All in the Family

In an Opinion Journal piece reprinted from Commentary, Kay Hymowitz offers a notable exercise in conservative critique of libertarianism. It's timely: as Hymowitz herself observes, with the growth of the internet as a political medium (and for a number of other reasons), the libertarian voice in conservative discourse is more prominent now than it has been in quite some time.

In her review of two new books by prominent libertarians (Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty, and The Age of Abundance by Cato's Brink Lindsey), Hymowitz, unsurprisingly, does not take particular issue with the authors' economic analysis. I've added Lindsey's book to my long list and will discuss its economic aspects in more detail when I get to it (it may be a while), but the most interesting part of Hymowitz's review is her focus on "the cultural contradictions of libertarianism."

Hymowitz writes:

Despite Mr. Lindsey's protestations to the contrary, libertarianism has supported, always implicitly and often with an enthusiastic hurrah, the "Aquarian" excesses that he now decries. Many of the movement's devotees were deeply involved in the radicalism of the 1960s.

Nor should this come as a surprise. After all, the libertarian vision of personal morality--described by Mr. Doherty as "People ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else"--is not far removed from "if it feels good, do it," the cri de coeur of the Aquarians. To be sure, part of the libertarian entanglement with the radicalism of the 1960s stemmed from the movement's opposition to both the Vietnam War and the draft, which Milton Friedman likened to slavery. But libertarians were also drawn to the left's revolutionary social posture.

But of course this simply isn't true. There's a universe of difference between "do what you will so long as you cause no harm to others," and "if it feels good, do it." It seems that the failure to understand this difference is what defines a social conservative, and this is why liberals (including, in this case, libertarians) have such mistrust for conservatives: those who cannot recognize such boundaries cannot be trusted either as moral agents on their own, nor as the guardians of others' morality.

Hymowitz makes much of libertarians' supposed disdain for the family, and in so doing she falls back on standard fusionist logic to argue that they ought to make preservation of the traditional family a priority:

On the one hand, libertarians make a fetish of freedom; it is their totalizing goal. On the other hand, libertarians depend on the family--an institution that, in crucial respects, is unfree--to produce the sort of people best suited to life in a free-market system (not to mention future members of their own movement). The complex, dynamic economy that libertarians have done so much to expand needs highly advanced human capital--that is, individuals of great moral, cognitive and emotional sophistication. Reams of social-science research prove that these qualities are best produced in traditional families with married parents.

Family breakdown, by contrast, limits the accumulation of such human capital. Worse, divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing leave the door wide open for big government. Dysfunctional families create an increased demand for state-funded food, housing and medical subsidies, which libertarians reject on principle. And in courts all over the country, judges who preside over the manifold disputes occasioned by broken families are forced to be more intrusive than the worst mother-in-law: They decide who should have primary custody, who gets a child on Christmas or summer holidays, whether a child should take piano lessons, go to Hebrew school, move to California, or speak to her grandmother on the phone. It is a libertarian's worst nightmare.

Hymowitz disputes Lindsey's assertion that "the instincts and abilities for liberty . . . are innate," arguing that such attributes can only be instilled in children who are properly raised by proper families.

All of this concern for the family is interesting, if slightly nauseating, coming from a party whose leaders are currently engaged in stripping health care away from children. Conservatives worry about what libertarians would do to families not in a material sense, of course, but in a spiritual one. The American Scene's Peter Suderman offers a libertarian rebuttal:

Few libertarians, I suspect, would argue that strong traditional family structures are a bad thing. In fact, I’d bet that the vast majority of them would be perfectly pleased to find families doing well. But I think a number of them would resist the idea that, somehow, there’s a social obligation to perpetuate the traditional family structure, and most would also argue that other forms of social arrangements are worth allowing, and might even prove fruitful. This stance might be less supportive of deploying government muscle in order to advance one's personal preferences than some would like, but it's hardly anti-family.

Suderman helpfully points out that the old fusionist equation -- "when families fail, government steps in" -- does not express the only government threat to the family; another is presented by the overbearing efforts of conservatives to ensure that everyone's family is socially correct.

Daniel Larison's response to both pieces constitutes a far more interesting social conservative engagement with libertarian theory than Hymowitz's article. Larison suggests that the real threat libertarianism presents to the family is in its tolerance of the displacements caused by capitalism and unbridled immigration; at the same time, he takes issue with the way that "families" are privileged within the internal conservative debate:

In fairness to the libertarians, labels such as pro-family and anti-family are absurd in a way. There are significant social and political consequences that result from legal and property arrangements that bind large, extended families together or from those that encourage the break-up of a household into many separate households. A public authority worried about the dangers of corruption, nepotism and civil strife created by extended family networks would implement laws to discourage that kind of family life, which might earn it the "anti-family" designation from those adversely affected by the change, while a booster of state authority might define it as a pro-family measure if he redefines what family is. Public authority has a vested interest in governing what kinds of families exist, because the different forms of families have consequences for social and political life that extend beyond the walls of the family home.

