Category: Liberty – Libertarianism – Rights

A Pseudo-libertarian Whiner, Cornered

The Corner‘s Ramesh Ponnuru zaps a pseudo-libertarian:

John Perry Barlow was being interviewed, with much of the discussion concerning his turn away from the Republicans. He said: “…in the past I found it most effective to be inside the Republican Party acting as a libertarian. But I’ve switched. One of the things going on in my mind when I wrote that note [announcing the decision to embrace political activism over lifestyle libertarianism] was that I’d just been busted for having a really trivial amount of marijuana in a checked bag under a PATRIOT Act search. I was arrested, hauled off in irons, an ugly experience. At San Francisco airport, for, like, three joints’ worth of dope. Before the plane took off, Delta employees came on and said, Mr. Barlow, you have to step off the plane, and bring your personal effects. Then San Francisco cops arrested me. I spent the day in Redwood City in jail. It was a chilling experience. It’s happening, and happening a lot. The Transportation Security Administration is now routinely searching checked bags. They are not just looking for explosives….”

The Transportation Security Administration is doing more intensive bag searches than we used to have, and when they find illegal substances they are not ignoring them. You can wish that marijuana were legal, or that the TSA were prohibited from enforcing the law in this way. But what any of this has to do with Patriot is beyond me.

Exactly! I speed a bit, but I’m not about to become a Democrat if I’m pulled over for speeding. Get over it, Mr. Barlow.

The Tricks Time Plays on Us

Remember when Barry Goldwater was reviled as a right-wing extremist? Of course, he still is in many quarters, but his ideas have much more currency today than they did in 1964, when he lost the presidential election, in a landslide, to FDR’s spiritual and moral heir, LBJ. Here are some passages from Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention:

[T]he tide has been running against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven ways — not because they are old, but because they are true….

[W]e are a Nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding along at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.

Rather than useful jobs in our country, our people have been offered bureaucratic “make work”; rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses….

Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth….

It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don’t rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression — and this is hogwash….

[O]nly the strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the peace….
Now, we here in America can keep the peace only if we remain vigilant and only if we remain strong. Only if we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we prevent war. And I want to make this abundantly clear: I don’t intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp because of lack of strength or lack of will — and that I promise you, Americans….

Now I know this freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts of brave and wise men. And I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road. And I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental paternalism….

We see in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And — And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We don’t seek to lead anyone’s life for him. We only seek — only seek to secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity — guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed….

A hard-nosed, libertarian Republican. If only….

An Aside about Libertarianism and War

Gene Healy has myopia when it comes to libertarianism and war. In his post on “Barnett on War and Liberty” he sees the trees — the high cost of securing the rights of Iraqis — and not the forest — the strategic advantage of defeating an antagonistic regime and securing a stronger foothold in the Middle East, where Americans have vital interests. Here’s some of what Healy has to say:

Does it violate libertarian principle for the U.S. government to wrest scores of billions of dollars from the American taxpayer (possibly as much as $3,000 per American family in the case of Iraq,) in order to address rights violations committed half a world away against people not under its protection?

I’d say it does. I have a right to come to the defense of others. I do not have the right to steal Randy Barnett’s car in order to do so….

[Barnett] might say the argument above applies just as well to taxation for the defense of Americans — it says the U.S. government can’t come to the defense of Californians if it has to tax Kansans to do it. After all, none of us signed any kind of “social contract” or consented to a Constitution that pledges us to the “common defence” of Americans. But if even that limited justification of the state-as-common-defense-pact is problematic, how do you justify the state-as-world-liberator? Where does it get the authority to carry out these missions, however benevolent they might be?

In any event, I think it’s odd to proceed as if the only rights in question are the rights of those who are to be liberated.

I think it’s odd to ignore the broader question of how Americans might benefit from such ventures as the war in Iraq. To put it in Healy’s terms, you can defend California on the Pacific Coast or you go sail across the Pacific and defend California on the enemy’s coast. That’s what we did in World War II. In my view, that’s just what we’re doing now, in the Middle East.

Libertarianism and Pre-emptive War: Part I

Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy has two new posts on the subject of libertarianism and war, here and here. Barnett’s posts, the posts he links to, and the comments on some of those posts have highlighted the need for a clear definition of libertarianism. In particular, we need a definition of libertarianism as it applies to the defense of America. I will offer that definition here, then (in a later post) I will offer a doctrine of pre-emptive war that is consistent with my view of libertarianism.

According to Wikipedia,

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). They further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect those rights.

That’s consistent with this passage from the Libertarian Party’s introductory statement:

The Libertarian way is a logically consistent approach to politics based on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right to control his or her own body, action, speech, and property. Government’s only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud.

Note that Wikipedia‘s definition and the Libertarian Party’s statement both acknowledge a role for government. It can’t be said often enough: Liberty is not anarchy. The state is legitimate, though not everything the state does is legitimate.

That statement may not seem to say much about libertarianism, but it does when libertarianism is contrasted with its alternatives. There are four main points on the political compass:

• Anarchy is the stateless solution, in which individuals, families, clans, and bands may or may not cooperate to defend their lives and property from others. Of course, anarchy inevitably gives way to a state, a rather powerful and oppressive one at that, because under anarchy “might makes right.”

