I wouldn’t even know what “Liberaltarianism” is except for this blog. It exists only in the ether of the blogosphere: I bet you could round up 2 liberaltarians, and a third would refuse the invitation to join them for tea. Goldberg writes:
But the gist of it goes like this. There are libertarians who really hate conservatism and/or the Republican party. They like liberals for one reason or another. Therefore, they want to dissolve the conservative-libertarian marriage and get the libertarians and liberals hitched instead.
Smells like that from here–united by what they hate: hey, you’re cool, I’m cool, let’s hook up. But that only goes so far. Liberals [I prefer “leftists” in this context] believe in legislation and better systems as the most effective solution to the ills of the human condition. Libertarians consider legislation and “systems” to be the absolute last resort to any human problem.
What the left and the libertarians have in common is pretending the status quo—conservatism, if you will—simply doesn’t exist except that it sucks. The left wants to reinvent the status quo; the libertarian wants to dispense with it as much as is possible.
All they really have in common is their distance from reality. Not to say that things can’t be improved, for any system or status quo is by definition imperfect since man is imperfect, but all the leftist and the libertarian have in common is discontent. One blasts off for the sun, the other for the stars, in completely different gravitational directions.
I admire them for their joint commitment to leaving Earth orbit. Progress is necessary to the human condition. But they’ll never agree as to their destination, so they can never get off the ground together. Checking out isn’t the same thing as going somewhere.
The problem with “liberaltarianism” is that the libertarians open to it aren’t looking far enough Left, while the mainstream liberals they keep trying to recruit respond with “well, stop being skeptical of government and then we can talk, until then piss off”.
Now, if more libertarians reached out to the sections of the Left that are harshly critical of government (even to the point of rejecting it entirely) due to corporate-state collusion and militarism…you might actually have something. Actually, you already do, but it tends towards statements like this, so your mileage may vary.
No, Libertarianism is the milquetoast, chicken shit, obsequious ideology that allows one to be anyone, at every moment–it incorporates and includes the entire spectrum of all human thought.
No matter how hard you try, you will always find an agreeing and dissenting opinion. Libertarians inarguably embrace about 90% of left wing lunacy, so why don’t they all take a long walk on a short plank–get lost. We DON’T need you. Bring back the KNOW Nothing Party–bound to find kindred spirits and misfits there.
Just had a thought—the Libertarians should name themselves the “Schrödinger’s Cat” party—they’re dead and alive at the same time!
I would ask whether this is snark or not, but in a way I actually agree. The association of libertarianism with the Right never made any sense — for libertarians. Throwing in with a crowd that sees no real problem with hardening preferred social norms by force is a curious thing to do when ones own view on the subject can best be stated as “if it requires force to keep then it’s not worth keeping”.
… the know nothings ARE the republicans, silly!
hardening preferred social norms by force
An interesting locution, albeit tortured. The dissolving of social norms by force is the real dynamic at play lately.
Further, the libertarian needs to realize that if government isn’t the solution, civil society must fulfill the role of “glue.” Disrupting civil society in the name of radical individualism leaves too big a void. The libertarian must allow the culture some cohesion, even if it doesn’t particularly suit his aesthetic druthers.
My family sponsored some missionaries back in the 1980’s. They came back every few years or so to regale us with stories about those poor benighted ese eja people.
Of course, one of the problems that tribal people have to deal with is stuff like “for real” malnutrition and we heard stories about how they had taboos against certain fruits in the jungle… perfectly nutritious fruits, mind… that hungry pregnant mothers would avoid.
Why? Because there was a societal taboo against eating them.
Those of us in the church wept for these people, of course. We were pleased that we could bring real knowledge to them.
I ask you this: were we disrupting their civil society?
Starving people in India not only walk past perfectly edible cattle, they often share their meager provisions with same.
note that some of these people may be starving for religious reasons, not due to a systemic lack of food.
Ok, I’ll bite: what’s your example?
If like-minded people want to pursue their particular cultural interests, whatever, none of my business. Unfortunately, most that yammer about cultural cohesion take it to an extreme, acting as if existence of the slightest disagreement is sign of The Fall of Man.
I can’t answer for the amorphous “most” here whom you accuse of yammering, Mr. Psycho, but clearly you do know what I mean afterall. Ron Paul’s pro-life stance, for instance.
Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, “It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket.”
In an Oct. 27, 1999 speech to Congress, Ron Paul said:
“I am strongly pro-life. I think one of the most disastrous rulings of this century was Roe versus Wade. I do believe in the slippery slope theory. I believe that if people are careless and casual about life at the beginning of life, we will be careless and casual about life at the end. Abortion leads to euthanasia. I believe that.”
Since it’s legal abortion for you rather than The Gays, my guess was wrong. Alright then. You aren’t going to like my view of that one either: not having a uterus, however distasteful I may find the practice matters absolutely jack squat. It’s not me with something siphoning off of my body from inside, it’s the woman, I have no legitimate power over her and nor do I want it.
As for euthanasia: if Ron is referring to the forced kind, then yes, that would be pretty terrible, though I don’t see where he’s getting the association from. But someone choosing to end their life? Well damn, it’s their life, isn’t it?