The point is that every act of legal recognition, permission or reinforcement of this or that social arrangement is equally "artificial" in one sense, and the decision to not privilege one form over another is a decision by default to support the emergence of alternative forms.

Larison recognizes one of the fundamental flaws of libertarian theory in general: there is no such thing as public neutrality on most issues. For Larison, the important question is "whether there are certain kinds of family life that are most conducive to human flourishing" -- as a genuine social conservative, he believes that the argument is unavoidable and worth having, and if we've come to an agreement, then the question is how to get government to encourage the best kind of family life.

Liberals, of course, apply the same critique to libertarian economic theory: the idea that government can avoid substantive engagement in the economy is simply nonsense. Even when it refuses to choose, it thereby tacitly makes a choice in someone's favor. And in a certain sense, we agree with Larison on the fact that government is inevitably involved in social matters as well. But "do as you will but cause no harm to others," properly understood, has very different consequences in economics than in the purely social sphere.

I still believe that, despite the optimism of the current crop of libertarians, they'll never really challenge the social conservatives for dominance on the right -- though I should note that by "social conservatives" I don't mean Christian fundamentalists per se; the latter are just a subset of the former, and their political import is likely to change significantly over the coming years. But at any rate, if the libertarians force social conservatives to more critically examine their assumptions about ideal social order, they will have done us all a favor.

Labels: Daniel Larison, Kay Hymowitz, libertarians, Peter Suderman, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:31 PM 9 comments

  Is It All About the Lindens?

Every so often in the modern era somebody crops up with a loopy, poorly-considered manifesto about how this technological development or that cyber-whatsit proves the case for libertarianism. Twelve years ago it was the "Californian ideology" of Wired and Mondo 2000 and other bright and ignorant young tech geeks; lately Newt Gingrich has been carrying the standard for those unable to grasp the relationship between technology, public investment, and the real world.

Now comes Michael Gerson, who writes that Second Life is "a large-scale experiment in libertarianism." Gerson, a social conservative, is not out to argue that the experiment is a success, but it got me thinking.

You may or may not be into SL. I had fun, for about a week, running around with my avatar ("Cosmo Mills," which I thought was a decent name for a character in a manufactured universe) looking at all the neat stuff and pretending to have a soul patch and a jacket made of shag carpeting. That was about as far as it went for me, but I can understand why people like it, especially when they get involved in what is, undeniably, a working economy of the game. But Gerson seems to buy the claims that it's somehow relevant to actual political economy:

Instead of showing the guiding hand of an author, this universe is created by the choices of its participants, or "residents." They can build, buy, trade and talk in a world entirely without rules or laws; a pure market where choice and consumption are the highest values.

Now, Gerson is actually using SL to criticize libertarianism, arguing that the game reveals the bankruptcy of a world without "moral rules" or "social obligations" or negative consequences to bad choices (thus resulting in too much random sex and consumerism). (Ramesh Ponnuru points out a flaw in Gerson's logic.)

At any rate, I've seen this claim before, from SL enthusiasts: that the game is somehow one big exercise in libertarianism, a "pure market" as Gerson calls it. Do people really believe that a "pure market" consists of a world in which there is no need for food or shelter or medicine, no scarcity at all beyond an economy of status items?

Labels: libertarians, Michael Gerson, Second Life

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:33 AM 3 comments

  The Enduring Appeal of the Reactionaries

Last seen proposing a grand alliance between liberals and libertarians (I explained why I think that would be a bad idea here), Cato's Brink Lindsey resurfaced last week to try his hand with the conservatives, taking to the pages of the National Review to offer advice from a "well-wishing outsider." It won't shock you that Lindsey's advice to the right is much like his appeal to the left: an invitation to think like libertarians do.

Lindsey proposes that conservatives set aside their "traditionalist" objections to things like gay marriage and Mexican immigration, commenting that "much of what has defined modern social conservatism — namely, political resistance to the incessant cultural change engendered by economic development — is not authentically conservative at all. It is reactionary." Social conservatism assumes a fragility to American culture that is not borne out by the evidence; more importantly, it's on the wrong side of history, in a sort of historical-materialist sense.

