Rethinking Huck and libertarianism

"some accomodation with libertarianism is probably the best chance we neotrads have of carving out a communal life for ourselves."

This is implied in Ron Paul's book, as well as in some of Roger Scruton's recent work. In addition, many paleocon writers seem to be able to distinguish between "small l" or non-ideological libertarianism, and the "big L" type, which is more problematic from a conservative perspective. If you read 'Chronicles' or 'Modern Age' you often see this differentiation.

I am too quick to grinch about libertarians, because (in my view) they exalt choice, not what is chosen, to an unhealthy degree. But Schwenkler's posts remind me that in a pluralistic society like ours, some accomodation with libertarianism is probably the best chance we neotrads have of carving out a communal life for ourselves.

Well, yeah, that's sort of what the libertarian ideal is about - autonomous individuals persuing happiness as they envision it.

If you want to set up a Traditionalist Orthodox Community, well hoorah for you and best of luck. But you may have to accept that you don't get to shut down or run out of town the Polygamist Pot-Smokers who live a couple of miles down the road.

"he says that "Crunchy Cons" is too glibly critical of the market, and fails to account for the role the state played in creating industrial agriculture and the like."

Amen! I self-identify as a "Crunchy Con" to all my peers and friends, but I was persuaded by Ron Paul's writings that many of the problems with the "free" market is that it isn't all that free at all.

You gave farm subsidies as an example. I'll give another one: healthcare. Until the government got involved in healthcare, costs were low, doctors and hospitals never denied anyone medical care but practiced something called "charity," and people could afford to buy insurance for catastrophes and debilitating diseases. Then the government did two things. They created a tax incentive for businesses to pay for health insurance and mandated that business over a certain size provide it for their employees, artificially wedding health insurance with employment. And they created HMOs. Because of the injection of all this "extra" money into the system to pay for health insurance, insurance costs rose and put it beyond the means of the average, independent consumer. The introduction of HMOs took choices out of the hands of doctors and patients and put them into the hands of insurance providers and the government, thereby dictating what kinds of medicine would and would not be practiced. Again, this infusion of a third party payment provider who is now the ultimate consumer and decision-maker (instead of the individual patient) assured that costs would rise, too, as doctors and hospitals started charging the *maximum* amount allowed rather than the *minimum* (which is what they used to charge when they were competing with individual patients for business). The government had its hands in health care in many other ways, but I think these two actions caused the worst of our current health care crisis.

In other words, I believe that in *most* cases, the evil that has come about in the marketplace (about which I and other Crunchy-Cons are critical) has been because we actually *lack* a free market.

Don't get me started on our current, compulsory public education system and the effects *that* government fiasco has had on our communities and families. That gets me red hot.

I sometimes wonder how things would be if states and their borders were abolished, if we had only congressional districts. People would quickly see the benefits of the smallest possible federal government, and the rewards of keeping more of their money flow local. I don't see any value in continuing to have states beyond the emotion of pride for a long-dead tradition.

IIRC, the Federalist acknowledged that, beyond a certain population size, republican government became problematic. It's worth noting that many (most?) states nowadays are larger than the entire Republic of 1789, and that many Congressional districts nowadays are larger than the largest state of that time.

Fissioning states might help shrink Fedgov, but more important, I think, would be a resurrection of the mentality that,

1. Some (most?) things are better handled at the state/local level; and

2. A willingness to handle such matters at such level(s) without nationally-funded handouts of any kind.

My impression is that the first view is prevalent, but only to some extent. And the second seems almost entirely absent (unsurprising, given human greed).

Sorry, but I still think that crunchy cons and other traditionalists should hold libertarians and libertarianism at arms-length. Note this phrase in Schwenkler's piece: "the State is their enemy." I have no problem with people who argue that government has gotten too big or that it has taken on inappropriate tasks. Let's discuss those questions. But government as "the enemy"? Come on. Government has a legitimate role in a civilized society, and any reasonable person should be able to agree with that basic statement.

For example, I agree with Huckabee that government should have some role in providing a safety net for the least fortunate in society.

For another, as one who has worked in the natural resources and environmental field for more than 35 years, I think government also has a valid role in allocating common resources (water, fish, wildlife, etc) and in regulating private activities that affect common resources (for example, the filling of wetlands).