I answered yr question, Mr Psycho, re
hardening preferred social norms by force
—An interesting locution, albeit tortured. The dissolving of social norms by force is the real dynamic at play lately.
As to the far left site you linked to, the OP stipulates that the far left and libertarians have the destruction of the status quo in common. After that, nothing in common atall.
[I did not know the far left hated Freddie and Fannie. That’s news to me, and it’s a bit late in the game regardless.]
The “far-left” site I linked to is also a libertarian site (that is, they are staunchly anti-government, but to an extent for reasons popularly thought of as left-wing). That was my point in linking it, an example of what a reasonable fusion between libertarianism and the Left sounds like.
The libertarian must allow the culture some cohesion, even if it doesn’t particularly suit his aesthetic druthers.
You say this as though the culture is monolithic. As though there are no variations to it. As though there almost ought not be any fluctuation to it. As though if 3% of the population wants to marry folks of the same sex, this is unacceptable and is so by the fact that 50%+1 might disagree.
I like to think that a “civil” society would value individual freedom far more than the possible offense to their aesthetic druthers.
Mr. Boggs, you might think that, but you might be wrong. Radical individualism poses problems for social cohesion. That would be the point.
No, I think radical individualism poses problems for some of those that think that social cohesion means that everybody else does things like *I* think they ought to do things. And they sure as hell don’t do the kind of things that *I* would take offense to. Those things ruin *my* sense of social cohesion. And *my* sense of social cohesion trumps your radical individualism or, as I like to call it, freedom.
At least that what it sounds like to me.
Hell, various religions, races, and nationalities cause problems for social cohesion. What do you propose to do about that?
Why, E Pluribus Unum, of course, Mr. Boggs. Inherent in radical individualism is the abolition of shared values in favor of relativistic ones. The result is no ends, only means: “liberty” becomes the end in itself.
[That materialism becomes the only substitute for transcendent values is no surprise, although that’s a corollary, not the main point here.]
And maybe that’s where we differ. To me, our “freedoms” will always be relative to our desires. Assuming my exercised freedom to metaphorically swing my fists never meets your nose, and I mean actual harm, not just icky offense at something someone else finds distatsteful, it seems that this ought to be the highest of shared values.
To what point are you willing to sacrifice liberty for order?
The question here is more about liberty being exercised for its own sake, at the expense of order. Does banning prayer in schools make this a “better” nation? Depends on what “better” means, I reckon. Why the push for such things? On the whole, were I an atheist, I’d still be down for any teleological fiction that would help the Great Unwashed behave themselves.
Most sane folks agree liberty without order is useless. It’s certainly a conundrum, this “ordered liberty” of the classical liberals that seems so oxymoronic to modern ears, hence this discussion.
I guess the problem comes when we give our definitions of ordered liberty. Some like their liberty more ordered than others. Some people want other peoples’ liberty ordered like they like. This is where the problems begin.
In regards to prayer, why not simply have a history lesson about the golden rule which is not strictly or originally a Christian idea.
I suppose if they want to set aside a minute or two for each kid to chatter about to their respective deity or even just to read LEGO comics (my boy is partial to those) then fine. And whereas, you seem all reasonable and such about the plurality of religion, I’d be interested to see what the majority of the great unwashed would do if a Muslim teacher used those few minutes on their mat towards Mecca. I’m betting that doesn’t quite fit the definition of “prayer” to them.
The idea of the Culture as Monolithic has a strong tradition in Scotch Irish culture — it’s the same thing that led to everyone being “white” down there, including the people with black ancestors (whitewashed into being Indian, eventually).
It’s from this tradition that people get the “We’re America. Speak English” line of thought.
The quakers never thought nothing of the sort, and were stronger for it (quantitatively speaking).
BTW: hilarious how one of the comments on that column at PJM basically says “Child molestation? Watching porn in your own home? Same thing!”
If “better” equals freer, then as long as you’re referring to prayer organized by the authorities in government schools, the answer to me would clearly be Yes. Banning voluntary prayer by particular students, on the other hand, is pointless. They might need Jah’s assistance on the quiz, y’know?
What if they don’t necessarily need a fiction to behave? Hell, what about if some actually act worse with that fiction? However bad someone may act on their own, imagine them with the idea in their head that god is on their side…
That there’s no social utility to religion is a different argument, and I think it’s readily admitted that we don’t really know for sure that there isn’t any. Therefore, symbolic exercises like booting prayer in school are ideologically driven, with no concern or care for their possible negative effects.
[School prayer had never been compulsory, and religious exemptions for this or that are as old as America herself.]
If there were never any tax-funded schools were students were led in prayer, then where’d those Supreme Court rulings come from?
What’s your point? That this is good for society, for the country? Fine. But it doesn’t look like it to me, nor does it seem wise [in the Burkean sense] to disrupt societal norms in the name of ideology, which these things are.
[As for the historical/constitutional argument, what can I say? I’m with Scalia, unsurprisingly.
“In holding that the Establishment Clause prohibits invocations and benedictions at public school graduation ceremonies, the Court – with nary a mention that it is doing so – lays waste a tradition that is as old as public school graduation ceremonies themselves, and that is a component of an even more longstanding American tradition of nonsectarian prayer to God at public celebrations generally. As its instrument of destruction, the bulldozer of its social engineering, the Court invents a boundless, and boundlessly manipulable, test of psychological coercion…” 505 U.S. 577, 632.]
