...final word (for now) on libertarians vs. conservatives

Really Strange Bedfellows II
A final word (for now) on libertarians vs. conservatives
by Nick Gilespie

It's been a long, long while since I've been accused of impairing the morals of a minor (really). In fact, the last time I can remember such a claim being leveled against me was back in high school when I coaxed some classmates at good old Mater Dei High School into seeing Monty Python's Life of Brian rather than a less theologically charged movie. Some of my friends' mothers--and a buttinsky parish priest--saw my actions as proof positive of heretical tendencies (this, even in a very post-Vatican II atmosphere).

So the recent charges by National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg that what he calls my brand of "cultural libertarianism" is partly to blame both for 20-year-old John Walker's defection to the Taliban and for "campuses today [being] infested with so many silly radicals" really make me feel young again. For that early Christmas present, I thank him. He's recently signaled that he's putting this particular hobbyhorse back in the closet for a while and I fully intend to follow suit after these few more words on the matter.

Beyond its particulars, this exchange--prompted by Jonah's taking exception to my editor's note in the January Reason--helps clarify important ideological differences not only between our respective publications but between libertarians and conservatives more generally. These differences are worth underscoring, if only because they are not going away anytime soon. Indeed, especially with the hardcore Marxian left becoming increasingly irrelevant and centrist liberals essentially acknowledging the efficiency of markets and grappling more and more with libertarian arguments for free expression and lifestyle choice, the debate between libertarians and conservatives is likely to assume greater and greater significance as the 21st century unfolds. These two positions--roughly representing forces of choice vs. forces of control--are where the action is, and will be, for a long time to come.

In his original formulation, Jonah claimed that libertarians espouse a form of "arrogant nihilism" and that John Walker's participation in a retrograde fundamentalist regime was "a logical consequence" of such a misguided "political agenda." He wrote, "According to cultural libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick from across the vast menu of human diversity — from all religions and cultures, real and imagined — until we find one that fits our own personal preferences."

He is not, I think, particularly mistaken in emphasizing libertarianism's interest in what he derisively terms "Chinese-menu culture" and "designer cultures." I'd argue, in fact, that all cultures are precisely admixtures put together by individuals to serve their particular needs and ends. No one questions that "cultures"--an imprecise term at best--change over time and in response to the demands of the people comprising them. Consider Roman Catholicism, which I alluded to at the start of this piece: Despite official claims to a consistent, unbroken, and self-evident tradition dating back to the first century A.D., the plain fact is that a Catholic from 1901 would barely recognize today's church as his own. Things change, and in response to specific and ongoing, if not always articulate, demands.

One of the defining characteristics of contemporary America and the modern world writ large is that more individuals have the means and motivation to insist on a "culture" that reflects their particular needs and sensibilities. Jonah ridicules this as underwriting such apparently clear absurdities as "Buddhists for Jesus" (as if Christianity itself had no precursor forms that violated existing categories). Dictating the limits of culture used to be the province of small, typically aristocratic elites, who could enforce their vision on the masses. Nowadays, that ability is effectively becoming decentralized, the result being a proliferation of standards, not a flight from them. This trend, which I've written about at length in terms of creative expression, frustrates and frightens conservatives and other gatekeepers who prize stability and hierarchy, for they mistake it as an end to standards.

Where Jonah is absolutely wrong, however, is to assert that an appreciation for this dynamic is tantamount to nihilism. To suggest that is to argue that tolerance is nihilism. It isn't: Tolerance, particularly in a libertarian framework, is grounded in respect for individuals as equal and autonomous agents, as long as they recognize others' similar standing--the right to swing one's fist ends at my nose and all that. Tolerance is a universal principle that underwrites all sorts of local differences. To believe in tolerance is manifestly not to believe in nothing.

Which is precisely why F.A. Hayek, in his widely read essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative," placed tolerance at the heart of a truly liberal--or, properly, libertarian--order. In his column titled "The Libertarian Lie," Jonah makes great hay over the fact that Hayek explicitly rejected the term "libertarian," calling it "singularly unattractive." There's no question Hayek dissed the particular word, claiming that "it carries too much the flavor of the manufactured term and of a substitute." Yet he unreservedly embraced the substance of it, too, talking repeatedly about "the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution." "The liberal," wrote Hayek, "is aware that it is of the essence of human achievement that it produces something new; and he is prepared to come to terms with new knowledge, whether he likes its immediate effects or not." This seems to me much more a description of "cultural libertarianism" than of National Review conservatism, which seems to groan at every change in women's status, say, or every new development in genetic engineering.

