Matt Zwolinski has a really good piece up in the Daily Caller on why he’s a bleeding-heart libertarian, and why progressives should be more libertarian themselves. He lists seven reasons, and concludes:
[P]olitical disagreement does not always, or even usually, imply an irreconcilable conflict of fundamental values. Progressives and libertarians should realize that they share many more values in common than they probably think, and that their different political prescriptions are less the product of an epic battle of good vs. evil and more a function of reasonable disagreement regarding how to prioritize and realize their common goals. Even if disagreement persists, bearing this point in mind should make that disagreement a more civil and productive one.
It’s too bad, in a sense, that Matt didn’t get this published in The Nation or some other progressive outlet. But it’s a good liberaltarian piece, and you should read the whole thing.
See also, Steve Horwitz on libertarianism and power – a topic that’s gotten quite a lot of play in the comments at the main blog yesterday and today.
It seems to me the biggest obstacle in liberal-libertarian relations is one of personality. Liberals just don’t like libertarians. To a greater degree than conservatives, on first glance, even though the disagreements aren’t any more severe. Some of it traces to the fact that a non-trivial number of conservatives (incorrectly) believe themselves to have a libertarian streak. Few liberals do, even when ideologically they have more in common with libertarians than a conservative attracted to the label (or at least the rhetoric).
I disagree. Its more then a bit silly to say people of one label just don’t like people of another label. Thats the kind of over broad generalization that infects these debates. Part of the disagreements we have is due to being cued to certain snippets of ideas people throw out which lead others to assume where they are going. So instead of fully listening to the other person ( before telling them how wrong they are) we jump to conclusions and end up speaking in talking points. There are pretty significant insults or criticisms L’s and L’s make against each other that don’t lead to polite conversation.
The amount of personal animosity and name-calling I see with regard to libertarians from the left far outweighs what I see from the right. The negative assumptions that you refer to are a big part of that. I see some of it from each side, but not symmetrically. Conservatives generally seem to see more common cause than actually exists. Liberals generally seem to see less. When I meet someone who thinks he is a libertarian but is not even close to being one, he’s far more likely to be conservative than liberal. When I meet someone who misunderstands libertarianism in a purely negative way, it’s more likely to be a liberal.
I’ll cop to overgeneralization, but when it comes to large groups of self-described ideologies and how they relate to one another, generalizations are not unimportant because it’s from these that the assumptions of what the groups are and what they believe come from.
I have a hard time imagining why you’d be surprised to see an imbalance of animosity toward libertarians between conservatives and liberals. Over the last couple of decades, conservatives have successfully co-opted libertarians, either through adopting their terminology or attracting their votes, to achieve considerable successes on those issues where they find common cause. There’s no better way to make friends than to share some victories.
Liberals have no comparable historical successes through partnering with libertarians.
Liberals have no comparable historical successes through partnering with libertarians.
There’s 2006, maybe. Maybe 2008.
Jaybird –
Getting Democratic majorities elected is something, I suppose. Didn’t lead to any legislation in areas where we share common goals (weakening of the security state, immigration reform, war on drugs, corporate welfare elimination) though, did it?
Perhaps you can put that all on the fecklessness of the Democrats, but I think some of that failure should to be attributed to the reality that the faction of libertarianism that cares as much about common cause with the left as it does economic freedom is just too small to be of much help.
Well, don’t forget that the DOJ belongs to the Executive rather than to the Legislative.
I live in one of the states that has legalized Medicinal MJ to the point where it’s humorous (seriously, drive up and down the main boulevard and you’ll need more than two hands to count the weed stores).
I also happen to be the guy who posted the post about the DOJ’s clarification of Obama’s position on MMJ.
It’s not *THAT* difficult to tell the DOJ to STOP BUSTING MEDICINAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES IN STATES THAT HAVE PASSED MEDICINAL MARIJUANA LAWS.
You’d think that the Dems would be distinguishable from the Reps on this.
You’d think. I’m at a loss to explain why they’re not. But, I can imagine the war on drugs ending under Dems and can’t imagine it happening under Reps. Can you? You think Mitt’s going to go there?
I can’t tell the difference between the parties on this.
Yeah there’s obviously people on both sides who want to end the war. Right now we have a Dem president who absolutely does *not* want to end the war. On the Rep side we have two presidential hopefuls who do want to end the war, and who will likely never get the nod because of that (among other things).
