Carson Holloway, writing for Public Discourse, urges libertarians and conservatives to work together against what he diagnoses as their common enemy, egalitarian liberalism. Where laws are legislated in favor of progressive interests, but framed in the language of repairing oppressive injustice, there are indeed bigger fish to fry:
Precisely because of their dogmatic egalitarianism, they could not defend the new law as a mere societal improvement, but had to frame it as remedying a basic injustice, a step without which we could not claim to have a decent society. Doubtless if the health care law survives the political and legal challenge it now faces, the next generation of liberals will insist, with indignation, that the government role in health care needs to be expanded even further in order to address the remaining inequalities in this area.
Read more here
April 24th, 2012 | 10:32 am
Oh libertarians have learned the hard way that conservatives are not their allies. Massive destruction of individual liberties (preached in the name of terrorism and framed into large survey apparatus of citizens), continuous spending (and increased debt), illegal wars based on lies (and in general terms, imperialistic behavior), billionaire bailouts of failed banks and enterprises (and corporate welfare in general terms), continuous attempts to disrupt people private life (especially in their beds), etc… We know better now: Conservatives use libertarian philosophical rhetoric to advance their interests, the ways to destroy individual liberties and free market, not to protect them.
April 24th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
Wow Sergio, that’s quite a comment you have there. You’ve imposed a stereotype on people who disagree with you, made controversial statements as though they were self-evident truth, and made absolutely no attempt to define terms or construct arguments. As an example of ideological blinkering (not to mention pure chutzpah) it’s quite impressive. It is, however, a tad hard to take seriously as a political or philosophical statement.
April 24th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
+1 to Sergio’s concise take-down of this silly proposition.
April 24th, 2012 | 8:37 pm
Fred:
Lets see 1 by 1.
- Conservatives support the massive destruction of civil liberties: Isn´t it true or not? Don´t you support tougher anti immigration laws, racial profiling and didn´t a conservative president created a giant burocratic apparatus called the Department of Homeland Security? Didn´t that same conservative president passed many laws that allowed spying on citizens using the anti terrorist hysteria post 9/11 attacks? Aren´t you the people who gave us this insanity called “war on drugs” (remember, Nixon)?
- Spending: Isn´t it true that during conservative government’s spending has increased, most notably during the last Bush administration to new records? Yes, you cut taxes (for the rich mainly) but spending didn´t shrink, it increased (yeah, in stuff like the military, homeland security department and even more traditional programs on social issues – like “No child left behind” or “medicare”)? Am I lying or making some false characterization here?
- Illegal wars based on lies: Do I need to go on with the last war in Iraq…? or should we talk about all this hawkish nonsense about invading Iran that almost all conservative candidates, except Ron Paul which is dismissed as a nut by most conservatives, love to talk?
- The bailout of banks: Wasn’t that passed in the last days of the Bush administration? And corporate welfare, starting by the military industrial complex; you don´t have a problem with money redistribution, as long it ends in the pockets of large corporations. Am I making up some stuff here?
- Disruption of private life, especially in matters related with sex: Aren´t you the main opposes of abortion? Of Homosexuals having equal rights than the rest of the citizens (heck, many conservatives protested even the derogation of the barbaric “sodomy laws”). Don´t you favor censorship on movies, TV programs and printed work with sexual content?
Please, feel free to refute any of the stuff I mentioned, I will love to see it. And let’s not even talk about religious issues, your opposition to separate church and state, your intend to push your belief in the throat of all people, heck, even pay for it (faith based initiatives). Maybe you are all right in ALL those areas, but one thing I am sure: They are fundamentally at odds with libertarianism.
April 24th, 2012 | 8:46 pm
And actually, more honest conservatives agree with me in the issue. See:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/03/5002
for example.
April 25th, 2012 | 1:57 pm
OK Sergio, I’ll play.
Point 1: Nonsense on stilts. Most conservatives distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. No one has a right to enter this country illegally. Precisely what civil right would be violated by making a stronger attempt at preventing illegal immigration? As for the Department of Homeland Security: first, many conservatives doubted that adding another layer of bureaucracy to law enforcement was the best way to fight terrorism; however, it is certainly at least arguable that an umbrella organization to increase information flow among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and to focus time and resources on the particular problems that led to 911 is, at least in principle, not a bad idea. And precisely whose civil rights has DHS violated and how? All those muslims that have been rounded up and sent to concentration camps? All those journalists who constantly attacked W and were imprisoned for it? All those movie makers who were imprisoned and executed for making movies portraying W as an idiot or a tyrant or, in at least one case, fantasizing about assassinating him? Oh, wait. . . And your contention that the “war on drugs” is insanity is certainly an arguable position, but so is the reverse. There is a very strong case to be made that the increase in drug use and concommitant increases in drug addiction, absenteeism, accidents, strain on public health resources, and less tangible consequences like destroyed lives, blasted souls, and broken families would be as costly or more so than the war on drugs.