Sure, reasonable people can respectfully disagree over what government's role in these areas should be. It may well be that, in particular circumstances, government has exceeded its proper role. And sometimes libertarians may be right that the market can handle a particular problem better than the government can. But to flat out call government "the enemy" is not helpful. When you get past rhetoric and theory and begin talking praxis, I think very, very few Americans honestly believe that government is "the enemy". That's why it would be unwise for traditionalists to forge a close alliance with libertarians. Cooperating on discrete issues where we have common cause, fine. But otherwise keep our distance. As I noted in my post on the Huckabee thread, we need to remember that libertarians put their faith in individual self-interest, the market, technology, innovation and human nature. Traditionalists simply do not share those articles of faith. Frankly, although I see some limited opportunities for allying with libertarians on particular issues (farm bill, for example), in large part I think we traditionalists will find libertarians to be among our adversaries.

WRT health insurance history:

to control inflation in the overheated wartime economy, the federal government in 1942 limited employers' freedom to raise wages and thus to compete on the basis of pay for scarce workers. However, the federal government allowed employers to expand benefits for workers, such as health insurance, which resulted in a rapid increase in employer-sponsored insurance. Several additional federal rulings followed that increased the attractiveness of the provision of employer-sponsored insurance to workers and their unions. In 1945, the government said that employers could not unilaterally change benefits programs until the expiration of a labor contract, and in 1949, it ruled that benefits should be considered part of the wage package of employees so that unions could negotiate health insurance as part of contract talks. Finally, in 1954, the Internal Revenue Service decided that the contributions that employers made to the purchase of health insurance for their employees were not taxable as income to workers.

From Blumenthal D. "Employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States: ­origins and implications". New Engl J Med, 2006 Jul 6; 355(1):82-8.

Bill: But to flat out call government "the enemy" is not helpful.

I agree with you there, Bill, and in general I side with you. What made me rethink somewhat my position is that as a practical matter, given our political culture, some sort of common cause with libertarians might be the best option we have to carve out a space in which to live a neotraditional life. For example, libertarians are going to defend one's right to homeschool. Joel Salatin calls himself an Evangelical Christian libertarian, because he believes (and can demonstrate) how the power of the state is used to protect corporate interests against the small, traditional farmer.

I suppose the point I want to make is that while I do not go as far as J.S. and call the state "the enemy," I appreciate his point about the need to make practical alliances.

pyrrho, in light of the point MI brought up about size and growth, would you say that happily small states like yours were able to preserve those virtues because they never faced the growing pains of expansion? I find much of that in my closer neighbor Delaware. They seem to have avoided much of the pain associated with being in the middle of the DC-to-NYC corridor.

Franklin:

Southern New Hampshire is essentially part of the Greater Boston Metroplex. Our capital (and my fair hometown), Concord, is about an hour's drive from downtown Boston (sans traffic).

And you're right. The "New Hampshire Way" has disappeared in many (but not all) of these towns due to sprawl, disengaged commuter/residents, etc.

A Libertarian wants to live life isolated from all interference, and sees government intervention as the most egregious form of it, not the only form.

A libertarian, if at all sane, recognizes that avoiding interference is most effectively accomplished by direct participation in the government processes in order to work with like-minded people to minimize the interference. An important part of that recognition is the knowledge that some things simply cannot be accomplished at the local level, and will not be accomplished at any level unless the power to do so is delegated to someone (or some entity) at each level.

I'd like to see how happy Libertarians would be when one consequence of getting what they want is the collapse of the Interstate Highway system. I have yet to meet a Libertarian who didn't hold his geographic mobility as sacred and precious.

There is a complementary view to Benj. Franklin's wise caution concerning liberty and safety. One cannot enjoy any liberty at all if one is not willing to have some liberty balanced with a responsible and effective government. In my experience, Libertarians do not understand balance. All (liberty) and nothing (government) is their refrain.

I guess that should be "Dixiecrat".

(And my mother is a Southerner so don't construe what I'm saying as being anti-Southern, folks.)

Political parties are all about branding, in both the marketing and stigmatizing senses.

I like your adolescent/grown-up metaphor, pyrrho. Hits the nail on the head.

MI, for me the obstacle in accepting your Cartesian metaphor is in the false* notion that government is responsible for national safety. This notion has (notably recently) replaced the original concept that government is responsible for national defense.

As abstracts, I also don't see how one could substitute government intervention for safety.