Will –
Go read the comments on the article by Steve Horwitz and then tell me if you stand by your claim that the biggest obstacle in liberal-libertarian relations is one of liberals not liking libertarians.
Mr. Horwitz makes a rather modest request that libertarians just acknowledge there is such a thing as non-state power. He completely dismisses the idea that the state can effectively counter that power. Fair enough – that’s a fairly common position for libertarians.
But his commenters take him to task for ceding too much. Only the state has power. Period. End of discussion. There’s your obstacle for this particular liberal.
I said the biggest obstacle was one personality. I went on to talk about liberals’ views of libertarians, but that’s only part of the personality clash (fresh on my mind, having read the Unfogged thread on Balko recently). You want to argue that there are reasons for the animosity? I won’t argue for that. I’m neither liberal nor libertarian. I have no dog in that hunt.
To answer your other comment, I do not find it “surprising” at all why libertarians have better relations with conservatives. It’s been that way for as long as I have been following politics. But I think it’s based more on personality (and rhetoric) than the notion that libertarians are actually closer to contemporary conservatism than contemporary liberalism.
It’s mostly about language, and about libertarians for a long time (I think) focusing on the wrong priorities. You can’t blame them, however. Think of where liberalism was prior to Carter and his deregulation push.
you mean things like the civil rights laws? Elimination of the poll tax? Medicare? C’mon, progressives did a lot for America pre-77. It’s comments like yours that are, ironically, a good example of misplaced priorities.
For libertarians, after bedrooms and bongs, there’s nothing in common with the left. The left’s notion of freedom [freedom from want] is simply not synonymous with liberty, as in “libertarian.”
Plus the left passionately hates anybody who’s not left, which is why the piece was published in the conservative Daily Caller instead of the flaming left Nation, and so it shall remain.
The leftist’s reason for being is to condemn the benighted who are not of the left: as Adam Smith noted in his Moral Sentiments centuries ago, it’s motives we honor, not results. The capitalist—the free-marketer—he who provides jobs and wealth and plenty, he who makes the poor not-poor, why, he’s still the enemy and always will remain so. Therefore, so is the libertarian who advocates getting out of his way.
Well, the problem is that Conservatives talk a good game when it comes to Liberty (sometimes, anyway) but then follow it up with stuff like “and we should be allowed to kick in doors and arrest two dudes for humping”.
When pressed, they usually explain something like “States’ Rights” which, to be honest, undercuts much of the other stuff that they have said to that point.
They both strike me as folks who believe that Force of Law can make people be Better. It’s just that Conservatives have this morality here that they want folks to follow and Progressives have that morality there that they want folks to follow and they’ve both co-opted the language of morality for things that seem to be little more than matters of taste.
There have been decades of uncertainty and debate about the true nature of political ideologies and the distinguishing features of “left,” “right,” and “libertarian.”
However, Tom Van Dyke, on July 9, 2011, at 10:41 am, has finally resolved the uncertainty with “The left’s notion of freedom [freedom from want] is simply not synonymous with liberty, as in ‘libertarian.'” and “Plus the left passionately hates anybody who’s not left.”
Who can argue with that?
Who can argue with that?
Thx for the drive-by, Mr. Corneille. I accept your surrender, for if you had a counterargument, you would make it.
Mr. Jaybird, in the conservative view, “society” is pre-political, to the leftist, all is political. To you it all seems the same, but it is not.
I can appreciate the difference in theory but, at the end of the day, it’s difficult for me to differentiate between cops kicking in doors of houses of folks that aren’t hurting anybody because of pre-political standards or because of political standards.
I understand it’s difficult, JB, but you must try.
I don’t think anyone on right or left is fronting for that crap.
Reason.tv: The Killing of Allen Kephart – How the police lost the trust of a law-and-order town
Tim Cavanaugh & Paul Detrick | July 5, 2011
http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/05/reasontv-the-killing-of-allen
Please understand, I came here after being banned from Redstate.
I hung with people who explained that Lawrence v. Texas was decided incorrectly. I had people explain to me that “Child Protective Services” could provide a template for how the government could deal with women who were considering abortions.
I know that you are explaining that, no, it’s different when Social Conservatives do it but, from here, y’all look alike to me.
There was barely a public peep after Lawrence v. Texas. The constitutional question was theoretical: there was little if any actual defense of sodomy laws.
Look, 20% on either side are True Believers. To focus on them is to miss the entire game. [I found RedState not to my taste, either. I like Reason much better, altho that doesn’t quite make me a libertarian.]
