Posted on 08/01/2002 3:27:45 PM PDT by Tomalak
Thought for the day
If you believe in a truly libertarian society, your only way to success is in working to build a society based upon traditional morality, shame and chastity. Contradictory? Actually, no. Given a little examination, it turns out to be rather obvious; almost self-evidently true. If you want to live in a country where every man supports himself rather than looking to the taxpayer, where crime is rare and so massive police powers, ID cards and DNA databases are superfluous, you will not do so on the back of the destructive policies of social liberalism.
Libertarians traditionally do not look to history for the sort of society they wish to build. But I sense that the famous passage with which AJP Taylor begins his English History 1914-1945 comes closest to the libertarian ideal: a place where the normal, sensible Englishman comes into contact with the state only through the post office and policeman. The United States that existed before FDR's massive extensions in state power is similarly the model of the sort of America that libertarians across the pond seek to build. What all successful societies in history with small states have had in common is a strictly moral populace. Victorian Britain could survive without a large state precisely because pious ideas of shame, duty and self-reliance ensured that people would look to themselves for what they needed, rather than the state, and because crime was low enough that the state did not need to seek all the powers it could summon to fight back.
One mistake far too many libertarians make is to associate traditional morality with big government, and hostility to freedom. The opposite is true. The more influence morality has over a man's conduct, the less need there is for the state to control it. Crime can be reduced by many police, many laws, tougher sentences and more guns. But most of all, to have a low crime society without an overbearing state, you need to fashion the sort of country whose people are inclined not to commit crime in the first place. Roger Scruton made this point as brilliantly as ever in his call to "Bring Back Stigma":
"The law combats crime not by eliminating criminal schemes but by increasing the risk attached to them; stigma combats crime by creating people who have no criminal schemes in the first place. The steady replacement of stigma by law, therefore, is a key cause of the constant increase in the number and severity of crimes."
To see morality as inimical to liberty, as a threat to libertarian ambitions, is the most statist thing one can do. It is to leave the state as the only thing to pick up the pieces when society fails to function.
It is no mere joke to say that at present libertarians are those who like the liberal society but hate paying for it. Take a recent column on paedophilia in America's leading Libertarian Magazine, Reason, entitled "Sins of the Fathers". Throughout the article, the message is clear: molesting kids is wrong, but 'merely' wanting to rape them is not. The article is a rebuke aimed at all those with a moral problem with lusting after children.
"The issue is not sexual attraction; it is sexual action...
Bibliophilia means the excessive love of books. It does not mean stealing books from libraries. Pedophilia means the excessive (sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them, although that is what people generally have in mind when they use the term. Because children cannot legally consent to anything, an adult using a child as a sexual object is engaging in a wrongful act. Such an act is wrongful because it entails the use of physical coercion, the threat of such coercion, or (what comes to the same thing in a relationship between an adult and a child) the abuse of the adult’s status as a trusted authority.
Saying that a priest who takes sexual advantage of a child entrusted to his care "suffers from pedophilia" implies that there is something wrong with his sexual functioning, just as saying that he suffers from pernicious anemia implies that there something wrong with the functioning of his hematopoietic system. If that were the issue, it would be his problem, not ours."
I believe that the dominance such people seem to have over libertarianism is a source of much of its undeserved failure. Such arguments only make libertarians sound nasty, extreme, and frankly strange. They may explain their defence of paedophilia on the grounds of a philosophical tradition of 140 years standing, but most ordinary people do not see it that way: what they see is a political movement apparently sympathetic to a pervert. Similarly, attacking the welfare state on grounds of economic efficiency is productive before some, but to the majority, it just looks like greed: not wanting to help those in need. Unless one explains morally the evils of trapping people on welfare so that each time they make an economic advance there is a corresponding benefit cut, and of creating a state which appears to remove every citizen's private duty to others, how can one show that they are wrong to put this thinking down to greed?
So morality surely reduces the need for a large state. But does accepting the importance of morality in society mean a greater role for the state in other areas? I do not believe so. Let us look at the actual aims of social conservatives like Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens, Ann Widdecombe, Charles Moore, John Redwood, Roger Scruton and Theodore Dalrymple. How many can you name in mainstream journalism or politics who actually want to change the law to make homosexuality illegal, for example? I do not know of any. Again, we see the reality - the social "authoritarians" are not really authoritarian. They do not want new laws to stop immorality and crime: they want free people to choose to be good themselves. They want a country where virtue is praised and vice condemned.
