Gene Healy reacted to one of Zell Miller’s lines this way:

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending.

I want Bush to decide.

Me, I want Congress to decide–you know, like it says in the Constitution and everything.

Gene, Gene, Gene, you know how it works. The president goes to Congress and says, “Please authorize the use of military force to do such-and-such” (which is tantamount to asking for a declaration of war). When Congress authorizes the use of military force, the president decides precisely when, where, and how to apply it.

Miller’s point is obvious to everyone but Gene and his fellow libertarian extremists. Here it is: Kerry is less likely than Bush to use authority already granted by Congress and less likely to ask for new authority, when it’s needed.

Gene and his ilk prefer the Kerry doctrine (wait until attacked) because it means military inaction, and libertarian extremists would rather die in a fiery building than have the president take pre-emptive action (military and otherwise) against anyone anywhere outside the United States. (Perhaps Gene and his friends are waiting for the enemy to bust down their doors, so they can shoot the enemy with their second-amendment weapons.)

Well, that’s what Gene and his ilk think they believe. They haven’t been mugged by reality yet.

William Watkins at Southern Appeal has a post in which he quotes from James Bovard’s The Bush Betrayal. Watkins says of Bush:

No matter what his failings, so the argument goes, surely he is better than Kerry. Perhaps he is better than Kerry, but ought not we have higher standards than this? If John Kerry is the measuring stick, then I would venture that there are a large number of rascals who would be better leaders than him. But if we measure Bush by a legitimate standard, then we see much is lacking Here is a taste of Bovard’s indictment….[long quotations here]…So this is the man who is about to lead what used to be the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility. What a shame.

The quotations are about the Medicare prescription plan, a farm bill with “generous” benefits, steel tariffs, foreign aid, and education spending. William characterizes some of those measures as “vote-buying”; hell, they’re all vote-buying.

Now let’s talk about why the glass is half-full, not half-empty. What Bush gave with prescriptions he will try to take back (and then some) through partial privatization of Social Security. Farm subsidies are a bi-partisan addiction; find a president who can resist them and you’ll find a nation in which the electoral college has been abolished and most farm products are imported. Bush’s overall stance on trade is good, why get upset by a blatantly political and short-lived bit of protectionism? Almost everyone’s against foreign aid, but it’s almost inconsequential and it might actually pay long-term dividends in the war on terror. A successful push for vouchers — a key item on the Republican agenda — will have a much greater positive effect on education than the feeble negative effect of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Bovard and Watkins seem to live in the perfect world of perfectly rational, non-political politicians. It doesn’t exist. Kerry is the standard to which Bush should be compared — this year. And defeating Kerry must be number two on Bush’s agenda — this year. Number one, of course, is fighting the war on terror, which Watkins doesn’t mention. I hope he doesn’t think that’s unimportant.

Next year, if Bush has been re-elected, Bovard and Watkins can rightly complain if Bush continues to disappoint them. But before they complain they should consider Bush’s entire record, including — most importantly — his performance in the war on terror. If that doesn’t satisfy them they should do more than complain; they should actively support the nomination of a better Republican candidate in 2008.

But they should never lose sight of the fact that the real world of presidential politics — as opposed to their ideal world of ideological perfection — will almost always produce a choice between the greater evil and the lesser evil. The last time it produced a clear choice between evil and good was in 1964. And look what happened then: Voters mistook good for evil and evil for good, and evil ensued, both at home and abroad.

Would Bovard and Watkins prefer the unelected Goldwater or the elected Bush? I’m sorry to say that’s the sort of choice the real world usually offers, my friends.

In an earlier post I traced the underpinnings of modern libertarianism to their origins with John Stuart Mill and Friedrich A. Hayek. I used a lot of space (though far from enough) to spell out their arguments for the primacy of the individual as against the state. Wikipedia nicely summarizes the philosophy that results from their arguments:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others. In this respect they agree with many other modern political ideologies. The difference arises from the definition of “rights”. For libertarians, there are no “positive rights” (such as to food or shelter or health care), only “negative rights” (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed or censored), including the right to personal property. Libertarians further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect these rights.