• Libertarianism admits a minimal, neutral state to protect life and property, and therefore the liberty to enjoy them.

• Communitarianism uses the power of the state to regulate private institutions for the sake of “desirable” outcomes in such realms as income distribution, health, safety, education, and the environment

• Statism consists of outright state control of most institutions, including religion (which may be banned or allowed in only one form). Statism may be reached either as an extension of communitarianism or via anarchy or near-anarchy, as in Soviet Russia, the Third Reich, and Communist China.

In sum, those who say that the state is inherently unjust — be they anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, and anarcho-libertarians — are not libertarians, they are simply anarchists by various names. All of them must accept the logical consequences of their ideology: They have no right to life, liberty, or property; they must prey upon others or be preyed upon. Luckily for most of them, their proclaimed belief in anarchy is a cloistered virtue, cosseted in the United States by a state that is far more benevolent than the one that would arise from anarchy.

Libertarians, having a firmer grasp of reality, understand that living under anarchy, in what amounts to a constant state of warfare, diminishes liberty — the ability to enjoy life and property — for all but the strongest or most ruthless. They understand, further, that there is less to enjoy under anarchy, communitarianism, and statism because those ideologies are inimical to free markets and property rights. Libertarians therefore willingly accept a neutral state for defense from force and fraud. Libertarians understand that the presence of such a state actually makes life better for everyone but predators.

Libertarians can and do argue about how the state should go about protecting individuals from force and fraud, but one cannot be a libertarian and argue that the state is inherently an unjust institution. That untenable position is reserved for anarchists and crypto-anarchists. As “Decnavda” says in a comment on a post by John Quiggin at Crooked Timber:

I think this is entirely a means vs. ends problem, in two senses:

1. Libertarians (NOT anarcho-capitalists) believe in strong police enforcement of property rights, but their belief in these property rights places many restrictions on HOW the police can engage in this strong enforcement. The same would apply to war. You can believe that a war against a dictator is justified…but also believe in major restrictions on how that war is fought. Thus, a privately owned power plant may be an illegitimate target, while actual military bases would undoubtedly be legitimate. It may be that a libertarian legitimate war is IMPOSSIBLE to fight on PRACTICAL grounds.

2. There are two types of libertarianism: “pure” deontological libertarianism and consequentialist libertarianism[*]….A consequentialist libertarian could easily conclude…that a war against a dictator, although inevitably resulting in the deaths of innocents, will advance the overall cause of freedom.

Indeed…it seems to me that the problem discussed here is not with libertarianism, but with deontology. Not only could a consequentialist libertarian easily support a war against a dictator, but ANY deontologist would have to oppose any modern war except to repel invasion. Is there ANY deontological moral code that would authorize the intentional killing of innocent workers at power plants?

There are, of course, consequentialist libertarians who argue that we only make the world more dangerous (for ourselves as well as others) by going to war in the absence of imminent danger to the homeland. But that’s an argument about how and when to go to war, not about whether to go to war or whether pre-emptive war is always unjustified.

The deontological view — what Randy Barnett would call “defenseism” — is more troublesome. Deontological libertarians (“defenseists”) seem to say that we should never attack until we are under attack, and then we must be very careful about what and whom we attack. Such a view, aside from being suicidal in practice, implies that the innocents and private property of the United States are somehow less worthy of protection than the innocents and private property of other lands.

That leads me to these thoughts, which I ask “defenseists” and reluctant consequentialists to consider.

You, the innocent, are targets simply because you’re Americans. Your main enemy — Osama bin Laden and his ilk — don’t care about the lives and property of innocents. Your main enemy doesn’t care what you think about George Bush, the invasion of Iraq, or pre-emptive war. Your main enemy doesn’t care whether you’re anarchists, crypto-anarchists, libertarians, communitarians, or even neo-fascists. You don’t have to choose sides, your main enemy has already done it for you.

The only ideology your main enemy values is Islamism, and he would impose an Islamic state upon you if he could. But he will settle for killing and terrorizing you so that you retreat from the Middle East. He will then control it and you will become poorer and ever more vulnerable to his threats of death and destruction. Now ask yourself whether you are willing to acquiesce in your enemy’s aims before you acquiesce in actions that might — unavoidably — result in the killing of foreign innocents and the destruction of their property.

That’s all for now. This post positions me to lay out a doctrine of pre-emptive war that is consistent with libertarianism, properly understood. I’ll do that in a future post.

———-

[* Editor’s note: Borrowing from Wikipedia, a deontological libertarian believes that the use of force is always wrong, except in self-defense; a consequentialist maintains “that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the consequences of the act and hence on the circumstances in which it is performed.”]

Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?

A revised version of “Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian?” is now available at my new blog, Politics & Prosperity.

Libertarianism and Foreign Policy

Randy Barnett at The Volokh Conspiracy writes again about libertarianism and foreign policy. He kindly mentions my posts on the subject (here and here). He also quotes some libertarian readers who are “defenseists” (“let the other guy shoot first”) and others who, like me, don’t believe in passivity. I’ll come back to this subject. For now, I just want to acknowledge Barnett’s latest post and thank him for the links.