The whole idea that tradition trumps all is its own slippery slope. The fact that (and I am unsurprised Scalia feels this way) these nonsectarian prayers need to be audible to the entire audience leaves me feeling like the insistence on having them is less to do with praising God and more to do with showing off. I assume even a nonsectarian God hears the words inside our head, no?
“Nonsectarian” prayer isn’t much of a distinction, as it still assumes everyone there holds the same faith (in this case, a slightly blurry but still distinguishable Christianity). Led by school authorities in tax-funded classrooms, it suggests that anyone who doesn’t hold the faith they choose to endorse is somehow less of a citizen.
Again, I’m fine with people having shared values. Why can’t they have that without a state seal of approval & my tax dollars?
The point is that the Constitution doesn’t demand such “neutrality.” Never did. At issue here is not your [or my] particular aesthetic druthers about what would be “better.” What’s at issue is deciding 100 years later that the 14th A [or the First] demands these radical changes when they don’t.
Government schools weren’t the norm when the Constitution was written. The issue of religious neutrality in government schools can’t come up with an assumption that there is no such creature.
“Neutrality” isn’t neutral as used here. It is indeed “the dissolving of social norms by force” as referenced above. The public schools are just one battlefield.
The libertarian [or leftist] reveals himself as ideological in cases like these, exercising an abstract “liberty” without care for its real-world consequences.
It’s true that Burkean thought—in this case nothing more than prudence—gives deference to tradition over ideology. But this isn’t “old is better,” it’s a fallibilism, that we don’t understand all the complexities of a society, and ripping out foundations for newer abstractions is unwise.
In this case, you submit that religion has no social utility. This may be true, but it’s quite unproven. Your idea of improving things may have already caused great harm for all we know.
[As for the history/constitutional question, that Congress has chaplains to this day argues against the sort of “neutrality” you write of approvingly here. The Constitution does not require we pretend God does not exist.]
But arguing that because religion may have social utility necessarily implies we ought to insert it into or that it should remain in the domain of public schools is a stretch.
I’d argue that religion has utility for individuals and that those of the same-ish religion tend to find a social utility in the beliefs they have together. An argument can be made, and we see some of the conflicts it can cause, that having differing religions in the same community may not be of beneficial social utility.
BTW, the Constitution does also not require we pretend God does exist. 😉
Agreed, Mr. Boggs, and that’s my point. It’s likely too late to re-insert prayer into schools, but it wasn’t constitutionally necessary to strip it out, either.
The problem for the libertarian in these matters to my mind is that he needs a coherent and functioning society to pick up the slack if government is to be minimized. To use that government to strip away the voluntary and cultural underpinnings of society seems counterproductive but that’s just what’s been happening.
In the case of schools, the legalist mind sees the public school as solely function of government. But that’s not the real world–think high school football in Texas. It’s cultural and social as well, not merely a function of the state.
“The naked public square” is a metaphor, but in a real and literal sense, who owns the public square is the question. If the “state” or the gov’t owns the public square or school and not the people or “society,” then the state is really all there is; “society” doesn’t really exist.
Therefore the libertarian has nothing to fall back on except radical individualism. And we know how decent people are in “the state of nature,” freed from the constraints and coercions of society. ;-P
Question then: If the government said, “we will no longer be issuing marriage certificates but will be granting civil union certificates which are effectively the same in all but name” you’d be alright with that? Heterosexual folk and religious folk could still have their marriages recognized and sanctified by their respective churches, but the state would no longer issue a certificate that implied superiority of one legal arrangement between two people over another. All of those arrangements would be simple contractual agreements, like business licenses. What social underpinning is being torn asunder in this scenario?
I’m having trouble understanding how less of government in many areas necessarily leads to chaos. Besides, the libertarian has one other thing that he can fall back against or run up against or use as a constraint and that is the liberties of everyone else.
I think you missed the reason I call them government or tax-funded schools in lieu of “public”. That distinction is because in my view using “public” as a synonym for government lends the latter a legitimacy it does not deserve.
Mark, now you’re onto gay marriage. My problem with this approach is each issue has its own particulars and one size does not fit all. As for marriage, society’s or the state’s only interest in institutionalizing any of it is to deal with the consequences of the type of sexual activity that makes babies.
The rest is ideology.
I’m having trouble understanding how less of government in many areas necessarily leads to chaos.
The only way to find out is to roll the dice. Burke found this imprudent to do on a major scale, as do I. Republicans talking about “Fair Tax” and gutting the 100-yr-old income tax system are equally playing with radical fire. It might be better to tear it down and start over, but there’s a real danger of crapping out.
Mr. Psycho, the rhetorical sleight-of-hand was noted. “Tax-supported” is accurate, but does not touch on the real issue of who owns the public square.
Or it does, if your position is that only gov’t exists and “society” is obsolete. I think that’s becoming true; it’s the modernist project. But since I’m speaking of “society” and you are not, we have run out of lingua franca here.
