An Inconvenient Truth
Cato domestic-policy people who try to think about foreign policy can be some of the dumbest fuckers on the planet.
It’s like seeing the actual Soviet Union in the 1970s and saying, “But the point is to bring about full Communism. That’s when everything is paradise.”
Which, you know, people actually said.
Comment by Barry —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:43 am
It’s not ‘domestic policy people discussing foreign policy’, IMHO, it’s supporters of the Iraq was saying anything execpt ‘mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’. I guess that it’s hard to construct a good argument when your premises were proven wrong beforehand, and only get more wrong as time goes on.
Comment by Kevin B. O'Reilly —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:45 am
I had a bizarre experience when reading that Coulson post. I saw his name up top and thought, “Doesn’t this guy usually write about education? Hmm … will he pull a Brink? And, sure enough, seven paragraphs later, he pulled a Brink. But actually it was sub-Brink, as even he has since made a half-hearted confession.
I think when it comes to foreign policy these folks ought to heed the dictum, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak aloud and remove all doubt.”
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 3, 2006 @ 10:51 am
Or it’s like when people look at how electric power deregulation worked in California, and say that the point is to get the government *completely* out of the process, and that’s why it seemed so screwed up.
Comment by Barry —
October 3, 2006 @ 12:17 pm
If you’re talking about that post at:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/07/25/confessions-of-a-former-and-maybe-future-hawk/#more-612
I just read it. G*dd*mn, that guy is stupid! Not quite as bad as the unrepentant hawks, but still, CATO should fire him, and state the reason ‘he’s a fool’.
Similarly, Coulson’s (sp?) post was stupid. I’m not just saying wrong, ill-considered, or something like that. Both of those posts *have* to be on commentless blogs or on the broadcast media. They’d both be torn to shreds in a second in any medium with replies.
Comment by Damon —
October 3, 2006 @ 1:08 pm
Government can’t run an education system – we need tuition tax credits and vouchers – but it can remake a 30 million person Arab society? Give me a break. Its diplomats don’t even speak the language!
Coulsen has it exactly backwards. Government can in fact run an education system – it does, whatever the inefficiencies and problems – but can’t even restore basic order in Iraq.
What a joke!
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:08 pm
I’ve been growing rather disillusioned with libertarianism lately. If it’s not bloodthirsty buffoons screeching why we need to start unnecessary wars to keep us safe, it’s chickenshits arguing that we need to give up our civil iberties to Big Daddy Government so he’ll keep us safe.
I lost all respect for one “libertarian” writer in particular who actually justified the liquid-and-gel bans on airplanes because “there’s no Constitutional right to bring drinks on a plane.” Because, y’know, when I think “libertarian” I always think “someone who says that which is not specifically allowed by the government is forbidden.”
Maybe libertarianism is one of those things that in reality only works during times of peace and prosperity, because God knows it’s been falling to shit ever since the Arabs replaced the Communists as the Big Scary Bugaboo.
(Disclosure: I am in a lousy mood today, which may be coloring my viewpoint a bit. But I doubt it.)
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
Well Jen, it’s not like we did worse as a group than either so-called conservatives or so-called liberals at keeping our underpants clean after the September 11 atrocities. Though I’d agree that, at least theoretically, we should have done better, and we didn’t. Sobering indeed.
Comment by 555 —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
Much of the “libertarian” policy infrastructure – the foundations and publications – is rotten to the core, rife with people who are only libertarian insofar as they don’t mind drug decriminalization or gay rights. Those issues are all well and good.
But when it comes to opposing the government’s power to make war, or even to torture and imprison innocents declared as “enemy non-combatants,” forget about it.
If I hear one more “libertarian” talk about the tyranny of gun laws or the injustice of public schools while at the same time defending or ignoring this government’s egregious violations of basic individual rights, I’m going to scream.
Here’s the problem with the libertarian “movement”: it’s dominated by people who don’t take their own advice seriously.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
Dammit, 555, that’s just not . . . untrue.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:52 pm
The libertarian movement went through the cultural equivalent of regulatory capture.
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
Well Jen, it’s not like we did worse as a group than either so-called conservatives or so-called liberals at keeping our underpants clean after the September 11 atrocities. Though I’d agree that, at least theoretically, we should have done better, and we didn’t. Sobering indeed.
I know. And enough to make me wonder “why bother?” I don’t mind belonging to a fringe group with close to zero chance of success if I think said fringe group is actually right. But I’m seeing more and more libertarianism of the “I’ve got mine, screw everybody else” variety, rather than the ideals of individual freedom and liberty. And even now–with legalized torture and legalized warrantless wiretapping and warrantless searches of American citizens–there are still plenty of “libertarians” who think the single worst thing that could happen to America is a tax increase.
When libertarian “big dogs” like Cato and Reason magazine are actually printing garbage like “there’s no explicit Constitutional right to do X, which means it’s okay for the government to outlaw it,” what do you do then? How many ‘leaders’ (for lack of a better word) of a movement must betray its ideals before the movement itself becomes not worth it?
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 3, 2006 @ 4:01 pm
17.
