Morality and Consequentialism

The text for this post comes from Freespace:

…Many [libertarians] are purely consequentialists—that is, they believe that morality simply cannot be the subject of disciplined inquiry, and that all that a libertarian can talk about is practical reasoning. In other words, they can’t argue that liberty is morally right; they can only argue about how as a practical matter free social and economic networks are organized. I have argued that if consistently followed, this practice will lead them to default on the responsibility of moral judgment, and ultimately they [will] fall into … cultural relativism….

I have argued in many posts that libertarianism properly understood must be based on an objective, universal morality….

The aim of this disciplined (albeit brief) inquiry is to show that “objective, universal morality” is a philosophical delusion. It follows that libertarianism must justified by its consequences.

First, Some Words about Philosophical Moral Absolutism and Religion

I cannot resist observing that philosophical moral absolutism seems to be a religion-substitute for libertarian moral absolutists, who tend to be atheists (e.g., the authors of Freespace, A Stitch in Haste, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and various of the bloggers at The Panda’s Thumb).

Libertarian moral absolutists, especially so-called libertarians of the Left, exude a “more moral than thou” attitude. I take it as a way of saying “Look at me, I’m an atheist but I’m a moral person, my religion-bashing notwithstanding.” As I say here,

[i]t is disheartening … when libertarians join the anti-religio[n] chorus. They know not what they do when they join the Left in tearing down a bulwark of civil society, without which liberty cannot prevail….

[A]s time passes the moral lessons … older Americans learned through religion will attenuate unless those lessons are taught, anew, to younger generations.

Rather than join the [anti-libertarian] Left in attacking the Judeo-Christian tradition, libertarians ought to accommodate themselves to it and even encourage its acceptance — for liberty’s sake.

See also this post and the links therein.

Philosophical Moral Absolutism as a Logical Fallacy

Returning to the matter of philosophical moral absolutism, let us consider murder: the taking of a human life, absent the motive of self-defense (be it individual or communal). According to proponents of natural rights based on self-ownership (i.e, philosophical moral absolutists), murder is wrong because it is a denial of the natural right to life (the ownership of one’s own life). (As I discuss below, it is an inconvenient fact that not all libertarian absolutists agree about the specific implications of their absolutism.)

But the argument from natural rights is both circular and consequential. It is circular in that it seeks to prove that murder is wrong by citing the unprovable axiom that humans possess natural (innate) rights, from which (the absolutist argues) the wrongness of murder flows. The argument is consequential (albeit circular) because the wrongness of murder is characterized in terms of its consequence: the denial of a natural right.

In fact, philosophical moral absolutists are hard-pressed to avoid invoking consequences. The author of Freespace, for example, says that

the framers were right to believe that government is limited by our natural rights, and that our natural rights protect our right to act so long as we harm no other person. This last observation was hardly new or unique to Mill; it is in Locke’s Second Treatise, for instance….

Putting it negatively (“our natural rights protect our right to act so long as we harm no other person”) is just another way of saying that natural rights do not include the right to harm another person. The writer would be quick to add, of course, “except in self-defense or in the course of preventing harm to a third party.”

And, for another example, we have the author of Dispatches from the Culture Wars asserting that

[u]nder libertarian standards, each individual is free to live their [sic] life as they [sic] see fit as long as they [sic] do not impose harm on another person against their [sic] will.

“Harm” is to “consequence” as apple is to fruit. That is, “harm” just a more specific (though still vague) term for an act’s effect on another person or persons. Philosophical moral absolutists, having conceded that libertarianism rests on the harm principle (whether Mill’s or Locke’s) have conceded that it rests on the consequences of acts.

It is impossible to label a specific act as an immoral one merely by stating that it is a violation of natural rights. Instead, the libertarian absolutist is forced to confront the consequences (actual or potential) of the act (event if he does so inwardly).

In sum, a libertarian absolutist’s invocation of natural rights is a ritual: an intellectual genuflection, if you will.

The Indeterminacy of Philosophical Moral Absolutism

It is telling that libertarian absolutists cannot always agree that an axiomatic principle translates into a unique set of moral judgments about particular acts. For example, some absolutists not only claim that there are natural rights, but that those rights lead to the certain moral prescriptions; for example: preemptive war is wrong; abortion is a justifiable act of self-ownership; and income redistribution is just in that it “actualizes” the otherwise theoretical liberty of its beneficiaries. (These are just examples; not all absolutists claim the same three things.)

The problem, for absolutists, is that a given axiomatic principle can be interpreted to justify almost any act, depending on the judgment of the individual who espouses that act. I could, for example, assert that I believe in self-ownership or natural rights and thence argue to the following conclusions: preemptive war is just when it averts an attack on innocent civilians; abortion is an unconscionable act, legally distinguished from murder only by the instant between gestation and birth; income redistribution harms its intended beneficiaries by making them dependent on it and by penalizing growth-inducing activities, such as invention, innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital investment.

My assertions would be no less valid than those of any absolutist, and might (as a set) even coincide with the assertions of some absolutists. How would those concurring absolutists know that I am not of their ilk, except by my own admission? They wouldn’t.

Q.E.D.: Philosophical moral absolutism is indeterminate.

Philosophical Moral Absolutism as a Semantic Illusion

The consequential aspect of morality tends to be overlooked because words for heinous acts (murder, rape, etc.) merely imply the consequences of the acts to which they refer (consequences such as involuntary death, involuntary sexual intimacy, etc.). It is that semantic subtlety which allows philosophical moral absolutists (usually deontolgists and Objectivists) to believe — mistakenly — that they are morally superior to consequentialists because they (the absolutists) have an a priori method for deducing morality.

In denouncing certain acts, philosophical absolutists are in fact denouncing the consequences of those acts, as I have discussed. Absolutists delude themselves by proclaiming that such denunciations really flow from an axiomatic principle, such as natural rights.

The Psychological and Sociological Sources of Moral Judgments

Concepts such as self-ownership and natural rights are, at best, after-the-fact justifications of one’s moral judgments about particular acts. Less charitably, they are shibboleths spouted by sophomoric pretenders to philosophical profundity.

Jim Manzi of The Corner puts it this way:

Any … moral argument, however, will ultimately rest on a set of beliefs that could be characterized as being “coughed up by an unconscious emotion”. We might call these, in a less loaded term, moral axioms. You don’t get a free pass out of this game [as a libertarian absolutist] by just saying you favor any non-coercive behavior, because either the restriction on coercion must itself be a moral axiom, or it must, in turn, rest upon some other more fundamental moral axioms.

The funny thing about axioms is that if they are so basic that pretty much everybody agrees with them, then reasoning from them to conclusions about specific policies will often lead different people to very different conclusions. If, on the other hand, they are highly developed, then lots of people won’t agree that they are axioms.

So, in the end, we are left with judgments about acts whose consequences repulse us, not free-floating universals that exist apart from human nature. Those judgments often are instinctive, and also are “built into” evolved social norms, which reflect accrued knowledge of the consequences of various acts. Thus:

We (most of us) flinch from doing things to others that we would not want done to ourselves. Is that because of inbred (“hard wired”) empathy? Or are we conditioned by social custom? Or is the answer “both”?

If inbred empathy is the only explanation for self-control with regard to other persons, why is it that our restraint so often fails us in interactions with others are fleeting and/or distant? (Think of aggressive driving and rude e-mails, for just two examples of unempathic behavior.) Empathy, to the extent that it is a real and restraining influence, seems most to work best (but not perfectly) in face-to-face encounters, especially where the persons involved have more than a fleeting relationship.

If behavior is (also) influenced by social custom, why does social custom favor restraint? Here is where consequentialism enters the picture.

We are taught (or we learn) about the possibility of retaliation by a victim of our behavior (or by someone acting on behalf of a victim). In certain instances, there is the possibility of state action on behalf of the victim: a fine, time in jail, etc. So we are taught (or we learn) to restrain ourselves (to some extent) in order to avoid punishments that flow directly and (more or less) predictably from our unrestrained actions.

More deeply, there is the idea that “what goes around comes around.” In other words, bad behavior can beget bad behavior, whereas good behavior can beget good behavior. (“Well, if so-and-so can get away with X, so can I.” “So-and-so is rewarded for good behavior; it will pay me to be good, also.” “If so-and-so is nice to me, I’ll be nice to him so that he’ll continue to be nice to me.”)

Why do we care that “what goes around comes around”? First, we humans are imitative social animals; what others do — for good or ill — cues our own behavior. Second, there is an “instinctive” (taught/learned) aversion to “fouling one’s own nest.”

Unfortunately, our aversion to nest-fouling weakens as our interactions with others become more fleeting and distant — as they have done since the onset of industrialization, urbanization, and mass communication. Bad behavior then becomes easier because its consequences are less obvious or certain; it becomes a model for imitation and, perhaps, even a norm. Good behavior then flows from the fear of being retaliated against, not from socialized norms, or even from fear of state action. Aggression — among the naturally aggressive — becomes more usual.