There’s more than a dime’s worth of difference between the sides and parties. At least $a trillion. That’s where the game is.
Imagine if I were a pro-life kinda Catholic person.
If one party wanted abortion on demand and the other party only wanted abortion on demand except for partial birth abortions being illegal except in extreme cases where the mother’s life was in danger, could you see how I *MIGHT* say “Nope, I’d rather waste my vote on a principled party than implicitly support the modern holocaust”?
Well, pretend that I have, like, a dozen abortions.
Well, I guess I had that coming, thanks to the snide remark I made.
I do think it is, to say the least, oversimplifying things to state that “freedom from want” is the be all and end all of what “the left” wants. If it were, then no members of “the left” would advocate, as at least some members do, unionization as a means to retain worker dignity in addition to as a means to secure “freedom from want.” My argument is that you are correct to say that “freedom from want” is probably a core value of “the left,” but that “freedom from want” does not characterize everything “the left” stands for.
I would also add (heck, I will add) that one of the pragmatic arguments for libertarian policies–such as an end to, or at least curtailing of, rent-seeking-enabling regulations–is that these policies help everyday people to secure those essential goods and services that, in practice, constitute what is behind the “freedom for want.”
Finally, to say that “the left” passionately hates people simply for being not-the-left is to overgeneralize inasmuch as saying so suggests that all members of “the left” by definition had the not-the-left simply because it is not-the-left. If you want a counterargument, here it is: I know at least one person who is part of “the left” who does not hate people simply for being not-the-left. Therefore, at least one member of “the left” does not fit into your characterization.
Maybe you were engaging in hyperbole. If so, to what end? Is anyone who is part of “the left,” or anyone who seriously is weighing the prospects of libertarian-progressive alliance, going to change their minds or reconsider any of their ideas?
In short, the statements in your comment that I (probably too snidely and sarcastically and adhominemly) criticized are merely question-begging bloviations that contribute little and invite such immature responses as the one I made.
You found yrself obliged to agree with my thrust, Pierre, to your credit. Cheers.
My observation of the general viciousness of the left toward dissenters is based on stuff like the Balloon Juice attack on the LOOGies, etc. as smugatarians, etc.
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/02/balloon-juice-attacks/175552/
Fact is, libertarians get greater slack—the welcome mat!—on the right. A Ron Paul is unimaginable on the left.
Certainly there are exceptions to the viciousness; there must be an honest man on the left somewhere.
😉
Perhaps you. But I think I’m onto something here with Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, esp vis-a-vis feelings about the creators of wealth and their libertarian defenders.
To the right, the motives of the rich man or the capitalist are a matter of indifference as long as he keeps playing Golden Goose.
Perhaps you.
Perhaps not….I’m not sure I consider myself a leftist anymore. At any rate, I have known some intolerant leftists in my day.
If it helps, Pierre, I want my mom’s Democrats back. Bill Clinton, Dick Gephardt, Evan Bayh, that sort of thing. I liked Bayh in particular and prob would have voted for him over McCain, who lacks the temperament for the presidency.
Bongs and bedrooms, and war, and the criminal justice system (more broadly than just the war on drugs). And censorship. Church and state, broadly.
I’m good with yr expanded list, WT. I still don’t think it a) reaches critical mass; b) is exclusively left or libertarian; the right has its own anti-censorship streak, and the left is the originator of campus “speech codes” and “hate crime” legislation and such; c) there are libertarians who are not “strict separatists” in religion and politics, who permit pluralism.
The war thing is interesting, tho, but again, I don’t think it achieves critical mass: libertarians are not all pacifists, and there remains a Wilsonian streak in the Dem Party and sometimes even on the far left.
http://www.thenation.com/article/genocide-darfur
I’ll hang with the “economic liberty” vs. “social justice” conundrum as to why the twain shall not meet. It’s an essential difference in worldview about what governments are even for.
Ironically, its similarity of values that does it. Libertarians and liberal reach radically different policy conclusions in spite of valuing essentially the same things. Most of the time, most people can’t reason through the difference of opinion, and its much easier to just assume bad faith. Usually it goes downhill from there. Conservatives are different, because fundamentally conservatives do not value the same things, although in the US the difference is subtle.
Let me respond to these points somewhat shortly as I can’t write a whole treatise.
1) Of course the government is coercive. That’s the whole point of organizing into a society. We’re not going to be allowed something things we want to do because we’ve organized in a society that says, hey that’ll hurt other people a whole lot. So don’t do it. And oh yeah, so people don’t starve, you can only have five houses, not six. In other words, taxes aren’t theft.