Point 2. Very few conservatives would disagree with you about W’s increases in spending and federalization of education. But the actions of an errant conservative president are not to the discredit of conservatism per se. He was not acting according to conservative principles when he took those actions.
Point 3. First, you have once again made an extremely controversial assertion as though it were self-evident truth. There is a difference between a mistake and a lie. Even the French believed at the time that Saddam had WMD, they just didn’t agree with using force because of it. In addition, Bush had a UN resolution that implied force as a consequence of refusal by Saddam to submit to inspections, he just never got one explicitly authorizing force, so it was not illegal under international law. He sought, and received, authorization from Congress within the 90 days specified by the War Powers Act, so it wasn’t a violation of American law. Under which law, precisely, then was it illegal? In addition, the Bush administration might have been wrong about WMD in Iraq, but we had _causus belli_ stretching back to 1992 and Saddam’s refusal to allow UN inspectors into suspected weapons sites, not to mention his firing on US planes enforcing the no-fly zone. And since when does “talk about invading Iran” constitute any kind of war, legal or otherwise? And to be perfectly honest, I care a helluva lot more that we botched the Iraq war than about its legality. That botching is what will come back to bite us in the posterior.
Point 4. No conservative would argue that the bank bailouts were a good thing. I seriously doubt W himself would argue that. I’m sure he saw it as the least bad option to prevent a run on banks and a paralysis of credit that could have had the same disastrous consequences they had in 1932. You can argue that preventing that wasn’t worth the price or that there were other, better ways to do it, but then that would require you to actually construct an argument and support it with evidence, wouldn’t it?
Point 5. As for abortion, no one has a right to take an innocent life. A woman not allowed to have an abortion may have her life disrupted; the child she kills has its life taken. Sorry, but to conservatives (unfortunately, unlike libertarians) preventing the taking of life takes precedence over preventing the disruption of life. Opposition to homosexuals having equal rights? More nonsense on stilts. We do believe that homosexuality is immoral and physically and psychologically unhealthy, but I have never heard any conservative advocate breaking in the doors of homosexuals and dragging them off to prison. Even anti-sodomy laws were symbolic of communal disapproval of that lifestyle rather than seriously enoforced. We conservatives believe homosexuals (qua citizens, not qua homosexuals) already have equal rights under the law. We object to granting homosexuals “official victim status” and all its attendent benfits (affirmative action for example) on the basis of their behavior. I would think libertarians, of all people, would agree with that. We also object to their attempts to normalize homosexuality and their tendency to react violently (both metaphorically and literally) to those who resist that normalization. Censorship is a whole other argument, that I don’t have time and space for here. Suffice it to say that most conservatives would have no objection to some restrictions on some content under some circumstances. Hard to see how that makes us Nazis.
Point 6. Oppose separation of church and state? Really, Sergio, try getting to know some religious conservatives rather than letting the leftwing media do your thinking for you. I don’t have the links at my fingertips, unfortunately. Perhaps you can google them. But Walter Russell Mead (hardly a right wing religious nut) had an excellent blog post at The American Interest about the hyperventilating on the left and the libertarian right about the coming “Christianist” theocracy. And in these very pages, Joe Carter, an evangelical, pointed out the extreme ludicrousness of fear of theocracy. Which Christian sect gets to be the theocrats? What do they do with the others? What Christian sect wants another telling it what to believe and how to worship? Again, Serg, nonsense on stilts.
The bottom line is that you libertarians have an idealized vision of what people are and what they are capable of. You profoundly overestimate people’s capacity to do the right thing if left to their own devices; you profoundly underestimate the consequences of people not doing the right thing because they’re left to their own devices, and you profoundly underestimate the degree to which social problems are economic problems. That is where we conservatives differ with you. That said, there are issues on which we can ally. To dismiss such an alliance because you disagree with us on other issues, especially when that dismissal is based on ignorance and stereotypes, is the height of foolishness.
April 26th, 2012 | 6:06 pm
Fred:
Ok, let´s go:
I will like to make a starting general comment: you seem to be arguing on behalf of conservative policies in your reply, not if they are incompatible or compatible with libertarianism. As I said, maybe you are all right on this issue (I doubt it, but you may be of course), but the question is if they are compatible with libertarianism.
- Point 1: First at all, libertarianism is a political theory about rights. One of the most fundamental rights people have is the one of private property. If people living in X place wants to invite A to his house, he has the right too, regardless of where X lives. The whole idea of anti immigration laws are at odds with the idea of borders on libertarian theory (since it will mean it recognize the right of the state to cohort property rights and the right of mobility of human beings just for the place where they were born). But leaving aside such purities…you conservatives are far away than just being in favor of “legal” immigration. You want to actively pursue immigrants, especially from third world countries, with the excuse they are illegal immigrants. The whole anti immigrant hysteria is nothing else; pardon me to say it, than racism disguised.