Social Norms (Including Those Inculcated by Religion) Are All That We Have

The Millian concept of harm, so blithely invoked by philosophical moral absolutists (among others), is a chimera. Harm, as an act of one person against another, cannot be defined by individuals; it can be defined only by social agreement.

The philosophical moral absolutist would like to find something “better than” social norms. Thus the accusation that one defends murder, rape, slavery, etc., if one rejects philosophical moral absolutism. It is as if morality cannot be grounded in human nature. But it can be, and it is.

Murder and other anti-social acts arise from human nature. Murder and other anti-social acts are condemned almost universally because of human nature. It is human nature that makes such acts easier to commit when social relations become less personal and more anonymous.

To the extent that human actions are influenced positively by religious precepts (and they are, on the whole), the general goodness of human beings testifies to the mostly benign influence of religion on human behavior.

Conclusion

In sum, consequentialist libertarianism is not a kind of moral relativism. Rather, it is based on realism about (a) the non-existence of philosophical moral absolutes and (b) human nature. It accepts the morality that has arisen from human experience (as influenced by religion), while rejecting absolutists’ Platonic mysticism. Consequentialism is therefore the only possible form of libertarianism, in the real world:

The virtue of [consequentialist] libertarianism … is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences [e.g., here and here]. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

That is,

predators … would take liberty from others, either directly (e.g., through murder…) or through the coercive power of the state (e.g., through smoking bans and licensing laws)…. [P]arasites … seek to advance their self-interest through the coercive power of the state rather than through their own efforts (e.g., through corporate welfare and regulatory protection).

Liberty, in the real world, is freedom (however elusive and episodic it may be) from predators and parasites. That freedom is to be found not through the invocation of philosophical moral absolutes (or anarchy), but through politics, policing, and war — as befits the circumstances.

Related posts:
“The Origin and Essence of Rights” (01 Jan 2005)
“A Non-Paradox for Libertarians” (15 Aug 2005)
“The Paradox of Libertarianism” (05 Jan 2006)
“Liberty as a Social Compact” (28 Feb 2006)
“This Is Objectivism?” (01 Mar 2006)
“Social Norms and Liberty” (02 Mar 2006)
“A Footnote about Liberty and the Social Compact” (06 Mar 2006)
“Finding Liberty” (25 Mar 2006)
“The Source of Rights” (06 Sep 2006)
“The Fear of Consequentialism” (26 Nov 2007)
“Pascal’s Wager, Morality, and the State” (09 Oct 2007)
“Religion and the Inculcation of Morality” (12 Nov 2007)
” ‘Family Values,’ Liberty, and the State” (07 Dec 2007)
“On Prejudice” (28 Feb 2008)
“In Search of Consistency” (12 Mar 2008)
“Objectivism: Tautologies in Search of Reality” (14 Mar 2008)

Related reading:
“What’s Right vs. What Works” (an undated colloquy on objective morality vs. consequentialism, with Charles Murray, David Friedman, David Boaz, and R.W. Bradford)
“Religion, Government, and Civil Society,” by Arnold Kling (21 Feb 2007)
“Is Atheism Only a Bundle of Sentiments?” by Mike Adams (24 Mar 2007)

What Happened to Personal Responsibilty?

A purportedly conservative site has published an article that includes a definition of conservatism. One of the author’s tenets of conservatism refers to “the market’s corrosive impact on humane values.”

Isn’t personal responsibility a conservative value (as well as a libertarian one)? Markets don’t corrode values; people corrode values, namely, their own and their children’s. If you don’t like what the market has to offer, reject it; do without, if necessary. No one forces you to own a TV or to watch everything shown on TV; no one forces you to attend movies that are full of sex, violence, and profanity (movies are still made that lack those elements); etc.

That “the market” caters to vulgarity and obscenity isn’t the fault of “the market.” It is, rather, a reflection of the general decline of moral and values. Most conservatives would agree (I daresay) with the proposition that moral values were stronger in the late 1800s than they are today. Yet, the late 1800s saw rapid economic growth because markets were then much freer than they are today.

If you want to blame any outside force for the decline of moral values, blame the intrusive state (more accurately, those of us who empower it and operate its machinery). The state has done much to undermine social norms and thus liberty.

P.S. Another example of “blame the market” appears in a piece by Jennifer Graham, at First Things. Reviewing Neil Gilbert’s A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life, Graham writes:

Cultural norms are fluid and malleable, but in a capitalist society they tend to flow away from traditional family life and toward the accumulation of ever more stuff. “The triumph of materialism in modern times feeds the market and leaves childrearing and family life undernourished,” Gilbert writes. “The capitalist ethos underrates the economic value and social utility of domestic labor in family life, particularly during the early years of childhood.”

Note the reification of “cultural norms” and “materialism,” as forces until themselves, divorced from human will. Similarly, it is not the “capitalist ethos” that “underrates the economic value and social utility of domestic labor in family life.” The “underrating, rather, reflects the free (if unwise) choice of individuals.

Spot-On

WFB’s obituary of Murray Rothbard. Well, it’s not entirely spot-on. Buckley is wrong about lighthouses, but that’s all.

On Prejudice

I have just finished reading Theodore Dalrymple’s In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas. Dalrymple’s thesis is simple but profound: We cannot (and do not) operate in this world without the benefit of preconceived ideas about how the world works. If we tried to do so, we would be as helpless as babes in the wood.

To state Dalrymple’s thesis so baldly is to do a grave injustice to the lucidity, incisiveness, elegance, and ruthless logic of his short book. At the outset, Dalrymple makes it clear that he holds no brief for racial and ethnic prejudice. As he points out: “No prejudice, no genocide.” But he adds that

If the existence of a widespread prejudice is necessary for the commission of genocide, it is certainly not a sufficient one. Nor does it follow from the fact that all who commit genocide are prejudiced that all who are prejudiced commit genocide.

Dalrymple spends many pages (fruitfully) eviscerating John Stuart Mill’s simplistic liberalism, which holds that that one may do as one pleases as long as (in one’s own opinion) one does no harm to others. This belief (itself a prejudice) has led to what Dalrymple calls “radical individualism” — and it is just that, despite the efforts of libertarian apologists to demonstrate otherwise. Dalrymple offers a spot-on diagnosis of the wages of radical individualism:

What starts out as a search for increased if not total individualism ends up by increasing the power of government over individuals. It does not do so by the totalitarian method of rendering compulsory all that is not forbidden … but by destroying all moral authority that intervenes between individual human will and governmental power…. “There is no law against it” becomes an unanswerable justification for conduct that is selfish and egotistical.

This, of course, makes the law, and therefore those who make the law, the moral arbiters of society. It is they who, by definition, decide what is permissible and what is not….

Given the nature of human nature, it hardly needs pointing out that those who are delegated the job of moral arbiter for the whole of society enjoy their power and come to thing that they deserve it, and that they have been chosen for their special insight into the way life should be lived. It is not legislators who succumb to this temptation but judges also….

Dalrymple, an admitted non-believer, also slices through the pretensions of Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins, strident atheists both. He exposes their prejudices, which they try to conceal with the language of science and bombastic certitude.

There is much more in this delightful book. I offer a final sample:

In order to prove to ourselves that we are not prejudiced, but have thought out everything for ourselves, as fully autonomous (if not responsible) human beings should, we have to reject the common maxims of life that in many, though not in all, cases, preserve civilized relations. Enlightenment, or rather, what is so much more important for many people, a reputation for enlightenment, consists in behaving in a way contrary to those maxims. And once a common maxim of life is overthrown in this fashion, it is replaced by another — often, though of course not always, a worse one.

Social norms that have passed the test of time are more likely than not to be beneficial. And, so, we owe them the benefit of the doubt, instead of discarding them for the sake of change, that is, for the sake of new prejudices.

I urge you to buy In Praise of Prejudice, to read it, and to re-read it (as I will do).

Related:
“The Meaning of Liberty” (25 Mar 2006)
“Atheism, Religion, and Science Redux” (01 Jul 2007)

A Thought for Today

Calling oneself a libertarian because one wants to be “left alone” is as shallow as calling oneself an American while secretly hankering to live in a “socialist paradise” like Sweden. Liberty isn’t just about being “left alone”; being an American isn’t (or didn’t used to be) just about living within the geographical boundaries of the United States.

Minarchy vs. Anarchy

Arnold Kling writes:

Those of us who are “minarchists,” meaning that we favor government that is limited to adjudicating conflict, have no reliable mechanism for restraining government.

Lest you jump to the conclusion that anarchy is therefore preferable to minarchy, consider this: Anarchy offers no reliable mechanism for restraining renegades (i.e., thugs and warlords) who choose not to participate in markets for defense services, or to honor contracts between those who do participate in such markets.

