Nick Gillespie is Reason's editor-in-chief.
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Posted on 12/22/2001 8:31:03 PM PST by jackbob
December 20, 2001
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.
Arrogant Nihilism vs. Social Tolerance
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.
Get Yer Hayeks Out
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.)
Choice vs. Control
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. Nick Gillespie is Reason's editor-in-chief.
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absolute bump!
Now, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you're the fear monger...
Granted, there'd be some confusion, mostly coming from cultural issues. But it seems as though you're not arguing, at least here, against libertarian ideas, but rather against the suggestions for implementing them. Even if I concede that the transition to this system would be rough, it still doesn't change the fact that this is the better system, or at least that is a separate thread.
The vast majority of those kids, woud be SO unprepared, that they would NOT be able to keep up
They'd be placed at a level commensurate with their knowledge. They'd eventually be placed and would then advance based on their achievement, unlike the public schools which graduate kids that can't make change for a dollar. A quality product would be generated soon or else the money funding that school would be elsewhere.
I'm more fearful of the idea that the high school graduate that reads at the 5th grade level is the next employee at my cafeteria, refilling my juice dispenser with a strange substance labeled 'caustic compound', a warning he can't understand because there are no pictures. Think I'm overreacting? Why do the keys of the cash registers at McDonalds have colorful pictures of cheeseburgers and apple pies? This is what I call 'chaos' and 'utter disaster'.
Cutting off ALL tax burdens, would not only stop this WAR in its tracks, but would NOT be enough money to pay for private school.
You can't know if it would or would not pay for private schooling. You cannot predict how the market would respond. If the great majority of kids could not afford private schools while public schooling were eliminated, the market would readjust. If governments controlled the supermarkets and their prices I imagine that we'd have fear mongers saying that the public would never be able to afford staple foods like milk if supermarkets were privatized. Then, if they controlled the supermarkets for 100 years, there would be no one left to say, "Bunk - I remember when supermarkets were privatized and we had more, better quality products available for less money....." This is what has happened with our schools. As I understand, by about 1880 or so this system was finally in full effect. That's too long ago for anyone alive to remember and speak of the times before this period.
I just don't buy the fear mongering is what I'm saying. No, it's not a perfect system because such a system doesn't exist. Instead, we're stuck accepting this system that dumbs down the nation because we're told that we'd be a nation of illiterates otherwise. I think history shows otherwise, but was it you that mentioned you had some background on this? Please post this, I'd be interested to hear about it.
There ARE huge consiquences to wishing for immidiancy, which would inevitently lead to a TOTOLITARIAN state
By your spelling and creation of words, I'm guessing you're a graduate of the public schools yourself! I'm kidding. Sorry, the opportunity was just there for me. No harm intended, honest. Just making light of the situation.
How would a change to this system, although chaotic, lead to totalitarianism?
I'm assuming that you're only taking issue with how the change is to be made. If so, how would you suggest to best change over to this system? far worse, than anything you can imagine. People don't like chaos, and they don't take kindly to the unexpected. Incrementalism is THE only way to change things.
Wow......tremendous response. I'm reeling as to now I can reconcile my philosophy to this glaringly apparent fact that you've pointed out.
How much force could an LP government use against communities that resisted orders to shut down their schools?
No force would be necessary. Once the government stops using force against people to force them to pay for the public schools, whether they use them or not, the communities would either operate their schools with funding from customers that they've earned, or else they would themselves shut down, since the government is no longer robbing Peter to pay Paul. Not that Paul is a bad guy, but Peter's property is Peter's property.
I read this as the exact opposite. Doing away with everything the libertarians claim to want / hold dear would mean no limits on the government, no property rights, no rkba, no free speech, etc. IOW - it would be to implement the exact opposite of libertarianism.
One world, one government. Another peek inside the Libertarian mindset.
How much force could an LP government use against communities that resisted orders to shut down their schools?
Could you invade their city halls? Burn their tax assessor offices? Padlock their school doors?
With very few exceptions, FR's Libertarians are rather young, unmarried, don't have children, and all speak off the same page.
Their understanding of the institutions that they would put to the torch is virtually nil.
How much force could an LP government use against communities that resisted orders to shut down their schools?
Could you invade their city halls? Burn their tax assessor offices? Padlock their school doors?
Nope, I went to a highly thought of, acredidated PRIVATE, boarding school, a state university for undergrad, and a renowned city college system, for muy Master's.
You claim that children, from now noexistant public schools would be placed into the grades, where the would fit. REALLY? Their parents, who think that little Jihnny is brilliant, because his public school techers keep passing him with As, are going to be willing to have him ledt back two or three grades ? In what universe ? The same one, in which functionally illiterate parents should hoe chool theor kids ? THAT ONE ? You'd have a great deal MORE to worry about then, at McDonalds ( and why do you eat THAT garbage, BTW ? ), than you do now !
I have just explained to you, that there is NO room for them in existing private schools ! You condem the way I write, and yet, YOU have a HUGE reading comprehension problem. Public schooled are YOU ? ( tit for tat ! Don't hand it out, if you don't want to get it handed right back at you. )
So, you assume that in a free market , suddenly schools would appear ; as if by magic ? And WHOM would start and teach in these schools ? Why, the very teachers who now teach in public schools , of course. The difference would be, that now, parents would actually have to pay for it all. What you don't understand, is that public schools use not only local taxes, but Fed funds as well, to pay for things. Now, under a Libertarian government, there would be NO Fed and NO local tax monies. Not only that, but NO buildings, no books, no compters, no desks, no science equipment; in short ... NO NOTHING !
Now, during the time it takes to organize schools, fund these schools, and drum up students for these schools, the teachers et al , have lost their jobs. No jobs, no salaries, so no taxes, don't mean a damned thing. No money,and not only are you going to have a vast number of children with time on their hands, their parent / s will have no health insurance, no pension plans, no money, no unemployment benifits, no welfare, and are mad as hell. These people are mostly liberals, so are ALL of their union bosses. Guess who WILL be sued ? THE GOVERNMENT !
Do I aprove if the current state ( actually, for the last 60 plus years!) of the public school education in this country ? Åbsolutely NOT ! Do I know how to change it, and TRUELY improve it ? YOU BET I DO , and it is NOT the way you and Libertaians want to thoughtlessly do it !
I am NOT a " fear monger ". I know history ( especially the history of education ! ), I understand human nature, and yes, I also DO know what is probable; unlike you.
As for the rest of your post, no matter what I type, and no matter how correct I am, you and your ilk will refuse to even consider IF I just might be correct. You will do this, because of WHO am, HOW you see me , and that WITHOUT a shred of proof that YOUR ideas could ever work, you "FEEL" / " KNOW ", without any impericle evidence, that it shall. You refuse to concede, even to yourselves, that there is the slightest possibility, that you just might be wrong. That's known as being delusional !
You haven't even been here for 2 months, yet YOU are THE arbiter of correct sentence structure ( when you can't write at all well yourself ) and THE authority on education? Think again, newbie !
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha
Nature hates a vacuum. Chaos would be the end result of immediate implimenttaion of Libertaian positons. Chaos leads directly to totolitarianism / dictatorship !
Look at Johnny Jihad. His parents allowed him to do anything he wanted to do. There evidently was NO right and wrong in that house. His parents are divorced, his father is a homosexual, he was allowed to investigate and be any religion he wanted to be, and he was NOT supervised at all. Even his education, was left up for hm to choose. So, what did he do ? He fell out of what most would cosider to be " normal ", and ran , as fast as he could, into THE most authoratarian, strick, backward religion / culture that he could find !
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