In summing up the reasons for subscribing to that statement, I said:

Mill instructs us that personal freedoms should be preserved because through them we become more knowledgeable and more capable; therefore, the state should intervene in our lives only to protect us from physical harm. Hayek then makes the case that the personal and the economic are inseparable: We engage in economic activity to serve personal values and our personal values are reflected in our economic activity. Moreover, the state cannot make personal and economic decisions more effectively than individuals operating freely within an ever-evolving societal network, and when the state intervenes in our lives it damages that network, to our detriment. That is the essence of modern libertarianism.

The closing sentence of Mill’s On Liberty reminds us of what happens when the state prevails against the individual:

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

The economic cost of statism is high, as I have argued here and here. The social costs are incalculable.

A lot has been written about libertarianism, but most of it is superficial. Take this definition from Wikipedia, for instance:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others. In this respect they agree with many other modern political ideologies. The difference arises from the definition of “rights”. For libertarians, there are no “positive rights” (such as to food or shelter or health care), only “negative rights” (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed or censored), including the right to personal property. Libertarians further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect these rights.

That’s all right, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t say why today’s libertarians believe what they believe about the primacy of the individual as against the state.

To learn that, we must begin with John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who advanced the principles of libertarianism beyond their 18th century origins in John Locke (who believed in divinely bestowed inalienable rights) and Adam Smith (who understood that the “invisible hand” of the market translates economic self-interest into general well-being). A look at the Wikipedia entry for Mill tells us that his long essay, On Liberty is

about the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. One argument that Mill formed was the harm principle, that is people should be free to engage in what ever behaviors they wish as long as it does not harm others.

That’s the sum of Mill’s argument. Now let’s turn to the meat of it.

First, with regard to freedom of speech, Mill says, in Chapter II of On Liberty:

We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

In other words, freedom of speech advances the truth, and we are better off for knowing the truth, however much we might resent hearing it in some instances. Similarly, in Chapter III Mill argues that we are better off if we respect individuality rather than impose uniformity of behavior:

As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions of customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

Having established the importance of freedom of speech and action, how does Mill balance these freedoms in a societal context? At the onset of Chapter IV, Mill says this:

What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it [touché, Rousseau], every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing at all costs to those who endeavour to withhold fulfillment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

That is, for the sake of preserving individuality, a person who actually harms another person may be punished by the state. But a person who merely says or does something that offends others may be punished only by the force of opinion and reason, to which he may or may not choose to bow. Mill applies his principles in Chapter V:

The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection….

In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a legitimate object, necessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain or loss to others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between individuals often arise from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable while those institutions last; and some would be unavoidable under any institutions. Whoever succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive examination; whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences….

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes of manufacture. But is now recognised, though not till after a long struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, quâ restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that doctrine….

Thus, despite his acknowledgment that commerce is a social act, and despite having made a good defense of free trade, Mill believes there is an essential difference between personal and economic freedom.

Now comes Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) to unify personal freedom and economic freedom. Virginia Postrel, writing earlier this year for The Boston Globe, explains:

Hayek’s most important insight, which he referred to as his “one discovery” in the social sciences, was to define the central economic and social problem as one of organizing dispersed knowledge. Different people have different purposes. They know different things about the world. Much important information is local and transitory, known only to the “man on the spot.” Some of that knowledge is objective and quantifiable, but much is tacit and unarticulated. Often we only discover what we truly want as we actually make trade-offs between competing goods.”

The economic problem of society,” Hayek wrote in his 1945 article [“The Use of Knowledge in Society”], “is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate `given’ resources — if `given’ is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these `data.’ It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in totality.”

The key to a functioning economy — or society — is decentralized competition. In a market economy, prices act as a “system of telecommunications,” coordinating information far beyond the scope of a single mind. They permit ever-evolving order to emerge from dispersed knowledge….

Information technology has strengthened Hayek’s legacy. At MIT’s Sloan School, Erik Brynjolfsson uses Hayek to remind students that feeding data into centralized computers doesn’t necessarily solve a company’s information problems. In any complex operation, there is too much relevant information for a single person or small group to absorb and act on.

“As Hayek pointed out, the key thing is to have the decision rights and the information co-located,” says Brynjolfsson. “There are at least two ways of achieving that. One is to move information to decision maker. The other is to move decision rights to where the information is.”