Related posts:
“Fundamentalist Libertarians, Anarcho-Capitalists, and Self-Defense” (22 Apr 2005)
“Another Thought about Anarchy” (10 May 2005)
“Anarcho-Capitalism vs. the State” (26 May 2005)
“Rights and the State” (13 Jun 2005)
“But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?” (24 Jul 2005)
“Liberty or Self-Indulgence?” (10 Oct 2005)
“My View of Warlordism, Seconded” (15 Dec 2005)
“Anarchy: An Empty Concept” (20 Dec 2005)
“The Fatal Naïveté of Anarcho-Libertarianism” (28 Jan 2006)
“The Meaning of Liberty” (25 Mar 2006)
“A Critique of Extreme Libertarianism” (27 Jul 2007)
“Anarchistic Balderdash” (17 Aug 2007)
“Anarchistic Whining” (04 Jan 2008)
“Wisdom from Mises” (04 Jan 2008)

Political Correctness

“Political correctness” (or “politically correct,” as an adjectival phrase) refers to

language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offense to racial, cultural, or other identity groups.

PCness exists at three connected levels: the individual, voluntary associations, and state action (which draws on and influences the other two).

1. At the individual level, PCness is an exaggerated case of good manners. A PC person refrains from speaking or behaving in ways that might offend or seem to denigrate an “identity group,” even at the expense of stereotyping and patronizing members of such groups (e.g., singling out for special attention, heaping fulsome praise).

2. At the next level, we find voluntary associations (e.g., churches, charities, political parties, academic faculties), whose members, because they share — or profess to share — certain ideas about “equality” and “social justice,” feel bound by those ideas to adopt language, ideas, policies, and behavior that stereotype, patronize, and give special treatment to certain “identity groups.” Some voluntary associations are organized solely for the purpose of seeking legislative and judicial enactment of special treatment, under the guise of “equal protection.”

3. This brings us to the “highest” level: state action. Here, individuals, members of voluntary associations, and government officials (armed with the power of the state) seek to advance the cause of special treatment through legislative and judicial processes, so that such treatment becomes a legal norm, even if it is not a social one.

4. Finally, state action is taken as a moral command by those who are easily led and eager-to-please, thus reinforcing PCness and legitimating its expansion at all three levels.

That PCness is a widespread phenomenon proves nothing about its rightness and a lot about human nature and the coercive power of the state. In spite of that, some libertarians, who (understandably) are anxious to distance themselves from Ron Paul and the Rockwell crowd, have become apologists for PCness. Will Wilkinson, for example, suggests that

most PC episodes mocked and derided by the right are not state impositions. They are generally episodes of the voluntary social enforcement of relatively newly established moral/cultural norms.

Wilkinson grossly simplifies the complex dynamics of PCness, which I sketch above. His so-called “newly established … norms” are, in fact, norms that have been embraced by insular élites (e.g., academics and think-tank denizens like Wilksinson) and then foisted upon “the masses” by the élites in charge of government and government-controlled institutions (e.g., tax-funded universities). Thus it is that proposals to allow same-sex marriage fare poorly when they are submitted to voters. Similarly, the “right” to an abortion, even 35 years after Roe v. Wade, remains far from universally accepted and meets greater popular resistance with the passage of time.

Roderick Long is another “libertarian” who endorses PCness:

Another issue that inflames many libertarians against political correctness is the issue of speech codes on campuses. Yes, many speech codes are daft. But should people really enjoy exactly the same freedom of speech on university property that they would rightfully enjoy on their own property? Why, exactly?

If the answer is that the purposes of a university are best served by an atmosphere of free exchange of ideas — is there no validity to the claim that certain kinds of speech might tend, through an intimidating effect, to undermine just such an atmosphere?…

At my university, several white fraternity members were recently disciplined for dressing up, some in Klan costumes and others in blackface, and enacting a mock lynching. Is the university guilty of violating their freedom of expression? I can’t see that it is. Certainly those students have a natural right to dress up as they please and engage in whatever playacting they like, so long as they conduct themselves peacefully. But there is no natural right to be a student at Auburn University.

Long’s argument is clever, but fallacious. The purposes of a university have nothing to do with the case. Speech is speech.* Long, a member of Auburn’s faculty, is rightly disgusted by the actions of the fraternity members he mentions, but disgust does not excuse the suppression of speech by a State university. It is true that there is no “natural right” to be a student at Auburn, but there is, likewise, no “natural right” not to be offended.

Long describes himself as a “left-libertarian market anarchist” (whatever that is). Interestingly, he also writes for LewRockwell.com, which is intertwined with Rockwell’s Ludwig von Mises Institute. It is ironic that Lew Rockwell, the Mises Institute, and those who affiliate with them are in bad odor with a long list of bloggers who characterize themselves as libertarians of one kind or another (e.g., here). Their displeasure centers on Ron Paul, his notorious newsletters (thought to have been written or co-written by Rockwell), Paul’s supporters at the Institute, and (for good measure) the Institute itself.

In an earlier post, I noted my agreement with David Friedman’s view of the affray:

There are a lot of different things going on in libertarian reactions to Ron Paul in general and the quotes from the Ron Paul newsletters in particular. One of them, I think, is a culture clash between different sorts of libertarians….

Loosely speaking, I think the clash can be described as between people who see non-PC speech as a positive virtue and those who see it as a fault–or, if you prefer, between people who approve of offending liberal sensibilities (“liberal” in the modern sense of the term) and those who share enough of those sensibilities to prefer not to offend them. The former group see the latter as wimps, the latter see the former as boors.

I added that “a bunch of moralist scolds have leaped at the opportunity to preach their respective, often contradictory, and sometimes wacky visions of libertarian purity.” I now see that there’s more to it. Here is Steven Horwitz, for example:

Yes, legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 involved some interference with private property and the right of association, but it also did away with a great deal of state-sponsored discrimination and was, in my view, a net gain for liberty.

Well, some parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, together with its progeny — the Civil Rights Acts of 1968 and 1991 — did advance liberty, but many parts did not. A principled libertarian would acknowledge that, and parse the Acts into their libertarian and anti-libertarian components. A moral scold who really, really wants the state to impose his attitudes on others would presume — as Horwitz does — to weigh legitimate gains (e.g., voting rights) against unconscionable losses (e.g., property rights and the right of association). But presumptuousness comes naturally to Horwitz because he stands high above reality, in his ivory tower.

Will Wilkinson is sympatico with Horwitz:

Government attempts to guarantee the worth of our liberties by recognizing positive rights to a minimum income or certain services like health care often (but not always) undermine the framework of market and civil institutions most likely to enhance liberty over the long run, and should be limited. But this is really an empirical question about what really does maximize individuals’ chances of formulating and realizing meaningful projects and lives.

Within this framework, racism, sexism, etc., which strongly limit the useful exercise of liberty are clear evils. Now, I am ambivalent about whether the state ought to step in and do anything about it.

Wilkinson, like Horwitz, is quite willing to submit to the state (or have others do so), where state action passes some kind of cost-benefit test. Wilkinson, unlike Horwitz, seems to ignore the fact that the state has tried already to do something about racism, sexism, etc., in the Civil Rights Acts. To the extent that balancing tests are relevant to the question of liberty, the Civil Rights Acts have been costly (both economically and socially) and, in the end, both futile and inimical to the comity of the races and sexes. Moreover, as both Horwitz and Wilkinson fail to acknowledge, state action is a blunt instrument, in that it penalizes many for the acts of the (relatively) few.

In any event, what more could the state do than it has done already? Well, there is always “hate crime” legislation, which (as Nat Hentoff points out) is tantamount to “thought crime” legislation. Perhaps that would satisfy Horwitz, Wilkinson, and their brethren on the “libertarian” Left. And, if that doesn’t do the trick, there is always Cass Sunstein’s proposal for policing thought on the internet. Sunstein, at least, doesn’t pretend to be a libertarian.

O brave new world that hath such philosophers in’t!
__________
* Except when it really isn’t speech; for example: sit-ins (trespass), child pornography (sexual exploitation of minors), and divulging military secrets (treason, in fact if not in name).

The Libertarian Culture Clash

David Friedman (Ideas) is right:

There are a lot of different things going on in libertarian reactions to Ron Paul in general and the quotes from the Ron Paul newsletters in particular. One of them, I think, is a culture clash between different sorts of libertarians….

Loosely speaking, I think the clash can be described as between people who see non-PC speech as a positive virtue and those who see it as a fault–or, if you prefer, between people who approve of offending liberal sensibilities (“liberal” in the modern sense of the term) and those who share enough of those sensibilities to prefer not to offend them. The former group see the latter as wimps, the latter see the former as boors.