As for marriage, society’s or the state’s only interest in institutionalizing any of it is to deal with the consequences of the type of sexual activity that makes babies.
Society or the state should have put a little more effort into maintaining unions during the 70’s and 80’s rather than focusing so much on baby-making.
We’ve reached a point where there are almost as many children born out of wedlock as in. From the wikipedia:
In April 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics announced that nearly 40 percent of American infants born in 2007 were borne by an unwed mother; that of 4.3 million children, 1.7 were born to unmarried parents, a 25 percent increase from 2002.
You may not be interested in making marriages be seen as something that ought to be lifepartnerships no matter what but marriages being something that ought to be lifepartnerships are interested in you.
Jaybird, John Locke’s case for marriage was for as long as it was making and raising children. That’s as far as I’m inclined to go in fora such as the League as well.
Gay marriage is one of many when it comes to the differences I have with conservatives. I’m using it as an example of the idea that societal structures especially as they are deemed important by X% segment of society trump the ability of others to enjoy the same freedoms. It’s also the same reason I got past my inconsistent belief that arbitrary income redistribution is anything but a fool’s errand. I’ve already recounted my conversion story various other places, but I think Jaybird could probably explain my view better than I could since he seems to be among the most ideologically consistent person ’round these parts.
In short, you must beware of saying that it’s OK to have the government doing these sorts of things for these good reasons while finding it absurd and downright totalitarian that they might do these other things despite their equally good and well-intentioned reasons.
In other words, you gotta be careful saying the government should make sure these 3% don’t have the same freedoms to enjoy contractual agreements while then claiming that it is unAmerican that government establish steeply progressive taxation or redistribute income.
Finally, one comment on the school prayer thing. If having a bunch of 6-18 year olds offer platitudes to non-sectarian deities is the thread that might keep us from tumbling into the abyss, I fear we’re screwed anyway.
TVD, I’m sure you’ve heard what I have to say about how 99.44% effective birth control and the advent (get it???) of on-demand abortion changed the nature of marriage far, faaaaaaar before it made any sense at all for two dudes to get married.
John Locke’s assumptions were the assumptions of someone who saw women die in childbirth, die of consumption as prostitutes, or die as crones.
I think it’s safe to say that his assumptions about marriage would be different had he seen a single commercial for Yaz.
Mr. Boggs, gay marriage is sui generis, like so many other things. I do not see it as a “freedom” issue. Binding the “breeders” to each other via marriage—by hook or crook—is in society’s interest, as well as the state’s, so society and/or the state isn’t responsible for looking after the little buggers. I leave it there.
The one comment above [but an echo of an argument often cited] that wanted to abolish marriage as a civil institution and make it “religious” missed the point completely. Destroying marriage [whatever’s left of it] in the interest of “fairness” is ideology, not wisdom.
Jaybird, unlike heterosexual marriage, neither society nor the state has a compelling interest in gay sex or SSM because it doesn’t generate children who need looking after.
Do what you want politically. It’s a free country. We have greater absurdities already on the books and one more probably won’t hurt that much.
Or even Ted Williams.
People who cheer that wealth gives us freedom but insist that the divorce rate arises purely from a lack of morals are fooling themselves. (Unless they’re Newt Gingrich;then they’re just just lying sacks of fish.) That’s their privilege, but I’m damned tired of their trying to fool me too.
And I get really tired of “We need to treat these people like shit because it might improve society as a whole.” That’s almost enough to make me a libertarian.
Jaybird, unlike heterosexual marriage, neither society nor the state has a compelling interest in gay sex or SSM because it doesn’t generate children who need looking after.
Tom, I am arguing that society’s neglect of marriage in the first place has resulted in both unheretofore seen levels of children born out of wedlock *AND* gay marriage.
Perhaps by re-emphasizing the importance of until-death lifepartnerships, we could get back to children being born with benefit of clergy.
It wasn’t homosexuals who brought us to 40ish percent bastardry, Tom.
But Tom, just because you foresee so many bad things resulting from the erosion of marriage doesn’t necessarily make it so. As Jaybird points out, marriage was well on its way, under the weight of heterosexuals own assault on its integrity to being a less than revered institution before the gays got their own ideas about it.
And this is where the importance of individuals matters. Many heterosexuals are irresponsible and do not treat marriage with the kind of reverence you seem to think it needs. Many homosexuals have been partners for tens upon tens of years, having the kinds of relationships that, were they opposite sex, would be the model for any social conservative to hold up as a model for “good marriage”. Are we really back to the idea that the sex glands are the only definitionally important variable in this whole question?
And Kolohe does ask a good question below. If in Iran, “culture” does not look kindly upon mingling of the sexes and they actually have strict rules and guidelines for it, and their own top police officer is willing to step down over the results of the poll if true, is that a good thing? I mean, these are their social norms, their ordered liberty so to speak. Less liberty than you or I might like, but then it starts to sound like George Carlin’s definition of bad drivers: Anyone going faster than you is a maniac and anyone going slower than you is an asshole. In the social norm instance, do we say that anyone more restrictive than us and draconian on their limitations is in the dark ages while anyone with more individual freedom and more slack to ordered liberty is racing toward the destruction of society as we know it?