The contested role of Hayek in this is worth lingering over, less because Hayek is some sort of high priest with divine insight and more because the appeals made in his name demonstrate core beliefs of his petitioners. At the heart of the Hayekian project, as I quoted in my earlier rejoinder to Jonah, is a belief that "to live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends." For Hayek, such tolerance had a strong instrumental component: He argued for a maximally defined private, "protected sphere," one free of all sorts of coercion, because it allows for decentralized experiments in living through which individuals and groups gain meaningful knowledge and social institutions evolve. Elsewhere, he defined a free society as one in which individuals "could at least attempt to shape their own li[ves], where [they] gained the opportunity of knowing and choosing different forms of life." To limit choices, for Hayek, was to risk impoverishing a robust "extended order."

Hayek's insistence on the necessary limits of human knowledge similarly distances him from contemporary conservatives, who typically sound a very different tone in their proclamations. "The liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the right ones or even that we can find all the answers," wrote Hayek. At another point, Hayek, true to his Humean roots, notes that "in some respects the liberal fundamentally a skeptic." Compare these positively postmodern emphases on the limits of knowledge to Jonah's exasperation that "to the cultural libertarian, all authoritative cultural norms should be scrutinized again and again" (emphasis in the original).

Jonah is right to note that the "conservatives" specifically alluded to in Hayek's title are "conservatives in the European tradition (de Maistre, Coleridge, et al)," yet he merely ignores the question of whether that brand of conservatism is a part of his own. Hayek may well have noted, as Jonah writes, "that United States was the one place in the world where you could call yourself a 'conservative' and be a lover of liberty" because of America's peculiar past as a liberal nation. Yet that doesn't mean that all aspects of U.S. conservatism are classically liberal. Hayek notes that conservatives have a reflexive "distrust of the new and strange," essentially a fear of change.

This calls to mind Jonah's argument against another "cultural libertarian," Andrew Sullivan, who supports gay marriage. Titled, "Patience, Andrew, Patience: The Case for Temperamental Conservatism," the column seems an illustration of Hayek's idea that conservatism, "by its very nature cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but...it cannot prevent their continuance." Jonah essentially grants that gay marriage will come one day--a concession that no conservative would have made 30 years ago--but that we should just hold off on it for the time being. (Click here to read the explicitly Hayekian case for gay marriage I made in Reason some five years ago.)

Regardless of where or whether Hayek fits into all this, there can be little question that libertarians and conservatives break sharply over issues of choice vs. control, with libs opting for more of the former in all areas of human activity and conservatives emphasizing the latter, whether the topic is gay marriage, biotech, or drug use. There can be little question that we are facing increasing choice--not simply in economic but cultural and social terms, too, where the "Chinese menu" has exploded into a wide-ranging buffet. Anthropologist Grant McCracken has observed what he terms "plenitude," or the "quickening speciation" of social groups, gender types and lifestyles. "Where once there was simplicity and limitation ... there is now social difference, and that difference proliferates into ever more diversity, variety, heterogeneity," writes McCracken in 1997's "Plenitude."

For conservatives, such thoroughgoing choice is problematic, whether we're talking politics or culture, because it allows for unregulated experimentation ("Buddhists for Jesus"). Jonah notes that "personal liberty is vitally important. But it isn't everything. If you emphasize personal liberty over all else, you undermine the development of character and citizenship" and all forms of "established authority."

Maybe, maybe not. This much is certain, though: Such an understanding misses the key point that individual liberty is the starting point of "established authority," whether political, social, or cultural. Reeling off a list of "the ingredients for Western civilization," Jonah counts, "Christianity and religion in general, sexual norms, individualism, patriotism, the Canon, community of standards, democracy, the rule of law, fairness, modesty, self-denial, and the patriarchy." All of these things are under construction, reconstruction, and deconstruction on a daily basis, as different individuals opt in or out. But they all require buy-in from individuals too, even if the choice, as it often is, is to bind oneself to particular rules and conventions.

"Choosing determines all human action," wrote a different Austrian economist (and Hayek's mentor), Ludwig von Mises. "In making his choice, man chooses not only between various materials and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another."

To understand that basic reality is not, pace Jonah, to "encourage the dismantling of the soapboxes [libertarians] stand on." Rather, it is the best and perhaps only way to maintain a flourishing culture.

I cannot claim to be an expert on libertariansim, but allow me to generalize on the way I see the philosophy as it relates to your response.