Libertarians and the Common Defense

Randy Barnett of The Volokh Conspiracy and I have both taken libertarian isolationists to task. My posts are here and here. Barnett’s latest is here. I’ve said this:

It is not aggression to seek out and destroy the aggressor before he attacks you, it is self-defense. If you were armed and you knew that another armed person meant you harm, why would you not shoot first? This isn’t just about Iraq, where there seems to be some nit-picking debate about what weapons Saddam might or might not have been making or intending to use, and about what sort of relationship Saddam might or might not have had with al Qaeda. This is a matter of principle. Let’s get the principle right, then argue about the facts.

Barnett, in his latest post, says this:

[The] rule of law doctrine of “imminent threat” is not a necessary prerequisite of justified self defense in all cases. As I discuss in The Structure of Liberty, what is needed to justify self-defense in principle is a communication of intent to invade rights in a context that suggests its seriousness. A communication constitutes a threat that violates the rights of another if it puts him in reasonable fear of being the victim of a battery or worse.

The example I give in SOL is of someone, let’s say it is me, who takes a full page advertisement in The New York Times announcing my intention to murder [a certain person] at some time within the next 7 days. Assuming it is not obviously a joke, and that I apparently have the means to carry out my threat, would [that person] have to wait until I came around to his house and made an overt threatening act, which ordinarily is required by the law of self defense? Given the nature of this “standing threat,” need there also be a showing of imminence?

I think under these special circumstances, [that person] should not have to wait until I chose a time and place convenient for my attack but could seek me out to preemptively defend himself against me at a time and place of his convenience. In SOL I call this “extended self-defense.” What makes this hypothetical unusual and unrealistic is the unambiguously objective manifestation of intent in the advertisement. The advertisement is what constitutes the threat that is the necessary condition of self defense and no further overt act is required. Under these circumstances [that person] is entitled, in my view, to “preempt” my attack before I ever perform an act that can be deemed “imminent” (like produce a weapon and point it in his direction). But this is so abnormal a hypothetical (criminals do not normally advertise their intentions) that it does not undermine the normal importance of imminence or to the law of self defense.

But advertisements and imminent acts (like massing armies on borders) are not the only ways to communicate a threat. So would speeches coupled with less normally obvious behavior. If the content of these other communications are sufficiently clear, then self defense would be warranted even in the absence of an overt act that constitutes an imminent threat. So “imminence” may not be a requirement of even a defenseist foreign policy (assuming that a [defenseist] foreign policy is logically entailed by libertarianism, which I doubt). What is required is a threat….

None of this however, is to argue that a military invasion is always (or ever) a good foreign policy. Many libertarians are “noninterventionists” who seem to oppose almost any military invasion outside the territory of the US on the ground that the unintended consequences of such actions are likely to be terrible, as indeed they often are.

My original point was simply that this type of noninterventionism, whether right or wrong, does not follow from Libertarian principles as some of its adherents apparently assume. It is more a pragmatic judgment of the sorts of rightful actions that will or will not yield good consequences. This judgment could lead to certain principles of foreign policy, but these should not be confused with Libertarian first principles. In addition, while I respect those who hold to this position, it tends to ignore the unintended consequences of nonaction, which can be just as harmful. Unintended consequences is a concept that, logically, runs in both directions….

Finally let me hasten to add that, though I have thought a lot about Iraq as a citizen, with these posts I have only just begun to think about the relationship of Libertarianism with foreign policy. I am completely open to being persuaded that this analysis is completely wrong (as well as to encouragement that I am on the right track). Indeed, I had hoped that, by raising the issue, someone else would [do] the [heavy] lifting and save me the trouble….

My sentiments, exactly. As I said in my last post on the subject,

I’m still waiting for a libertarian who specializes in foreign and defense policy to offer a policy paper that advocates something other than an isolationist foreign policy and a “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes” defense policy.

I guess I’ll have to dust off my old “defense analyst” credentials and do the job myself. But don’t expect anything soon.

Why I Am Not a Conservative

Professor Bainbridge is shocked, simply shocked, by a passage from Randy Barnett’s post about “Libertarians on War”. Bainbridge says:

Do people really believe this crap?…The government as a whole is “unjust”? Please. I doubt whether Barnett believes such nonsense, but his post implies that some people do. Unfathomable.

Here then we find the essential difference between sensible conservatism and the lunacy of libertarian anarchy.

Bainbridge paints libertarians with too broad a brush. Admittedly, there are some sophomoric anarchists among us. Then there are thoughtful libertarians (Barnett and myself, among many) who understand that government has an important, if limited, role to play in the affairs of humankind. Government’s most important role is as the protector of life, liberty, and property.

Bainbridge goes on to quote A Nickel’s Worth of Free Advice, which quotes Russell Kirk:

[I]n any tolerable society, order is the first need. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is reasonably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract Liberty. Conservatives, knowing the ‘liberty inheres in some sensible object’, are aware that freedom may be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the Constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable “liberty” at the expense of order the libertarians imperil the very freedom that they praise.

Wrong, but not too bad. At least Kirk is on the verge of saying the right thing about the role of government. But then he says:

Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individual, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.

I agree with Kirk if he means that the state may — in the name of protecting life, liberty, and property — protect us from — and punish — such acts as fraud, theft, assault, and murder. If he means that we must be censored or prosecuted for engaging in solitary and consensual acts that do not harm others, then he has gone down the slippery slope toward oppression. That’s what I fear Kirk has in mind when he says:

The libertarians contend — so far as they endure any binding at all — that the nexus of society is self-interest, closely joined to cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn; and that it coheres through what Aristotle called friendship and Christians call love of neighbor.

Calling society a “community of souls” is sheer romantic nonsense, and it’s but a step away from justifying a theocratic welfare state. There’s a lot more to libertarianism than “self-interest, closely joined to cash payment,” but I’d rather have such a “cold” society than Kirk’s suffocating Father-knows-best society.

In my “cold” society, those who choose to believe in “a community of souls” may practice that belief among themselves. They may even practice any form of “love of neighbor” they wish to, as long as their neighbor consents. But they may not impose their beliefs and practices on me. That’s libertarianism for you.

Finally, Bainbridge shouldn’t be too quick to condemn libertarians because some of us are kooks about government. “Kook” is an old and still valid adjective for many conservatives. But I wouldn’t dream of applying it to Professor Bainbridge.

Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy, Revisited

UPDATED

I posted “Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy on June 29. In that post I said

I’ve noticed that most “professional libertarians” — those affiliated with places like Cato Institute and Reason Foundation — have an isolationist (or “hands off”) view of foreign policy and military ventures….

It’s wise to be skeptical about the emanations from Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. But knee-jerk isolationism is unwise — and unbecoming a libertarian. Libertarians generally take the view that defense is a legitimate function of government. Waiting until the enemy is at our shores or hidden among us isn’t an effective defense strategy….

Libertarian specialists in foreign and defense affairs would be more credible if they would spend more time saying what’s worthwhile and suitable, and less time saying “no” to whatever comes out of Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon.

In sum, libertarian think-tankers should be innovators, and not mere reactionaries, when it comes to foreign and defense policy. A detailed, coherent libertarian statement with a positive vision of foreign policy and military posture could be a compelling document….

P.S. A nutty, Mises Institute-type position paper that tries to explain why defense isn’t a public good will get you laughed out of town and might even cost you some big

I went on vacation the next day, and so I missed Randy Barnett’s June 30 post at The Volokh Conspiracy, in which Barnett says

the time may be ripe for a full fledged debate on the relationship between libertarianism and foreign policy. It appears that there is an assumption on the part of many libertarian intellectuals that libertarian principles entail a very specific version of “noninterventionism” in foreign policy….

I do fear that the recent anti war vociferousness of some libertarian intellectuals, of whom I have the highest regard and respect, may unfairly tag all libertarians with a very particular set of foreign policy positions about which even radical libertarians actually differ….

I confess that my instincts here are driven by the fact that I disagree sharply with the anti war stance of these libertarians, and they with me, but I do not believe my libertarian principles, or my commitment to them, have changed in the slightest….

Today Barnett writes

I was pleased to see that my suggestion a while back that there should be a debate on the relationship between Libertarianism and foreign policy was taken up by some bloggers. Most recently by Brian Doss at the always thoughtful Catallarchy (“The Problem with Libertarians Today”). Some…considered this an invitation to debate the merits of the war in Iraq, but I was more concerned with the degree to which Libertarianism qua Libertarianism says anything about foreign policy. Because Libertarianism is essentially a philosophy of individual rights, I doubt it says much about what policies either individuals or collective institutions ought to pursue other than that they should not violate the rights of individuals in pursuing them.

Even if, as many Libertarians believe, governments themselves inherently violate rights, it does not follow (as some Libertarians appear to assume) that everything such an unjust institution does is a rights violation….One of the biggest errors made by Libertarian anarchists is assuming that because an institution is an unjust monopoly (because it confiscates its income by force and puts its competitors out of business by force), this makes everything such institutions do also unjust. The latter proposition simply does not follow from the former.

As for Iraq, there were a number of valid legal justifications for initiating the latest hostilities, but if I start to describe them here I will provoke a different discussion than I intend. Any such discussion would inevitably implicate international law or The Law of Nations, which I also do not believe follows from Libertarian first principles. Sometimes it appears to me that the governments of “nations” are simply assumed by Libertarians to have the same sorts of rights in the international sphere that Libertarians specifies for individual persons….Other times even these same Libertarians know better.

However legal or justified the war in Iraq may have been, though, this does not make its initiation good foreign policy (though I think it was). And this is my point. I do not think Libertarianism qua Libertarianism tells us much about what good foreign policy may be, any more than it tells us what good business or personal policies may be. As was well-expressed by Duncan Frissell at Technoptimist (in a post with which I have some disagreement):

Libertarianism qua libertarianism is only a political philosophy and lacks theories of esthetics, ethics, theology, epistemology, and personal behavior. Libertarians as individuals are perfectly free within their political philosophy to espouse white supremacy, pacifism, private ownership of nuclear weapons, Anglo-Catholicism, atheism, the worship of Shiva, vegetarianism, the Atkins’ Diet, grammatical prescriptivism, progressive education, etc.

This claim is central to my recent paper “The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism”….

And what does Catallarchy’s Brian Doss have to say?

[S]ince the advent of 9/11 and the War(s), the current Libertarian party and large swathes of fellow small-L ideological libertarians have also seemed to abandon reason and have adopted a single-issue litmus test by which to separate the Elect from the Damned. That issue is whether or not you are against The War, in all of its guises, completely and without reservation, exception, or caveat. If you are, you are a True…Libertarian. If you deviate in the slightest from the orthodoxy / received wisdom on The War, then you are Damned….

There’s a lot more in that vein — and it’s enjoyable reading for a pro-war libertarian like me — but it doesn’t really go beyond what Barnett and I have said about the reasonableness of being a pro-war libertarian.

I’m still waiting for a libertarian who specializes in foreign and defense policy to offer a policy paper that advocates something other than an isolationist foreign policy and a “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes” defense policy. Perhaps this is all there is to say: A legitimate function of the state is to preserve the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. Sometimes the state will be more effective in that respect if it seeks out and destroys its citizens’ enemies before those enemies strike. But I think that the proposition can be elaborated and supported by facts as well as logic. Is there a libertarian foreign-defense policy specialist in the house?

P.S. This, from the LCD, certainly isn’t what I’m looking for, but it’s a good sample of the shallowness of intransigent antiwar libertarians. Jeremy says:

If we follow Rothbard, all libertarian theory must be built up from this axiom: “no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.” And if we add in Jefferson’s statement that governments “deriv[e] their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,” then Rothbard’s statement applies equally to states. Individuals can only delegate rights that they already possess. If no individual can use force (other than in clear cases of self defense), then no government can do so either. If you have a problem with this, than libertarianism might not be for you.

It is not aggression to seek out and destroy the aggressor before he attacks you, it is self-defense. If you were armed and you knew that another armed person meant you harm, why would you not shoot first? This isn’t just about Iraq, where there seems to be some nit-picking debate about what weapons Saddam might or might not have been making or intending to use, and about what sort of relationship Saddam might or might not have had with al Qaeda. This is a matter of principle. Let’s get the principle right, then argue about the facts.

A Good Summing Up of Libertarianism

Randy Barnett, a professor of law at Boston University and a co-conspirator at The Volokh Conspiracy, has just published “The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism”. Here are excerpts of his conclusion:

Unlike moral or religious theorists, a libertarian, qua libertarian, is not seeking a universal and comprehensive answer to the question of how persons ought to behave. Rather a libertarian seeks a universal answer to the question of when the use of force is justified….Libertarians seek a political theory that could be accepted by persons of diverse approaches to morality living together and interacting in what Hayek called the Great Society.

It works for me, especially when “force” is understood to include coercion by the state.

The Sentinel: A Tragic Parable of Economic Reality

The principles of economics can be illustrated by the tale of a not-so-mythical country. Its history comprises three eras: life gets better, life stays the same, and life gets worse.

Life Gets Better

1. Self-sufficient individuals, families, and clans (economic units) produce their own goods and services.

2. Specialization and barter lead to greater output of all goods and services, which aren’t distributed equally because the distribution of resources (including intelligence, competence, and ambition) isn’t equal. Some economic units are relatively rich; some are relatively poor.

3. Simple accounting through coins and tallies saves time and promotes greater output, to the benefit of all economic units.

4. Investments in new technology (capital) yield more and/or better and/or newer products and services, to the benefit of all economic units (though the investors reap additional rewards for their foresight and the risks they take when they invest).

5. Credit (borrowing to finance consumption and or investment) enable consumers to ride out bad times and producers to increase their investments in new capital.

6. Population growth yields more economic units, whose efforts — as they become skilled (through education and training by their elders) — cause per capita income to rise.

Life Stays the Same

7. Economic units band together in common defense against criminals and foreign marauders. They select one of their own for the job of Sentinel, and share in the cost of his sustenance. Though the cost of keeping a sentinel reduces their incomes, they consider the resulting protection and peace of mind worth it.

8. The Sentinel diligently performs his mission, year after year, for decades. The economic units of the country continue to pay willingly for his sustenance. The country prospers.

Life Gets Worse

9. A drought descends on the country. It isn’t the first drought, but it’s the worst one the country has experienced. Crops wither and game animals die before they can be taken for food. Many economic units survive the drought because they had emergency stores of food. Others suffer hunger, which makes them less able to fend for themselves and exposes them to the ravages of disease. Death becomes more common and begins to strike young as well as old. The toll of hunger, disease, and death is greater among the poorer economic units.

10. Before the drought ends, as it will in time, the Sentinel (responding to the pleas of the poor and the guilt-ridden rich), and ignoring the arguments of those who understand the country’s economy, begins to impose taxes on those with high incomes and give the money to those with low incomes. That the Sentinel isn’t authorized to redistribute income is another argument he disdains, for he has become addicted to power and seizes an opportunity to expand it.

11. Bit by bit, the Sentinel assumes greater control over economic activity — indeed over the lives of those he was hired to protect. He creates new schemes for transferring income from the richer economic units to the poorer ones, which grow increasingly dependent on the Sentinel. He even creates schemes for taxing all economic units and bestowing special benefits on selected economic units, so that the units receiving the special benefits think they are getting something for nothing. More of the rich decide to support the Sentinel, as they come to see that they can use his power to gain special benefits for themselves. Others continue to support him because they believe that they are better off because of the special benefits he bestows on them. Still others arise and mature without having known life without the all-powerful Sentinel; they assume that the Sentinel has always been and always will be the arbiter of their economic fate.

12. Lonely voices try to explain that almost everyone is worse off because of the Sentinel’s meddling in their affairs. Those lonely voices explain logically that the Sentinel has assumed powers that aren’t rightly his, that the country would have recovered from the great drought without the Sentinel’s help, that the Sentinel’s activities actually diminish the country’s wealth and income by stifling commerce and discouraging thrift and initiative, and that the Sentinel’s actions discourage private acts of charity toward those who are truly incapable of caring for themselves.

13. The lonely voices are ignored, for the lonely voices are drowned by the clamor of those who are dependent on the Sentinel, those who cannot understand how the Sentinel makes them worse off, those for whom the Sentinel has become a totem, and those who simply want the Sentinel to tell others how to run their lives.

14. The mythical country nevertheless survives and thrives because even the Sentinel cannot rob it of its resources or blunt the drive and inventiveness of its economic units. Will it ever thrive to the extent of its potential? That’s unlikely. Will it ever stop thriving and go into a long and perhaps irreversible decline, as have other nations that vested too much power in their Sentinels? It might happen.

Liberty or Anarchy?

I recently remarked flippantly to a friend that I wouldn’t wear a certain brand of footwear in public because doing so might brand me “liberal”. His retort:

Probably a large percentage of the wearers of Brand X are true libertarians, whereas you are a control libertarian. These folks moved to the mountains, work “off the formal economy” and thus don’t pay any taxes, ignore all forms of government, and don’t really care about anyone’s political or personal views.

I think I like being a “control libertarian” — whatever that is. Perhaps it means that I have good personal hygeine and save my tax returns for three years. I know that I care about others’ personal or political views only to the extent that those views might affect my taxes or my physical security. (Oh, and sometimes those views are good fodder for this blog.) In fact, I spend as much time as possible reading novels and ignoring others’ personal and political views.

Those “true libertarians” who don’t pay taxes and ignore all forms of government aren’t libertarians, they’re neo-anarchists (that’s a fancy term for hippie drop-out). Libertarians aren’t anarchists, because libertarians understand that liberty is impossible without just enough government to protect us from each other and from our enemies. As Wikipedia

puts it (emphasis added by me):

Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe 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). They further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect those rights.

  • Comments? Click here.

    • More Things a Libertarian Can Believe In

    In two earlier posts (here and here), I staked out a number of positions on foreign and defense policy that are not au courant in libertarian circles. Here are some possibly heterodox positions on other matters:

    • Sure punishment for crime, administered swiftly and evenhandedly, fosters mutual trust in a socially fragmented society. The only necessary justification for capital punishment, therefore, is that it has broad support.

    • Religious scruples aside, it’s possible that many pro-life advocates see abortion as a step down the slippery slope toward legalized, involuntary euthanasia. And perhaps they’re right.

    • Religious scruples aside, it’s possible that many opponents of gay marriage see it as step toward undermining the importance of the traditional nuclear family, which — in spite of its many problems — remains a cornerstone of societal stability. And perhaps the opponents are right, at least insofar as the proponents of gay marriage tend to demean heterosexual marriage. The issue would be far less salient if the state would go out of the marriage business and let society sort itself out.

    • Opposing Bush because he’s a “big spender” or “soft on civil liberties” or a “war-monger” or a “protectionist” makes no sense when his opponent is a bigger spender, a proponent of the regulatory state, a knee-jerk multilateralist, and a candidate of the labor-union party.

    • Economists who advocate free-market capitalism because of its economic efficiency are often mistaken for libertarians. (Some of them are, some of them aren’t, and some of them — being too “rational” for such ethereal concerns — don’t care whether they are or aren’t.) But libertarianism is more than a belief in the superiority of free-market capitalism over other economic systems. It is a belief in political freedom, that is, freedom from the shackles of the state in matters intellectual, religious, social, and — yes — economic. Political freedom offers the best assurance of free markets and secure property rights, as long as the political system prevents encroachments on markets and property rights.

    • Environmentalism is, in part, a defense of property rights. Environmentalism often goes beyond a defense of property rights into pure silliness (e.g., no species should ever die, no tree should ever be cut down). There is, however, a positive case to be made for certain forms of environmentalism. Libertarians should advance a positive version of environmentalism and tone down their negative rhetoric about environmental silliness.

    Things a Libertarian Can Believe In

    The United States of America exists for the benefit of Americans. Any benefit we may happen to confer on the rest of the world should be calculated to advance the interests of Americans. Done properly, these things can ensure and enhance our life, liberty, and happiness:

  • Alliances

  • Military assistance to other nations and foreign factions

  • Forward defense

  • Pre-emptive defense

  • Assassination of terrorists abroad

  • Indefinite detention of terrorists and enemy combatants, including persons seized on U.S. soil

  • Quotas and standards for immigration

  • Thorough surveillance of our borders

  • No subsidies for, and immediate deportation of, illegal aliens

    • Mistakes can and will be made. But we shouldn’t be paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes. Passivity is a greater mistake.

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    • Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy

    I’ve noticed that most “professional libertarians” — those affiliated with places like Cato Institute and Reason Foundation — have an isolationist (or “hands off”) view of foreign policy and military ventures. (See the writings of Cato’s Ted Galen Carpenter, for example.)

    It’s wise to be skeptical about the emanations from Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. But knee-jerk isolationism is unwise — and unbecoming a libertarian. Libertarians generally take the view that defense is a legitimate function of government. Waiting until the enemy is at our shores or hidden among us isn’t an effective defense strategy.

    Yes, we can go — and often have gone — too far in the other direction: making unnecessary commitments to “allies” of dubious worth and wasting billions on ineffective and inappropriate weapons. But there are worthwhile alliances and suitable military postures. Libertarian specialists in foreign and defense affairs would be more credible if they would spend more time saying what’s worthwhile and suitable, and less time saying “no” to whatever comes out of Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon.

    In sum, libertarian think-tankers should be innovators, and not mere reactionaries, when it comes to foreign and defense policy. A detailed, coherent libertarian statement with a positive vision of foreign policy and military posture could be a compelling document. But it must a white paper, not a book. The executive summary should fit on one typeset page; the text should run no more than 10 typeset pages. Are you listening out there at Cato and Reason?

    P.S. A nutty, Mises Institute-type position paper that tries to explain why defense isn’t a public good will get you laughed out of town and might even cost you some big contributions.

    Call-Blocking and Free Speech

    The Corner‘s Jonah Goldberg, noting that political organizations aren’t covered by the Do Not Call Registry Law, says “it would in fact be worse if the government could block political speech because it’s inconvenient” to the person receiving an unsolicited call. Let’s put aside the Do Not Call Registry for a moment, and consider the real issue.

    Remember door-to-door salesmen? (If you don’t, you certainly don’t remember bums.) Well, if you didn’t want salesmen or bums knocking at your door, you would post a “No Soliciting” sign on your gate or at your front door. That would usually deflect unwanted callers (as we used to refer to people who came to the front door). If that didn’t work, you would post a “No Trespassing” sign, which clearly meant “Don’t come here without an invitation unless you’re a postman, census taker, sheriff, police officer, or fireman.”

    Unsolicited phone calls are like door-to-door salesmen and bums. The callers have a right to call people who are willing to be called, but they don’t have a right to call people who don’t want to be called. It’s my phone and my house, dammit. There’s no free speech issue. Does freedom of speech give anyone the right to burst into your house at dinner time and shout “Joe Schmoe for dogcatcher!”? I don’t think so.

    Now, the only question is how to block those uninvited calls. The best way is to sign up for caller ID and buy a call bouncer, which blocks calls from designated numbers and diverts calls from other numbers to your answering machine unless you’ve flagged them as “acceptable.” Calls from acceptable numbers will ring longer before going to the answering machine. That gives you a chance to pick up if you’re there and want to do so. (The setup also allows you to screen your calls and avoid long-winded conversations with friends and family when you don’t have time for such conversations.) The technology works and it’s cheap.

    The Do Not Call Registry is just another pseudo-panacea. It’s a “gift” from the same people who gave you the McCain-Feingold Act.

    More about War and Civil Liberties

    In the previous post I chastised the U.S. Supreme Court for finding that enemy combatants taken on foreign soil have access to American courts, saying that the Court’s rulings “give aid and comfort to our enemies.” That is the effect of the Court’s rulings, it seems to me. But I’m certainly not accusing the Court of treason. (There will be no “Impeach Earl Warren” bumper stickers on this site.)

    I am nevertheless irked by the Court’s willingness to intrude into matters where it need not intrude. That is why I cited the counter-example of an earlier Court’s ruling in the case of the Japanese-Americans who were relocated during World War II.

    Some might think that my views on the Court’s present rulings are inconsistent with my trashing of Cass Sunstein for his statist views (see here, here, here, here, and here). I see a vast difference between Sunstein’s philosophy and mine.

    Sunstein proposes a permanent diminution of liberty for the sake of achieving certain outcomes, such as avoiding group polarization (though how this can be achieved by government coercion is beyond me) and advancing FDR’s essentially socialist agenda for America (which, to our detriment, has been achieved in the main).

    I am not talking about the diminution of anyone’s liberty (unless it counts as a diminution of liberty to capture enemy soldiers). What I am saying is this: It is a perfectly legitimate defense of liberty to treat our enemies as enemies when we are engaged in a legal war. When we begin to treat our enemies as mere criminals, and inject them into civilian courts, we accord them a status they do not deserve, and we put ourselves at greater risk of losing liberty, life, and happiness.

    For a much longer treatment of this and related issues, click here.

    First Principles, for the Second Time

    After reading the effusions of Cass Sunstein at The Volokh Conspiracy (see previous post and links therein), I needed to come up for air. What better way than to republish the text of an earlier post? Here it is:

    A society is formed by the voluntary bonding of individuals into overlapping, ever-changing groups whose members strive to serve each others’ emotional and material needs. Government — regardless of its rhetoric — is an outside force that cannot possibly replicate societal bonding, or even foster it. At best, government can help preserve society — as it does when it deters aggression from abroad or administers justice. But in the main, government corrodes society by destroying bonds between individuals and dictating the terms of social and economic intercourse — as it does through countless laws, regulations, and programs, from Social Security to farm subsidies, from corporate welfare to the hapless “war” on drugs, from the minimum wage to affirmative action. On balance, the greatest threat to society is government itself.

    The constitutional contract charges the federal government with keeping peace among the States, ensuring uniformity in the rules of inter-State and international commerce, facing the world with a single foreign policy and a national armed force, and assuring the even-handed application of the Constitution and of constitutional laws. That is all.

    The business of government is to protect the lawful pursuit and enjoyment of income and wealth, not to redistribute them.

    Liberty is the right to make mistakes, to pay for them, and to profit by learning from them.

    The most precious right is the right to be left alone.

    Ideological or Just Logical?

    You’ve undoubtedly heard or read something like this: Libertarians are merely ideological parrots who keep repeating “leave it to the free market.” Economic libertarianism isn’t ideological — it’s logical. In fact, it’s better than logical — it’s an empirically sound position.

    Libertarian-Conservatives Are from the Earth, Liberals Are from the Moon

    A post by Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution points to George Lakoff’s book, Moral Politics. Lakoff thinks he has an explanation for the difference between conservatives (who hew to a “Strict Father” model) and liberals (a “Nurturant Parent” model):

    What we have here are two different forms of family-based morality. What links them to politics is a common understanding of the nation as a family, with the government as parent. Thus, it is natural for liberals to see it as the function of the government to help people in need and hence to support social programs, while it is equally natural for conservatives to see the function of the government as requiring citizens to be self-disciplined and self-reliant and, therefore, to help themselves.

    Lakoff is probably wrong about liberals, and he’s certainly wrong about most conservatives — and about libertarians, whom he doesn’t seem to acknowledge.

    Liberals, in my observation, don’t think of the nation as a family. They think of it as a playground full of unruly children, needing someone (government) to enforce the rules (liberal rules, of course). A liberal’s candid thoughts would run something like this:

    Well, here we are all on the same playground. Well, if we’re going to be here, we might as well get along together. I’m sure we’ll do just fine, and you’ll all be happy, if you do as I say. Now, if we all share, there won’t be any fights. Johnny, you have more toys than Billy, you have to give him some of your toys. Susie, no fair hanging around with your friends, you have to hang around with people you’ve never met; it’ll be good for you.

    In other words, the liberal mindset is more like that of a bossy child trying to control her playmates than that of a “nuturant parent.”

    Conservatives (those who think about such things, anyway) and libertarians don’t see “the nation as a family, with government as parent.” They see the nation as parent whose role is to guarantee a form of government that exists not to require citizens to be self-disciplined and self-reliant but to allow citizens to realize the fruits of whatever self-discipline and self-reliance they can muster.

    It is not surprising, therefore, to find that conservatives and libertarians are generally more patriotic than liberals. Conservatives and libertarians put nationhood above government, realizing that without the nation our enemies (without and within) would rob us of our ability to enjoy the fruits of our self-discipline and self-reliance. Liberals, on the other hand, put government first and seem embarrassed by patriotism.

    Thomas Sowell, in A Conflict of Visions, has a much better explanation of the dichotomy between the liberal and conservative-libertarian perspectives. He posits two opposing visions: the unconstrained vision (I would call it the idealistic vision) and the constrained vision (which I would call the realistic vision). As Sowell explains, at the end of chapter 2:

    The dichotomy between constrained and unconstrained visions is based on whether or not inherent limitations of man are among the key elements included in each vision….These different ways of conceiving man and the world lead not merely to different conclusions but to sharply divergent, often diametrically opposed, conclusions on issues ranging from justice to war.

    Thus, in chapter 5, Sowell writes:

    The enormous importance of evolved systemic interactions in the constrained vision does not make it a vision of collective choice, for the end results are not chosen at all — the prices, output, employment, and interest rates emerging from competition under laissez-faire economics being the classic example. Judges adhering closely to the written law — avoiding the choosing of results per se — would be the analogue in law. Laissez-faire economics and “black letter” law are essentially frameworks, with the locus of substantive discretion being innumerable individuals.

    By contrast,

    those in the tradition of the unconstrained vision almost invariably assume that some intellectual and moral pioneers advance far beyond their contemporaries, and in one way or another lead them toward ever-higher levels of understanding and practice. These intellectual and moral pioneers become the surrogate decision-makers, pending the eventual progress of mankind to the point where all can make moral decisions.

    Sowell has nailed it. Equality is a state that we will reach when liberals tell us we’ve reached it. Until then, we must do as they say — or else.