Naturally we progressives will be more enamored of his arguments when he is directing them against the assumptions of social conservatism, though Lindsey is careful to frame his case in a way that flatters the traditionalist preoccupations of decades past -- even as he rightly condemns the right's record of getting it wrong on things like civil rights and the entry of women into the workforce. He puts it this way:

The culture wars are over, and capitalism won. The question now is: Will the Left or the Right be the first to figure this out? The answer may well determine the future balance of political power.

Lindsey surveys post-war American history on a broad level, arguing that we have arrived at this juncture after mid-20th century prosperity first unleashed a tidal wave of cultural change:

As the post-war boom took off, however, the unprecedented development of technology and organization made America the first society in human history in which most people could take satisfaction of their basic material needs more or less for granted.

The story of post-war America is thus the story of adaptation to fundamentally new social realities, particularly mass affluence. Time-honored practices that had developed during the long reign of scarcity were now in need of serious revision or even wholesale abandonment. At the same time, new values and priorities began to assert themselves. Wrenching cultural conflict was unavoidable.

In Lindsey's telling, the prosperity brought by unfettered capitalism triggered cultural changes both positive -- feminism, sexual liberation, the end of legal segregation -- and negative. On the negative side, Lindsey describes "a radical assault on all traditions, all authority, and all constraints" -- a sort of general "Aquarian" madness (I wasn't around at the time, but reading the right's literature I imagine that a typical day in, say, 1971 probably involved packs of cannibalistic hippies raiding churches and boiling peyote in the hollowed-out skulls of former Mouseketeers. But I digress.). Social conservatives, he says, were right to push back against the chaos and crime thus unleashed, but now, in saner times, they have reached a crossroads:

The fundamental question for conservatives today is: What should they be seeking to conserve? The great American heritage of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets seems the only viable answer. As Peter Berkowitz has frequently and wisely noted, a truly American conservatism must have at the core of its concerns the defense and preservation of the liberal tradition. Which makes it a special kind of conservatism indeed: Its function is not to arrest change generally, or even slow it down, but rather to preserve the institutions that are both the chief source of change and the primary means through which we adapt to new conditions.

One obvious flaw in Lindsey's narrative is that he, a committed libertarian, ignores the important role of government investment and social insurance in fueling that post-war boom and widening the scope of its public benefits. But for the purposes of a debate with social conservatives, another problem stands out. Lindsey argues that they, clinging to their traditionalist views, are at odds with the march of history. Yet, as Ramesh Ponnuru points out in a rebuttal, Linsdey has also said that traditionalists were right to resist that march in certain ways at certain times. In that case, each social conservative argument must be judged on its merits; you can't simply dismiss them all with the proposition that, if we take care of capitalism, capitalism will take care of the rest. Ponnuru, in a sur-reply, writes:

[A]nyone who has taken up a social-conservative cause or two, or declines to sign on to all of Lindsey’s arguments, is supposed to don sackcloth and ashes and take historical responsibility for other conservatives’ having been segregationists. (Speaking for myself: No thanks.) The demand makes sense if all social conservative causes are the same, impermissibly reactionary thing, except when they happen to further “the logic of social development under capitalism,” whatever that means.

Ponnuru acknowledges, and I agree, that Lindsey is correct in pointing out that material forces, not just ideas, move history. As Ponnuru puts it, "Feminism didn’t happen when it did just because Betty Friedan wrote a book, which is why anti-feminist books can’t undo it."

Lest I sound too much like a defender of the traditionalists, let me add that we needn't simply let Ponnuru and his compatriots wiggle out from under the historical burden of social conservatives' many serious mistakes -- nor should we allow them to pretend that their arguments really do always resonate on their philosophical merits, when we all know perfectly well that naked bigotry provides much of their constituency. Whether or not Ponnuru wants to accept it, when we judge social conservative arguments on gay marriage, we can and must consider the precedents and legacy of their positions on civil rights and the role of women in society. For that matter, the record shows that a considerable number of the very same social conservatives leading the reactionary charge today still haven't abandoned the racism and sexism of the previous era. Ponnuru doesn't have to wear the sackcloth, but that doesn't mean his movement won't be judged by its own historical sins.

Ultimately, the negotations break down, with Ponnuru dismissing Lindsey's views as marginal -- just as Jonathan Chait did from a liberal perspective. The debate will be between the Ponnurus and the Chaits. I do believe that the traditionalists will continue to lose -- as they always do -- and they will lose in part because capitalism and other large-scale forces will continue to undermine the appeal of their prejudices. But I don't think they'll disappear, or that the right will limit itself to a simple defense of "classical liberalism." The social disruption and insecurity wrought by capitalism's "creative destruction" (to use a favorite libertarian term) mitigate against such reductionist politics. Social conservatism may be reactionary -- a misguided response to those dislocations -- but it's not going away.