Comment by Rad Geek —
October 3, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
Jennifer,
I think that the basic problem with professional libertarians is that they accept the legitimacy of the State. And in order to keep their positions as policy wonks, instead of looking for an honest line of work, they have to continuously act and speak on the presumptions that written Constitutions can authorize government powers over non-consenting third parties, that there are “compelling State interests” that the government can legitimately pursue, etc. Once you’ve already signed on for governmentally organized, coercively monopolized, collectivist rot in the name of continent-spanning “National Defense,” you’ve already accepted the principle that governments can go around bulldozing individual people’s rights for the higher purposes of military strategy and power politics, in the form of foreign spying, war, diplomatic collective-bargaining, domestic repression, etc. From there on out, the rest–domestic spying, torture, Star Chamber courts, internment camps, world empire, etc.–is just haggling over the price.
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 4:49 pm
Oh, speak of the goddamned devil: Hit and Run just put up a post praising the late Helen Chenoweth: white-supremacist sympathizer, admired by the neo-Nazi group Stormfront, and one who claimed the New World Order controlled a big chunk of America.
But she also supported term limits, so libertarians should admire her, right?
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 4:52 pm
WHITE POWER! WHITE POWER! WHITE POW–oh, fuck, I just remembered my last name is kinda Jewish.
Comment by 555 —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:11 pm
As someone who spent ten years of his life in and among libertarian organizations, I can confirm that Red Geek speaks the honest-to-God truth.
But it’s even worse than that. Many of the people who call themselves libertarians are 1) painfully ignorant of the intellectual bases of that tradition – they have not read Hayek, to take an example – and 2) as a consequence were never at any point deeply skeptical of the state.
It’s not as if they were once innocent, but are now bought out as a consequence of trying to keep their jobs. That might be a happier story, because at least at some level they’d understand how rotten the movement is.
In addition, they genuinely believe that the right policy, the right elected leaders, the right judges are the key. From there, it’s a small step to say, well if we can’t at least have the “right” leaders, at least we can avoid having the “wrong” leaders – i.e. the Democrats – and “wrong” policies.
In addition, the funders of the movement are generally conservative or businessmen. If conservative, they throw some money at putatively libertarian organizations by-the-by. If businessmen, they expect results. And results – measurement – nearly always amount to either laws influenced, policies changed.
In addition, the young people in the movement pull for the Republicans because that’s where the jobs are if they should want to do a stint in government.
Everything is geared to get in bed with the state.
There’s a book to be written about how rotten the libertarian movement is, but unfortunately no one would care.
Comment by 555 —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
As you might surmise, I’m getting out of the movement while the getting is good.
Comment by Barry —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:52 pm
“The libertarian movement went through the cultural equivalent of regulatory capture.”
My opinions (which you can now relax and gratefully receive):
First, there was the effect of fear. Note that Brink’s essay would have been much more palatable and plausible if he had admitted that he was terrified after 9/11, and that a bunch of politicians had promised to relieve his fear. It’d fit nicely into libertarian doctrine, also, as a Classic Lesson Learned.
Second, there’s what I’ll call ’stripping’. There were a lot of people who weren’t really libertarians; generally, they were republicans with libertarian tendencies. Frequently, of course, they voted republican. However, they’ve been faced with an increasing divide, and have had to make choices. Since many were really rebublicans, that’s the way that they went – even if they’re in denial. The classic examples, of course, would be Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. This is less of a conversion, than of the true core being left by the exodus of the non-believers.
For the Reason/(some) CATO/etc. people, it wasn’t capture by the state, IMHO, but by the elite ‘in crowd’. Over time, as they associate with other ‘think tankers’, and GOP staffers, their viewpoint is altered.
Comment by Gnorgathon —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
I thought that any other sort of libertarianism was awfully rare, to the extent that I usually characterize Jim as “one of the non-insane libertarians on the net.” At least, I assume there must be one or two others out there somewhere…
Comment by Pithlord —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
My theory is that the domination of the mainstream “conservative” right in America by Prod fundamentalists led some secular people who would have been happy Thatcherites to call themselves “libertarians.” Standard issue Tories in most of the rest of the Anglophone world think that consensual sex and recreational drug use is morally indifferent, that belief in a personal saviour is unimportant to living a moral life and that evangelicals who knock at your door are a public nuisance. But when it comes to the wogs, it is important to put a bit of stick about.
There is nothing really “libertarian” about this kind of politics (secular market authoritarianism?), but the label was useful to distinguish from those wacky Bible thumpers.
Comment by Michael Sullivan —
October 3, 2006 @ 6:54 pm
I think that all of the “Libertarians who aren’t really all that big on civil rights” are just one of many manifestations of a greater principle of libertarianism.
As Libertarians are a faction without any formal representation in government, there’s no real authority to point to and say, “That’s what Libertarianism is.” For the Republicans, you can say, “LOOK! The Republicans in government are doing THIS. If you don’t agree with THAT, then you effectively aren’t a Republican!” and most people can tell that you’re right. Similarly, if less noticeably so right now, the Democrats.
