At a recent conference, I participated in a plenary panel session on the question of whether libertarians and social conservatives can get along. I advocated for common ground from the social conservative position, but also sought to help the audience think through some of the basic issues involved. Below, I’m pasting in my answer to a question about whether there was always a bigger rift than we realized that was papered over by the Communist threat and whether there is hope for the two groups to work together. It is an approximation of my remarks, but it is quite close to what I said.
The answer to the question is that yes, there is a rift and yes, the spectre of the old Soviet menace made the distance between the two camps appear less significant. During the Cold War, both camps were terrified of the seemingly all-powerful Soviet empire and what it would do to the cause of human dignity and freedom if allowed to prevail. The great Whittaker Chambers, you probably recall, felt that when he left the Soviet cause he was joining the losing side. This terror effect is all the more impressive when we consider the fact that the Soviet supermen and their centralized committees were never able to solve the riddle of how to effectively ration out toilet paper to their comrades. But there is no mistaking it. They looked quite formidable at the time.
So, what is the cause of the rift? After all, social conservatives and libertarians agree that the free market is fundamentally superior to other economic systems. They also both believe in limiting the power of government.
The primary difference between the two groups is with regard to the connection between the law, on the one hand, and morality and culture on the other.
My fellow panelist (Doug Bandow) will speak better for libertarians than I can, but I think it is fair to say that in their view, the reason we choose to live together in political association rather than as hermits in the woods is so that we can enjoy the benefits of mutual defense and commerce. Thus, all the government we really need is a military to protect against external threats, police to protect against internal ones, and maybe courts to enforce contracts between individuals.
Social conservatives, in contrast, line up more or less with Aristotle, who insisted that political life is about more than just mutual defense and commerce. Instead, political associations exist to enable us to develop a civic friendship whereby we will discover moral excellence as a community.
For social conservatives, that Aristotelian civic friendship means there is value in turning the law to certain moral purposes beyond things like mutual defense and enforcing contracts. Instead, we hope to make law in such a way that it promotes human flourishing and prevents or discourages things that lead to decay and decline.
Given that logic, we tend to want to legally promote and affirm things like marriage and the bearing of children within wedlock. Many of us would also, for example, probably support laws that require children to attend school up to a certain age (just not necessarily a public school!).
We believe in promoting or supporting these things (marriage, childbearing within wedlock, education) via the instrument of law because we believe they are fundamentally good for people and are good for our culture. Indeed, you will often hear social conservatives citing studies that show that individuals who successfully graduate from high school, get married, and delay childbearing until after marriage are extremely unlikely to live in poverty. The research also shows that children who grow up in traditional, two parent households, in the aggregate, tend to perform better in school, have less behavioral problems, are less likely to commit crimes, and are less likely to depend on public assistance when they grow up. For those reasons, and not merely as a matter of religious preference as others often believe, social conservatives support using the law to bolster social arrangements that improve human flourishing.
Then, on the negative side of the ledger, social conservatives support using the law to restrain or prohibit activities they thing are damaging to human beings and the culture as a whole. That means social conservatives agree with laws against addictive narcotics, pornography, gambling, and prostitution. They do not believe these are victimless crimes, but rather that they are pathological and destructive to both individuals, families, and communities.
Libertarians tend to disagree with this approach to law as a promoter of various human goods, not because they hate traditional marriage or are big fans of prostitution, but because they believe this broader view of the law opens the door to a growing, busybody, and possibly malignant state.
Their concern is obviously not an empty one. And the libertarian theory of government is very clean and elegant. I think is part of why some of my brightest students are often libertarians. When I was a college student myself, I found libertarian political and economic thought quite compelling. For that matter, I still do.
But I find the Aristotelian view more appealing, still. “The Philosopher,” as St. Thomas Aquinas referred to him, believed that God made us social and rational so that we might seek after true justice using our ability to discuss what is good and what is bad.
I very much like Aristotle’s answer to Plato on the question of private property. I think it helps us see the common ground we can have. Plato proposed a system of common property and common wives. Indeed, in his system no one would even know who their children were. He reasoned that in such a system, the city would be like one body. If one hurts, then all hurt. If one is happy, all are happy.
Aristotle, my model of a conservative for today, at least, criticized the views of his old teacher. Just observe human beings, for that matter think about yourself, and you will know that human beings love the particular, not the general. A field that is owned by all will remain unplowed. But a field owned by one will be developed to the profit of all. A boy who has a thousand fathers, truly has no father. A boy with one father, has a good chance to know what it is to be loved.
Thus, the choice for private property over common property and traditional families over utopian communes is a choice for human flourishing.
As a final note, Arisotle throws in something else that is a staple of conservative reasoning. Plato, he says, the world is very old. Many have lived before us. Is it not likely that some who have lived before us have tried this idea of common property? And is it not the nature of people to keep the things that are good and work well? And yet, we see almost no societies built on a vision of common property like yours. So, Aristotle concludes, we can see private property has endured and is better both in terms of our reason about the nature of people and from historical example. We can try what you say, but ultimately, we will revert to the better option.
Now, a libertarian analysis of the same problem might go a different way and would perhaps resemble the thought of John Locke instead of Aristotle, but in this case and in several others, the libertarian would reach the same conclusion. That is a happy coincidence because it makes us co-belligerents in the cause of liberty.
The rift is real, but the threats forcing us together right now are much stronger than the disagreements which push us apart.
October 7th, 2009 | 12:48 pm
Good thoughts. I’m a self-described Aristotelian, and you hit exactly the one point in Aristotle that makes me most uncomfortable: the idea that the state is to promote morality. As you say, there’s good reason to be wary of this – and, in fact, it is just such thinking that is behind attempts to normalize via law all sorts of degenerate behaviors today. Better, I’m tempted to think, to put as tight a box around government as possible than to risk giving such power to one’s opponents – as inevitably happens in Democracy.
But then, Aristotle’s idea of a community was based on the city-states of his day, not on the giant states of today. In his world, a man was not so overwhelmed by the sheer size of government as we are today.
So, perhaps you’d like to comment on Aristotle’s thinking in light of the size of a government – part of an ideal Aristotelian society, it seems to me, is the ability to interact on some level (Twitter doesn’t count) with other citizens and lawmakers. This is hardly possible in a nation-state.
October 7th, 2009 | 1:23 pm
I’ll second Joseph by noting that Aristotle’s polis could be swallowed by a large American city without even a mild case of indigestion.
I think one strand of thought that should be present in this discussion is that of subsidiarity, which is delegating a governmental task to the lowest, most local level possible. There are many flavors of libertarians and subsidiarity is a good way to distinguish between them and also show where conservatives overlap.
Heck, many liberals who are working on helping poor neighborhoods grow their own fresh food and similar causes seem to have an implicit concept of subsidiarity, and may be willing to join ranks with conservatives and libertarians on abuses of power on the national level.
October 7th, 2009 | 1:41 pm
Wow! Where have the original, libertarian-leaning Democrats from Jefferson to Cleveland gone? All that seems to be left are Marxists who want to bring America back into the Old World fold, where poverty and tyranny are the custom, as in THE CHANGING FACE OF DEMOCRATS (Amazon.com) or http://www.claysamerica.com.
October 7th, 2009 | 1:41 pm
You might be interested in the following brand-new book, by the American hsitorian Jennifer Burns. It is about Rand’s relationship with the American Right, which out to shed some light on the relationship between conservatives and libertarians. (In spite of the fact that Objectivist officially dislike Libertarians with a capital “L”).
October 7th, 2009 | 2:20 pm
I think that there are possible points of convergence on social issues between conservatives and libertarians. For example, if one takes the view that certain government programs actually worsen social issues – say, welfare programs that enable the government to take over the role of the father, thereby weakening the family, then conservatives and libertarians can work together. Perhaps the motivation is slightly different, but I also don’t think libertarians would necessarily be repelled by socially conservative arguments for less government.
Frankly, I take a somewhat libertarian approach to social issues in that I think there are few things that government can actively do to promote socially conservative goals. Obviously I part ways with libertarians with things like abortion and gay marriage, but for the most part I think we ought to approach social issues from outside the governmental perspective. As I said, sometimes lessening the government’s reach is itself actually a step in the right direction. It really depends on what we’re talking about.