This analysis, which applies as much to culture as to economics, informs Hayek’s best-known work, The Road to Serfdom, which he wrote as a wartime warning to a popular audience. Published in 1944 and dedicated “to the socialists of all parties,” the book argued that the logic of socialist central planning implied the erosion of personal freedoms. Britain’s well-intended socialists were headed down the same path as the National Socialists whose rise Hayek had witnessed in Austria….

[H]e argued that to fully control the economy meant to control all aspects of life. Economic decisions are not separate from individual values or purposes. They reflect those purposes.”We want money for many different things, and those things are not always, or even rarely, just to have money for its own sake,” explains Jerry Z. Muller, a historian at Catholic University….”We want money for our spouses or our children or to do something in terms of the transformation of ourselves — for everything from plastic surgery to reading intellectual history or building a church. These are all noneconomic goals that we express through the common means of money.”

Hayek argued that only in a competitive market, in which prices signal the relative values placed on different goods, can people with very different values live together peacefully. And only in such a market can they figure out how best to meet their needs and wants — or even what those needs and wants are…

There you have it: Mill instructs us that personal freedoms should be preserved because through them we become more knowledgeable and more capable; therefore, the state should intervene in our lives only to protect us from physical harm. Hayek then makes the case that the personal and the economic are inseparable: We engage in economic activity to serve personal values and our personal values are reflected in our economic activity. Moreover, the state cannot make personal and economic decisions more effectively than individuals operating freely within an ever-evolving societal network, and when the state intervenes in our lives it damages that network, to our detriment. That is the essence of modern libertarianism.

It does, if you believe Kenneth Silber’s article, “The Fusionist Path”, at Tech Central Station. Silber almost derails his argument by listing some issues on which most libertarians and conservatives are unalterably opposed: “government spending, faith-based programs, gay marriage, abortion, the Patriot Act, [and] the Iraq War….”

Putting aside government spending as an artifact of government policy, Silber has listed some issues on which there’s a chasm between most libertarians and most conservatives:

Faith-based programs. Most conservatives love it, because “faith” is a key word for them. Libertarians can rightly abhor these programs because, even if they weren’t faith-based, they would inject government into matters outside its legitimate sphere.

Gay marriage. Conservatives hate it. Most libertarians are reflexively for it. Those libertarians who have thought about it say that government should go out of the marriage business.

Abortion. Conservatives hate it. Most libertarians openly favor it. I think they’re wrong, but I’m in the vast minority.

The Patriot Act. Another point of difference, though it hinges on esoteric details.

Iraq war. (Silber should have added preemptive war, just for completeness.) Here, too, I’m in the vast minority of libertarians, who generally oppose the Iraq war and preemptive war.

Throw in issues like flag-burning, prostitution, and drugs and you wonder if there could ever be a libertarian-conservative coalition.

On the other hand, libertarians and conservatives generally see eye-to-eye on so-called social programs, affirmative action, Social Security reform, school vouchers, campaign-finance laws, political correctness, and regulation. Libertarians will never see eye to eye with conservatives on all issues, but it seems to me that they see eye to eye on enough issues to make a political alliance worthwhile.

If libertarians were pragmatic they would adopt this view: An alliance with conservatives is, on balance, more congenial than an alliance with liberals because conservatives are closer to being “right” on more issues, and their theocratic leanings are unlikely to prevail (the social norms of the 1940s and 1950s are gone forever). If libertarians were to approach conservatives en bloc, libertarians might be able to help conservatives advance the causes on which there is agreement. If libertarians were to approach conservatives en bloc, libertarians might be able to trade their support (and the threat of withdrawing it) for influence in the councils of government. Libertarians could use that influence to push conservatives in the right direction on issues where they now differ with conservatives.

Many libertarians will reject such a strategy, but they would be wrong to do so. We will never attain a libertarian nirvana — whatever that is — but we can advance some libertarian causes. We shouldn’t let the “best” be the enemy of the “good”.

Doug Kern’s piece, A Real Story of Two Americas, at Tech Central Station is worth a look. Some key points:

One America is safe. One America is not.

Government statistics confirm that the average victim of crime tends to be young (under 24), black, male, single, urban, and poor. Crime is predominantly a problem for the struggling and marginalized….

Poverty can be resolved through individual effort; crime cannot….For the crimes that afflict the poor, our society has only one approved solution: stop being poor, so you can move somewhere safe. Some solution.

