals are going to be of limited usefulness.
So humans marry and animals mate? I think we can both agree that animals don’t marry as we understand the human practice, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a definition that explains that difference.
Ever hear of common-law marriage? By including “authoritative status” in your definition of marriage you’re begging the question.
I’m not playing fast and loose with anything. I’m challenging your assertion, it’s clarity and obviousness notwithstanding.
Otherwise, are you saying that tribal, nomadic, or hunter gather societies didn’t have government?
I’ll grant that human mating behavior predates government, but I don’t think that’s the same as marriage. One can do all of that behavior and still not be married even today. Marriage is a function of some group authority whether we’re talking religious marriage or civil marriage, whether the institution is voluntary or arranged.
Yes, common law marriage as deemed and enforced by the civil authority.
Animals rut and humans make love. Animals follow instinct and humans make choices. I think these are significant differences that make comparisons to animals of not much use in this context.
As I say this thread probably isn’t the place for this so I’ll bow out now.
They had social structure, but not government. I’d say a fairly simple definition of government is someone is engaged full-time in governing. That doesn’t exist in the simplest human societies. Even the leader is largely equal to the others, and spends his time on the same tasks.
You’re still begging the question here. “In Roman Law, marriage is a status created by a simple private agreement. It’s validity results from this understanding and is absolutely independent” of several other things, of which official sanction plays no part.
That’s a rather large exception to your alleged definition.
I too saw the Tom and Sal podcast and wanted very much to listen and participate. I did listen to the first ten minutes but I didn’t have time to finish it, and unfortunately my time now is also limited. I have been a vocal opponent of Libertarianism and I felt an obligation to listen to their understanding of their own working philosophy. Unfortunately by the time I do, that conversation will have run its course.
I did just skim Rachel’s counter to it here, and I also don’t have too much time. But let me throw these thoughts out there, a little haphazard, I’m afraid.
The reason Libertarianism is so identified with loss of faith (atheism might be too strong a characterization) is because as an ideology positions itself as neutral to values. Traditional government codifies values into law with the intent that the law itself maintains these values. This runs completely contrary to Libertarianism. This is very attractive to those with weak religious formation, with the agnostic, and with atheists. They don’t believe in those values to begin with. Libertarianism is not just a reaction to the administrative state. Libertarianism is essentially moral relativism.
I find Libertarianism to be a fallacy. It takes an economic approach, a reasonable economic approach that has proven by and large to be a viable way to prosperity, and applies its governing principle to the social sphere. It is fallacious to think that limited government interference in economic matters is analogous to limited government in social matters. Society sets up government to maintain its values. The only value Libertarianism seems to uphold is liberty.
Continued…
Liberty is important, but to set up liberty at the cost of moral values is to destroy one’s traditional culture. Morality, codified through government, is what maintains a culture. It is no coincidence that Libertarianism flourished with the social Liberalism of the 1960s. It is no coincidence that on social issues Libertarianism and Liberalism are nearly alike. They share the same John Stuart Mill philosophic root.
Such a philosophy is problematic to a Christian based culture, where, yes, the dignity of the individual needs to be maintained, but the individual is required to sacrifice his egocentric needs for the common good. Libertarianism turns that on its head. It upholds the egocentric needs to be paramount over the common good.
I found Sal’s analogy of Libertarianism to religion as funny. In the absence of religious faith people find other religions, such as environmentalism or here Libertarianism. To put liberty on such a plane where it is the end all of all values is idolatry. There’s even a statue in the New York Harbor that people can pray to. :-P
I think it’s fair to say that the term “government” is subject to some ambiguity. Sometimes it is used to refer to state as opposed to private activity, and sometimes it is used to refer to any kind of governing, including that which goes on in completely private institutions.
So, for example, a business, or a church, or a HOA, might have an internal government. That kind of government is nonetheless distinct from what we call the state. Likewise, social structures – even informal ones – can be said to “govern” human behavior, but still aren’t “the government” in the sense of the state. Unless you’re talking about the one social arrangement with the monopoly on legitimate force – the state.
I think what Ed G and a lot of non-libertarians want to say is that all governing, no matter how private, is “government” in some sense, and that all associations of human beings are “political”. Libertarians, on the other hand, prefer to terms other than “government” and “politics” to describe the non-state ways in which people govern themselves, reserving the terms “government” and “politics” for what they are most likely to refer to anyhow these days – state action.
The bolded section here is basically correct, but the statements surrounding it are not.