Ultimately, the enemy of libertarians is state control, not self-control. Morality in ordinary life removes the need for the sort of huge state that politicians have built for us since the 1930s. The more people choose to be good of their own accord, the more convincingly one can question the need for an over-mighty government to keep them in line. But until libertarians give up their crusade against any idea of decent behaviour, I do not see them succeeding.
Sigh. No.
Okay - so can you name a few countries where the state is small and the people are immoral that are worth living in then? I think every conservative and libertarian would agree that the best combination is a moral people plus a small state. But you can't have a small state without a people moral enough to manage without big government.
Libertarians do not believe it free and total reign let loose on the populace. You seem to believe that people are incapable of living out a life of decency and morality without either believing in God or having the government tell them what is correct to do and how to behave. Please tell me if I am misunderstanding what you are saying.
But I don't think you need to be religious to be moral.
Oh really, I wish I had a time machine so I could see the look on your face.
I don't understand your point. Neither the Founders nor any of our ancestors exhibited any great difficulty in differentiating a brothel from an opera. There was no flood of pornography in the first 200 years of our nation's culture, the nation's store shelves were devoid of intaglio etchings of people copulating, and yet the laws were so written to discourage it. The flood of pornography came only recently, with the moral-liberal court rulings striking down the age-old obscenity laws. Hence your 'Woe is us, the state is to blame for porn' doesn't really fly.
Or maybe your point is that the laws which provide legal protection to porn should be rescinded so as to allow citizens their right to close down the porn industry.
Can you provide me a complete list of everything I must and must not due or am I going to have to figure this out myself. If I have to figure it out, it will subject to my judgement. Since, my judgement is so poor that I've actually read folks like the evil Dr. Szasz, obviously we'll need someone else to make decisions for me. Gee, I hope they have my best interests in mind.
It means helping others when they need you,
What if they have brought suffering on themselves?
working hard when you would rather be lazy,
What if I am not allowed to enjoy the fruits of my own labor?
doing your duty even if it is a difficult one,
Who defines my duties?
and providing for yourself and your family, rather than looking to others.
Housing is too expensive to form a family. Marriage puts a husband in danger of losing his home, salary, children and 2nd Amendment rights.
The same was true in Rome in later days.
No, I'm just asking how you arrive at moral judgements.
Sorry, but there is such a thing as right and wrong, and you can only have a small state if people in general do what is right.
No actually, you can have a small state full of bad people. I've seen them first hand. They're just kinda sketchy. They do nevertheless exists. And there are some good people in them. Some of the good people like the chaos, most do not.
Well said. The law is not a religion. The law cannot give one a conscience. The law cannot compel one to stop and help another. We need much more than mere human laws in order to have a healthy, functioning society. But the law does have an important role to play.
If the wife is 10 years old? As pedophilia continues to be normalized--and it will--you will either embrace it or regret your moral relativism. It all flows from the same mindset--and you have it.
Policing the bedroom is bad government and feckless politics, but that does not mean that what some people do behind closed doors ought to be applauded or tolerated in public discourse. You honor it by impliedly defending it. You ought to feel ashamed. But shame over sexual sickness is in short supply in the nation, especially since Bubba and Monica did their thing in the "privacy" of the Oval Office.
This statement is utterly false:
I think that you misunderstood what he's trying to say. It's not saying that you cannot have large gov't with good people or a small gov't and bad people. He is saying that if you want a orderly, peaceful law biding society, then you either need to have a large gov't to ensure order(on an irresponsible people), or a moral society that will demand good behavior from its neighbors.
His point is that if we are going to achieve the libertarian ideal of extremely small or no gov't, we need to have a moral influence in society to maintain order or we will turn into a somalia (no gov't, no moral influence = total chaos). I dont' think that Somalia is any libertarian's ideal society.
Look at our nation's founding. It would be considered very libertarian compared to what we have today. And our founding fathers considered a religous (moral) influence necessary for maintaining a free society.
Nope, that won't work. But that's what we going to do. Once you divorce the individual from personal responsibility your society will become increasingly disorderly.
I concur with your other points.
Conflating examples of genuine moral issues (e.g. irresponsibility and laziness) with my point is either stupidity or dishonesty on your part -- which is it?
Thank you, yes. That is my point exactly. And like most Americans, I think the second option is far better than the first.
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