But if I decide that I’m invested in being a Libertarian, even though I’m all about requiring cavity searches for any Arabs who want to travel more than 150 feet from their homes, you can’t really say “That’s not what Libertarians are all about,” because nobody really gets to decide that. So you end up with a really, really big tent — from people who are honestly really anarchists and regard the tiniest bit of state as equivalent to slavery to people who are as authoritarian as you can get.
You get the same thing in the real parties, too, of course — there’s always someone stubborn enough to say, “Well, just because every elected Republican believes things totally antithetical to what I believe doesn’t mean I’m not a Republican” — but they’re rarer; the leaders matter, and tend to drive away most people who strongly disagree with them.
I think that Libertarianism would come into much sharper focus (for better or for worse) if the Libertarian party actually got someone elected on a national level.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 3, 2006 @ 7:31 pm
It’s interesting — I’ve been arguing with / making fun of libertarians for something like more than a decade now, primarily because 1) they weren’t in control of anything, so it didn’t actually piss me off to argue with them, 2) I pretty much assumed that all of them were exactly like the ones that are being “stripped away” now. Jim is the first libertarian who appears to really believe in principle rather than dogma that I’ve actually read.
So, yes, the honest libertarians out there, however few of them, really should reconsider what’s happened to their movement. If libertarians really who were they said they were, there should always have been about as many Democrat-leaning libertarians as Republican-leaning libertarians. The fact is that there never were. Libertarianism concealed a deep authoritarianism, a desire to make everyone live by the same simplified rules, and to cement social class for a certain group of “meritocratically” advantaged people who happened to have the right skills and family assets. Low taxes always would beat out any conceivable number of civil liberties violations.
I expect the honest libertarians to mostly become anarchists, which I think is a much more consistent position. Most of the rest will become Republicans plain and simple.
Comment by ran —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:11 pm
Here’s another honest and honorable libertarian, Arthur Silber:
Comment by ran —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:13 pm
Arthur Silber
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:51 pm
If libertarians really who were they said they were, there should always have been about as many Democrat-leaning libertarians as Republican-leaning libertarians.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always considered myself a left-wing libertarian, and furthermore I do believe that some regulation of business is indeed necessary. I also support the idea of a social safety net (though far different than the mess we’ve got now). I always said that I was a libertarian not because I agreed with everything they said, but because I disagreed with them less than the Dems and the Reps.
But I don’t know if that’s even true anymore. Offhand, all I can think of where libertarianism is clearly better that the mainstream parties is in regards to victimless crimes like drugs and prostitution. But when the philosophy is cluttered with torture apologists and Iraq-War apologists and professional libertarians paid to write articles talking about how if something’s not allowed in the Constitution it’s okay to make it illegal . . . fuck, they’re just Republicans who lack the balls to admit it.
Comment by Radley Balko —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:57 pm
I’ll step in to defend my employer.
I think it’s unfair to lump all “professional libertarians” together and declare them guilty of succumbing to the trappings of public choice simply because one guy who covers education policy spoke out of turn, and delivered some silly (IMHO) opinions on foreign policy.
The people at Cato who are actually paid to opine on foreign policy haven’t lost sight of libertarian principles, nor have those of us who are paid to advocate for civil liberties.
Yes, not everyone at Cato agrees on everything. Some might even be less than purists on issues othern than their policy specialties. We aren’t given litmus tests when we’re hired. That we aren’t required to march in lockstep ideologoy on every issue I think is a good thing — an attribute in an environment meant to discuss, develop, and promote ideas.
I suppose the only downside to that is that some people are likely to misinterpret the occasional stray comment from someone speaking outside his policy area as some sort of official Cato statement of position.
To indict Cato for having lost touch with its principles because of one casual post on a blog, or because a few people in the building support the war –in spite of the enormous body of work from Cato’s actual foreign policy scholars that’s about as pure and hardcore as it gets — is pretty short-sighted.
Comment by thoreau —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:06 pm
I don’t think the problem is lack of philosophical foundations. It’s perfectly possible to be a decent libertarian by adhering to just a few attitudes:
1) The solution to most or all problems will involve less government rather than more.
2) It’s OK if people make bad choices. It might not always be pleasant, but it won’t be the end of the world.
3) Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean somebody else shouldn’t do it.
4) Markets and technological advances may not be perfect, but we’re better off with them than without them.
5) Minding your own business is usually a good idea.
6) Anybody who thinks he can plan the activities of a bunch of other people doing very different things and have it all work out nicely is either a fool or a wedding planner. Either way, don’t let him or her get any power.
And so forth.
Some people might see these attitudes as the consequences of deeper axioms, and maybe they are. But these consequences are what matter in real life.
Libertarians who hold these attitudes might not come to philosophically rigorous stands on the question “What is the ideal society?” but they’ll probably come up with good answers to the question “What should we do in the current situation?”
Indeed, I would say that it’s actually easier to be a libertarian with thos eattitudes rather than a pure philosophical vision. My set of basic attitudes can get me through the travails of real life with decent libertarian answers. I don’t have to maintain clean distinctions between principles and reality, because my principles don’t involve any sort of utopian vision. A person who has a utopian vision will have to abandon it during an encounter with reality, and once you abandon that there’s no telling where you’ll wind up. But if you have some simple rules that mesh will with reality and get you through rough patches, you’ll be OK. You’ll stay on the wagon, even if you get a little dirty.