Jaybird,
you should do more geneology research. you’d be surprised how many women have babies six months apart.
Tom,
“Revered”… is there really such a name for marriage? I Say Not! Particularly not for my religion. It’s an economic contract, and can be severed with another legal document. The fact that we put hoopla around “tying two families together” isn’t much of a thing — we do the same thing, with similar rituals, when two corporations work together.
Marriage used to be a fundamental economic reality (women couldn’t live by themselves and make enough money). When it ceased to be that, other trappings started to take over.
But the Sanctity of Marriage as an Ancient Thing is a fools canard.
Kimmi, I am well aware of the phenomenon of first-born full-weight preemies (“it’s a miracle!”) in the SBC.
My attitude towards such is that it’s good that they’re getting married and I hope that they stay married. They’ll most likely be better off if they stay married.
Marriage is a good thing. Lifepartnerships are good things.
We should have more of them.
Jaybird,
sorry, guess I was unclear.
When you come across christening papers that say that
Mrs. Poole had a baby on 10/10
and then that she had a baby four months later,
you know that someone’s turning an eye to something.
Oh *THAT* phenomenon.
I see such things as society doing everything they can to avoid using the punishment tools they tend to have to use when they have to use them.
I’m a fan of that type of hypocrisy. I wish we had more of it.
Heterosexuals making a joke of marriage really doesn’t bear on SSM one way or the other. My position is that society/the state has no interest in sex, only babies. You’re having a different discussion than I: If the culture wants SSM, it will institute it organically, not by force of gov’t. I believe JasonK espouses the same principle; certainly Montesquieu did.
“…when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the laws, as this would appear to be too tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners…”
But heterosexuals making a joke of marriage *DOES* bear on the disintegration of the culture.
If we are interested in reintegration, it’s not like we have a whole lot of tools at our disposal. Support for strengthening marriage is one that I think would work to society’s long-term benefit and achieve the goals that you’re looking for here: Namely the raising of children in two-parent households.
Sorry, JB, not buying. Society can do whatever it wants; I don’t think this will help, not does the state or society have any compelling interest in doing so.
My point here is that government imposing a new marriage regime is tyrannical absent a consensus on society’s part, regardless of whether it’s a “good idea.” The world is lousy with “good ideas.”
Opposition to a good idea in the service to a good idea that has since demonstrated massive foundational cracks will have the likely outcome of even more massive foundational cracks.
It’s irritating to me because the particular good idea being opposed is one that could very well act as a patch upon said foundation.
JB, it’s your opinion it’s a “good idea.” I suspect you’ll convince enough people in time, and per Montesquieu, the faithful citizen will say, so be it.
And what in the meantime?
Bastardry increases. Fewer marriages. More divorces.
In service to the idea that marriage is about siring children.
More and more folks are painfully aware that siring children is not necessarily related to marriage at all. More and more children.
This should be addressed.
“…when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the laws, as this would appear to be too tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners…”
But isn’t this awfully convenient to use against those trying to open the legal access to marriage especially from one who argues the need for *ordered* liberty. An order that presumably is kept by force of law? In that respect I guess we’ll always disagree. If someone being told that the freedoms that certain others enjoy is off the table because of some arbitrary or presumed harm, then I’m all for using the processes of government to facilitate that. Because in terms of persuading “society” for approval in changing things, the question will always be, “If not now, when?” Because when it comes to individual freedoms and equality, “When we’re good and ready” is not really an acceptable answer.
Not atall, JB. Society’s [and gov’t’s] interest is in babies, not sex. Expanding the marriage regime to sex partners who can’t make babies addresses nothing. Mr. Boggs now too, asserting SSM as a “rights” question.
The Constitution and its amendments do not obliterate the notion of gender: one can legislate or amend that there is no substantive difference between the genders, but that would be a legal fiction.
Not that legal fictions are unacceptable: we create them all the time. But it’s not self-evident that the genders are interchangeable–I loved my mother dearly, but one was enough.
The OP is arm’s length from whether SSM is a “good idea”; the question is whether when gov’t imposes its will on society, if it’s tyranny, per Montesquieu.
In fact, the situation below re Iran is an example of such a tyranny, since the culture is clearly at odds with its rulers. But what if a Muslim culture/society/nation largely wants alcohol banned? Or SSM? Must the libertarian argue that Mecca become Amsterdam or be illegitimate? Wouldn’t making it so against the will of its people be tyrannical?
Government’s interest is in babies that become, at worst, harmless consumers. At best, they become producers.
They want the babies to *NOT* become sappers of the strength of the state.
But now you’re into the tyranny of the majority. You seem to lament government recognizing freedoms against the will of the majority but seem to be OK with majority (society) seemingly limiting the freedoms of the minority.
As far as the Iran example, I’d argue we’re on the right track. From a social utility standpoint, if we’re looking at the scale of social=planet, it does us all a favor for those folks to be freer and able to be free of the governments and majorities who would oppress them.
Mr. Boggs, you’re arguing “tyranny of the majority!”, not me. We’ve gone far enough afield from the OP on this one, that libertarianism’s dynamic isn’t leftism’s. When they meet on a particular issue, it’s more coincidence than principle.