Worse, crime corrodes the very ability of the poor to improve their own situation….The poor need investment opportunities more than anyone else — but who wants to build anything in communities that aren’t safe at night?…

Whatever the long-term solution to crime may be, the short-term solutions are simple, obvious, and expensive. We need more: more prosecutors, more public defenders, more judges, more investigators, and more local jail space, to ensure that more criminals learn early and often that their crimes will be justly punished….

In recent years, federal legislation has subsidized the hiring of more police officers. That’s terrific, but what can the police accomplish if the bad guys get off with a slap on the wrist and a suspended sentence, once arrested and convicted? Rare is the jurisdiction in which misdemeanor property theft or damage results in jail time — and yet such small-scale crimes are the very offenses that make life intolerable for America’s poorest citizens. Too often, jail is not an option for misdemeanor-level offenses, as local jails overflow with probation violators and felons awaiting trial. The low-income localities that suffer most greatly from small-scale crimes often lack the resources to punish the criminals who torment them. Those places simply need more money to find, prosecute, and incarcerate criminals.

We should give it to them.

Of course, there are federalism issues and questions about where the money would come from. But a way should be found to make it happen. Protecting the public from crime is the libertarian thing to do, and what Kern proposes would have the added benefit of helping people build productive, welfare-free lives.

UPDATED WITH A P.S. AT THE END

Yesterday, thanks to this pointer by Mike Rappaport at The Right Coast, I read Edward Feser’s “The Trouble with Libertarianism” at Tech Central Station. I posted this response, not knowing that I was late to the party.

Feser’s article (dated 07/20/04) had already drawn a rebuttal (on the same day) by Julian Sanchez at Julian’s Lounge, another rebuttal (dated 07/28/04) by Will Wilkinson at Tech Central Station, and a third rebuttal by Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy. Feser replied to Wilkinson on 08/03/04. Wilkinson, writing at The Fly Bottle (his own blog) essayed a partial reply to Feser on 08/04/04, with a promise of more to come.

The centerpiece of Feser’s original essay is this provocative statement:

The trouble with libertarianism is that many of its adherents have for too long labored under the illusion…that their creed is a single unified political philosophy that does not, and need not, take a stand on the most contentious moral issues dividing contemporary society. This has led to confusion both at the level of theory and at the level of policy. Libertarians need to get clear about exactly what they believe and why. And when they do, they might find that their particular version of libertarianism commits them – or ought to commit them – to regard as rivals those they might once have considered allies.

What did Julian Sanchez say in reply to Feser? Here’s the bottom line:

The whole reason to have a neutral political conception is that citizens hold such incompatible doctrines. On Feser’s account, apparently, if I endorse a political conception from the perspective of a background picture that regards theological doctrines as in error, then somehow the doctrine itself becomes non-neutral. This gets coupled with the weird assertion that non-traditionalist libertarian views “entail” a social marginalization of those with traditionalist or bourgeois views. “Entails” in what sense? Your guess is as good as mine.

Will Wilkinson, in his article of 07/28/04, neatly summarizes Feser’s argument, then makes essentially the same point as Sanchez:

It’s hard to pin down the argument in Feser’s convoluted dissertation. I count at least four loosely confederated claims:

(1) ‘Libertarianism’ does not designate a single, coherent philosophical position. There are only “libertarianisms,” i.e., various mutually inconsistent brands of so-called libertarianism.

(2) Libertarianisms can be lumped into two main categories:

a. Traditionalism, natural rights classical liberalism with a “thick” conception of human nature and human natural ends. (I’ll call this “thick libertarianism.”)

b. “Economistic” consequentialist libertarianism, with a “thin,” reductionist conception of human nature and rational choice. I’ll call this (“thin libertarianism.”)

(3) Both thick and thin libertarianism pretend to be neutral between various moral worldviews, but aren’t really. In the end, each marginalizes someone.

(4) Thick libertarians have more in common with natural law conservatives than they do with thin libertarians, and ought to be wary of allying themselves with laissez allez economists.

It would be tedious to address each of these claims at length. Instead, I’m going to present what I take to be the most persuasive form libertarianism, which I’ll call “political libertarianism.” Now, political libertarianism just is libertarianism. Libertarianism is a political doctrine of liberal social order, not a metaphysical doctrine about human nature and the human good. Once you’ve got a grip on the idea of libertarianism as a distinctively political doctrine, it’s easy enough to see that Feser’s claim (1) is false, (2) and (4) are irrelevant, and (3) betrays rather stunning incomprehension of the idea of liberal (and libertarian) neutrality.