October 7th, 2009 | 2:52 pm
There’s a deeper rift than is suggested here, though it’s hinted at in your remarks on pornography and prostitution. Libertarians will object to restrictions on these things not simply from a fear of over-reaching government. Such restrictions also place limits on the free workings of the market. From a libertarian perspective, there’s no reason sex shouldn’t be a commodity if there’s a market for its various manifestations. From an Aristotelian/Platonic perspective, on the other hand, there’s every reason in the world to treat sex as different than other kinds of things people want. What this points to is the simple fact that while libertarians quite naturally and consistently can endorse free markets, it’s much more problematic for Aristotelian social conservatives to do so. In fact, it’s really quite baffling. Simply put, there no mechanism by which the market can morally distinguish desires, but such distinctions are at the heart and soul of Aristotelian/Platonic moral theory. Given our tendency to be tempted by vice, even when we recognize it as vice, it’s hard to see why Aristotelians would want to trust the distribution of goods to a mechanism that simply acts on our wants willy nilly.
October 7th, 2009 | 3:02 pm
Nice work, Hunter.
October 7th, 2009 | 3:10 pm
Great article.
After reading some of Ron Paul’s books, I have sort of removed myself from the social conservative, Aristotelian political philosophy. Not because I don’t agree with what they view as the end of government and society, but because those ends are impossible to achieve without putting primacy to the issue of sound money. I think a virtuous society exists when there is sound money by necessity (or close enough), and not a printing press system that rewards the politically well connected, who most often are not pro-family type people, as well as fund wars that are unpopular and would not be funded in a sound money system, free-market financial system. This is the elephant in the room that social conservatives completely miss.
The libertarians, or at least some of them, see this. If you are pro-family, pro-marriage, pro free market, pro-morality, I would recommend picking up some of Dr. Paul’s books if you haven’t and discover some of these eye opening things for yourself.
Aristotle’s point that men love particulars can only thrive in a free market system, and the social conservatives don’t really understand what a free market system is, unfortunately. This is because for them it is secondary. The unintended effects of putting something so vital secondary are made very clear in The Revolution: A Manifesto.
October 7th, 2009 | 4:24 pm
[...] Baker, author of The End of Secularism, writes at First Things’ First Thoughts blog: I think it is fair to say that in [the libertarian] view, the reason we choose to live together in [...]
October 7th, 2009 | 4:51 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Roger Cook. Roger Cook said: New shared item: Social Conservatives, Libertarians, and Aristotle: At a recent conference, I p.. http://bit.ly/4FpCkO [...]
October 7th, 2009 | 4:52 pm
Nice article.
A quick note about “subsidiarity” which was described above as “delegating a governmental task to the lowest, most local level possible.” Fair point, but stating it in this way might be a bit misleading. For one thing, it might give the impression that the “lower level” of which we speak is itself a governmental entity, in which case we are only speaking of different levels of government (analogous to a federal conception of national, state or provincial, and local). But families and business enterprises and churches and “voluntary associations” are not “parts” to which governments are “wholes,” to which the government (or state) can “delegate” responsibility. (As if the state is the true parent that delegates “parental responsibility” to parents because that just happens to be more convenient and functional.) Each has their own integrity, or their own “sovereignty” as the Kuyperian tradition puts it (a way of conceiving things, by the way, that Fr. Neuhaus not long before his passing suggested may capture his understanding of “mediating structures” better than the concept of subsidiarity), an integrity that the state must acknowledge.
In any case, “subsidiarity” in Catholic social thought doesn’t mean just to” delegate.” It means more fundamentally to “help” or “provide aid” to those “mediating structures” or, better, non-governmental societal structures (perhaps better “pre-state” societal structures). The legitimate task of government is to “help” them “be all that they can be,” but to do so in such as way as not to usurp their unique role or “callings”. So, to the libertarians we say that government has a normative and active role to play. To the Aristotelians with polis envy we insist that the polis is not the be all and end all, regardless of scale. We must insist that the family is not “part” of the polis, and the polis is not the family writ large. And besides, there is this little thing called the “Church.” “Two there are, not one there is.” Can a true Aristotelian abide that?
October 7th, 2009 | 5:11 pm
It seems to me that the thread in Aristotle’s thought that supports true freedom, in spite of his view of the state as potentially a benefactor, is what has come to be called natural law.