Comment by thoreau —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:08 pm
That we aren’t required to march in lockstep ideologoy on every issue I think is a good thing — an attribute in an environment meant to discuss, develop, and promote ideas.
That’s a darn good point. Add that to my list of libertarian attitudes: Absolutely conformity, no matter how well intentioned, will probably backfire.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:13 pm
If libertarians really who were they said they were, there should always have been about as many Democrat-leaning libertarians as Republican-leaning libertarians.
There’s a pretty substantial number of left-leaning libertarians out there, and if they’re outnumbered by right-leaning libertarians that’s probably largely because of Ayn Rand’s outsized influence on the movement. It’s just that most of the left-leaning libertarians don’t become Democrats, because … well, what’s the point? Since the Reagan years, the GOP has at least paid lip service to libertarian economic ideas, even if it hasn’t delivered much in practice. How often do prominent Democrats even pretend to stand up for peace or civil liberties? If you’re on the line between liberty and the left, you’ve got much more in common with Ralph Nader than with John Kerry or Al Gore.
P.S. to Jennifer: Even if you’re right about Chenoweth’s alleged racial views (and you may be, though you have yet to support your charges with any evidence), you’re wrong about the Hit & Run post, whose kind words for Chenoweth, to the extent that it had any, related not to term limits but to her stand after Waco.
My general impression of Chenoweth, for what it’s worth, is that she was a lot like Bob Barr — ultraconservative on social issues, but pretty good on resisting unconstitutional extensions of federal power. In other words, not as good as a libertarian, but better than a neocon. (I also got the impression that, unlike Barr, she was a bit of a dim bulb. And lord, but her hair was frightening. I once sat right behind her at a press event in DC, and was deeply disturbed at the forest of hairspray two feet in front of my face. But I digress…)
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:25 pm
Radley, I substantially agree with you, which is why my actual blog entry used qualifiers, annoyed as I was. I realize that people like Brink and Arnold Kling and this Coulson fellow are not speaking ex cathedra. And I realize that there are many folks on Cato’s domestic-policy and econ staffs who are solid on foreign policy and civil liberties.
Much of what follows the “but” is best handled offline (maybe Thursday night?). I am comfortable saying that my affection for Cato makes the occasional lapses on core issues that I see some of its people making particularly annoying to me. If someone from AEI writes some poorly considered or vicious prowar apologia, hey, it’s AEI, right? I’m not emotionally invested in AEI.
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:30 pm
“Absolute conformity” is indeed bad, but exactly what lines need to be drawn? For example: suppose someone agrees with every basic plank of the libertarian platform except that drugs, prostitution and consensual homosexual sex need to remain illegal because they’re baaaad, m’kay? I don’t like litmus tests but I’d say that a person with such utter disregard for individual liberty at the expense of government power is absolutely not a libertarian, no matter what they say.
Now, I know there are those who’d say I am not and never have been a libertarian because of what I mentioned in my earlier post about regulation and safety nets. Fine.
But, Jesus! “Constitutionally, what isn’t allowed can be forbidden.” Is that what libertarianism should be about? “Government torture’s constitutional as long as it’s not our own citizens, but people in other countries.” What? “Pre-emptive war is acceptable, even if the pretenses for it later turn out to be wrong.” What?
Libertarians have something in common with women before 1920 or blacks before the end of segregation: though this isn’t fair, the fact that we’re not in the mainstream means we have to be damned careful about how we present ourselves to said mainstream if we want any chance of achieving our goals.
Let’s say it’s 1905. Some women are trying to get the right to vote, but most still view these women as dangerous radicals. And then Andrea Dworkin and other insane feminists go back in time and become publicly associated with the suffrage movement: “All men are evil, all sex is rape, all women are virtuous and no man can ever be.” You think women would still have won the right to vote in 1920, had that happened? Hell no; it would’ve set us back decades.
Suppose that in the 1950s, the civil-rights movement wasn’t associated with nice peaceful ministers like MLK, but only with the “kill whitey” Black Panther types. Do you think legal segregation would have ended sooner or later, had that been the case? I’d say much later.
Concerning libertarians, it’s bad enough we’ve got the rep of being unselfish bastards who don’t care if every single poor person starves to death. Bad enough, without the professionals making scary arguments in favor of expanded government and expanded war and the right to torture and Christ knows what else. That leaves nothing to the philosophy except what outsiders view as “let businesses do whatever the hell they want.”
Yeah, that plus public libertarians arguing in favor of shampoo bans on airplanes and random bag searches on subways and pre-emptive war where we have the right to torture will really win us converts. Hope the Reason and Cato staffs aren’t crushed to death under the mountain of subscription and donation money that’ll pour in.
Comment by Jennifer —
October 3, 2006 @ 9:45 pm
Another thought occurs to me: due to a quirk of technology and history, maybe libertarians can’t ever come to power. Because, if Dworkin and her friends went back to 1905, the suffrage movement would have shunned them and nobody would have even noticed them. But if there had been an Internet back them, and the Dworkinites and any other loon who wanted to could reach mass audiences and present themselves as representatives of the women’s movement . . . hell, the question of who I’m voting for in the 2006 election might be entirely moot.