Labels: Brink Lindsey, conservative futures, libertarians, Ramesh Ponnuru, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:24 AM 4 comments

  Marriage Counseling

A number of my recent posts have related to the strained marriage between Republicans and libertarians. I haven't yet commented on discussions about a liberal-libertarian alliance. I'm skeptical about such discussions, I have to admit, in part because I'm not sure that negotiating with self-identified libertarian intellectuals of the Cato Institute variety is the same thing as negotiating with so-called "libertarian" voters. The latter, I think, are a rather more complicated group, to the extent that they are a group at all.

The way I see it, libertarian thought is quite mainstream on matters of civil liberties, but, when followed to its logical conclusions, not very mainstream at all regarding its views on government. But then, I guess that's what makes me a liberal.

Anyway, here's a dose of skepticism from the other side, by a libertarian who just doesn't think a fling with the left would be a very good idea:

Why not, instead, follow Brink Lindsey's suggestion and try to forge a common bond between libertarians and liberals?

Briefly, my answer boils down to two points.

1) The Republican base is more naturally favorable toward limited government than is the Democratic base.

2) I find it a challenge trying to persuade religious conservatives to loosen the relationship between their religious beliefs and their political agenda. However, I find it even more of a challenge to deal with the Left, where their political agenda is their religion.

[...]

The typical libertarian shorthand is that we are with the Democrats on social issues and with the Republicans on economic issues. In recent years, the Republicans betrayed us on economic issues. However, my sense is that many in the conservative movement are anxious to repent. On foreign policy, I think that we can gradually persuade more of them to come to their senses on the challenges of the Natural State.

Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be completely dug in to hard-left positions on economics. They lack any vision for foreign policy. I think we should stick with our marriage to conservatives, and try to make it work.

Again, I'm not sure that whatever the intellectuals decide to do will necessarily have a tremendous impact on the "libertarian vote." But maybe I don't give political theorists enough credit.

Labels: Cato Institute, libertarians, TCS Daily

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:14 PM 0 comments

  Right-Wing Think Tank Review - 2/6/07

Cato Institute (Sourcewatch profile here)

"Libertarian Voters in 2004 and 2006" (Cato Policy Report: Jan/Feb 2007)

Article by David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, and David Kirby, executive director of America's Future Foundation.

Boaz and Kirby use poll data to show that the 2004 and 2006 elections have found "libertarian-leaning voters" moving increasingly into the Democratic column. While it's generally understood that Republicans lost heavily among independents in 2006, the authors seek to show that libertarians "may be the largest bloc of such independent-minded swing voters." If this is the case, if "libertarians are a bigger share of the electorate than the much-discussed 'soccer moms' or 'NASCAR dads,'" and if their votes are up for grabs, then parties should seek to address specifically libertarian concerns in order to win elections.

However, the article, in my analysis, is not entirely convincing on two important - and related - levels:

1. Defining "libertarian voters," and


2. Determining what motivated these voters in '04 and '06.

The authors report that they have selected questions from a number of polls about American political attitudes, arriving at results that suggest that about 14% of American voters can be "classified as libertarians." However, they do not disclose specifically what those questions are. They also rely on data from a poll they themselves commissioned from Zogby International, which identifies 15% of voters as "libertarian," but they don't provide or link to the full results of this poll (For more on questions regarding Zogby's special-interest polls, and specifically those commissioned by Cato, see this Chris Mooney article from the American Prospect).

Boaz and Kirby report that, in 2004, "the libertarian vote for Bush dropped from 72 to 59 percent, while the libertarian vote for the Democratic nominee almost doubled." They continue:

It’s not hard to imagine why. Bush’s record on federal spending, centralization of education, expansion of entitlements, the war in Iraq, executive authority, the federal marriage amendment, and civil liberties was certainly sufficient to dissuade many libertarian voters.

This, however, fails to distinguish among these potential motives, providing no indication of whether "libertarian" voters were more displeased by the war in Iraq or by "centralization of education."

The trend continued in 2006:

After two more years of war, wiretapping, and welfare-state social spending, we found similar patterns in 2006. In the Zogby survey, 59 percent of libertarians voted for Republican candidates for Congress, and 36 percent voted for Democrats. Comparing those results to the last off-year election in 2002, we find a 24 percentage point swing to the Democrats.

An interesting note: as measured by Boaz and Kirby, "The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large."