That may be why Aristotle argued for smaller city-states. There is a scale to freedom according to nature, and to break that scale is to threaten freedom.
From what I can figure out of Aristotle, that scale is based on duty and authority. If you separate the two, you have broken the fundamental principle of freedom as, it seems to me, Aristotle and Plato, at least, thought of it.
In other words, if you give someone authority over something for which he bears no responsibility, he will be a tyrant.
If someone bears responsibility for something over which he has no authority, it’s hard to see how such a person is free.
Perhaps we can agree on this point and help Americans see how far we have wandered from these points.
October 7th, 2009 | 5:31 pm
[...] excellent post on social conservatives, libertarians, and Aristotle gives me an excuse to link to an essay by a more recent thinker—the late, great Russell [...]
October 7th, 2009 | 11:01 pm
One way to explain the difference between the two is on the nature of freedom. Libertarians are concerned ONLY WITH exterior freedom-meaning they are worried about the pressure the state can apply. Social Conservatives, on the hand, are concerned with a deeper understanding of freedom, interior freedom. He recognizes there are things other than the state which can enslave you e.g. your appetites. A drug addict or alcoholic is free according to a Libertarian, but not according to a Social Conservative.
Another way to explain the difference is to see how they view bioethics. The Libertarian values Autonomy so he recognizes no authority outside of the self. In this scenario, redesigning human nature through biotechnology is permissible. The Social Conservative values human dignity and recongizes a transcendent reference point for it. Tampering with human nature then would be playing God.
October 7th, 2009 | 11:25 pm
Have social conservatives gotten anything out of their alliance with the libertarians? The more they’ve allied with the libertarians, the worse things have gotten and the more powerful the cultural left has become. Indeed, libertarians are proselytizing the children of the social conservatives with far more vigor than the SoCons are proselytizing towards anybody else.
October 7th, 2009 | 11:31 pm
Kevin, you win the “Comment of the Week” prize. That is exactly how I feel. The alliance has been a net loss for SoCons.
Last year I was invited to a meeting in D.C. for young “conservatives” (at 39, I was the oldest guy in the room). There were about forty very influential young people so I asked how many identified as social conservatives. Not one of them raised their hands. We’re completely losing this generation.
October 8th, 2009 | 1:04 pm
You should ask yourselves why the “libertarians” are winning over the youth. There is a reason for it that you won’t like: they make a lot more sense. They are articulating our current deep, systemic problems that in many ways were allowed by socialists and social conservatives whose costs will be passed on to the next generation in a way that social conservatives cannot, and they are making concrete solutions. The theory that the “polis” takes an active role in our lives as a solution to current problems is laughable to a lot of people. I cannot imagine what the classical theory would even look like in our current day and age that isn’t something similar to socialism, that is, using force to promote some ideal. How are you going to sell something that is so abstract and uncomprehendable to most people? The fact that so many young people are being drawn to freedom/libertarian ideologies is proof that markets work. Its not the “libertarians” who are abstract, its the socons, and the market is reflecting this.
I use libertarian in quotes because I think the current libertarian movement is not the same libertarianism that is being argued against in this article and the subsequent comments. The libertarianism here seems to be more of a straw man.
October 8th, 2009 | 3:58 pm
The Libertarians have the ultimate advantage in the Doctrine of Inevitablity. In other words, they do not have to engage in a philosophical debate at all. They merely have to say, “X is going to be done and you cannot stop us.” And if enough people say that, the state, no matter how organized, must cave in.
This is why the social conservatives always lose. In the end it really does not matter what Aristotle or Plato had to say about anything. It is about what people living in a period of time decide what it is they are going to do and then simply rolling over anyone who tries to stop them. A perfect example was the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. The arguments against non-marital sex were the same in 1969 as they were in 1963 (and occasionally one hears someone even try to make them now) but by 1969, very few people gave a damn about the arguments. They had decided what they wanted to do and it did not matter what anyone else thought.
The debate between Aristotelians and Libertarians is about the same as a debate between a man on the tracks waving his arms and a speeding freight train. The smart money is on the train.
October 13th, 2009 | 7:13 am
[...] Hunter Baker, an adjunct scholar with the Acton Institute and a contributor here at the PowerBlog, posted an excerpt from “a plenary panel session on the question of whether libertarians and social [...]
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