Next comes Randy Barnett (07/29/04), who refers to his paper on “The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism”, the abstract of which is worth quoting in full:

Libertarians no longer argue, as they once did in the 1970s, about whether libertarianism must be grounded on moral rights or on consequences; they no longer act as though they must choose between these two moral views. In this paper, I contend that libertarians need not choose between moral rights and consequences because theirs is a political, not a moral, philosophy; one that can be shown to be compatible with various moral theories, which is one source of its appeal.

Moral theories based on either moral rights or on consequentialism purport to be “comprehensive,” insofar as they apply to all moral questions to the exclusion of all other moral theories. Although the acceptance of one of these moral theories entails the rejection of all others, libertarian moral rights philosophers on the one hand, and utilitarians on the other, can embrace libertarian political theory with equal fervor. I explain how can this be and why it is a strength rather than a weakness of libertarian political theory.

Conservatives, neoconservatives, and those on the left who seek to impose by force their comprehensive conception of “the good” neglect the “problem of power” – an exacerbated instance of the twin fundamental social problems of knowledge and interest. For a comprehensive moralist of the right or left, using force to impose their morality on others might be their first choice among social arrangements. Having another’s comprehensive morality imposed upon them by force is their last choice. The libertarian minimalist approach of enforcing only the natural rights that define justice should be everyone’s second choice. A compromise, as it were, that makes civil society possible. And therein lies its imperative.

Feser, in his article of 08/03/04, rejects the notion of a neutral “political libertarianism” of the sort advanced by Sanchez, Wilkinson, and Barnett:

When the semantic game-playing is put to one side, however, it is clear that, whatever one thinks of abortion, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates can be reasonable (in the everyday sense of “reasonable,” rather than the ideologically loaded Rawlsian or Wilkinsonian sense); and it is also clear that any view (whether one chooses to call it “political libertarianism” or not) which requires either legalized abortion or a prohibition on abortion is not genuinely neutral between all reasonable worldviews. It is obvious too that a vast theoretical and practical gulf separates pro-life and pro-choice libertarians, just as a vast theoretical and practical gulf separated those believers in natural rights who held slavery to be legitimate from those who held it to be unjust. Differences this big cannot fail to reflect deep differences over the nature of justice, rights, and the bearers of rights. Both the claims of my original article are thereby confirmed: the differences between the various versions of libertarianism are more significant than the similarities; and once one gets clear about exactly which version of libertarianism one is talking about, one will see that it is not genuinely neutral between all reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

Wilkinson, in his most recent entry (08/04/04), restates his position by contrasting libertarianism with competing political philosophies:

The libertarian conception of liberal order differs from the welfare liberal version and the conservative versions in exactly the way you would imagine, and in exactly the way I mentioned near the end of my TCS piece. The welfare liberal believes fairly extensive and deep-reaching redistributive and regulatory mechanisms are a necessary condition for stable liberal order. The conservative believes that a considerable number of restrictions on personal choice are required to maintain the conditions for the flourishing of the family, which is a necessary condition for stable liberal order. The libertarian thinks we need neither extensive and deep-reaching regulation and redistribution, nor considerable restriction on personal choice in order for liberal order to hum along quite nicely. Various views about the nature of rights and the rule of law are consistent with the libertarian view.

Feser in general seems to be obsessed with borderline cases, and how exactly to mark out the boundaries of categories. He should relax and acquiesce to the wisdom of ordinary use. While I don’t insist on self-identifying as a libertarian, other people identify me as a libertarian because I have a set of views that are characteristically shared by libertarians. That said, I believe in the possibility of a legitimate state. I believe in the desirability of some small-scale redistribution. I am not opposed to all paternalistic restrictions on behavior. I’m no purist. But people have no problem identifying me as a kind of libertarian. If my views shifted along one or another dimension, I might become more like a welfare liberal or a classical liberal conservative than a libertarian. The point on the continua where I would be best classified as something else, like the point of hair-loss at which I man is best classified as “bald”, is obscure. Nevertheless, I don’t imagine Feser has a problem identifying the bald. And I don’t suppose that people who identify me as a libertarian are confused.