Not meaning to rain on your blue sky, but another point there is the tendency to allow cultural norms to have the force of law. One can and should be directly punished for breaking a law. One cannot and must not be similarly punished for "breaking" a cultural norm. The whole point of American justice is to protect the individual. Unless such protection is one of the cultural "norms", we will always have lynch mobs. :-(

* "False" in the sense that my reading of B. Franklin leads me to use.

Franklin Evans - by "voluntary action", I was referring to shunning, harsh words, and the like, not vigilantism. Whether such sanctions are preferable to death, imprisonment, or money extracted at gunpoint is debatable. In my blue-sky scenario, I still figure on having (government-enforced) laws against murder, assault, & other acts that deliberately endanger a person's physical safety. I'm no anarcho-capitalist.

As for my Cartesian metaphor...I was mainly considering physical safety, which can be divided into three areas:

1. Harms caused by parties external to a nation-state (the realm of national defense)

2. Harms deliberately caused by parties within a nation-state (e.g., criminal actions)

3. Harms accidentally caused by parties within a nation-state (i.e., acts arising from negligence)

In the abstract, in any of these cases, it seems to me that an increase in the number or reach of (well-designed) regulations could correlate with a reduction in the incidence & amount of the harm(s) in question; however, by reducing the scope of legally-permissible human actions, such regulations would (obviously) also reduce liberty.

One can also apply this to economic "security", with "harm" being defined as "unexpected loss of assets or income", and infringements on liberty including (say) the dole (funded by taxes extracted via coercion), or restricting employers' ability to terminate employees "at will", or regulations prohibiting individuals from investing in certain risky asset classes. Such programs & regulations may indeed reduce the probability of "economic harm", but at the cost of reducing individuals' liberty.

BTW, by way of clarification...my reference to B. Franklin was mistaken; I was actually thinking of one of Niven's Laws, "The product of freedom and security is a constant". While we're at it, however: Franklin's maxim - "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - is silent on whether restrictions on liberty are _capable_ of increasing safety. It does, however, pass judgment on whether those who trade liberty for safety are _worthy_ of liberty (or safety).

All this discussion about liberty vs. security is wrong. Liberty and security are orthogonal to each other. Increasing or decreasing one rarely has an effect on the other. What's happening is that we've decided to have a completely false idea of what 'security' and 'liberty' are.

The government spying on us only decreases liberty if our 'liberty' requires the government not knowing what we are doing, which only works if the government will punish us for that thing, either within a law that we were breaking, or extralegally. In which case, we didn't actually have that liberty in the first place, we had pretend liberty.

Likewise, there are plenty of measures that decrease actual liberty but only pretend to increase security, like almost everything to do with airplanes right now.

Additionally, decreasing liberty can decrease security, because entire sections of thought get driven underground. Back to airport security...who here would be willing to point out a security flaw at an airport to security personal?

It is not a knob, with security at one end and liberty at the other. It is not a parabolic curve, it is not a tradeoff. You're almost always trading fake security for actual liberty, or actual security for fake liberty, or fake both for each other.

If anyone can think of any security measure that meaningfully makes people safer (Instead of stopping absurd movie-plot threats), but removes your right to do something that legally you can do (as opposed to just letting you get away with stuff that is illegal but society doesn't agree and ignores that law), tell me. I'd like to know.

The closest I can think of would be something like seat-belt and motorcycle helmet laws.

Of course, I think Bob Barr completely misses the point! Huckabee is ahead of the curve as usual.

Compassion does not equal big government. Big government has been used to "fake" compassion. That's the issue. If Conservatism and limited government cannot be presented with authentic compassion then it's not viable and will be pushed aside. The trouble is that you have to deal with what true compassion is. We must care about people, but not necessarily (provide) care "for" them. The government has been on a path for many decades of larger and larger roles in everyday life. I am not in support of that direction, but changes and corrections in course have to be done with thoughtfulness and consideration and yes compassion. It is also compassionate to be considerate and responsible for the futures of our children and grandchildren. It's compassionate to deal with the problem we've created with excess spending and promises in Medicare and the "borrow it" mentality of Social Security and the Baby Boom generation as a whole.