Comment by matthew hogan —
October 3, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
“I am comfortable saying that my affection for Cato makes the occasional lapses on core issues that I see some of its people making particularly annoying to me.”
Ditto.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 3, 2006 @ 10:18 pm
“Since the Reagan years, the GOP has at least paid lip service to libertarian economic ideas, even if it hasn’t delivered much in practice. How often do prominent Democrats even pretend to stand up for peace or civil liberties?”
Sorry, but this is nonsense. The ability to have a legal abortion is not a civil liberty? The ability to come out of the closet, if you’re gay? How about the ability to not suffer from legalized racist actions if you’re black? Why do you think that the peace movement, such as it is, is associated with the left (which, as discussed elsewhere here ad nauseum, automatically puts them within the Democrats’ sphere as there can only be two major parties in the U.S.)? How many ACLU members do you think are Republicans? Who do you think advocates for legal defense for poor people?
There’s only one way in which you can think that Republicans paid lip service to libertarian ideas, and Democrats did nothing, and that’s if civil liberties were really never that important to you.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
October 3, 2006 @ 11:01 pm
There’s only one way in which you can think that Republicans paid lip service to libertarian ideas, and Democrats did nothing, and that’s if civil liberties were really never that important to you.
Oh bullshit, Rich. Yes, the Dems will stand up for a right to an abortion. But where have they been on the two most important civil liberties issues of the last two decades?
First: The War on Drugs, which assaults the liberties of drug users and non-users alike — militarizing local police, imposing record levels of imprisonment, steamrolling property rights with civil forfeiture. The Congressional Black Caucus has occasionally spoken up about the crack/powder disparity and related issues, but other than that, the Dems have rolled over for drug war. Worse: Because they feel so vulnerable on cultural and crime issues, many of them have taken the lead in anti-drug demagoguery. The results speak for themselves. Look at the stats for drug arrests under Clinton — and while you’re at it, look at how the ACLU reacted to his civil-liberties record. (I like the ACLU, and yes, I suspect most ACLU members are Democrats. A fat lot of good that’s done them when the Democratic Party is in power.)
2. The War on Terror. Again, there are some honorable dissenters here, such as Russell Feingold — the only Democratic candidate in 2008 who I can imagine myself supporting. But look at how the leadership of the party rushed to support the Patriot Act et al. And before you chalk that up to the post-9/11 jitters, look at the forerunners to the Patriot Act that were passed (or requested but beaten back by Republicans) back in the ’90s. Yes, Bush has been much worse than Clinton on due-process issues. But he’s standing on Clinton’s shoulders.
I know there are grassroots Democrats who disagree with all this, but they’ve been shut out of their party’s leadership for decades now. The same goes for the peace movement — again there are exceptions, but as a body the Democratic Party has been astonishingly gutless in opposing the Iraq War, even now that most Americans want the troops to come home; and back in the ’90s, of course, the party stood behind a host of interventionist policies. Yes, most of the peace movement is associated with the left. “The left” does not mean “the Democrats.” Most of my leftist friends hold the Democratic Party in contempt, even if they hold their nose and vote for it when the alternative is named George Bush.
There was a moment in the ’70s — the era of the McGovern campaign and the congressional class of ‘74 — when it arguably made sense to look to the Democrats for leadership on civil liberties issues. But there’s only one way in which you can think that the modern Democratic Party has been good for civil liberties, and that’s if you think the only liberty that matters is the freedom to terminate a preganancy.
Comment by Rad Geek —
October 4, 2006 @ 1:19 am
I know that this is tangential to the point that you were trying to make, but Andrea Dworkin never actually said this or anything like it. (Neither did Catharine MacKinnon, for what that’s worth.) In fact Dworkin rather angrily denounced the last two notions in her essay Biological Superiority: The World’s Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea. Whether you agree or disagree with Dworkin’s positions, these descriptions of her views are exposed fabrications, and should not be repeated.
Now, the substantive point:
Just so we’re clear, Martin Luther King was certainly not very widely thought of as a “nice peaceful minister!” On the contrary, he was repeatedly slammed as an “extremist,” a reckless agitator, and a Communist, both by his open enemies and also by white liberals and “moderates” within the black clergy. He wrote about this in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, concluding “So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? … So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
I’d make similar comments about the principled radicals who were instrumental in the victory of the suffrage movement (Alice Paul, the Pankhursts), the abortion rights movement (NARAL, Redstockings), the abolitionist movement (Garrison, Douglass, John Brown), the gay liberation movement (the Stonewall rioters, GLF, Lavender Menace), etc. Broadly speaking, I think that social respectability and coming off as pleasing to either your open enemies or the stifling “moderates” and “centrists” means precisely nothing to the prospects for a social movement’s success. The people who move the world are very often treated by mainstream opinion as stupid, blinkered, reckless, over-zealous, or simply insane. The important thing is not diplomacy but honesty and tenacity; the problem with Mussolinists who sometimes pose as libertarians is not that they make libertarianism look crazy to the statists (who cares?) but rather because they make us look too “reasonable” to Power. If they make us look crazy to some people, the problem is that they make us look crazy for the wrong reasons; their belligerent bellowing drowns out the “crazy” ideas from genuine radicals who the mainstream dismisses as lunatics for all the right ones.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 6:58 am
Rich, I would have guessed that, sharing most of our social foibles, you felt a certain affinity!