As I said:

Conservative libertarians weigh their values and choose to be libertarians rather than conservatives, just as utilitarian libertarians weigh their values and choose to be libertarians rather than, say, anarchists. Even if these disparate libertarians are joined “only” in their commitment to the liberty afforded by the minimal state, that surely distinguishes them from those on the left and right who — separately and differently — seek the shelter of the regulatory-welfare state. Whatever divides libertarians is less significant than what unites them.

P.S.

As a pro-war libertarian, I would rather be allied, in the long run, with anti-war libertarians than with anti-war Democrats, whose anti-war rhetoric reflects Bush-hatred rather than a principled objection to any war that isn’t strictly defensive. I similarly reject any long-run alliance with pro-war Republicans, whose pro-war rhetoric knows no distinction between self-defense and hatred of all things Arabic and Islamic.

As someone who has reservations about abortion and same-sex marriage, for reasons too complex to explore here, I would rather be allied with libertarians who support or condone both causes than with Republicans whose religious views dominate their political views or Democrats whose support of abortion and same-sex marriage is simply a mindless mantra.

I will vote for Bush because, for me, he is the lesser of two evils; many (perhaps most) libertarians will not vote, waste a vote on a third-party candidate, or vote for Kerry because, for them, he is the lesser of two evils. Again, I would rather be allied with those libertarians, for the long haul, than with Democrats or Republicans, whose principles boil down to “spend and elect”.

In other words, I agree with Feser in this respect:

These disagreements and their inevitable political consequences cannot be wished away — or defined away — and libertarians do themselves no credit by pretending otherwise.

I do not pretend otherwise, nor do I expect other libertarians to pretend otherwise.

I accept that not all libertarians think alike about all issues, but neither do all conservatives, liberals, Democrats, or Republicans think alike about all issues. The important thing, to me, about conservatives, liberals, Democrats, and Republicans is that they don’t share my commitment to what Feser describes so well

as the view in political philosophy that the only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens’ dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous.

I therefore ally myself with those who share that view. If that isn’t moral neutrality, what is?

Edward Feser, writing at Tech Central Station, concludes that “The Trouble with Libertarianism”

is that many of its adherents have for too long labored under the illusion that…their creed is a single unified political philosophy that does not, and need not, take a stand on the most contentious moral issues dividing contemporary society. This has led to confusion both at the level of theory and at the level of policy. Libertarians need to get clear about exactly what they believe and why. And when they do, they might find that their particular version of libertarianism commits them – or ought to commit them – to regard as rivals those they might once have considered allies.

I will come to Feser’s challenge at the end of this post, after I give the main points of his argument.

Feser posits two main strands of libertarianism. Those strands differ in how their proponents arrive at what Feser describes, accurately, as the libertarian position:

[T]he only legitimate function of a government is to protect its citizens from force, fraud, theft, and breach of contract, and that it otherwise ought not to interfere with its citizens’ dealings with one another, either to make them more economically equal or to make them more morally virtuous.

On the one hand, there are “conservative” libertarians — most notably Locke, Smith, and Hayek (with Nozick lurking at the fringes) — who argue from God-given rights or, in Hayek’s case, the indispensability of moral tradition and social stability to liberty.

On the other hand, there are those who believe libertarianism is grounded in contractarianism, utilitarianism, and “economism”. Contractarianism amounts to a mutual hands-off agreement: “I’ll leave you alone if you’ll leave me alone.” Utilitarianism is an extension of contractarianism; that is, each of us will be better off if we’re left alone. “Economism” is really an economic interpretation of utilitarianism; as Feser observes:

At its most extreme, the results are artifacts like Richard Posner’s book Sex and Reason, which attempts to account for all human sexual behavior in terms of perceived costs and benefits.

Feser then argues that these two strands of libertarianism are irreconcilable; that is, contractarianism, utilitarianism, and “economism”

do not treat conservative views as truly moral views at all; they treat them instead as mere prejudices: at best matters of taste, like one’s preference for this or that flavor of ice cream, and at worst rank superstitions that pose a constant danger of leading those holding them to try to restrict the freedoms of those practicing non-traditional lifestyles. Libertarians of the contractarian, utilitarian, or “economistic” bent must therefore treat the conservative the way the egalitarian liberal treats the racist, i.e. as someone who can be permitted to hold and practice his views, but only provided he and his views are widely regarded as of the crackpot variety. Just as the Lockean, Smithian, Hayekian, and Aristotelian versions of libertarianism entail a social marginalization of those who flout bourgeois moral standards, so too do these unconservative versions of libertarianism entail a social marginalization of those who defend bourgeois moral standards. Neither kind of libertarianism is truly neutral between moral worldviews.

