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Do Libertarians Really "Want a World Without Moral Judgments"?
Reason ^
| 03/22/2013
| Nick Gillespie
Posted on 03/22/2013 8:51:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
On March 15 in The New York Times, liberal journalist and author Richard Reeves wrote an op-ed about the new plan in New York City to dramatize the many negative effects of teen pregnancy on girls who give birth before graduating high school and outside of a stable two-parent unit. Billboards and other advertisements around the city, for instance, point out that unwed teen mothers are twice as likely to not finish high school as girls who don't give birth before graduating.
With many smart qualifications, Reeves makes a case for shaming regarding teen pregnancy and other behaviors, and he does it from a liberal POV:
A society purged of shame might sound good in theory. But it would be terrible in practice. We need a sense of shame to live well together. For those with liberal instincts, this is necessarily hard. But it is also necessary.
My issue is less with Reeves' views on public shaming per se and more on an aside he makes about libertarians:
Libertarians might want a world without moral judgments, in which teen pregnancy carries no stigma at all. And paternalists might want the state to enshrine judgments in law perhaps by raising the age of sexual consent or mandating contraception. True liberals, though, believe we can hold one another to moral account without coercion. We must not shy away from shame.
I submit to you that few statements are more wrong than saying "libertarians might want a world without moral judgments." From my vantage point, one of the things to which libertarianism is dedicated is the proliferation of moral judgments by freeing people up to the greatest degree possible to create their own ways of being in the world. To conflate the live and let live ethos at the heart of the classical liberal and libertarian project with an essentially nihilistic dismissal of pluralism and tolerance is a gigantic error. It's like saying that because religious dissenters want to abolish a single state church that they are anti-god.
As the anthropologist Grant McCracken argued in a 1998 Reason story called "The Politics of Plenitude," our world is characterized by a "quickening speciation" of social types and sub-cultures, a liberating reality that is typically mistaken for the end of the world and the end of all morality. McCracken notes that plenitude particularly aggrieves conservatives, because they mistake an urge to escape "a morality" for an attempt to abolish "all morality." He explains:
The right acts as if the many groups thrown off by plenitude harbor an anarchic tendency, that people have become gays, feminists, or Deadheads in order to escape morality. This is not the logic of plenitude. These people have reinvented themselves merely to escape a morality, not all morality. New communities set to work immediately in the creation of new moralities. Chaos does not ensue; convention, even orthodoxy, returns. Liminality is the slingshot that allows new groups to free themselves from the gravitational field of the old moralities they must escape. But liminality is almost never the condition that prevails once this liberation has been accomplished.
courtesy PBSReeves is no conservative. He's a devotee of John Stuart Mill and, I rush to add, has said many positive things about Reason over the years. But his characterization of libertarians as uninterested in moral judgments proceeds from a very conservative - and very profound - misunderstanding of what I think we are all about. This sort of thinking typically emanates from the right - how many of us have had conversations with conservatives who equate ending drug prohibition with a case not simply for occasional use of currently illegal drugs but for an absolute embrace of never-ending intoxication and stupefaction? - but apparently it harbors a home on the left as well. (Go here to read part of a debate I had with Jonah Goldberg a decade ago on the same basic topic).
Shame is certainly not the first thing that most libertarians I know reach for in high-minded policy discussions or less serious conversations. On the narrow question of reducing teen pregnancy - which has in any case reached historic lows over the past decades - it's far from clear the role the sort of public shaming enivisioned by New York authorities will play compared to, say, frank discussions of the harshly reduced opportunities faced by young mothers. Certainly, it may make certain policymakers and politicians feel good, but that is hardly any ground by which to analyze the efficacy of a given policy (to his credit, Reeves calls for a cost-benefit analysis himself).
But it's time to start swatting away random accusations of libertarians as nihilists simply because we don't sign on to every given moralistic agenda that is proposed or enacted in the name of the greater good. No less a buttoned-down character than Friedrich Hayek once wrote 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." The libertarian commitment to true pluralism and tolerance is not easy to maintain, but it remains exactly the sort of gesture that allows for differing moralities to flourish and, one hopes, new and better ways of living to emerge.
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: libertarianism; libertarians; morality
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181
posted on
03/23/2013 8:27:04 AM PDT
by
narses
To: Berlin_Freeper
Don’t forget dirty air and water, starving school children, and throwing granny off a cliff.
182
posted on
03/23/2013 8:32:23 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: cdcdawg
Actually, I forgot the neighbor on the other side with the drug lab, the crack house across the street and the masturbating pervert in the yard behind his.
To: Berlin_Freeper
I still think you need the dirty air, dirty water, starving schoolchildren and murdered granny. If your going to act like an MSNBC leftist, go all out.
184
posted on
03/23/2013 8:51:13 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: cdcdawg
Hey if you want to deny those would flourish because of the kooky ideas of liberaltarians then go ahead and look the fool,
To: Berlin_Freeper
And you would prefer jack-booted thugs paroling the streets?
Libertarianism is definitively about self-governance. Statism is about forcing the will of govt on its victims. Morality and neighborliness are tangential to these two opposing enforcement extents.
186
posted on
03/23/2013 9:08:14 AM PDT
by
Gene Eric
(The Palin Doctrine.)