The question of “society” is necessarily a majoritarian one by definition, but the state imposing its will upon it is even more problematic per Montesquieu.
I guess I assumed society and culture are usually in the majority. Arguing their traditions trump individual freedoms, to my mind, seems to be equivalent to saying “majority rules.”
And I agree that libertarianism and leftism are at odds on plenty of occasions. About the same number it would be at odds with conservatism. They both believe government has a role to play in dictating to others how their lives should be lead. They’re both fans of nanny-state thinking, they simply differ on what parts of life need nannying.
Mr. Boggs, undifferentiated “rights talk” obscures more than it clarifies. Are rights natural, i.e., pre-political, or just whatever’s allowed by the social contract? [We’re told the Declaration of Independence has no legal force; true on its face, but the Constitution is silent on the nature of rights. Therefore, we could be talking about different things.]
To re-tether to the OP, I agree that conservatives and leftists are each “communitarian” in their way: the former more informal [social], the latter legal and political. The problem for the libertarian as I see it is that he depends on order being spontaneous, which it is not. You need a society or a government, and usually a combination of both.
Hence the tension between radical individualism and communitarianism.
If religion (more accurately your religion) is so useful for society, then wouldn’t the people within society just maintain it themselves? How does dragging me into backing something I don’t believe in by force come into a social utility equation?
Congress can have chaplains all they want, I don’t care. What I care about is your insistence that simply violating the 10th Amendment isn’t enough, they have to violate the 1st too.
Mr. Psycho, you’re putting society on trial with every morning paper. I’m not having that discussion, you are.
As for congressional chaplains violating the First Amendment for 235 years, that’s your opinion, which I submit is based on an insufficient understanding of history before 1960 or so.
Dammit I wasn’t saying having chaplains for members of congress was a violation! The shark that was jumped was government taking a role in education, saying they can continue that AND have the resulting schools endorse a religion is compounding the problem.
My position is actually the opposite.
Mr. Psycho, acknowledging God isn’t “establishing religion.” At least it wasn’t to the Founders [or the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment either].
It is establishing religion to certain judges of the past half-century or so, and most of the products of our secular-left education system. This is why Scalia writes, correctly, that “In holding that the Establishment Clause prohibits invocations and benedictions at public school graduation ceremonies, the Court – with nary a mention that it is doing so – lays waste a tradition that is as old as public school graduation ceremonies themselves, and that is a component of an even more longstanding American tradition of nonsectarian prayer to God at public celebrations generally. As its instrument of destruction, the bulldozer of its social engineering, the Court invents a boundless, and boundlessly manipulable, test of psychological coercion…”
For the record, I would not want to put words in your mouth or take advantage of an awkward phrasing. This has been a very principled discussion and there is no “winning,” esp by cheating like that.
However, the public square remains very much in question. The gov’t did indeed take over the education system, and the jurisprudence of the past 70-80 years has driven out society’s role in the schools, its co-dominion. This is precisely my point—once the gov’t gets in [“tax money”] we also get “godless” jurisprudence and the etc.
My objection is twofold:
a) Contra the popular Kramnick/Moore book, the Constitution isn’t “godless.” It’s silent. We’re free to do what we want short of establishing the “Church of America” like they did Church of England or the Church of Norway.
b) Where government encroaches, society disappears. The local school or the public square is not properly only the government’s: it’s the people’s, it’s society’s. Gov’t is only the administrator, and shouldn’t be banning prayers at high school football games in Arlen, Texas. That’s the real hand of Leviathan, not some preacher asking God’s blessing before the kids beat each other’s brains out.
And this is my beef with self-defined “defenders of liberty” on this issue and others, who are anything but, and are indeed “dissolving…social norms by force,” a statement I stand by, and now you have a better idea of why.
While I agree that liberaltarianism is doomed, it’s for reasons entirely other than this (and Goldberg’s even worse summary), which ignores the long lists of policy items from those pushing the coalition showing the common goals of (many) liberals and (many) libertarians.
A less militaristic foreign policy, less militarization of the police, prison reform, aversion to state-sponsored torture and warrant-less wiretapping of citizens, GLBT rights, the drug war, and yes, the coercive possibilities from massive wealth inequity are all areas of common ground that don’t rely on “we think Rush Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg are assbuckets” as a primary motivating force.
“They’re just doing it because they hate Republicans” is a fundamentally silly, specious, and solipsistic argument.
That’s your opinion, Mr. Gregniak. Based on my observations of the goings-on at the League and the links to the relative handful of other like-minded blogs, it strikes me as quite accurate.
Neither do I think your laundry list is extensive enough to overcome the fundamental philosophical problem that the left wants more government, the libertarian less.
Again, the problem for the libertarian is that he can lessen the influence of gov’t or that of civil society, but not both.
I’m not Mr. Gregniak; check the user ID again…
It’s also obviously incorrect to make the blanket statement that “the left wants more government,” especially given the laundry list above. The left, particularly the segment amenable to a left-libertarian partnership, wants much *less* government in certain areas, just different ones from most conservatives.
Libertarians also desire a very different-looking society from the religious right and neocons, yet that didn’t stop them from joining forces with those groups for much of the last generation.