Comment by Jennifer —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:08 am
Broadly speaking, I think that social respectability and coming off as pleasing to either your open enemies or the stifling “moderates†and “centrists†means precisely nothing to the prospects for a social movement’s success.
Maybe, but how many social successes has libertarianism as a movement seen in the past few years?
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:31 am
“Rich, I would have guessed that, sharing most of our social foibles, you felt a certain affinity!”
Well, sure, that’s probably a factor too. The vanity of small differences, or something.
Jsees, look back at your original claim — that the Republicans at least paid lip service although they didn’t do much, while the Democrats didn’t even do that. Then you reply mentioning “The Congressional Black Caucus has occasionally spoken up about the crack/powder disparity and related issues, but other than that, the Dems have rolled over for drug war” and “there are some honorable dissenters here, such as Russell Feingold”. If you were predisposed to value lip service on these matters, you’d think that this qualified. But in general, the “lip service” on the Democratic side in recent years is mostly from associated interest groups, so you’re looking in the wrong place.
The basic point remains: everyone knows that the Democrats in power favor anti-racism, sexual freedom, that subset of civil rights that depends on legal representation for people who can’t buy it, and so on, and that the Republicans are against all these things. If libertarians really were both socially liberal and economically conservative, as they claim to be, then they should have split half-and-half, with some finding the social issues sligthly more salient and some the economic ones. Their actual distribution reveals what they actually care about.
Jennifer, the social movements that Rad Geek describes (and he or she is right about Dworkin, btw) all depended on communal social action. Which “libertarianism as a movement” can’t have, unless you emulate that scene out of _Life of Brian_.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:45 am
Rich: I’m referring to the party as an institution, not to everyone associated with the party. The GOP’s platform and leaders always talk a lot about free markets, even though in practice it has been more interested in using the government to help its favorite constituencies. The Democratic Party — its spokesmen and its national candidates — rarely say anything about civil liberties, even if there are some congressional outliers who do give a damn. (Feingold’s dissent on the Patriot Act isn’t “lip service” to civil liberties any more than Ron Paul’s dissent on the Iraq War is lip service to peace — they’re both principled stances against the mainstream of their parties.)
If you want to know if libertarians care about civil liberties, don’t ask whether they join the Democratic Party. Ask whether they join the ACLU, Amnesty International, NORML, and other groups that actually specialize in civil-liberties issues. Guess what? They do.
(Granted, libs tend to drift in and out of the ACLU, joining it when it’s taking an important stand for the Bill of Rights, drifting away when it rides one of its big-government hobbyhorses, then returning the next time something like Gitmo gets big. But there’s a reason why they’re attracted in the first place, and there’s a reason why the Democratic Party isn’t as attractive.)
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:43 am
I think it’s more that libertarians skewed Republican secure in the notion that “The courts will protect us from the riff-raff” on social issues. The flaw was, of course, that putting a theocratic party in charge of the executive and legislature long enough meant that it could remake the courts.
That’s where we are now: the courts substantially remade. All the laws of England have been chopped down and libertarians have really had to think about party affiliation in a way they had avoided, trusting that a liberal court was sufficient counterweight to people who wanted to destroy liberal courts.
Comment by Barry —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:56 am
Rich: “There’s only one way in which you can think that Republicans paid lip service to libertarian ideas, and Democrats did nothing, and that’s if civil liberties were really never that important to you.”
Jesse Walker: “Oh bullshit, Rich. Yes, the Dems will stand up for a right to an abortion. But where have they been on the two most important civil liberties issues of the last two decades?”
Well, on the War on Drugs, they’ve been followers, trying not to be politically destroyed by the *leaders*, who’d be known as the ‘Republican Party’. If I were to wave a magic wand, and tone down the GOP on drugs a couple of decades ago, do you think that the Democratic Party would have it’s current positions, or considerably softer positions?
It’s rather important to see who are the initiators, and who are the followers.
Comment by Justin Raimondo —
October 4, 2006 @ 1:10 pm
An interesting comments thread.
Senor Balko intimates that the Coulson-Lindsay pro-war faction of Cato is just a small uninfluential minority, but that is hardly the case. There is a reason why Antiwar.com has become a veritable orphanage for ex-Cato foreign policy analysts — Ivan Eland, Chuck Pena, Doug Bandow. The reason is because Cato has become increasingly inhospitable to anyone who challenges the interventionist “consensus” in Washington. We all remember Ted Galen Carpenter’s proposal that the U.S. invade Pakistan (especially now that General Musharraf has detailed the ultimatum delivered to Islamabad by Richard Armitage), just as we remember the pro-war nonsense put out by Tom Palmer (in a speech to donors, and on his blog) and Palmer is not alone.