2 & 3) I think we went over this quite a bit in the other thread.
4) Of course economic growth is important. But we’ve had tremendous economic growth in the US over the past 30 years…that has gone up to the top one percent. So, not all growth is the best type of growth. To be blunt, I’ll take 4% growth that’s distributed like it was in the 60’s and 70’s over 6% growth that is distribruted like it has for the last twenty years.
5) I simply disagree. The right to vote or not be searched without a warrant is more important than the right to open up a pizza shop and nothing will dissuade me from that fact.
6) Yes, libertarians want to end the Drug War, end the Patriot Act, etc. Why didn’t Reason write up articles about how they needed to save Russ Feingold? Because while he was one of the few civil libertarians in the Senate, he was an evil statist when it came to health care. So, he had to go.
7) Any argument that points out that basically, “Hurrican Katrina wasn’t that bad” loses points with me. Plus, it ends with ‘charities will fill the need.’ No, they won’t. I have 5,000 years of human history on my side.
But, I will cop to this. I don’t like libertarianism that much. Because in their perfect world, my mother either would’ve had to beg at some church for help with her children after my father died or gone to work at some low-wage job (with no workers protections) that would likely have made her MS flare up much earlier and as a result, stuck her in a wheelchair at an early age. So yeah, fuck them. The evil government made sure I had a roof over my head, food in my belly, and a relatively normal life.
On point 6: I see this claim made far too often. It is a deeply ignorant claim, since Reason magazine is a publication of a nonprofit. To my knowledge, reason can’t campaign on behalf of any politician without violating that tax exempt nonprofit status.
Additionally, McCain-Feingold is more than enough to turn a full-throated “he’s awesome!” into a “well, he was good on some things, bad on others” endorsement.
Because in their perfect world, my mother either would’ve had to beg at some church for help with her children after my father died or gone to work at some low-wage job
This is not clear at all. Plenty of libertarians like Friedman and Hayek have advocated for stuff like -ve income taxes and social insurances. Most libertarians are fine with some kind of social safety net. THere are ways to run these things that minimise unintended consequences and the like. Its just that every time we mention the word market, a lot of progressives treat us like we are talking about ghosts or voodoo.
I think Mr. Zwolinski overstates point number 5 a bit:
I think libertarians and “progressives” can find common ground on agreeing that economic liberty is important without arguing whether it is “as important” (or “more important” or “less important”) than civil liberty.
I imagine there are cases where the two types of liberty come into conflict, but it might just be enough to recognize that they are important. Jesse Ewiak may have a point when he says “[t]he right to vote or not be searched without a warrant is more important than the right to open up a pizza shop.” But an important point is that the right to open up a pizza shop is pretty nice to have.
I’m a progressive, and a big fan of your work, E.D., but I’m afraid I found that piece mostly enraging. If Libertarians want to build bridges with Progressives, they need to drop the patronizing tone. It is not some shocking revelation to me that governments can be coercive, or that regulatory capture exists. I’m quite familiar with these views, but I don’t find them all that persuasive or relevant to most current policy debates. For example, I agree that taxation can be used as a means of unjust coercion, but it’s silly to then conclude that U.S. taxes (currently 15 percent of GDP) are oppressive as a whole, or that we should cut taxes further on the wealthy.
Finally, though I know it wasn’t the aim of MZ’s essay, I would be much more interested in building bridges if “liberaltarians” would break with Libertarian orthodoxy in a serious way. Brink Lindsey’s article in TNR (which started this whole movement) made no serious concessions, nor has anyone else AFAIK. For starters, how about endorsing some anti-trust regime (doesn’t have to be the one currently in place), or a carbon tax, or admit that the EPA has been a net positive? Instead, progressives usually get platitudes about how much liberaltarians love social justice, and that’s why we don’t trust you.
You know, I totally agree. I think that’s a very legitimate critique and reveals a definite blind spot in the liberaltarian movement.
Thanks admitting that.
In the spirit of bridge building, I’ll admit that I’d be willing to forgo a more progressive tax regime in favor of a VAT or consumption tax. That would go a long way toward solving the debt issue in a way that, I assume, libertarians would prefer to the progressive income tax.
It makes sense, though I think we can’t really do away with the progressive tax scheme either. I doubt it would be politically feasible for one thing, and I’m not at all sure it would be fair.