Specifically, I think it’s a mistake to assume that the decision not to codify a value into law assumes neutrality toward that value. The law may be ill-equipped to handle the matter and/or the costs of enforcement may be prohibitively high or simply higher than compared to non-legal remedies. For example, the belief that fornication should be legal in no way implies an indifference to the subject.
No begging here. What you quote defines marriage as a status in law. The status is created by the law and wouldn’t exist without the law or without the context of the wider group from which the law dreives it’s authority. That’s not to say that the private agreement doesn’t exist without law, only that that agreement isn’t marriage until that status is conferred by the law however laissez faire an approach is taken to formation.
I think we addressed this even in the first few minutes. We are most emphatically not presenting libertarianism as holistic philosophy on a par with Christianity. We are presenting it solely as a political philosophy with a very limited scope: aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology and most of the finer points of ethics are outside of its purview.
Anyone who describes themselves as a libertarian full stop, nothing-more-to-see-here-folks is missing out on most of life. We are not doing that.
No that’s not really what Ed G. wants to say. We’re talking about government in the sense of “ the continuous exercise of authority over and the performance of functions for a political unit” and also “the office, authority, or function of governing”. Political units don’t need to be large to be political units; small tribes certainly count IMO. These political units had governments in the form of chieftains, councils, elders, etc. If HOA’s existed in a vacuum then they might be considered political units too, but as it is they are a part of the several preexisting political units of city, state, and nation.
I have to leave and I won’t have access at least for the rest of the day, so I apologize for the hit and run. I tried to bow out earlier, but I have no discipline and I couldn’t resist. ;D
One more on the way out: mating is not synonymous with marriage. People mate all the time (including sex, cohabitation, commingling of assets and interests, and even some pledge of commitment) without being married – while being explicitly not married.
Sorry! As I say, I have no discipline when it comes to Ricochet.
In my mind there is no difference in Economics between classic Conservatives and Libertarian it is foreign policy and Social issues were there is the dived. A lot of people call them self Conservatives but Economically they are only conservative on issues that only cost them money. If it actually benefits them they are suddenly semi-socialist.
Secondly, I think when it comes to government intervention a lot of Conservatives are not Conservative. They some how believe different groups should receive special treatment when it is their group. So a lot of people call themselves Conservatives but are really a hybrid of what ever you want to call conservative monarchist in a democracy (Populist conservatives?).
I think a conservatives burden of proof that at what point and when the government should intervene and treat some group differently is what is vastly different when it comes to Libertarians.
So I would try to define the Major subjection of Liberalism and conservatism by the burden of proof one thinks is required for there to be government intervention.
So my thoughts are what arguments are valid and at what point is the burden of proof justifiable for there to be government intervention at a given level. Libertarians on some subject believe there is almost burden of proof that can justify government intervention were as conservative might believe there should be limited narrow and scaled back intervention with the same evidence.
You’re probably objecting to that remaining sentence from my statement. Yes, I understand how one could personally uphold values and not think it wise to incorporate them into law. Rachel in the OP mentioned a number of people who do, and I don’t deny their sincerity. However, I find it difficult to articulate why the distinction between a personal value and a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to institutionalizing values rings hollow, but it does ring hollow for me. In the abortion debates, I frequently – no not just frequently, repeatedly – come across the claim, “I’m personally against abortion, but I wouldn’t want to deny some one else.” That is just so vacuous.
I know, I was tongue in cheek on that. I couldn’t help myself on the joke I was leading to, but I do come across statements on Ricochet by Libertarians where Liberty is the end all of everything and no one has a right to legislate something that violates their free will. Those specific people, not Libertarianism in general, do raise liberty to an idol.
I once saw a libertarian, a very prominent Ricochet member, say that if you are against legalizing heroin then you have no room to complain about Mike Bloomberg’s soda ban. So yes, things like that happen.
Wow. I posted my previous comment before reading this one. I didn’t think someone would actually go there in this very thread.
This, right here, is why I am not a libertarian.
I sent your post off to a retired philosophy professor friend (an Aristotelian). His reply:
St. Thomas Aquinas is the most important figure trying to reconcile Aristotle and Catholicism. One of the many ways he does this is by arguing that reason provides sufficient grounds for ethics, so Aristotle didn’t (and we don’t) need revelation to understand the difference between right and wrong or to live morally. OTOH, revelation is required for the theological virtues and for salvation.
That’s why in Dante the best residential area in hell is reserved for virtuous pagans. It’s quite nice—fountains, villas, etc.—idyllic according to classical norms—but they’re not in the presence of God.