Balko’s contention that Cato’s occasional pro-war outburst’s are just a few tiny blips on the screen is, unfortunately, wrong. The reasons for Cato’s continuing departure from what Murray Rothbard called the “libertarian plumbline” were identified by Rothbard many years ago. In the 1980s these people decided to go after “low tax liberals,” and tried to convince the REAL low tax liberals that libertarians were just a variation of this type. When they went to Washington and found themselves in the middle of Gingrich’s “revolution,” they decided to go after libertarian-leaning Republicans, and, in the process, BECAME libertarian-leaning Republicans.
The problem with Cato goes much deeper than anyone on this thread has acknowledged. In the 1980s, the Cato leadership consciously decided to shed their ideological “baggage,” kick out the real founder and inspiration of Cato — Rothbard — and proceeded to sell out to anyone who would give them a few crumbs from Washington’s table. And they have sold out.
This is not to say that everyone at Cato is a rank opportunist. It is to say that the leadership is rotten — to the core. Radley will never acknowledge that — he wants to keep his job, after all, and I don’t blame him. But in refusing to do so, he obfuscates an important point, which has been proved to my own satisfaction by the (growing) group of ex-Cato types who now adorn Antiwar.com’s bevy of columnists: there is indeed an organized pro-war faction inside Cato that is working to derail what was once an effective voice for a noninterventionist foreign policy in Washington. And they are succeeding. Just look at the new policy of Cato to give a platform to pro-war public policy intellectuals, like Max Boot, under the rubric of “debate” and “open discussion.” Don’t these people have plenty of venues from which to spread their poison? Of course they do. Yet Cato wants to appear “respectable,” they want to be considered “players,” and, above all, they want to be LIKED. And that impulse is fatal, not only to libertarians, but to anyone who considers himself (or herself) an independent thinker.
Finally, consider what Philip Weiss of the NY Observer said of Cato recently, in the midst of a piece about thinktanks and the Israel-Lebanon issue:
“Move on to libertarian Cato, where I am told scholars were warned to pull in their horns on Israel last year lest they endanger funding.”
Did Cato pull in its horns? Leon Hadar wrote to Weiss, and averred that he, Hadar, had written pieces critical of Israel and yet remained on the Cato payroll, yet if you look at what Cato has actually published by Hadar, what is missing is an outright condemnation of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Indeed, go to the Cato website and search for such a condemnation — you won’t find it.
The Cato we have is better than having no Cato at all — but the Cato we used to have, with Rothbard at the helm, is really the Cato we need. Yes, Murray is dead, but the fact that Cato has completely buried his memory, and disdained its own history as a thinktank, tells us everything we need to know about its present stance and future trajectory.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:20 pm
It’s rather important to see who are the initiators, and who are the followers.
That’s the problem – followers marketing themselves as opposition.
Comment by 555 —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
When someone like Radley Balko – after all, he’s likely helped an innocent man escape the death penalty and his report on the militarization of the police is a lesson in how policy studies should be written – weighs in, I should sit up and take notice.
Radley writes, “We aren’t given litmus tests when we’re hired.” True enough. After all, I’m not one for litmus tests.
Having hired enough people in the “libertarian” movement, I know questions about ideology are central to the hiring process, as they surely are at any policy institute of any political stripe in Washington, DC. After, fat chance on getting hired as a lowly policy wonk, which is what Coulsen in effect is, at the Center for American Progress to work on, say, environmental policy if you were to tell them during the interview that you’re pro-school choice and anti-minimum wage. Exceptions may be made for big name scholars.
If someone were to respond at an interview for a job in education policy at a libertarian policy institute, “Yes, I subscribe to John Yoo’s view of the executive,” I would damn well hope they wouldn’t be offered a job there, even if it were just to tout vouchers.
Cato hawks seem to weigh in with surprising frequency on the virtues of the war, even though it’s outside their area of expertise.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Cato policy expert who specialized in, say, education, wax poetic about the virtues of the minimum wage on Cato’s blog. Or on how protectionism is a pretty rockin’ idea.
Also, I don’t think I’ve seen a non-specialist say something critical about Cato’s social security privatization plan, even though there are very good reasons to oppose that plan on libertarian grounds.
Comment by matthew hogan —
October 5, 2006 @ 8:03 am
I think the lip service thing is more basic: — one can hang out among Republicans and say “the government really shouldn’t be involved in issue X, or cannot competently handle it” and even people angry at the comment will take the statement seriously.
Say that among Democrats and, except on abortion, they look at you as if you said the earth was flat.
That’s the root of the lip service division, not that the GOP is, today especially, any good or sincere with a government-shouldnt-be-involved policy.
Comment by Barry —
October 5, 2006 @ 8:38 am
Me: “It’s rather important to see who are the initiators, and who are the followers.”
Eric: “That’s the problem – followers marketing themselves as opposition. ”
It is a problem. Any idea on how to solve it?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 5, 2006 @ 10:59 am
Barry:
I can only make general suggestions that a single Democrat couldn’t meaningfully do anything about. Things like “Don’t object to the war and then disdain the anti-war guys like Dean in favor of a guy who says he’d have invaded Iraq, anyway.” or, “Don’t gripe about the PATRIOT Act and keep re-electing the Democrats who voted for it and re-approved it.”
Ultimately, it all boils down to, “Choose to be an opposition.”