DarrenG, libertarians join[ed] the right rather than left on most occasions for the fundamental reason given. You are of course correct on your list of exceptions. However, I do think that very list is the list of exceptions where the left wants less government, not more.
I cannot stray from the generalization that the left thinks government [legislation, collective political action] is the solution and that libertarians believe legislation tends to create more problems and that “collective” political action is chilling to personal liberty.
And as it turns out in the 21st century, social conservatives are hardly in a position to increase the amount of socially conservative legislation/regulation: theirs is a “hold the line” strategy at best. Sodomy laws are not coming back, post-Lawrence. Social conservatism may be an obstacle, but leftism/statism is a threat.
Sorry for the case of mistaken identity. Your participation down here in the sub-blog basement is welcome.
See, this is the thing. If this were your argument for kicking government back out of it, while your motivation couldn’t possibly differ more (my concerns are about their whitewashing of history and how relatively unprepared for the world as it exists students end up here) I’d really see no problem.
Instead, you’re arguing that an atheist paying taxes to fund a government-run institution that effectively plans to tell students that I’m somehow defective or less of a citizen because I don’t believe in a supreme being poses no issue.
Well, it doesn’t for you…
Mr. Psycho, we’re tantalizing close to a meeting of the minds. Clarity. Why I accepted this assignment to a LoOG sub-basement blog in the first place: not to write wry and devastating Emperor’s New Clothes pieces [although they are fun], but to discuss quietly and sincerely the important things.
My own studies of history—and religion and the Founding is my particular area of focus—come to bear here. As Antonin Scalia wrote, it’s not that the law is gravitating to “neutrality” on God, it’s that we [born 1950-60-70 and later] don’t even know our history well enough to know this is a major theologico-political change.
The Constitution and its amendments certainly allow for us to go atheist/secular/empirical/materialist/whathaveyou if we want to go that way. We can abolish God if we want, abolish “society” if we want. What I’m saying [Scalia too] is that let’s just be straight-up about what we’re doing, and not pretend that our “social contract” demands it.
It doesn’t. Let’s just be clear that it’s a choice.
As for the rest, it’s not about me and it’s not about you. No insidious gov’t money should condemn you for not believing in God. [The US has had, since its birth, a great leeway for religious/unreligious freedom of conscience.]
But neither should the law or gov’t abolish God. This is simply not in the Constitution or its amendments.
“Society” is an amorphous concept: it is what it is, and the polls and reality say that the USA believes in God in some form. 45+ states [I forget the number] have the Almighty in their state constitutions.
In my view, the fed gov’t banning saying a prayer before a high school football game is tyranny, not liberty, no matter who pays the taxes.
I’m not a legalist when it comes to political philosophy or the human condition. If I were, I have enough of a lawyer’s brain to make the case the other way. Shit, it won, 6-3. I can read the boxscores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Independent_School_Dist._v._Doe
Liberaltarianism probably works just as well as conservatarianism or liberalservatism could. In fact, the OccupyWallStreet types could probably find some worthy common ground with conservatives who maintain that ancient skepticism toward “tricks on paper.” It’s simply not enough, however, to share in opposition. The underlying reasons must intersect. The breed of conservative who favors shrinking the power of the large national banks shares no meaningful rationale with an OccupyWallStreet protester who superficially wants the same thing. The first is identified by the idea about the proper role of institutions in the life of the individual as measured by the conception of man’s meaning and purpose in the world. The other is identified by not having any ideas at all.
There’s no shortage of coherent political philosophy that might lend footing to a political cause. But coherency is so confining.
In other words, only conservatives have actual reason for skepticism, anyone else is just spewing things they don’t understand.
That’s quite the charge. Especially considering the modern conception of conservative political thought in the U.S. reaches conclusions like “government hands off my Medicare” and “illegal immigration is a big deal here in West Bumblefck (which not only has zilch migrants undocumented or otherwise, but is actually shrinking in population)”.
Mr. Van Dyke, a trollish, but honest question. With regard to dynamic of dissolving cultural norms, why are you the good guy and this guy:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/10/world/asia/iran-top-cop/index.html
the bad guy?
Or are both of you good guys?
If the 80% figure is true [likely it is], then he really doesn’t have a handle on what the culture is.
And yes, it is trollish and unfair to put me with a gentleman like that.
If a culture sincerely opposes something, there’s a simple solution: don’t do it.
The thing with Iran, albeit extreme, does show the problem with using the state to uphold tradition. If young Iranians agreed with the cultural taboo against drinking then they wouldn’t drink, them drinking in the proportion the survey suggests says that drinking as a taboo is dead to them. Either that value didn’t make it through to them during their upbringing, or as they learned more about the world as adults they simply decided the old way was wrong. Some semblance of allegiance to the old way may persist for part of the population regardless, but how far will they — can they — go in basically fighting off the future?
People will disagree, inevitably. Without state intervention, like-minded people can simply clique up and keep going. With state intervention, we have anything from petty antagonism to outright war — all because someone has to “win”.
Mr. Psycho: Why Montesquieu prefers gov’t reflect its underlying society, rather than the other way around, top-down, which is tyranny.
What I’m arguing for is for each society to reflect itself, period. It’s because of the prospect of control over a claimed monopoly on force — government — that either of us even remotely cares what the other thinks about religion.