There is something missing in this discussion, I think. And that is this: the attitudes of liberals and conservatives towards libertarians seem to correlate almost exactly with whether there is a D or an R in the White House. I have been active in the blogosphere long enough to remember that between mid 2007 and January 20, 2009, the following statements were true:
1. Anyone who even uttered the words “Ron Paul” was immediately banned from most high profile conservative sites, even if they weren’t one of the typical Paulbot trolls, u less of course preceded by an expletive.
2. Any number of vicious hit pieces towards libertarians on sites like Town Hall, little different from the average piece of crap hit piece nowadays in various liberal locales.
3. Where Slate published the absurd Metcalf piece a few weeks ago, in 2007, it published a remarkably thoughtful piece on libertarianism from Michael Kinsley.
The volume of vitriol is certainly worse now than it was then, but then again there aren’t the historic political ties between the two movements, either, so that is to be expected.
Well, the Paulbots did disrupt many conservative sites and it was a presidential election year. But Ron Paul is a Republican congressman, and his kid is a GOP senator. There are no elected Dem libertarians or demi-libertarians to my knowledge, although Russ Feingold may have come arguably close on many sub-critical mass issues.
But I do not think Russ Feingold is the future of libertarianism, or the future of anything except irrelevance, really. I respect him deeply though, as a man of good conscience.
You will recall my emphasis on longstanding political ties. The point is simply that the attitudes of liberals and conservatives towards libertarians seem to flip dramatically once the letter after the President’s name has changed.
The point is simply that the attitudes of liberals and conservatives towards libertarians seem to flip dramatically once the letter after the President’s name has changed.
As “pox on both their houses” types, libertarians naturally become part of the opposition when one party or the other is in power. That they have not been in power themselves explains to some degree why they have such difficulty relating to the parties who have to contend with the kind of compromise required when handed the reins.
Ah, that libertarians are first and foremost contrarians, the other side of MT’s coin, Mr. Across. Exc.
“In a world where the chief need is once more, as it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to free the process of spontaneous growth from the obstacles and encumbrances that human folly has erected, his hopes must rest on persuading and gaining the support of those who by disposition are “progressives,” those who, though they may now be seeking change in the wrong direction, are at least willing to examine critically the existing and to change it wherever necessary.”—Hayek
Good luck fishing, or rather good fishing luck on that one.
For the record, I don’t buy the premise that libertarianism is equidistant from conservatism and progressivism, at least not in their present constellation. The left hates the creators of wealth, and their defenders. This is moral sentiment, and not impeachable by fact or argument. Contra Hayek, you can’t make a cat into a dog.
(Warning: There are a lot of generalizations in this post, for brevity’s sake.)
I think Will is right that liberal-progressives tend to have a personal animosity towards libertarians. But I think that’s mainly because, on the whole, the kind of liberal-progressives we’re talking about here are socio-economically well-off if not elite and, generally, right-wing people with significant education and a similar socio-economic placement tend to defend their beliefs on libertarian grounds (while the more big-c conservatives tend to be less educated and less likely to travel in the same circles as liberal-progressives). So it’s not like liberal-progressives like Huckabee-type right-wingers more than those who call themselves libertarian; it’s just that they have far more experience/contact with the latter and, if they’re smart, don’t want to come off as snobby and patronizing by belittling the former.
There are smart libertarians that I like, but on the whole I must admit that my personal interactions (i.e., not online) with self-described libertarians have not been especially positive. You all know the stereotypes; limited as they are (as all stereotypes are), they exist for a reason. And, as a more minor critique, I wholeheartedly echo mw’s issue with point no. 5. I find this worldview to be blinkered and out-of-touch in the extreme.
I just want to say that that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the problems with licensure and eminent domain (I think these are important issues deserving of scrutiny and reform); but to focus on those two at the expense of, say, minimum wage, etc., is kind of a cop-out. In real life, real politics is often about the prosaic stuff like licenses; but for this context — mainly poligeeks debating one another from their respective tribes — they’re rather secondary.
I commend libertarians who talk about social justice and refuse to enter into the ideological bunker which states that the world is just and that power, insofar as it exists, is only wielded by the weak to dominate the strong. Anti-Rand libertarianism is a thing to be celebrated. But I think people like the author take a wrong turn when they expect their merely talking about social justice to be enough. In all honesty, I tend to care little about what people may think or say in the abstract; I just want to know what policy choices they’d make, given our woefully limited options.