The authors' Zogby poll apparently does provide a breakdown of these voters' motivations in 2006:

Libertarians who said the war in Iraq was the most important issue voted 64-31 for Democratic congressional candidates. Libertarians who stuck with Republican candidates were most likely to describe terrorism or security as the most important issue. Libertarians for whom federal spending was the most important issue were most likely to vote for third-party candidates: 39 percent Democratic, 38 percent Republican, 22 percent other.

Once again, however, the authors do not provide the raw numbers. How many of those libertarians said the war in Iraq was the most important issue? How many cited federal spending? Of course, those numbers, representing the opinions of 15% of respondents to a poll of 1,012 voters, would be subject to a margin of error of roughly 10%. Based on the information Boaz and Kirby provide, it's difficult to extrapolate that there is a significant swing vote motivated directly by opposition to "welfare-state social spending." To be fair, the authors mostly avoid making any claims that would privilege economic motives over others. But we should be cautious about rushing to assume that, if libertarian voters are swinging elections, politicians should therefore make it a priority to focus their attacks on entitlements. Indeed, for instance, one of the surveys cited by the authors, the 2004 Pew Values poll, indicated a sharp drop in anti-government sentiment since 1994, and a corresponding rise in public support for the idea of a social safety net.

And who are those libertarian voters, anyway? Again, the authors are appropriately cautious:

Certainly we are not claiming that 15 percent of American voters have the deep and well-informed commitment to liberty and limited constitutional government of Cato Sponsors or Reason magazine readers. Rather, we include both individuals who would self-identify as libertarian and individuals who hold generally libertarian views but may be unfamiliar with the word.

The authors recognize the limits of ideological self-identification polls, which are in my view the least useful measure of public political attitudes. Of course, it behooves them to recognize this, as "only 9 percent of voters with libertarian views identify themselves that way."

Thus, they ask an additional question:

We asked half the sample, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?” We asked the other half of the respondents, “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian?”

The problem is that this question also relies on self-identification, only at another level. It's still left to the respondent to interpret the meaning of "liberal" and "conservative." And this allows for a tremendously broad interpretation: no wonder that 59% of respondents answered "yes" to the first question. "Fiscally conservative and socially liberal" is a phrase that has frequently been used to describe Howard Dean - and many of the "Deaniacs" who were lampooned as wacky leftists; it could also apply to many, if not most, of the posters at Daily Kos - including Markos himself.

The authors themselves admit that this number is "overinclusive," though they find it "encouraging." I am still unclear as to how they then arrived at the 15% figure - I couldn't find where they had reported any further screening questions. Boaz and Kirby provide some interesting indications that the libertarian constituency, such as it is, may increasingly operate as a swing vote. But the who, why, and how much of this story remains far from clear.


Heritage Foundation (Sourcewatch profile here)

"Bush Budget Reins in Entitlement Costs" (WebMemo no. 1341, 2/5/07)

Article by Brian M. Riedl, "Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Insitute for Economic Policy Studes at the Heritage Foundation."

Riedl praises the president's budget for its "focus on entitlements."

The impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers will trigger a $39 trillion tsunami of unfunded entitlement costs over the next 75 years.[1] The good news for the younger Americans who will pick up this tab for retiring baby boomers is that President Bush's budget begins to seriously address this challenge by proposing real reforms that could slice $8 trillion from Medicare's total unfunded liability.

Specifically, Riedl is pleased with the proposal to require wealthy retirees to pay higher premiums, as well as to modify the "market basket" of Medicare payment plans, so as to pay less money to doctors and hospitals over time. However, he indicates that Medicare is still fundamentally flawed from a conservative perspective, arguing, as many conservatives do, in favor of a "defined contribution" scheme that would de-collectivize it.

Riedl also defends Bush's request to extend his notorious tax cuts:

By increasing incentives to work, save, and invest, reduced tax rates played a key role in the expanding business investment, job growth, and the stock market gains that have powered recent years' economic growth.

(By contrast, this article suggests that the tax cuts have not resulted in increased business investment or in higher wages for American workers.)

The article also further indicates how the right will frame the battle over extension of the tax cuts: as a fight over a tax increase:

Letting the tax cuts expire--or worse, repealing them--would be a major tax increase for millions of Americans. [...]

The federal budget's problems do not stem from Americans being undertaxed, but rather from Washington spending too much. In order to prevent one of the largest tax increases in American history, Congress should follow the President's lead by extending the current tax policies.

Of course, when they were proposed, the cuts were only supposed to be temporary - so one could argue that it was Bush himself who "planned" this massive tax "increase."

As for who this "increase" will primarily affect, see this study.

Labels: Brian Riedl, Budget, Cato Institute, David Boaz, David Kirby, electoral politics, Heritage Foundation, libertarians, Right Wing Think Tank Review

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:03 AM 2 comments