What else is going on? Well, for one thing, a bunch of moralist scolds have leaped at the opportunity to preach their respective, often contradictory, and sometimes wacky visions of libertarian purity. When they have finished with Ron Paul and his gaggle of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, they will return to bashing each other. Political purity may be self-satisfying, but it wins few converts and fewer elections.

Just to be clear about it, I hold no brief for Ron Paul.

Quotation of the Day

Mark Steyn quotes Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.

Precisely.

There are valid, libertarian reasons not to accept everything that is claimed to be a libertarian cause (e.g., sodomistic “marriage,” abortion on demand, and absolute freedom of speech). Those reasons are libertarian in that they go to the foundation of liberty, which can exist only in a civil society founded on the mutual respect, trust, and restraint that arise from the observance of socially evolved norms. The undoing of those norms by the state in the name of liberty is a form of civilizational suicide.

Related posts:
“Rights and Liberty” (12 Dec 2007)
“Optimality, Liberty, and the Golden Rule” (18 Dec 2007)

It’s Happening in Britain…

…and if it’s happening there, it can happen here. What? The suppression of politically incorrect speech by the state — not just a tax-funded university, but the central government itself.

Wolf Howling has the story. It’s about a British blogger, Lionheart, who lays it on the line here, and links to his “offending” posts.

P.S. A good subtitle for this post is “Cowering before Islam.” Someone who is not cowering before Islam, even though his government would like to is Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. (Thanks, again, to Wolf Howling.)

P.P.S. I should have mentioned Canada, of course. Cases in point, the “human rights” complaints against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.

Wisdom from Mises

As if to rebuke the extreme individualists who invoke his name, Ludwig von Mises writes:

Seen from the point of view of the individual, society is the great means for the attainment of all his ends. The preservation of society is an essential condition of any plans an individual may want to realize by any action whatever. Even the refractory delinquent who fails to adjust his conduct to the requirements of life within the societal system of cooperation does not want to miss any of the advantages derived from the division of labor. He does not consciously aim at the destruction of society. He wants to lay his hands on a greater portion of the jointly produced wealth than the social order assigns to him. He would feel miserable if antisocial behavior were to become universal and its inevitable outcome, the return to primitive indigence, resulted.

It is illusory to maintain that individuals in renouncing the alleged blessings of a fabulous state of nature and entering into society have foregone some advantages and have a fair claim to be indemnified for what they have lost. The idea that anybody would have fared better under an asocial state of mankind and is wronged by the very existence of society is absurd. Thanks to the higher productivity of social cooperation the human species has multiplied far beyond the margin of subsistence offered by the conditions prevailing in ages with a rudimentary degree of the division of labor. Each man enjoys a standard of living much higher than that of his savage ancestors….

One of the privileges which society affords to the individual is the privilege of living in spite of sickness or physical disability. Sick animals are doomed. Their weakness handicaps them in their attempts to find food and to repel aggression on the part of other animals. Deaf, nearsighted, or crippled savages must perish. But such defects do not deprive a man of the opportunity to adjust himself to life in society….

Related post: “A Critique of Extreme Libertarianism” (27 Jul 2007)

Anarchistic Whining

The very late Murray Rothbard didn’t want to be called an “anarchist” because the word has acquired several negative connotations. It is clear, however, that Rothbard was an anarchist; he just didn’t want to be called one.

Robert Higgs reifies government:

The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you.

On top of that, he counsels an ostrich-like foreign policy:

[D]espite everything that is claimed for the military’s protective powers, its operation and deployment overseas leave us ordinary Americans facing greater, not lesser, risk than we would otherwise face, because of the many enemies it cultivates who would have left us alone, if the U.S. military had only left them alone. (Yes, Virginia, they are over here because we’re over there.)

I guess Higgs wouldn’t care if the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil were to fall into the hands of Islamofascists.

Anyway, Higgs asserts that

[a]lthough the mugger, the sneak thief, and the con man are not the only types of government operatives, they make up a large proportion of the leading figures in government today. The lower ranks, especially in the various police agencies, have a disproportionate share of the bullies.

I’d like to see his data. Certainly a goodly share of cops are bullies, and a goodly share of government “operatives” behave like bullies, muggers, sneak thieves, and con men (Higgs’s characterizations). But the way Higgs puts it, it’s as if government was invented to serve those types, which is rather unfair to Mr. Madison et al.

Here’s a better way of putting it: Government, when allowed to assume functions beyond the minimal ones alloted by the Constitution, becomes a haven for some bullies, muggers, sneak thieves, and con men. But most of them, I daresay, are not in government.

Related posts:
“But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?” (24 Jul 2005)
“Liberty As a Social Compact” (28 Feb 2006)
“The Source of Rights” (06 Sep 2006)
“The Golden Rule, for Libertarians” (02 Aug 2007)
“Anarchistic Balderdash” (17 Aug 2007)
“The Fear of Consequentialism” (26 Nov 2007)
“Optimality, Liberty, and the Golden Rule” (18 Dec 2007)

Ron Paul, Continued

Guest post:

I’ve heard that Ron Paul has publicly distanced himself from his extremist followers, although I’ve yet to see a report about it. Certainly I hope the rumor is true. However, even the ultra-libertarians at Liberal Values make the sensible observation that

After pulling in another six million dollars you would think that Ron Paul could afford to do the right thing and return that $500 contribution from [neo-Nazi] Stormfront founder Don Black. At very least you would think that… he would at least realize that returning such a contribution is what any other candidate would do and what he must also do if he wants to be credible. Failure to do so also fuels the suspicions of racism and anti-Semitism on Paul’s part which has been noted in some of his writings.

In my last post on the topic, I discussed critical coverage from the “neo-cons” at National Review. In all fairness to Paul, I agree with many of his positions, especially on economics, morals and the family. But that leaves some major gaps. The one point that will lose him the broad base of Republic/conservative support is his position on the war. Personally, I don’t mind a little elbow room on policy. Foreign affairs are a prudential matter, unlike abortion, which deals with moral absolutes. I can agree with paleo-cons that Wilsonian interventionism is both unnecessary and risky. But I disagree with their dogmatic isolationism; the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all pattern to political exigencies.

The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy makes this point with reference to Paul’s views on federal policy and racism. While traditional conservatives would agree that left-wing statist policies have exacerbated the problem, it simply not true that state government is inherently better than the federal level (perhaps that is why the Founders wanted a balance between the two). Volokh points out that “It was, after all, state governments that took the lead in defending slavery, segregation, and other forms of discrimination against blacks and (in the Western states) Asian-Americans.”

Some others have pitched in with their constructive criticism, showing that a cautious view of Paul is hardly the product of neo-con persecution. The most impressive of these is Dave Nalle’s Blogcritics Magazine commentary of December 14. In it, Nalle comes across as very sympathetic. Yet he cautions against the the direction that Paul’s “largely uncontrolled campaign is taking and the people who are infiltrating it and shaping it….” He condemns the more fanatical supporters: “Self-righteous ideologues make terrible politicians, they don’t win elections and they’re dragging Ron Paul down with them.” Yet it is Paul’s campaign, after all, and if he can’t control that then one wonders how well he would control the presidency. However, the latter scenario seems highly unlikely, despite the recent record-breaking intake of campaign money.

Earlier post on Ron Paul.

Optimality, Liberty, and the Golden Rule

I ended a recent post by saying that

the only rights that can be claimed universally are negative rights (the right not be attacked, robbed, etc.). Positive rights (the right to welfare benefits, a job based on one’s color or gender, etc.) are not rights, properly understood, because they benefit some persons at the expense of others. Positive rights are not rights, they are privileges.

Liberty, in other words, can be understood as Pareto-optimality, in which a right should be recognized only when doing so makes “at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off.”

This is not an argument for preserving the status quo. It is, rather, an argument against having gone as far down the road to serfdom as we have gone in the United States. The regulatory-welfare state, to which we have evolved, is rife with privileges: the harming of some persons for the benefit of others. Those privileges have been bestowed in two essential ways: (a) the redistribution income, and (b) the regulation of economic and social affairs to the economic and social benefit of narrow interests (“bootleggers and Baptists“).

Liberty — rightly understood as a Pareto-optimal endowment of rights — is possible only when the Golden Rule is, in fact, the rule. As I say here,

the Golden Rule… encapsulates a lesson learned over the eons of human coexistence. That lesson? If I desist from harming others, they (for the most part) will desist from harming me…. The exceptions usually are dealt with by codifying the myriad instances of the Golden Rule (e.g., do not steal, do not kill) and then enforcing those instances through communal action (i.e., justice and defense).

Why communal (state) action and not purely private, contractual arrangements for justice and defense, as anarcho-capitalists propose? Because there is, now, no alternative to state action. The state has been commandeered by Leftist ideals. It feeds parasites, coddles criminals, and verges on acquiescence to our enemies. The restoration of liberty (or something more like it) is, therefore, impossible unless and until

social and fiscal conservatives… recapture the levers of power and undo the damage that the state has done to liberty over the past century.

There will always be a state. The real issues are these: Who will control the state, and to what ends?

Related posts:
“But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?” (24 Jul 2005)
“Liberty As a Social Compact” (28 Feb 2006)
“The Source of Rights” (06 Sep 2006)
“The Golden Rule, for Libertarians” (02 Aug 2007)
“Anarchistic Balderdash” (17 Aug 2007)
“The Fear of Consequentialism” (26 Nov 2007)
“‘Family Values,’ Liberty, and the State (07 Dec 2007)
“Rights and Liberty” (12 Dec 2007)

Rights and Liberty

The most quoted sentence of the Declaration of Independence, I daresay, is this one:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Founders’ trinity of rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) really constitute a unitary right, which I simply call liberty. I do so because liberty (as a separate right) is meaningless without life and the ability to pursue happiness. Thus we have this: rights ≡ liberty (rights and liberty are identical). The identity of rights and liberty is consistent with this definition of liberty:

3. A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference.

The odd thing about the Founders’ equation (rights ≡ liberty) is that they believed in “natural rights” (“unalienable rights”). Today’s believers in “natural rights” would argue that such rights exist independently of liberty; that is, one always has one’s “natural rights” (whatever those might be), regardless of the state of one’s liberty.

I have put paid to that notion here, here, here, and here. The only rights that a person has are those which he can claim through social custom, common law, statutory law, contract, or constitution — depending on which of them applies and prevails in a given situation. Moreover, rights have no reality unless they are enforceable and can be restored after having been violated.

I do not mean to imply that the restoration of rights is automatic, even in a polity where the rule of law generally prevails. Rights sometimes cannot be restored; for example:

A victim of murder no longer has any rights (though his estate might). The victim’s murderer is prosecuted and punished for the sake of the living — for justice (i.e., vengeance) and its deterrent effect.

A person who permanently loses something to a criminal (e.g., an eye or a fortune), no longer has the use of that which was lost. His pursuit of happiness is, therefore, impaired permanently.

Further, the restoration of the rights lost by most Americans over the past century is highly doubtful. Rights vanish as liberty recedes. Liberty recedes as the state broadens its scope beyond justice and defense, expands its regulatory regime, redistributes income, and “enables” some citizens at the expense of others.

Finally, but most importantly, the only rights that can be claimed universally are negative rights (the right not be attacked, robbed, etc.). Positive rights (the right to welfare benefits, a job based on one’s color or gender, etc.) are not rights, properly understood, because they benefit some persons at the expense of others. Positive rights are not rights, they are privileges.

(See also Part II of “Practical Libertarianism.”)

"Family Values," Liberty, and the State

Among Maverick Philosopher”s answers to Dennis Prager’s 23 questions in “Are You a Liberal?” is this gem:

The State is involved in marriage in order to promote a legitimate common interest, namely, that there be healthy families in which men are tamed, women are protected, and children are socialized. There is no reason to extend these protections to any two people who choose to cohabit.

MP points to a deeper truth, which is that civil society (and thus liberty) depends to a large extent (though not exclusively) on the exaltation of heterosexual marriage and “family values.” As I say here:

Liberty requires a consensus about harms and the boundaries of mutual restraint — the one being the complement of the other. Agreed harms are to be avoided mainly through self-restraint. Societal consensus and mutual restraint must, therefore, go hand in hand.

Looked at in that way, it becomes obvious that liberty is embedded in society and preserved through order. There may be societally forbidden acts that, to an outsider, would seem not to cause harm but which, if permitted within a society, would unravel the mutual restraint upon which ordered liberty depends. . . .

What happens to self-restraint, honesty, and mutual aid outside the emotional and social bonds of family, friendship, community, church, and club can be seen quite readily in the ways in which we treat one another when we are nameless or faceless to each other. Thus we become rude (and worse) as drivers, e-mailers, bloggers, spectators, movie-goers, mass-transit commuters, shoppers, diners-out, and so on. Which is why, in a society much larger than a clan, we must resort to the empowerment of governmental agencies to enforce mutual restraint, mutual defense, and honesty within the society — as well as to protect society from external enemies.

But liberty begins at home. Without the civilizing influence of traditional families, friendships, and social organizations, police and courts would be overwhelmed by chaos. Liberty would be a hollower word than it has become, largely because of the existence of other governmental units that have come to specialize in the imposition of harms on the general public in the pursuit of power and in the service of special interests (which enables the pursuit of power). Those harms have been accomplished in large part by the intrusion of government into matters that had been the province of families, voluntary social organizations, and close-knit communities. . . .

The state has, in the past century, undone much of which society had put in place for its own protection. For example, here’s Arnold Kling, writing about Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics:

Morse argues that the incentives of government programs, such as Social Security, can have the same [destructive] consequences [as government decrees].

It is convenient for us who are young to forget about old people if their financial needs are taken care of…But elderly people want and need attention from their children and grandchildren…This, then, is the ultimate trouble with the government spending other people’s money for the support of one part of the family. Other people’s money relieves us from some of the personal responsibility for the other members of our family. Parents are less accountable for instilling good work habits, encouraging work effort…Young people are less accountable for the care of particular old people, since they are forcibly taxed to support old people in general. (p. 116-117)

Most Western nations have created a cycle of dependency with respect to single motherhood. Government programs, such as welfare payments or taxpayer-funded child care, are developed to “support” single mothers. This in turn encourages more single motherhood. This enlarges the constituency for such support programs, leading politicians to broaden such programs.

Earlier in the same article, Kling says:

There are a number of issues that provide sources of friction between market libertarianism and “family values” conservatism. They concern personal behavior, morality, and the law.

Should gambling, prostitution, and recreational drugs be legalized? Market libertarianism answers in the affirmative, but “family values” conservatives would disagree.

Another potential source of friction is abortion. It is not a coincidence that the abortion issue became prominent during the sexual revolution of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. That was a period in which social attitudes about sex-without-consequences underwent a reversal. Prior to 1960, sex-without-consequences generally was frowned upon. By 1975, sex-without-consequences was widely applauded. In that context, abortion rights were considered a victory for sexual freedom. Libertarians tend to take the pro-choice side.

Gay marriage is another legacy of the sexual revolution. Again, it tends to divide libertarians from “family values” conservatives.

One compromise, which Morse generally endorses, is to use persuasion rather than government in the family-values struggle. That is a compromise that I would favor, although unlike Morse, I approach the issue primarily as a libertarian.

If one views a strong state and a strong family as incompatible, then a case can be made that taking the state out of issues related to prostitution or abortion or marriage actually helps serve family values. If people know that they cannot rely on the state to arbitrate these issues, then they will turn to families, religious institutions, and other associations within communities to help strengthen our values.

I am unpersuaded, for the simple reason that society cannot rebuild its norms without the state’s help. Having sent the wrong signals about “family values,” in general, and about heterosexual marriage, in particular, the state has wrought much harm; for example:

Abuse risk higher as kids live without two biological parents

Thursday, November 15, 2007

– David Crary, AP National Writer

….[M]any scholars and front-line caseworkers who monitor America’s families see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”…

[T]here are many…studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

-Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

-Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

-Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University….

Census data leaves no doubt that family patterns have changed dramatically in recent decades as cohabitation and single-parenthood became common. Thirty years ago, nearly 80 percent of America’s children lived with both parents. Now, only two-thirds of them do. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977.

The net result is a sharp increase in households with a potential for instability, and the likelihood that adults and children will reside in them who have no biological tie to each other….

“It comes down to the fact they don’t have a relationship established with these kids,” she said. “Their primary interest is really the adult partner, and they may find themselves more irritated when there’s a problem with the children.”

And the beat goes on:

The teen birth rate in the United States rose in 2006 for the first time since 1991, and unmarried childbearing also rose significantly, according to preliminary birth statistics released [December 5, 2007] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)….

The study also shows unmarried childbearing reached a new record high in 2006. The total number of births to unmarried mothers rose nearly 8 percent to 1,641,700 in 2006. This represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in nonmarital births began. The biggest jump was among unmarried women aged 25-29, among whom there was a 10 percent increase between 2005 and 2006.

In addition, the nonmarital birth rate also rose sharply, from 47.5 births per 1,000 unmarried females in 2005 to 50.6 per 1,000 in 2006 — a 7-percent 1-year increase and a 16 percent increase since 2002.

The study also revealed that the percentage of all U.S. births to unmarried mothers increased to 38.5 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2005.

And on:

An ETS study reported by the NYT finds four family variables–including proportion of single-parent families–explain two-thirds of the variation in school performance.

And on:

[M]arriage qua marriage tends to be a much more important indicator of well-being, both for children and for parents, in the United States than it does in Europe. Perhaps this will not always be so; perhaps the coexistence, in the 1990s and early Oughts, of falling crime and higher rates of out-of-wedlock births are a leading indicator of the Swedenization of American social norms. But I doubt it, not least because the secondary consequences of family breakdown, persistent inequality and social immobility chief among them, appear to have worsened over the last decade….

What the state has sundered, it must mend. With respect to marriage, for example, I have argued that

it is clear that the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which…is a primary civilizing force. I now therefore reject the unrealistic (perhaps even ill-considered) position that the state ought to keep its mitts off marriage. I embrace, instead, the realistic, consequentialist position that society — acting through the state — ought to uphold the special status of heterosexual marriage by refusing legal recognition to other forms of marriage. That is, the state should refuse to treat marriage as if it were mainly (or nothing but) an arrangement to acquire certain economic advantages or to legitimate relationships that society, in the main, finds illegitimate.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We’ve seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.) The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down that slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves….

….Although it’s true that traditional, heterosexual unions have their problems, those problems have been made worse, not better, by the intercession of the state. (The loosening of divorce laws, for example, signaled that marriage was to be taken less seriously, and so it has been.) Nevertheless, the state — in its usual perverse wisdom — may create new problems for society by legitimating same-sex marriage, thus signaling that traditional marriage is just another contractual arrangement in which any combination of persons may participate. Heterosexual marriage — as Jennifer Roback Morse explains — is a primary and irreplicable civilizing force. The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state will undermine that civilizing force. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will “pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

Of course, the state not only continues to undermine heterosexual marriage (except where the general will is consulted through referenda), but it also continues to undermine other social norms. There is, for example, the new California statute known as SB777,

a public education bill prohibiting schools and teachers from “reflecting adversely” on gays and lesbians. The Democratic majority in both houses of the California State Legislature supported the bill, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [in October 2007]. Meanwhile, pro-family groups are mobilized and will challenge this bill with a petition to force a statewide referendum. The law’s implementation has been postponed by court order until January 1, pending results of statewide signature gathering….

Although the bill adds “sexual orientation” to the list of protected groups in this State, supporters are playing down its significance, calling it instead a safety measure. Meanwhile, critics, including Republican members of the Legislature, all of whom were opposed, regard the legislation as an attack on the family….

On the face of it, the changes are simple and uncomplicated. Existing provisions of the Education Code that prohibit discrimination against members of protected racial, ethnic, national, gender, ancestral and disabled groups have been changed to include “sexual orientation,” which specifically refers to members of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual groups.

Supporters of this change are right in one particular, at least from their point of view: the bill simply “updates” existing law. That is, existing law already gives protected status to members of designated groups. The question has always been whether that effectively denies protection (or provides less) to all not belonging to those groups, including especially white males. This sort of categorizing, critics have argued, puts members of all groups in gender conflict while opening the door to protected status for illegal aliens….

Not surprisingly, SB 777 adds the term “sexual orientation” to the categories of persons protected against “hate crimes,” a concept based on the assumption that a violent crime against a gay or lesbian person is particularly heinous, more so than when committed against others.

The main part of the bill concerns public education. All public school districts will be responsible for forbidding any discrimination and monitoring for compliance. Thus, while religious schools whose tenets conflict with homosexuality and lesbianism are exempted, publicly funded alternative and charter schools are not. The new law specifies that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that reflects adversely upon persons because of [sexual orientation].” (Italics in text.) The same requirement is laid on districts’ adoption or use of textbooks or other instructional materials.

The bill does not define what constitutes adverse reflection. It could mean anything from simple good manners, which is wholly defensible; to failure to “celebrate” the homosexual lifestyle, as prominent writers such as Harvey Mansfield have noted. According to its advocates, diversity comprehends all protected groups. who should be celebrated and not merely tolerated.

According to press reports, only in September did State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, the bill’s main sponsor, remove language that would have forbidden in public schools the use of “mom,” “dad,” “husband” and “wife.” It is a fair question whether removing those terms has changed the intent or effect of this legislation.

This latest development in the so-called “culture wars” once again raises the question whether it is a zero-sum game in which, in this case, the protection against adverse reflection on gays and lesbians necessarily entails a rejection of traditional morality and even human categories. Many do not believe so. Time will tell whether this is part of a slippery slope or merely equal justice. Still, one wonders when the straighforward concept of protection takes the broader form of not “reflecting adversely,” that the object is not tolerance but privilege.

I have no doubt that the object is privilege. The effect of SB777, should it become law, will be to suppress and further denigrate heterosexual marriage and all that it stands for. On that point, WND quotes Meredith Turney, the legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute:

[State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack] O’Connell, the bill’s author Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Gov. Schwarzenegger have all maintained the party line that SB 777 merely “streamlines” existing anti-discrimination laws. However, these attempts to discredit the public outcry against SB 777’s policies are disingenuous and misleading. In fact, SB 777 goes far beyond implementing anti-discrimination and harassment policies for public schools.

The new law states that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias because of’ … (homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexual or transgender status). Including instruction and activities in the anti-discrimination law goes much further than ‘streamlining.” This incremental and deceitful approach to achieving their goals is a favorite and effective tactic of liberals. Expanding the law is not ‘streamlining’ the law.

Mr. O’Connell’s doublespeak reveals his – and his peers’ – arrogant attitude toward their “gullible” constituents. In fact, parents are not stupid and they recognize that their authority is being undermined by such subversive school policies. This is nothing less than an attempt to confuse the public about the true intention of SB 777.

The terms “mom and dad” or “husband and wife” could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured.

Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB 777 is law, schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual experimentation.

Just as taxpayer-funded universities have become indoctrination centers for political correctness and other Leftist dogmas.

Yesteryear’s rebels (the “kids” of the ’60s and ’70s) didn’t get everything they wanted through their protests and riots. So they found a more effective way to destroy the social fabric, which — being perpetual adolescents — they despise. The more effective way was to seize the levers of power in academia and government, and thence to dissolve the social cohesion upon which liberty depends.

No, the answer isn’t to take the state out of the “family values” business. The answer is for social and fiscal conservatives to recapture the levers of power and undo the damage that the state has done to liberty over the past century.

There will always be a state. The real issues are these: Who will control the state, and to what ends?

A Century of Progress?
Feminist Balderdash
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence
Consider the Children
Same-Sex Marriage
“Equal Protection” and Homosexual Marriage
Marriage and Children
Abortion and the Slippery Slope
Equal Time: The Sequel
The Adolescent Rebellion Syndrome
Social Norms and Liberty
Parenting, Religion, Culture, and Liberty
A “Person” or a “Life”?
The Case against Genetic Engineering
How Much Jail Time?
The Political Case for Traditional Morality
Anarchy, Minarchy, and Liberty
Parents and the State
Academic Bias
Ahead of His Time

Republicans Are Happier Than Democrats

This content of this post is now incorporated in “Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness.”

A First Amendment Right to Anonymity?

Orin Kerr reports about such a ruling:

Federal prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled the customers have a First Amendment right to keep their reading habits from the government.

Lest you think that the feds were merely poking around for the fun of it, read on:

Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last year as part of a grand jury investigation into a former Madison official who was a prolific seller of used books on Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D’Angelo, was indicted last month on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a used book business out of his city office and did not report the income. He has pleaded not guilty.

D’Angelo sold books through the Amazon Marketplace feature, and buyers paid Amazon, which took a commission.

“We didn’t care about the content of what anybody read. We just wanted to know what these business transactions were,” prosecutor Vaudreuil said Tuesday. “These were simply business records we were seeking to prove the case of fraud and tax crimes against Mr. D’Angelo.”

Orin’s comment:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a First Amendment right to anonymity trumping a grand jury subpoena obtained in a criminal case. The general rule is that if the grand jury issues a subpoena, there’s no third party right to assert a First Amendment interest of others against the grand jury subpoena.

I agree with Orin. In my post, “Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty,” I say:

It is sometimes necessary for government to intrude on privacy for the sake of liberty. If, for example, the punishment of crime fosters the security of life, limb, and property by deterring yet more crime, then liberty is served by certain types of governmental intrusion on privacy (e.g., searches of private property, questioning of suspects and witnesses, and compulsion of testimony in criminal cases).

Those who rush to defend privacy at all costs have put privacy ahead of liberty on their scale of values. (Anarcho-libertarians do much the same thing when they treat the non-aggression principle as the be-all-and-end-all of libertarianism.)

Privacy is important. It is, as I say in “Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty,”

one among many values that liberty should serve. An individual’s desire for privacy is as legitimate as a desire for, say, a Lamborghini, a full head of hair, and perpetual youth. Seriously, privacy is a legitimate pursuit, yet (like a Lamborghini) it cannot an absolute right. For — as I have argued elsewhere — if privacy were an absolute right, it would be possible to get away with murder in one’s home simply by committing murder there.

The judge in the D’Angelo case hasn’t abetted murder, but he may be abetting tax evasion. Thanks a lot, judge.

The Fear of Consequentialism

I like to revisit old issues from time to time. This is one of those times. I have changed the name of the blogger whom I quote throughout this post because the issue isn’t personal, and I don’t want to it to seem personal. I am merely drawing on an old exchange of views for the purpose of expounding on the concept of “natural rights” and its opposite in libertarian theory, which is consequentialism. I enclose “natural rights” in quotation marks because I find the concept invalid, for reasons detailed here.

More than three years ago, Rand (as I will call blogger X), in a post that responds (in part) to a post of mine, wrote the following:

I don’t like consequentialism, because it’s usually an excuse for exchanging principles for popularity. Deducing one’s way from principles of human nature gives a grounding for any policy—that’s the great thing about natural rights theory. But drawing one’s policy conclusions from the opposite pole—from “consequentialism”—means looking to “social welfare” as one’s standard of value, rather than individual welfare. And “social welfare” is practically impossible to measure,… so that one’s consequentialism could easily be a license for any silly thing.

I have two problems with Rand’s dismissal of consequentialism. The first problem is his reliance on “principles of human nature” or “natural rights.” The second problem is his dismissal of consequentialism by invoking “social welfare.”

Before I address the two problems, I should say a bit about the underlying issues, which are captured in these questions:

Is liberty justified because it enables us to exercise our “natural rights,” or is it justified because it produces better outcomes (consequences)?

If the former, what makes “natural rights” natural (i.e., innate in the human condition), what rights are comprised in “natural rights,” and whose judgment delineates “natural rights”?

If the latter, what outcomes are made better, for whom, and in whose judgment?

I believe that liberty is justified by its consequences, and I have given my reasons elsewhere — here, here, and here, for example. But I am compelled to give them again, in different words (with the same result).

What does it matter how liberty is justified? Liberty is liberty, right? Wrong. The “natural rights” theory opens the door to abuses of liberty. Consider, for example, the following passages from Mortimer Adler’s “Natural Needs = Natural Rights“:

But what is a moral right as contradistinguished from a legal right? It is obvious at once that it must be a right that exists without being created by positive law or social custom. What is not the product of legal or social conventions must be a creation of nature, or to state the matter more precisely, it must have its being in the nature of men. Moral rights are natural rights, rights inherent in man’s common or specific nature, just as his natural desires or needs are. Such rights, being antecedent to society and government, may be recognized and enforced by society or they may be transgressed and violated, but they are inalienable in the sense that, not being the gift of legal enactment, they cannot be taken away or annulled by acts of government.

The critical point to observe is that natural rights are correlative with natural needs. I said a moment ago that where one individual has an obligation — legal or moral — to another, it must be in virtue of some right — legal or moral — possessed by that other. There is a deeper and more significant connection between rights and obligations, but one that obtains only in the case of moral rights and moral obligations. I do not have any moral rights vis-a-vis others unless I also have, for each moral right that I claim, a moral obligation to discharge in the sphere of my own private life. Every moral right of mine that imposes a moral duty upon others is inseparable from a moral duty imposed upon me.

For example, if I have a moral — or natural — right to a decent livelihood, that can be the case only because wealth, to a degree that includes amenities as well as bare necessities, is a real good, part of the totum bonum, and thus indispensable to a good life. The fact that it is a real good, together with the fact that I am morally obliged to seek it as part of my moral obligation to make a good life for myself, is inseparable from the fact that I have a natural right to a decent livelihood….

Our basic natural right to the pursuit of happiness, and all the subsidiary rights that it encompasses, impose moral obligations on organized society and its institutions as well as upon other individuals. If another individual is unjust when he does not respect our rights, and so injures us by interfering with or impeding our pursuit of happiness, the institutions of organized society, its laws, and its government, are similarly unjust when they deprive individuals of their natural rights.

Just governments, it has been correctly declared, are instituted to secure these rights. I interpret that statement as going further than the negative injunction not to violate the natural rights of the individual, or deprive him of the things he needs to make a good life for himself. It imposes upon organized society and its government the positive obligation to secure the natural rights of its individuals by doing everything it can to aid and abet them in their efforts to make good lives for themselves — especially helping them to get things they need that are not within their power to get for themselves [emphasis added].

Adler openly admits the essential (if unintended) nature of the “natural rights” doctrine. It is open-ended. In the wrong hands, it becomes an excuse to take from the more-productive members of a society and give to the less-productive members of a society by claiming that there is a “natural right” to a certain level of income — which must be determined arbitrarily, by those who claim that there is such a right. (How convenient.) Worse, perhaps, is that the notion of “natural rights” can justify the unfettered pursuit of “natural desires,” without regard for the cumulative effect of such pursuits on the moral fiber of society.

Do libertarian adherents of “natural rights” really believe that it makes no difference whether they live in a confiscatory and debauched society or in a society that eschews confiscation and debauchery? I doubt it.

We are all consequentialists, at heart. Some of us just like to play with the idea of “natural rights,” in the manner of children who play with matches.

Let us now consider this question:

Are “Natural Rights” Natural?

According to Rand (blogger X), “A right is a moral claim based on the nature of human beings….” But the nature of human beings is complex; there are many “principles” of human nature, aggressiveness being among them. In order to have a conception of rights that is founded on human nature (i.e., natural rights), one must first decide which of the “principles” of human nature one is willing to countenance. It is one thing to assert that we have natural rights; it is another thing, entirely, to reach agreement about what those rights include. Some proponents of natural rights would, for example, have those rights include the right to steal from others, via the state (“for the general welfare,” “for the public good,” “to eradicate poverty,” etc.). Libertarian proponents of natural rights would deny that natural rights encompass legalized theft. In sum, there is nothing “natural” about natural rights.

Rand effectively concedes that point, when he writes:

Our natural rights and our liberty derive from nature, more specifically, from our nature as human beings.

The link leads to the Declaration of Independence, which contains one relevant passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Rand is an ostentatious atheist, who proudly displays this link at the top of his sidebar. When he relies on a political document (which the Declaration of Independence is) to back up his claim that rights (which ones?) are innate in human beings, and when he ignores the plain words of that document, which attribute those rights to a Creator, it is evident that the concept of “natural rights” is arbitrary (i.e., not natural).

If the concept of “natural rights” is not arbitrary, why must Rand spend so much time (as he has) explaining to others why such-and-such is or isn’t a “natural right.” This strikes me as priestly behavior. It certainly belies the naturalness of “natural rights.”

Breathing is natural, in that it is in our nature to breathe in order to live. But that does not rule out suicide, murder, death at the hands of someone acting in self-defense, death by “natural causes,” or anything else that causes the cessation of breathing and life. In sum, breathing is natural, but it is not a “natural right.” Given that, what can be an unqualified “natural right”?

The answer is “nothing,” as explained as Jonathan Wallace explains so well in “Natural Rights Don’t Exist.” This passage captures the essence of Wallace’s long argument (which you should read):

We believe there is a natural right to do anything which we think should be permitted (or mandated) under a human rulebook. Anything which should be forbidden under a human rulebook therefore cannot be a natural right, even if it is physically possible and can be justified by the same arguments used to support the idea of natural rights.

Is There Anything Natural about Rights?

Something that is natural — in the sense that it can arise spontaneously from within us — but which is by no means universal, is the Golden Rule. This is from my post, “The Source of Rights” (September 6, 2006):

Stephan Kinsella of Mises Economics Blog, in a pugnacious and meandering post, finally gets around to naming the source of rights, as he sees it. That source is empathy, which is:

1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.

2. The attribution of one’s own feelings to an object.

Empathy has something to do with it. But my view is that rights arise from self-interest, best expressed as the Golden Rule….

The Golden Rule implies empathy; that is, the validity of the Golden Rule hinges on the view that others have the same feelings as oneself. But the Golden Rule also encapsulates a lesson learned over the eons of human coexistence. That lesson? If I desist from harming others, they (for the most part) will desist from harming me. (There’s the self-interest.) The exceptions usually are dealt with by codifying the myriad instances of the Golden Rule (e.g., do not steal, do not kill) and then enforcing those instances through communal action (i.e., justice and defense).

The lesson here is three-fold:

Rights are “natural,” but not in the sense that they are somehow innate in humans. Rather, rights are natural in the sense that they arise from a nearly universal sense of empathy and an experiential belief in the value of mutual forbearance.

Those “natural rights” have no force or effect unless they are generally recognized and enforced through communal action.

Rights may therefore vary from place to place and time to time, according to the mores of the community in which they are recognized and enforced.

That is the natural explanation for rights. They are not universals floating in the air, waiting to be grasped by a priestly caste and handed down to the rest of us (like Kant’s categorical imperative, in its various incarnations). Rights simply are the best bargains that we can make with each other about behavioral norms, to the extent that we have the political freedom to make such bargains. Those bargains will be honored by the unempathic and predatory among us only as the rest of us are able to force them to do so.

The rights that arise from the Golden Rule are bound to have much in common across disparate groups because they arise from the human traits of empathy and self-interestedness. But they are not bound to be identical across disparate groups because of divergences in social evolution.

Rand would now (as he has) resort to a last-ditch defense of “natural rights” by asking this:

If a woman is raped in a forest and nobody hears, are her rights being violated?

Now, there’s a lawyerly question for you. It’s designed to elicit embarrassed agreement. The casual reader will see “woman is raped” and think “of course her rights are being violated” and “I wouldn’t want it to happen to me/my wife/my sister/my mother, etc.” What we have here is evidence of the prevalence of empathy and self-interestedness as human traits, not proof of the immanence of rights. The proper answer to Rand’s question isn’t “yes” or “no”; it is this: Almost everyone — but, unfortunately, not everyone — would condemn the rapist for having done something wrong.

To test the robustness of Rand’s technique for identifying “rights” — which is to posit a “right” in opposition to an instance of repulsive behavior — I pose this series of questions:

1. If A premeditatedly kills B, have B’s rights been violated?

2. If C kills D in self defense, have D’s rights been violated?

3. What about D’s rights if, in retrospect, an investigator concludes (by trying to put himself in C’s shoes) that C could have defended himself without killing D?

4. If the state electrocutes A for having premeditatedly killed B, has the state violated A’s “natural rights”?

5. If the state punishes C for having killed D unnecessarily, has the state violated C’s “natural rights” by relying on an investigator’s after-the-fact judgment instead of C’s contemporaneous judgment?

6. If E procures an abortion, have the rights of her fetus (F) been violated?

7. If E kills her infant (G) upon its birth, has she violated G’s rights? What if she waits until G is, say two years old?

8. If the answer to question 6 is “no,” and the answer to at least one part of question 7 is “yes,” when and how does a fetus/child acquire rights?

9. With respect to question 8, who makes the judgment as to when and how a fetus/child acquires rights?

10. Even if the answer to question 6 is “no,” doesn’t the legalization of abortion jeopardize the rights of others by fostering, say, involuntary euthanasia among the conscious, but infirm, elderly persons?

11. H, who lives in squalor and abject poverty, makes far less money than I. Does H have a right to steal from I in order to ameliorate his (H’s) lot?

12. If H doesn’t have a right to steal from I, does the state violate I’s “natural rights” by taxing I in order to ameliorate H’s lot?

Reasonable persons will disagree reasonably about the answers to many of those questions. Which leads me to another series of questions: Would Rand’s answers be superior to the answers of other reasonable persons? In other words, who decides when rights have been violated, and on what basis are such decisions made? Is Rand the sole judge of what constitutes a right, and whether it is a “natural right” or some other kind of right? Does he have, somewhere, a list of rights that we can consult and, having consulted it, make unanimous judgments about the answers to all twelve questions (and others like them)? How did Rand obtain his list? Did he inspect his “human nature” and find written on it a list of “natural rights” and a guide for determining what is or isn’t a right? Or did he make some (undoubtedly reasonable) judgments about what ought to be rights, just as others do (with differing results)? Or, if is he borrowing from others who have made such judgments, how did they arrive at their judgments?

Don’t get me wrong about the role of the state in all of this. I agree wholeheartedly with Rand when he says that “rights exist before the state enforces them.” As I have said before (here, for example),

rights do not necessarily depend on the existence of a state, but do arise from politics because politics “is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings…[which] is observed in all human group interactions….” And those “group interactions” began long before the creation of a state.

Therefore, I now return to Rand’s question and restate it in a way that is consistent with human nature and human behavior:

If a woman is raped in a forest and nobody hears her, does she feel harmed? Would other persons, upon learning of the rape, generally agree that she was harmed? Would enough such persons concert to (a) exact justice on the victim’s behalf and (b) ensure (to the extent possible) against the rape of any other person within the territory over which they can exert control?

In sum, rights — when properly understood as man-made bargains — are consequentialist to their core, arising as they do (in part) from empathy and (in part) from self-interestedness.

Consequentialism Is about Norms, Not “Social Welfare”

I turn now to Rand’s dismissal of consequentialism, a dismissal that is justified because (in his view) consequentialism depends on the concept of “social welfare.” That concept (in this context) is a red herring. Consequentialism does not depend on “social welfare” because it cannot do so; there is no such thing as “social welfare.” (See this, for example.) “Social welfare” is not “practically impossible to measure,” as Rand says in the first quotation above; as a nullity, it is impossible to measure.

I am perfectly willing to admit the arbitrariness of consequentialism; arbitrariness in the classification of rights is unavoidable. The best one can hope for is a systematic and generally accepted kind of arbitrariness that tends to limit the harm that predators and parasites do to the rest of us.

In its simplest form, such a system operates like this:

A, B, and C — knowing that each of them has different notions of acceptable behavior toward others — agree that murder (among other things) is a forbidden activity, and that one may not murder another except in self-defense. (They further agree as to the ways and means of enforcing their prohibition of murder, of course.)

That is liberty, for it enables each of them … to “pursue happiness” within their respective means.

But…

What if A and B agree, honorably, not to kill each other, whereas C “leaves his options open”? It then behooves A and B to reach a further agreement, which is that they will defend each other against C. (This is analogous to the decision of the original States to adopt the Constitution because it bound each of them to provide men, matériel, and money for the defense of all of them.) A and B therefore agree to live in liberty (the liberty of self-restraint and mutual defense), whereas C stands outside that agreement. He has forfeited the liberty of self-restraint and mutual self-defense. How so? A and B, knowing that C has “left his options open,” might honorably kill or imprison C when they have good reason to believe that C is planning to kill them or acquire the means to kill them.

In sum, there can be no system makes everyone happy (unless you believe, foolishly, that everyone is of good will). Try to imagine, for example, a metric by which C’s happiness (if he succeeds in his predatory scheme) would offset A and B’s unhappiness (were C successful).

The inescapable fact is that someone must define and enforce norms that rest on consequences (or perceived consequences) of certain behavior. The big questions, as always, are these: Who defines and enforces the norms, and how (if at all) are the deciders and the enforcers constrained in what they do?

Jonathan Wallace says this in “Natural Rights Don’t Exist“:

I prefer this freedom, which seems to me simple and clear: we are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don’t tell me it offends the universe.

Were that life so simple.

There are, in fact, four basic possibilities (which I explore in “A Political Compass: Locating the United States“), anarchy, libertarianism, communitarianism, and statism:

According to anarchists (or anarcho-libertarians, as I call them), an individual’s freedom of action should be limited only by (a) voluntary observance of social norms and (b) contracts (enforced by third parties) that bind the members of a group to observe certain restraints and to pay certain penalties for failing to observe those restraints….

Rights and liberty, it must be understood, are not Platonic abstractions; they are, rather, social phenomena. They are the best “deal” we can make with those around us — the set of compromises that define acceptable behavior, which is the boundary of liberty. Those compromises are not made by a philosopher-king but through an evolving consensus about harms — a consensus that flows from reason, experience, persuasion, and necessity.

Minarchism is true libertarianism because it provides a minimal state for the protection of the lives, liberty, and property of those who adhere to it; a state that otherwise remains neutral with respect to its adherents’ affairs; a state that does not distort the wisdom embedded in tradition, that is, in voluntarily evolved social norms; a state that is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to protect its willing adherents‘ interests from predators, within and without….

Communitarianism is the regulation by the state of private institutions for the purpose of producing certain outcomes desired by controlling élites (e.g., income redistribution, “protection” from learning by our mistakes, “protection” from things deemed harmful by the worrying classes, and “social (or cosmic) justice“). Such outcomes, contrary to their stated purposes, are unwise, inefficient, and harmful to their intended beneficiaries….

[S]tatism…is outright state control of most social and economic institutions….

Statism may be reached either as an extension of communitarianism or via post-statist anarchy or near-anarchy, as in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China. We have come to statism via communitarianism, which leads inevitably to statism because the appetite for largesse is insatiable, as is the desire (in certain circles) to foster “social (or cosmic) justice.”

None of the four systems rests on the concept of “social welfare,” regardless of its proponents’ claims. Each system simply offers a different way of defining and enforcing behavioral norms within a polity. Each, in its own way, is consequential. It’s all a matter of consequences for whom.

Where I Stand…

…on the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz.” I am glad to report that I have advanced from the reflexive libertarianism to which I adhered in the early days of this blog. Thus:

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS,

You fall exactly on the border

of two political philosophies…

CONSERVATIVE

LIBERTARIAN

CONSERVATIVES tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently

support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates “traditional
values.” They oppose excessive government control of business,

while endorsing government action to defend morality and the

traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong

military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market

economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal

and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government;

one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion

and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual

responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes,

promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the

free market, and defend civil liberties.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 50%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 100%.

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