The biggest problem with that attitude, which many of us completely deride and discard until we become parents (or contemplate doing so) is that none of us was raised in the wilds by wolves. Many, many people-- parents, other family members, youth group leaders, dedicated teachers, and friends make enormous investments of time, energy and love in all of us

Although libertarianism fosters self-reliance I don't believe that this is what it is based upon. In fact, in raising issue, for example, with how the public schools and the state at large is becoming the new nanny (the "It Takes a Village" mentality), it claims that these functions should be handled by the families. In other words, it stands for individual sovereignty but this is not to say that it is against the family collective; in fact, it is pro-family in the sense that it takes the parenting away from government.

....those who survived lived for something larger than themselves-- whether for God, or for a family member, or for a passion for music, or science or some other intellectual endeavor. The self simply wasn't enough to sustain them-- they had to believe that there was something larger and more valuable than themselves that they needed to serve

Well said, but I don't see how this reliance on others is anti-libertarian. Again, I think you're mistakenly representing it as a philosophy of "me, me, me" when it's really about free choice. As a Christian and a libertarian I see no incompatibilies between the two, since God gave us free choice. It's when the reliance on others is fostered through state control that libertarians object.

A common response to my point of view expressed here is "What of those who can't raise their own children?" Yes, there's always a what if. What to do about those who can't afford privatized education - they're going to rely on charity?

I think what they mean, and pardon my being blunt, is that "white trash" parents, for example, don't love their children enough to raise them properly. I quote Vin Suprynovich here, "That these children should be entrusted to the care and upbringing of these parents who have borne them was decided before you came into the picture. If in your insufferable smugness you believe you have a superior wisdom that allows you to decide from which mothers' breasts the babes in arms may be riped away.....you'd better look up what happens to those who think their plans are better than the Creator's" (referring to Hitler and the like).

I think what Vin is saying here was summed up by jackbob in another post - there is no utopia, and libertarianism should not be interpreted as proposing a "freedom utopia", although many mistakenly do so. Instead, it's a realization that free choice usually results in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, yet there will always be those that abuse freedom, and those that seem to get screwed by something we could change. But there are really only two options - state control in the name of making things better, whereby conditions are worsened for the greatest number of people, or self-government, which, far from perfect, results in the best possible outcome.

You make good points, but I would say that the libertarian insistence on personal freedom as a value that trumps all other values is what leads one to believe that it is, essentially, a philosophy of "me, me, me." The libertarian arguments in favor of elimination of so-called "victimless" crimes are classic in that regard: against real, tangible evidence that such things as drugs and prostitution harm both individuals and society, the libertarian will hold up only the inviolable value of personal freedom. The conservative, on the other hand, sees little or no value in drug use or prostitution for anyone, certainly not nearly enough to compensate for the tremendous damage such "victimless" crimes do, and will therefore opt for criminalization. The only conservatives who come down on the side of legalization (I think W. F. Buckley is one) do so from a practical perspective-- i.e., that prohibition doesn't work, and perhaps only makes such things more attractive to more people.

As for any incompatibility between libertarianism and a belief in God-- I'll leave that question to the libertarians. How many of you consider yourselves to be religious? How many of you believe in God? While the two are not necessarily at odds, as you note, I will place a bet that a libertarian belief system is usually embraced by non-believers.

"But there are really only two options - state control in the name of making things better, whereby conditions are worsened for the greatest number of people, or self-government, which, far from perfect, results in the best possible outcome."

That, I think, is the true flaw of libertarianism-- it is a philosophy of absolutes. I'll give you an example of state control: my child cannot drive until she is 15 and has had driver's ed and acquired a permit, at which time she can drive with a licensed driver over 21 in the car. At 16 she gets a license, but in Texas now, cannot drive with other young people in the car other than siblings for a period of six months to a year. There are also local curfews that prevent them being out in the wee hours of the morning. At 18, all restrictions are lifted and they can drive like any other adult, during all hours. These laws wouldn't be necessary if every parent carefully monitered their children, but of course, they don't. As it is, these laws protect not only the kids they pertain to, but the rest of us as well. Nothing could be further from an absolute than this interlocking network of laws, but it strikes a balance between freedom and safety and protection of others.

A conservative philosophy does exactly that-- strike a balance between individual liberty and societal (or "state", if you prefer) control. That's why conservatism isn't as wonderfully internally logically consistent as either libertarianism or socialism-- it weighs and balances competing goods and evils and attempts to maximize good overall. The other day I was in downtown Houston, and watched a poor, crazy homeless woman wander around talking to herself, plucking at her clothes. She was very thin and very dirty. Fortunately, it was a warm, pretty day, but that woman will still be there on dark, cold nights. I know it was the liberal philosophy that put her there, but I also believe that libertarians would keep her there, if she expressed the wish to stay. Conservatives, on the other hand, would gather her up, get her seen by a doctor and prescribed medication, clean her up, feed her, and give her a warm place to sleep. Yes, we would try to get her out as much as possible, but to us, her life and health are more important than her freedom. But, the liberals and libertarians would not only say that we were wrong to take care of her against her will, but that somehow we would do so for our own selfish purposes, for our own comfort or convenience. Uncomfortable with the outcome of their own philosophy, libertarians and liberals often feel the need to impugn the motives of others.