On the issue of homeland security…of course you may think it is a “great idea”, to have big brother spy on people. But please, don´t say it is libertarian, and especially, don´t get surprised that you are called hypocrites, when all conservative candidates fill their mouths with anti government rhetoric, small government rhetoric, and then come up and propose such monstrosity. If government is bad as libertarians claim to provide welfare or education, why it will be good to provide “security” and how can we trust it with powers to spy and detain people without due process or trial (ehem…like Guantanamo)? So, and that answers another question you raise, if creating a massive apparatus to spy and control your own citizens, and if keeping detainees in a juridical limbo (while inflicting and justifying the use of torture on them) is not violating rights, what it is? Ah yeah, I forgot to thank you for not acting like a totalitarian nation that imprisons dissenters and critics…thank you so much. You have such a high standard!
Finally, regarding the issue on the war on drugs: I call it insane because it insane that State has the right to control what its people can or cannot use in their bodies. That, from a libertarian point of view is unacceptable. And let’s not to talk about the idea the state can put in jail for the crime of having the substances it considers you cannot put in your body, which by the way, is a very puritanical and hypocrite idea (since other substances, more dangerous than many illegal ones like alcohol, are allowed). And is not only dangerous, but counterproductive, since there the demand for such substances (which cannot be controlled, as 40 years of failure of the war on drugs show, and shouldn´t) is so high that obviously it creates a black market for its trade, a market that will obviously end up controlled by criminals. And we can go on and one, but you see why the war on drugs is unacceptable on libertarian grounds (and there is pretty consensus on this one among libertarians, I assure you).
Point 2: The action´s of an errand conservative president? Have Bush father or Reagan or Nixon even any different regarding increasing spending? Go check it out.
Point 3: Not only I doubt your claim that the French admitted Iraq had WMD, but I claim that US intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush that there was no conclusive evidence that Iraq had not WMD. And no, the US did not have a cassus belli against Iraq. Actually, conservative presidents supported Hussein, armed and helped him (when useful against Iran) and even encouraged him to start the invasion in Kuwait. In 2004 Iraq was not a treat to the US so you had any case for a just war. Now, saying the US president had authorization of the congress to start war, doesn´t make it less criminal (is like saying Hitler had authorization according to German Law to invade Poland: that still doesn´t mean he started a war of aggression). Aside from that, have you actually seen the way republican candidates speak today about foreign affairs? That conservative narrative of the US as an especial country with some “Manifest Destiny”, which essentially gives the nation the right to invade and impose their preferred governments on anybody it considers? Tell me, how can that be compatible with libertarian ideals, which recognize only rights to individuals (the same ones for all individuals in the world)? How is not that some form of fascistic collectivism?
Point 4: You are speculating about W motives (and the members in the congress that passed the bailout including all republicans). I seriously doubt he saw it as the “lesser of evils”, especially since Bush economic advisors where all well connected to the banks that will benefit from it. But the point is again the same: it is unlibertarian, as any other form of welfare. It is unfair, it creates perverse incentives (hey, lets just continue to gamble with other people money…if we get broke the State will come and save us!) and it’s just another form of corporate welfare, that rewards failure. If you don´t believe me, check it out: Many of these arguments were formulated by libertarian economists, for example Steve Horwitz.
Point 5: The issue of abortion is a contested one among libertarians, I admit. Some, as you do think it is murder. Others, as I, think the right of a women to own her own body is far more important, even at the expense of the fetus life (although, I think conservatives are far more prone to grant personhood to early stages of the fetus than the ordinary libertarian). Concerning the rest of my point: Not only you want to deny homosexuals the right to celebrate unions and have the same benefits than heterosexuals have in them, but you want to use the state to force that view on all of us. That is called privilege, state granted privilege, and that is fundamentally at odds with libertarianism. And you can´t deny that many conservatives protested the abolition of laws that criminalized homosexuals. I don´t care if such laws were or not enforced, their sole existence is an offense for any good libertarian (or should be: the idea the private behavior between consenting adults that does not violate anybody else rights is criminal).
Point 6: Well, actually I´ve studying American right from some time ago. I know them of all flavors, but most of them, from theocrats (and I know of many sorts) to moderated and sophisticated neoconservatives mostly oppose separation of church and state in one way or another. Sure, there are degrees in which you will like to get religion and state mixed, but the point is that from some extent to another you want to use the power of the state (which from a libertarian point of view is based on coercion a theft) to promote your preferred divinity).
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact