While we’re on the subject of war, though, isn’t that the elephant in the room here? I mean, I’m not a tenth the social liberal that Will is, nor am I an open borders devotee, etc. etc., but the fact remains that I wouldn’t think of supporting the GOP so long as it remains the party of bloated defense budgets, unapologetic support for the Iraq war, and bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran, not to mention freedom fries, FISA, the PATRIOT Act, torture, and the rest. That’s statism, my friends, and if Jonah Goldberg really can’t see why a committed libertarian might regard such a party as a lost cause to be jettisoned in favor of an admittedly unattractive other, then he clearly needs to think things through again.
Will Wilkinson
The Sweet Release of Reason
And perhaps it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. It's not just the specific statist manifiestations of the current war on terra that libertarians object to, but to the dynamic involved: the pychology of the national security state softens resistance to a whole host of pernicious state interventions, many of which are not even ostensibly related to the alleged foreign threeat(s), as well as empowering non-state institutions which have a vested interest in the continuation of the national security state.
Or, stated even more simply, historicly most (not all) great expansions of state power have followed periods of real or imagined external or internal “security” threats to the state.
Does anyone else have to stifle a giggle when they read the phrase “committed libertarian”?
I think the torture and surveillance state points are genuine blind spots for Jonah and perhaps other opponents of the liberaltarian idea; they make conservative-libertarian alliance in the present circumstances more problematic than Jonah is willing to recognize. However, the freedom fries point seems to suggest that at least some of the libertarian hostility is cultural prejudice rather than policy disagreement.
All of us, even committed libertarians, agree that keeping the country safe from military threats is a necessary government function. Fulfilling that function costs whatever it costs. Of course we can (and did) debate whether invading Iraq or Afghanistan had anything to do with being safe. After the debate, we voted and Congress authorized both adventures. Now we have a Democratic President and Congress who will, unless I miss my guess, (1) maintain military budgets not much smaller then W's, (2) keep over 1000,000 troops in Iraq beyond May of 2010, and (3) escalate, not wind down, the military involvement in Afghanistan. The current President, as Senator, voted for the latest incarnation of the Patriot Act. It seems to me that the D politicians are no more serious about curbing military statism than Bush was about curbing domestic statism.
Jonah has written thoughtfully about torture. the fact that folks disagree with him about water borading does not constitute proof that he has a blind spot.
If we are going to have police and soldiers, we are going to have state agents inflicting pain and sometimes even death on our fellow humans, to vindicate the preferences of the majority who voted for the application of state power. The rest is just details.
My point on the blind spot is that Jonah doesn't realize the extent to which, for an opponent, torture constitutes a reason to oppose the GOP. I think that issue and Bush's executive power doctrines have probably driven libertarian-inclined voters away from Republicans, despite the fact that drug legalization is, for the reasons Jonah cites, a secondary priority for many of us.
If one shares Mark G's evidently Hobbesian theory of state power (the state is limited in its ends but unlimited in its means) then much of what Bush did is not a problem. However, for libertarians who trace their ideas to Locke or some idea of natural law, and to Madisonian Constitutional theory, this is problematic, and not just a matter of details. Government upholding the right to life by punishing crime, proportionally and under law, or engaging in just war, is for us very different from government acting on the principle of necessity.
Jonah is worried that libertarians have abandoned Locke for Rousseau, but he's forgotten about Hobbes.
RE: Freedom Fries
Sure, I'd say there is some cultural prejudice at work here, although calling it prejudice makes it sound insignificant and illegitimate. The culture of knee-jerk jingoism and nativism that gave us freedom fries results in real policy disagreements in practice. For instance, I don't see many conservatives up in arms about the punitive Roquefort cheese tariff. There are probably cultural reasons for that and it has resulted in terrible policy.
If water boarding some terrorist (and I truly believe that this is a last resort and not used on every prisoner) will save lives, I am all for it. If intercepting and listening in on every call made between the Middle East and the U.S. does the same I also applaud it.
I care not for the rights of those who want us all dead.