To: Berlin_Freeper
Hey, if you want to deny that dirty air and dirty water would flourish because of the kooky ideas of liberaltarians, then go ahead and look the fool.
I think given the chance, you could whip up some anti-gun hysteria as well. You see, that’s when leftists act exactly like you. All those things you said are what libs say about guns (even using the Drug War to further their anti-gun agenda, with your help). If we just had stronger drug laws, if we just had stronger gun laws, if we just had stronger banking laws, if we just had stronger environmental laws. Then we could solve all of these problems. Because government solves problems so very well.
187
posted on
03/23/2013 9:12:30 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: Gene Eric
Being out of touch with reality is a requisite of being a kooky Liberaltarian. Thank you for providing such a stark example of that.
To: cdcdawg
After denying the validity of my post, you now seek a-do-over by validating it.
Too funny but so typical LoL!
To: SeekAndFind
To say that libertarians want a world w/out moral judgement is a misrepresentation of true libertarianism.
Libertarians, IMO, believe it is society's role to ostracize and discourage destructive behaviors. It is not the role of the government through the monopoly of force.
Now, ofcourse, do all libertarians understand this? No. But MANY libertarians are really just leftists who understand calling themselves a leftist isn't as cool.
Also, as with any large body of people where the left can spread it's tentacles --there is infiltration. The left spreads it's peoples far and wide to corrupt and destroy. See media, academia, churches, non-profit orgs, and the REPUBLICAN PARTY for examples.
190
posted on
03/23/2013 9:26:34 AM PDT
by
riri
(Plannedopolis-look it up. It's how the elites plan for US to live.)
To: Berlin_Freeper
I think you were the first to engage in a do-over. You are using the dirty air/dirty water/starve children formulation of the left. You can’t distinguish your own argument from theirs, mainly because they are the same. You would make an outstanding gun control advocate.
191
posted on
03/23/2013 9:34:54 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: Berlin_Freeper
A punk statist complaining about a kooky Libertarian. Go figure.
192
posted on
03/23/2013 9:36:47 AM PDT
by
Gene Eric
(The Palin Doctrine.)
To: cdcdawg
You are arguing to make it legal to pipe sewer water to peoples faucets as if you have a point other than the one on top of your head... because you have nothing but empty hyperbole and quickly jump to “jackboot” type words of the drug pushing agenda.
You don’t warrant another minute of my time.
Got you pegged.
To: riri
Libertarians, IMO, believe it is society's role to ostracize and discourage destructive behaviors.
I will disagree. Most L's I have read think if you don't like seeing a man masturbating on the street, that is your sole problem and too bad for you. The L's have absolutely ZERO interest in discouraging destructive behaviors.
To: SeekAndFind
I’m going to have a 17 ounce Coca Cola with my lunch. Is that okay with the Socons? After all, my body is a temple of the Lord, so I want to clear that with them. Government wants to limit me to 16 ounces, but I’m feeling frisky. I mean, at this rate, left to my own devices, I could have a needle in my arm and a penis in my rectum by nightfall. I hope the government saves me from all of that.
Oh, and I’m not responsible enough to have these guns either. I think the government needs to take them. Christ said that he who lives by the sword will die by it, so that’s a good pretext for taking them. If my neighbors and I all have them, this street would be a shooting gallery, with dead kids stacked 10 deep. Thank God gun ownership is only 100% around here, or we would have more than our 1 murder every 15-20 years. We’ve gotten by too long without the government’s help on this. Pure luck.
Come to think of it, there are times when I don’t give to the poor. Maybe the government should also do that for me. Christian morality requires it, so the government should enforce it. Those guys do a better job of things anyway. I might be greedy without their influence. They are so upright, and they make me a better person. We just need to make sure to elect the best people, and give them lots of power, because they can do good with it.
If the government can just make me do enough of the right things, I won’t need the church. Hurray! Oh, wait.
195
posted on
03/23/2013 9:48:27 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: Berlin_Freeper
Not sure what’s on top of your head, but my point went right over it, and I aimed pretty low. Your empty hyperbole is what started this exchange, and your inability to reason makes it a waste of time. I’ll leave it at this: your hyperbolic examples are exactly the tactics of the Left. They are just as devoid of facts or logic. You should reflect on that. There are good arguments against the libertarian perspective. If you want to argue against it, you should read up on them.
196
posted on
03/23/2013 9:54:12 AM PDT
by
cdcdawg
To: cdcdawg
>> tactics of the Left.
And statists too.
197
posted on
03/23/2013 9:56:25 AM PDT
by
Gene Eric
(The Palin Doctrine.)
To: freeandfreezing
Sorry, but I'm familiar with your game. I don't play games. I don't deceive, dissemble or use duplicity. I didn't even read your comment, I just added your name since the person I was responding to was responding to you. I will read you entire referenced comment and this one later when I have time.
198
posted on
03/23/2013 10:55:12 AM PDT
by
little jeremiah
(Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. CSLewis)
To: Tax-chick
Everyone who considers himself "libertarian" defines the philosophy as being comprised of his personal beliefs. Damn that's good. Perfectly summarized.
To: Fightin Whitey
Why, thank you. I’m known for my summaries ;-), as well as baby pictures and cat pictures.
200
posted on
03/23/2013 11:20:08 AM PDT
by
Tax-chick
(Why should I get Valium when wine comes in 5-liter boxes?)
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