...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 was perfectly content to watch my friends collect Darwin awards, but somehow I'm less sanguine about the prospect of my children doing so. Ah, too soon old, too late smart.

Well, for the record, I'm 26 and categorized myself as libertarian about 2 years ago or so. I often think of what you're talking about as my friends marry off - if I have kids someday, what would I say to them about drugs, for example?

The consistent libertarian in me says that I would talk to them about "free choice", from the standpoint that I can't prevent them from doing something they're hell-bent on doing. I suppose I'll teach them the best I can with a strong emphasis on "family", so that they're less inclined to use drugs.

However, something tells me that if I actually had my own flesh and blood running around in this world, part of me might be given a degree more of peace by thinking in the dominant paradigm - that drugs are just a little less available because of our laws so my kid is a degree more safe.

I imagine you're laughing at me now, saying to yourself that I couldn't possibly know anything about having a kid until I actually have one. Perhaps......

Until that day comes, I can only speculate. To me, however, with what I know now, it makes sense that drugs are first a cultural problem that cannot be solved through legislation and that if I'm depending on the law to prevent my kid from using them, I shouldn't be a parent in the first place.

.....if I'm depending on the law to prevent my kid from using them, I shouldn't be a parent in the first place.

Sounds to me like you know a lot more about parenting, or at least who should be a parent, than a good many of those who post to FR.

Maybe that's it. Think you might have hit the nail on the head. A bunch of these people have had a son, daughter, brother, sister, go bad, and had messed up their lives. So rather than blame the loved one whose life went to ruin, or blame themselves, or their parents, etc., they blame society, and ultimately every perceived libertarian aspect of society.

Some of these people believe themselves unable to handle freedom, so they want to make sure you and I don't have any either.

I have this tremendous urge to get in, nit pick and rip your reply #22 apart. The problem is that your reply is so well written and full of well placed truisms, that I think every word of it holds a certain truth.

I had the same initial reaction, - but when I settled down to refute her 'truisms', I once again discovered that empty, well written rhetotic, scattered with snippits of true generalizations, are still empty pap. Why bother nit picking the obvious?

I should just like to repeate your last paragraph, which so well concluding your entire reply.
"Gee-- the product of a religious impulse, or obnoxious? Your choice. For what it's worth, many intelligent people under 30 think that they discovered libertarianism all by themselves and no one has ever understood it before. By the time one reaches middle age, its limitations have become apparent."
I hope their are libertarians at FR who read the entire reply of yours, and were able to chuckle a little at themselves, before getting back to the task at hand.

Sure, - an amusing paragraph. - and at the end, the 'well written'/meaningless observation underlined begs the question. - What limitations? - Unless we are told, it remains merely entertaining rhetoric.

"I imagine you're laughing at me now, saying to yourself that I couldn't possibly know anything about having a kid until I actually have one. "

Actually, I'm not laughing at all-- I'm delighted to hear the thoughts of someone looking ahead in their life and planning as well as one can how to deal with potential problems. The way I see it, libertarianism is a perfectly rational philosophy, which would work perfectly if man were a perfectly rational animal-- but of course, he isn't. The aspect of it that most appealed to me when I was younger was the emphasis on freedom, making one's own judgments, and self-reliance. Like many young people today, my attitude was, "It's my life, and if I am hurting myself (which I never thought I was), well, that's my right." The same argument can be carried to an extreme and used to justify suicide. 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. Without those investments, although we are loathe to admit it, most of us would be nothing. If you want a graphic and thought-provoking demonstration of how we are inextricably tied to one another, just attend the funeral of a young person, especially one who died by their own hand.

Libertarianism also seems to me to provide nothing to tide one over when rationality fails, and we face the occasional emotional pits of life. Viktor E. Frankl writes movingly of what really sustains us in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", which draws extensively on his experience in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl found that 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. In my own, much lesser trial with borderline depression, I can say that I believe Frankl is right.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne (1572-1631)

See my post #69 to missileboy.

Libertarianism raises the central issue in both life and politics-- the boundaries between individuals and society, and between individuals and the collective expression of society's goals, namely government. Unfortunately, for libertarianism to really work well, people must cease being human and become perfectly rational and highly intelligent thinking machines, which isn't likely to happen anytime soon. It works best in relation to economics and free markets, but even there, it cannot work unless we, as a society, are willing to watch at least some of the less intelligent among us starve, along with their children.

I actually believe that the tension among competing political and social philosophies is healthy for the country as a whole, so while I would never again subscribe to libertarianism, I wouldn't want to see it go away altogether, just as I don't want to see liberalism vanish altogether, because both act as valuable checks on the conservative impulse. The political pendulum in this country swings within a very narrow range which I think is good-- what keeps it in that range is vibrant competition among political and social philosophies. If we ever lose that competition, then we will be at risk of totalitarianism of one sort or another.

For what it's worth, many intelligent people under 30 think that they discovered libertarianism all by themselves and no one has ever understood it before. By the time one reaches middle age, its limitations have become apparent.

- an amusing paragraph. - and at the end, the 'well written'/meaningless observation underlined begs the question. - What limitations? - Unless we are told, it remains merely entertaining rhetoric.

Are the above your words, or Jonah Goldbergs? -- If yours, do you imagine that you have answered my question above in your last two posts?

"Libertarian" is a name some conservatives give themselves.
"Conservative" is a name some libertarians give themselves.
"Fascist", "statist", and "naziboy who get's off on the homoerotic bonding that takes place when control freaks dress up together, enforce rules, and stomp people any time, for any reason, and if you're not guilty, then you have no reason to protest" are names some libertarians give conservatives.
"Anarchist", "liberaltarian", "druggie", and "pedophile, sex freak, crackheads who get off staring at their belly buttons through pot glazed eyes, believing that their urine soaked gutter is utopia" are names some conservatives give libertarians.

But it's all in good fun.

For the record, I think it's a bit of a stretch to assert that libertarians follow liberals more closely than conservatives; however it seems to me that part of the problem is one of labels. That is, today's 'conservative' doesn't seem to me to be what 'conservative' was during the Reagan presidency. People are so anxious to identify libertarians in terms of the limited vocabulary , "right" or "left", terms that are themselves not clearly defined, that ultimately all attempts to properly identify them fail.

This is because the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are politically relative. Terms like "libertarian" or "socialist" are absolutes. The degree of overlap between libertarians and conservative or liberals will be determined by the conservatives and liberals as they exist in the current political climate, not by the libertarians.

Today's "conservatives" will rail against the outcomes of FDR and his socialist policies, but will not dare to speak against the government-as-savior ideology that made them possible.

Yesterday's liberals are today's conservatives.

- an amusing paragraph. - and at the end, the 'well written'/meaningless observation underlined begs the question. - What limitations? - Unless we are told, it remains merely entertaining rhetoric.

Are the above your words, or Jonah Goldbergs? -- If yours, do you imagine that you have answered my question above in your last two posts at 69 & 70? - It is becoming obvious that you did not, but that you hoped to give that impression.

And from your inablity to answer, I'm getting the idea that the 'limitations' line was Jonahs. - Correct? - Not nice to take credit for anothers line, you know, - even if the line is empty rhetoric.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.