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 5, 2006 @ 2:19 pm
matthew hogan: “I think the lip service thing is more basic: — one can hang out among Republicans and say “the government really shouldn’t be involved in issue X, or cannot competently handle it†and even people angry at the comment will take the statement seriously.”
You can hang out among Republicans and say “those [racial slur] really are inferior” and they’ll take that statement seriously too.
Once again, this reveals what you really care about, and what you don’t. And brown people getting tortured is firmly in the “don’t care” category for most libertarians.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
October 5, 2006 @ 6:06 pm
While there are anarcho-libertarians, many and perhaps most have favored limited government. Exactly what limits on government are desirable, has been subject to debate. However, most libertarians who are willing to put up with some government have accepted the need for government provision of national defense and domestic law enforcement. The key difference between libertarians and everyone else is the sorts of laws they generally favor being enforced. Not many. However, protection of person and property from violent attack is high on the list. Our primary difference from the right is our lack of interest in enforcing laws against things that scripture suggest offend God. And our difference with the left is our lack of interest in enforcing laws against charging too much or paying too little. Or perhaps enforcing those laws requiring that one participate in (or at least pay for) some universal public service. But we generally support enforcing laws protecting person and property.
So, the foreign policy debate is about national defense strategy. And the civil liberties debate regarding terrorists, is about how to best defend person and property.
As far as I know, there have been no libertarians who have rejected our core foreign policy ideal. Is there some libertarian now saying that war is a good thing–for example, providing a platform for us to exhibit our glorious martial virtues? Or that we should be fighting wars in order to enrich ourselves at the expense of those foreigners we intend to loot? While I find the pie-in-the-sky stories of using invasion to create a shining example of liberal democratic capitalism absurdly unrealistic, the proposal looks to a libertarian like one intended to help the Iraqis while reducing the threat of attack to the U.S. The problem is that it is just so unlikely to work as intended and instead so likely to be counterproductive.
While I will grant that many libertarians haven’t read Hayek, I don’t agree with the notion that one cannot make some kind of general pattern predictions of the effects of outsiders enforcing a limited government constitutional order. The fatal conceit is the notion that rational planning can impose some kind of complete plan on the social order. How will we get Iraqis to raise their children just so?
My own view is that the U.S. government is unlikely to enforce a desirable limited government constitutional order on a subject people. And, even if it did try, doing so to people who oppose it would be counterproductive, while creating massively more opposition among poeple who fear they may be next.
My impression has been that even those libertarians who have rather crazed notions about the the desirability of war against various muslim nations have not been in favor of Bush’s theory of unchecked Presidential power to imprison whomever he wants. I do think that there are a good many libertarians whose primary concern is with the falsely accused rather than with poor treatment of those who truly have or intend to commit crimes of violence against person or property. Again, how any libertarian couldn’t worry about the falsely accused, or the abuse of people who are guilty of actions that should not be crimes at all, is beyond me. You trust the government? Now and forever? You have got to be kidding?
Perhaps the more partisan Democrats who post to this board tend to read blogs by their opposites. So, their view of libertarians is skewed towards those libertarians who are partisan Republicans.
I find that most libertarians are not very partisan. They are either independent (or maybe partisan for the Libertarian Party) or else self-consciously choosing what they know to be at best a lesser of evils. Perhaps some can then go on to take this attitude of “my party right or wrong,” but I don’t find such an attitude common.
I don’t believe it is only me among libertarians, who can only cringe when we hear defenses of Bush–well, Clinton was worse. Or vice versa. How about reality. Maybe both had serious failings, and the failing of one is hardly a defense of the failing of another?
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 5, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
“Maybe both had serious failings, and the failing of one is hardly a defense of the failing of another?”
If you’re still mentioning Clinton’s failings as if they are in any way comparable to Bush’s, you’re a typical libertarian.
Comment by matthew hogan —
October 5, 2006 @ 8:43 pm
You can hang out among Republicans and say ‘those [racial slur] really are inferior’ and they’ll take that statement seriously too.
Not especially, except in some regions I suppose. In my personal existence, the n-words were more likely to be used by older Southern democrats than GOPers, but times have changed.
Either way, what is important for libertarians, limited or reduced government, has gotten more rhetoric as a general principle from Republicans than Democracts. So the attraction is there. It is what is important to libertarians that matters in deciding where libertarians will find things more attractive in the two parties.
When it came to anti-Muslim or anti-Arab sentiment, for example, it used to be the D’s were more likely to be comfortable, but that has changed over the past decades.
Parties change, but the rhetoric of limited govenrment, that sentiment that delights the hearts of libertarians, still has tended to come more from the Republicans.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
October 5, 2006 @ 9:13 pm
“If you’re still mentioning Clinton’s failings as if they are in any way comparable to Bush’s, you’re a typical libertarian.”
How do you know what a “typical” libertarian might think?
Just blinded by your partisanship.
I could care less about whether Clinton had any failings comparable to Bush.
My point was that making such comparisons is is the province of people blinded by partisanship.
In truth, however, I tend to think of Bush in the context of Nixon, Johnson, and Franklin Roosevelt. Bush’s only saving grace is that the others had already ruined the country.