Caring about people includes being good stewards of our economy, our environment and our government. Excessive consumption of goods is NOT a virtue, and yet some talk of it as a right. Our responsibility with freedom is to be good stewards and to care for our fellow man. If Republicans and Conservatives cannot articulate the message in that manner, they will fail and we'll have irresponsible Democrats. Huckabee is right; making a fiscal conservative case without addressing troubles with morality and care for our fellow man is empty and wrong.

The true Conservative case is one of responsibility, good stewardship and conservation of our environment, culture, traditions and our way of life. There is a righteous case to be made for the government to take a path towards responsibility and good stewardship and it's a compassionate case. It takes someone who is genuine and can solve these problems from the positive side. I'm sorry, but no one is going to vote for the Grinch and just taking things away is not a solution. We need to face our troubles head on and compete in the arena of ideas and one of those ideas is based on the principle that Freedom comes with Responsibility. And we care so much about people and our children that we will face these problems head on and deal with them instead of saddling the next generations with unbearable debt and potentially bankruptcy as a nation. A lot of people want to hear the truth from good people who aren't looking at who to blame but how to fix the problem. The blame part is easy; there is a generation plus that only needs to look in the mirror and realize that our collective greed and poor stewardship has left things in a big mess. We now have a country of generally overweight, lazy people with poor health that have few hands on skills that have chased convenience, comfort, security, financial safety, entertainment and efficiency. None of these are actually virtues and they have left society and families in a shambles. Conservatives have to redefine themselves as something virtuous and righteous instead of a hollow arguement of why we should be able to drive our SUV's and live in 4000 sq ft houses.

It does not take a lot of money to "care" about and for people. Just because the Dems have made the fallacy case that "money=care" doesn't mean the Conservatives have to make the same error in reverse. Our country was founded on the principle of the value of each and every human being as special being created by God. Defining Conservatism needs to be done with care and principle and it should have very little to do with materialism. We need to care more and in a real way about the future of our country and our descendants. And that care and love is the kind of care that requires sacrifice, creativity and optimism. It will need real Leadership from many people.

1. Conscription. Depending on the adversary, demand for manpower could necessitate a draft.

That is certainly a valid one, but you'll notice that it's about as likely to happen as a Manned Pluto Mission. The American people know that's an actual reduction of liberty and will only do it if their security is actually at risk, not to traipse around a desert for no logical reason. A draft for a stupid war doesn't increase security.

2. Preventive detention of enemy aliens. I'd wager this probably disrupted at least some espionage/sabotage/propaganda efforts during WWII.

That's trading actual liberty for false security. If malicious people roaming around the US is a security risk, focusing on aliens is sorta stupid. I'm not saying it can't ever be a good idea, I'm just saying that it does not meaningfully increase security.

And, to extent to reduces liberty, it doesn't do it to Americans, so it really can't be a liberty/security trade-off for us.

4. Inspecting every container that comes across our border for NBC weapons.

No, this is what I was talking about. This is only infringing on your liberty if you assume you should have freedom to bring things into the country that are against the law to bring into the country.

You shouldn't be worried if you have nothing to hide, and you'd have nothing to hide if the government wasn't petty and irrational and often malicious. But that is not a problem with security measures that catch the things you have to hide from the government that you shouldn't, that's a problem with fact you're having to hide things from the government in the first place.

You already don't have the liberty, you're just sorta pretending you do. An increase in security that stops things that are already illegal is not trading liberty for security, it's trading 'a society-wide lack of getting caught' for security.

Pretty much anything that can be restated as trading privacy for security is not a 'liberty' issue. If the government, when it violates your privacy, uses the information either to charge you with violations of the law, or uses it extralegally to harm you, those are both problems, but neither of them have a damn thing to do with 'less liberty'.

6. Laws prohibiting private ownership of military weapons (e.g., Stingers, TOWs, Tridents).

Well, yes, along with your freedom to kill people. That really trade liberty for security. But I was talking about actual policy changes that would be referred to as liberty/security trade-off.

I wasn't really talking about the 'Society has rules about harming others that restrict the freedom of people to harm others' fact that actually is that exact trade-off, which humanity made about 8000 years ago.

That's pretty much the definition of 'society'...rules we have to follow that restrict us from being about to harm people, in exchange for the protection of those rules and the enforcement of them against those who harm us.

1. Occupational licensing laws for medical professionals.
2. At least some FDA, NHTSA, EPA, & OSHA regulations.

Specifically, these limit the freedom to harm yourself by taking a cheaper option. You can't purchase tainted beef at half off, you can't see an unlicensed quack as a doctor, and you can't take a job breathing toxins. No matter if you want to or not, even if it saves you money or makes you more money.

Those actually are the exact sort of laws I was thinking about when I posted, but aren't generally considered when people talk about the security/liberty trade-off, even though they, honestly, are the best current examples.

Oh, I almost entirely agree with you, Franklin. There is a trade-off between liberty and security, it does exist in some sense. It's what all of society is built on.

However, 90% of the current policies that supposedly do that either are operating on fake liberty, fake security, or both. This isn't new...arguable the point of the fourth amendment is to enshrine 'fake liberty', as British authorities had been abusing 'writs of assistant', which were essentially permanent search warrants for entire areas.

So, to keep the authorities from abusing such broad warrants, they require specific ones. But the problem wasn't actually the warrant, the problem was the abuse, and the warrants just made said abuse harder. You already had the right not to be abused by the authorities, and you already didn't have the right not to have illegal contraband.

The entire concept of 'search warrants' is a false liberty, although it's been proven over and over to be a needed operating principle of the government or people in charge of enforcing laws will cause more harm than good. But that doesn't make it a 'freedom' per se.

I think society sometimes makes the mistake that 'privacy' is 'liberty', that doing things that aren't approved of by the government or people in the government, without the government knowing, is some sort of inherent freedom. And then have to resort to confusing and stupid arguments that they have the 'right' to break the law when such 'freedoms' are taken away. We might be much better off if the law was enforced perfectly, because then we'd be forced to get rid of such laws. We'd have more security and more freedom.

And for authorities that abuse their power or act in an idiotic fashion? (The entire no-fly list springs to mind again.) That isn't solved by us hiding things from them, that's solved by them being disallowed to hide things from us.

Ironically, the non-total enforcement of laws contributes quite a lot to abuses of power, in the sense the police and government as a whole can enforce the law only against people they don't like.

Random thoughts:

1. Border inspections: I readily concede that inspections, searches, surveillance, etc., are not necessarily infringements of _liberty_ per se. The infringement lies not in the inspection itself, so much as the (hypothetical) requirement that every container submit to inspection. This necessarily implies the illegality of importing uninspected containers.

2. Detention of enemy aliens: I honestly don't know whether this was effective at increasing security during WWII. If it wasn't, I'll agree that such detentions do not fit the paradigm of a security-liberty tradeoff.

3. While I do believe that a tradeoff between liberty & security can exist, I also agree that not every law necessarily increases security (or safety), and that many such laws can be counterproductive in that regard. As I mentioned in one of my 8:39 post, a tradeoff between liberty & security only exists with "well-designed" laws (by which I mean laws that do in fact increase security - not silly security theater like TSA).

4. I agree that privacy & liberty aren't the same thing, even though the former may augment the latter. Brin's "Transparent Society" takes this distinction & runs with it - he envisions a system wherein a _lack_ of privacy actually helps reinforce liberty.

When those claiming to espouse Christian beliefs come crashing down on libertarianism, I like to point out a few things that God himself had to say to us.

"You shall not steal."

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."

Simply put, in a free society like the US, where we the people are indirectly responsible for the amount of taxation laid on others, voting to take from others against their wishes is tantamount to theft. This is not a "give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's," situation because there is no Ceasar. In a free society there is only us. If you wish to assume the role of Ceasar, that is your free will (Which by the way, is the greatest gift God gave us) but search your soul, and see if you believe Ceasar is in heaven.

Christ did not say, "take from others, and be generous with what is not your own." Christ taugh to be generous of yourself. Christ did not say, "force others to act in a way which I find pleaseing." Christ asked us to act in a manner which pleases Him. If God himself is unwilling to force men to act as he desires, how can you belive that he wishes you to?

The United States is not a missionary church, and it should not be treated as one. God warned us not to attempt to make a heaven on earth, instead asking us to work for his glory as individuals.

Just a few thoughts after some prayer and reflection.

Thank you for reading.

"Interestingly, the Greek polis in ancient times appears to have experienced similar problems when the polulation exceeded 5,000. It is usually when they turned autocratic."

I think the 5,000 referred only to free adult male citizens. Probably the total population was closer to 50,000, which Aristotle considered the ideal size for a city.