Feser then explains:

There are two dramatic consequences of this difference between these kinds of libertarianism. The first is that a society self-consciously guided by principles of the Lockean, Smithian, Hayekian, or Aristotelian sort will, obviously, be a society of a generally conservative character, while a society self-consciously guided by principles of a contractarian, utilitarian, or “economistic” sort will, equally obviously, be a society of a generally anti-conservative character….

The second dramatic consequence is that there are also bound to be differences in the public policy recommendations made by the different versions of libertarianism. Take, for example, the issue of abortion. Those whose libertarianism is grounded in Lockean, Aristotelian, or Hayekian thinking are far more likely to take a conservative line on the matter….

By contrast, libertarians influenced by contractarianism are very unlikely to oppose abortion….

There are also bound to be differences over the question of “same-sex marriage.”…

In the end, these differing conceptions of libertarianism are irreconcilable because

none of these doctrines takes liberty or freedom to be fundamental. What is taken to be fundamental is rather natural rights, or tradition, or a social contract, or utility, or efficiency; “freedom” falls out only as a consequence of the libertarian’s more basic commitment to one of these other values, and the content of that “freedom” differs radically depending on precisely which of these fundamental values he is committed to. For the Aristotelian-natural law theorist, freedom includes not only freedom from excessive state power, but also freedom from those moral vices which prevent the realization of our natural end; for the contractarian or utilitarian, however, freedom may well include freedom from the very concepts of moral vice and natural ends. Freedom would also entail for the latter the right to commit suicide, while for the Lockean, there can be no such right, since suicide would itself violate the rights of the God who created and owns us.

As Feser sees it:

This difference in the understanding of freedom has its parallel in a difference in what we might call the tone in which various libertarians assert the right of self-ownership. In the mouth of some libertarians, what self-ownership is fundamentally about is something like this: “Other human beings have an intrinsic dignity and moral value, and this entails a duty on my part not to use them as means to my own ends; I therefore have no right to the fruits of another man’s labor.” In the mouths of other libertarians, what it means is, at bottom, rather this: “I can do whatever what I want to do, as long as I let everyone else do what they want to do too; there are no grounds for preventing any of us from doing, in general, what we want to do.” The first view expresses an attitude of deference, the second an attitude of self-assertion; the first reflects a commitment to strong moral realism and a rich conception of human nature, the second a thin conception of human nature and a tendency toward moral minimalism or even moral skepticism. And the first, I would submit, is more characteristic of libertarians of a Lockean, Hayekian, or Aristotelian bent, while the latter is more typical of libertarians influenced by contractarianism, utilitarianism, or “economism.”

Thus

contemporary libertarianism…comprises an uneasy alliance, an association between incompatible factions committed to very different conceptions of freedom.

Which is why Feser seems to think (hope?) that libertarianism would splinter if we libertarians were to examine our premises more closely.

But the differences Feser writes about come as no news to libertarians, who are now engaged in a fairly acerbic intramural debate about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, in particular, and about the propriety of pre-emptive warfare, in general. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the pro-war libertarians were of the “conservative” variety and most of the anti-war libertarians were of the utilitarian variety.

The fact that libertarians arrive at their libertarianism by different routes simply means that libertarians — like all humans — arrive at their beliefs in rather convoluted and, really, inexplicable ways having to do with nature, nurture, experience, observation, and reason. It seems to me, however, that libertarians bring to the journey a larger portion of observation and reason than do the adherents of other coherent political philosophies. (Republicans and Democrats, per se, are not adherents of coherent political philosophies; they are merely partisans with somewhat different sets of preferred political outcomes.)

Here, then, is my answer to Feser. Conservative libertarians weigh their values and choose to be libertarians rather than conservatives, just as utilitarian libertarians weigh their values and choose to be libertarians rather than, say, anarchists. Even if these disparate libertarians are joined “only” in their commitment to the liberty afforded by the minimal state, that surely distinguishes them from those on the left and right who — separately and differently — seek the shelter of the regulatory-welfare state. Whatever divides libertarians is less significant than what unites them.