As I said before, many intelligent young people are attracted to libertarianism, and I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with that. As a prescription for running a society, though, I think a true adherence to libertarian principles (just like a true adherence to liberal, or to socialist principles) would be extremely destructive. Libertarianism is consistent with the optimism and sense of invulnerability of the young, while I think conservatism is more consistent with the wisdom and sense of mortality of the old. :)

Surprisingly, my dear, you are wrong, and that statement is incorrect. The Abolishonist movement was alive, well, and extremely acyive, BEFORE Harriet wrote, and the publocation of " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN " ! Her brother, a VERY famous / respected , firey minster ( regardless of the late cause celebre, of his pedophilia ! ) , was one of MANY rabid Abolishonsts and prohibitionists ( the Abolishonists said , at that time, that alcohol was a WORSE problem , than slavery, and also were for the prohibition / condemnation of dopers ! ) who worked day and night for the cause. There was NO radio, T.V., or movies, and religion WAS the entertainent of the time. Prominent preachers were as popular, idolized, and famous as movie stars and rock stars , of later times. : -)

The Abolishonists did NOT start the Civil War, no matter what anyone claims. The Southern states did.

OTOH, Dickens had been publishing Christmas ghost stories for years. After the Cromwellian suppressions , in England, and the Mather's attempts to ignore / suppress long ( from the beginning of the celebrations, which Constantine actually instigated ! ) popular / performed paganistic , carnaval type Christmas revelries, it was the popularity of " A CHRISTMAS CAROL ", unaided by sermons from pulpits, and any organized movement, which changed / gave birth to what we tend to think of as Christmas traditions. Yes, Prince Albert, and Queen Victoria, also had a hand in it, as did both Moore and Nast, in America. What is the difference, is that it was a cultural reversal, influenced primarily by one book; bereft of ANY outside help, from anyone, or anywhere !

Since this was a SECULAR overlay, over a religious celebration, and NOT in any way, shape, manner, or form, a POLITICAL ( unless one adds in Victoria's concerted effort to clean up / improve the monarchy's HORRIBLE image, with the pushing the " PERFECT FAMILY " idea and ideal, and Prince Albert's Germanic / pagan introduction of the Christmas tree ) change. est one forget ( unless one hasNEVER known ! ) Dickens was a bleeding hearted LIBERAL; adstinct foreruner of today's PC Hollywood crowd. He wrote books just FILLED with social commentary, but none ofthem changed politics, nor governace !

Rand's works haven't managed to EVER do / influence anything a all. Her books used to be lugedaround, and quoted by geeky, psuedo-inteletuals , on college campuses, decades BEFORE the LP was founded ! They were later surplanted , on campus, by the hippie types, who, WITHOUT any book at all ( discounting Marx and Mao, of course. LOL ) DID unfortunately change both the cultural and political atmosphere , in America.

The problem here, as in most cases, in the abject lack of historical and cultural knowledge, by most people.

A big Blessed, and MERY CHRISTMAS t YOU, and your's, my very dear friend. I ope that Santa is VERY good to all of you, and most especially to your lovely kiddos !

You have utterly missed the thrust and historically accurate consiquences of so much " liberty ". Libertarians suppose, incorrectly, that it somehow doesn't matter if a majority (it is NOT, as you claim, a MINORITY of parents !) of childen will be either NOT educated at all, or even MORE poorly educated, than when the ( barf ! ) government schools them. Parents and religious institutions, have, form the beginnings of time, have held the provinence of educating the young. The result of that, was a HUGE class of illiterate / semi-illiterates ! The governmental take over, of education, actually worked quite well, for a VERY long time, in America ! I shan't go into all of the historical foot notes, on education, here, as it would take me HOURS to do so, and bore most people to death. It is also rather off topic. : - )

As with ALL Libertarian theories, the consiquences of their yearnings, are completely ignored by all of them ! Let's take just ONE example. If, by some utterly horrible happenstance, our entire governnment was Libertarian, when we all wake up in three weeks. Every public school is closed that day. NOW WHAT ? Please post your thoughts on this, and I'll refute your's. : - )

And I honestly believe that this is a strawman argument, misrepresenting libertarianism. In fact, the way I see it, I think it is the most selfless of all political philosophies because it requires that you not inhibit others' freedoms lest yours be inhibited. But in that sense, maybe it's about "me, me, me" because the freedom of others is preserved so that the system that protects your own freedom is preserved. Always two ways to look at it.