Obviously you’re not an anarchist, and I don’t expect to turn you into one. But whenever I encounter these type of arguments, I imagine society is a car with me sitting in an ejector seat, with whoever is on the other side frantically pushing the button, wondering to themselves “why isn’t he GONE yet??”. What I’m asking is why don’t we just take separate cars?
Well, Mr. Psycho, I would argue it’s easier to opt out from society’s conventions than from the government’s laws. Therefore, I lean toward the former as the first ring of “order,” as it’s more informal and voluntary. When gov’t exerts forcible control over society—or worse, when “society” and government become synonymous, as is the modern trend—there is no escape from Leviathan.
I’m not sure the libertarians get that. They seem to take order for granted, esp our order here in the West. “Society” fosters a “soft” order; the alternative is the “hard” order of laws and coercive enforcement of them. Radical individualism and its abstract “rights talk” often leads to unmeaningful abstraction and hostility to “soft” order—“one nation under God” picks no one’s pocket nor breaks their leg, to put Jefferson’s shoe on the other foot.
Society is a collection of conventions, admittedly: conventions, nothing more or less, some good, some not-so-good. But Burkean prudence merely admits that it’s hard to tell which are useful and which are not. Radical individualism simply doesn’t care.
Unfortunately, man is a social animal as well as an existential hero raging alone at the universe. To ignore or dispense with man’s nature as a social animal is ideology, not reality, and is decidedly unpragmatic. To exercise one’s individual will unmindful of its effect on the coherence of society is seen as existentially heroic in this modern age, but is ultimately harmful to him.
Or at least may be harmful to the next guy.
😉
As for the left, some of the above reservations apply: If a nation is reduced merely to the sum of its laws, I see only disaster, for man—human nature—is more notorious for disobeying laws than keeping them.
Mr. Van Dyke, I just think your categorization of libertarians as a bunch of Asimovian Solarians is a bit off. Sure there’s the over-representation of self-diagnosed* Asperger sufferers, but in the main, the preference *is* for social norms to do the heavy lifting to create a general situation where everyone, individually, tries to be a good person – and government doing this as little as possible (particularly when the law’s definition of ‘not good’ is so clearly off)
*self-diagnosed = making excuses for being a jerk
Mr. Kolohe, this would be very good news indeed, that:
“…in the main, the preference *is* for social norms to do the heavy lifting to create a general situation where everyone, individually, tries to be a good person – and government doing this as little as possible…”
although it doesn’t square with my personal observations, which see more a bent toward radical individualism, if not Asperger’s. [Not to mention a general antipathy for religion and “traditional” morality.] But it’s exactly the sort of thing I long to be wrong about.
If true, it squares well with the Burkean view I take here, and explains why they find themselves more often on his side than the Jacobins’, and why they’ll have better luck liberalizing the conservatives than damping down the radicals. For, as has been sagely pointed out, everything conservatives defend—“conserve”—was a new idea at one point.
b-pyscho’s observation that this boils down to a mother -daughter argument over liberty is correct.
Tom Van Dyke’s assertion that the “mother argument” is rooted in impracticable ideological purity is not correct. The essence of the libertarian political critique is that the civil society and the state are in conflict. I think this is an accurate assessment. Really what appeals to Burke are there concerning the emergence of the secret police and the national security state? Is this protecting social convention or something else?
The libertarian argument is that protectionism is at the root of exploitation and domination. To me, this is an undeniable fact.
The typical rejoinder is not a liberal defense of the secret police but rather a case for the non-viability of the “mother” alternative. But there is a simple, childlike question to this. Why, then, the need for a secret police and a national security state apparatus?
If an alternative is implausible, then there is no reason for it to be there. That it is there is a problem.
It kills me that people accuse libertarianism of ideological reality denial when they themselves are guilty of ignoring the 800 pound gorilla of empirical reality.
Mr. dL, your reply surely makes more sense to you in your world than it does in the one most of us live in.
I see from your blog you’re at ideological or definitional war with most of it. Give my regards to David Gordon, a fine gentleman with whom I’m happily acquainted.
If I do follow you atall, although I don’t touch on your apparently frequent theme of “secret police,” libertarianism is vulnerable to the inadequacies of human nature. There is no doubt that man doesn’t need to be an angel to do without government—or “society”—just a reasonable devil, who realizes stability [order] is in his own interest.
Were he only that reasonable, libertarianism would surely be the political philosophy of choice. As for the role of “society” per Burke, that “soft” order is preferable to the “hard,” and that conventions have the virtue of a provenness that ideology does not, it is asked and answered in the above [very good] discussion.
Nice to hear from you.
This is why marriage is good! Stability! Yay stability!
If as you describe government is to err on the side of social convention and prop it up, then the huge chunk of it that seemingly goes well beyond that purpose begs for explanation. Either some other interest is being pursued, or you have a much more lenient definition of order than the state does. Hence dL’s remark about Burke and the security state.
I don’t understand dL’s “secret police/security state” riff well enough, I guess, or how it bears on the Burkean view of society. I did admit that.
Neither am I particularly anxious to be dragged into the tall weeds of it.
>:-O