The only conservatives who come down on the side of legalization (I think W. F. Buckley is one) do so from a practical perspective-- i.e., that prohibition doesn't work, and perhaps only makes such things more attractive to more people.

But I think that the practical aspect, although it may or may not be the true impetus that drives libertarians to fight for freedom, always supports arguments for freedom. In fact, if I didn't see how practicality logically followed, I would not be a libertarian.

This could be. However, speaking for myself, I am a Christian (while rejecting the term 'religious' because I see it to be a misnomer). It's also worth mentioning, however, that many who call themselves Christians are not Christians, based on the the fundamental tenets of the faith. That is, I'm not judging their actions and determining that they're not Christians, I make the judgement based on the idea that they do not ascribe to the ideas laid forth in the Bible (i.e. if you do not believe Jesus is the only way to God, you are not a Christian, although you may claim to be one still). Before becoming so interested in politics, theological discussions were my passion. Actually, my interest in libertarianism grew out of my experiences in sharing the Christian gospel, but this is another thread.

That, I think, is the true flaw of libertarianism-- it is a philosophy of absolutes.

I would say that it is a philosophy of consistency of principle. Sometimes it may be painful to be consistent, and hence it seems to be about absolutes.

I'll give you an example of state control: my child cannot drive until she is 15 and has had driver's ed and acquired a permit, at which time she can drive with a licensed driver over 21 in the car.

This is really another can of worms. The issue of freedom applies to adults, and the question of when children go from being children to adults having their own free will has before been debated on this site. If libertarianism of open to flaws in reasoning, I think this is where they might likely come from.

With that said, though, I always see it from the perspective that problems with children (drug use, for example) are cultural and therefore the government could never hope to alleviate this. Driving laws, however, for children or for adults, are not against libertarianism as I understand it. Libertarians don't object to speed limits or even laws that determine when a child can drive etc. It's no one's right to drive, and these laws therefore infringe on no one's rights. Furthermore, it seems to me that kids' driving poorly, like drunk drivers, are causing harm to others. They are being judged for what they're doing, not for what they own, what they think, or what they do strictly unto themselves.

You've written an interesting take on conservatism. Most conservatives I know (and I used to be one) cannot put their beliefs to words as you have. Moreover, I'm further and further dismayed by the fact that it's becoming harder and harder to find true conservatives (G.W. is NOT a conservative, yet true conservatives support him). This in itself is what I think attracts many of us to libertarianism. The term conservative has lost all meaning, and is not a postion but rather a chaning perception of a position.

But, the liberals and libertarians would not only say that we were wrong to take care of her against her will, but that somehow we would do so for our own selfish purposes, for our own comfort or convenience. Uncomfortable with the outcome of their own philosophy, libertarians and liberals often feel the need to impugn the motives of others.

I don't really see the strong link between liberals and libertarians that many on this site have suggested exists. Liberals as they are today, at least, (and remember, I wasn't around to see the liberals of yesterday) couldn't care less about free choice and freedom. I see liberals today as Marxists, saying that because of selfish others, poor people like the woman that you saw exist. They are the ones that created the 'war on poverty' after all. I could never see their saying that the woman has a free will to remain destitute when they seek to make the state powerful enough to provide for her and thus be her master.

Let's take just ONE example. If, by some utterly horrible happenstance, our entire governnment was Libertarian, when we all wake up in three weeks. Every public school is closed that day. NOW WHAT ? Please post your thoughts on this, and I'll refute yours

I've thought about these issues. I think it comes down to how fast you'd like change. Now, one can make the argument, as Harry Browne does, that gradualism won't work, which means all changes must be enacted immediately. I generally feel that way but in some cases it may not be appropriate. Or, perhaps initially the change may cause chaos but the end result will be better (witness Russians' initially now knowing what to do when they were presented with the freedom to determine their own professions - eventually, their eyes adjust to the bright light of freedom and they can see).

Or perhaps you're arguing from utility, in which case I would say that, if all public schools were closed, and kids were to be either home-schooled or were to go to private schools, all the other freedoms would have to be in place. That is to say, the income tax would have to be repealed so that parents could afford to send their kids to private schools, along with the property tax, of course, which funds public schools. To be cliche, freedom is not like a chinese menu, it's either all or nothing. Giving partial freedom creates disastrous results (witness the 'deregulation of California's power industry where the price was deregulated from producer to distributor but NOT from distributor to consumer - partial freedom created a situation worse than previously existed, but this is not a failure of freedom of choice, since none really existed)

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