If water boarding some terrorist (and I truly believe that this is a last resort and not used on every prisoner) will save lives, I am all for it. If intercepting and listening in on every call made between the Middle East and the U.S. does the same I also applaud it.
I care not for the rights of those who want us all dead.
You don't have to care about the rights of terrorists to oppose those policies. Caring for your own rights is sufficient.
> The rest is just details.
So the third world junta and the Jeffersonian representative democracy inhabit a semi-differentiated lumpy mass?
The ability to make morally vacuous statements does not obligate anyone to withhold disgust.
Aaron — Sorry if I misunderstood you. Though I suspect Jonah's in-box gives him a really good sense of how many people are bothered by his views
I'm not smart enough to tell you whether I am a Hobbesian or Lockean. Probably neither strictly speaking. If I gave the impression that I think the State should have broad power to trample on individuals for the common good, or that the Bill of Rights is anything but crucial, I have miscommunicated. I favor limited government intrusion on the liberties of citizens. I think that the President's powers are limited by the powers the Constitution grants to congress and the judiciary, but I think that cuts both ways: congress does not get to subjugate the President either.
When I said “the rest is details,” I meant only to confront what I perceive as a too-glib demonization of the last administration as a bunch of barbarians. Orwell (no Bushie he) said it better than I did: “Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
As I explained below, I did not all mean to say there are no moral distinctions to be made. My only point is that anyone who favors our current set-up — armed agents acting at the behest of the democratic majority — has to that extent supported state infliction of pain an death on others, and for that reason should not talk as if there are no gray areas or hard cases. I mean to argue in favor of making moral distinctions, not against it. Obviously I expressed myself poorly.
But, but, but…hope and change! If you repeat if often enough, you will believe!
Will, have another Free Will with Jonah. I would really like to better understand where you guys agree and disagree. I thought he made some pretty good points about the idea that libertarians and liberals actually see eye to eye on most social issues.
I have to wonder if this isn't a generational thing.
Libertarians who came of political age in the last 15 years have had their views shaped by the abuses of a Republican government. The latter half of the Clinton administration made liberalism look better than it is because his choices were largely constrained by having to work with a Republican legislature. So the Democrats looked fairly benign, but the Republicans have been spendthrift, overly focused on social issues, and have implemented policies that rub Libertarians the wrong way.
The liberals, being out of power, were acting mainly to oppose these things, and therefore willingly made common cause with the new Libertarians where they could. They claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. For people with no experience of being governed by them, they sound pretty good.
However, those of us who were around in the 70's have seen liberalism when it has had power, and we don't like it. We grew up when Ronald Reagan was telling us that government is the problem, not the solution. We remember when the 'progressives' of the day were apologists for the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other brutal collectivist states. We remember Hillarycare, and 'it takes a village', and we went to college during a time when progressives controlled the culture and professors were even more left-leaning than they are today.
Now the liberals are back in power, and you're about to get a full taste of just how freedom-loving they are. In the first month of Obama's Presidency, he has already racked up the equivalent of several years of the Bush's administration's deficits. The Fairness Doctrine is making a comeback. Obama has already quietly canceled the White House's review of new regulatory policies. Having just signed this stimulus, he's already campaigning for another 75 billion dollars. And we're just getting started.
Let's see after four years of this whether the libertarians still consider themselves ideologically aligned with the liberals. I notice that Reason magazine has already responded to their wakeup call, and the liberal tilt it was starting to take has almost completely vanished. No one there wants to admit to supporting Obama anymore.
I basically agree with Dan H. (for the record, I was born in 1984.) Or, rather, I'd say there's Rothbardian libertarians who formed the LP in the Age of Nixon and inspired the early Cato Institute; there's the more establishment and Republican-friendly libertarianism informed by the Reagan and Gingrich years, and the HillaryCare battles; and today's libertarians who cannot see Bush as an ally and assume that the late Clinton years show that the Left is no longer very dangerous to private enterprise.
A favorite quote of mine comes (supposedly) from the late Illinois Republican Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen:
“A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.”
Amazingly, the quote is 40+ years old.
A favorite quote of mine comes (supposedly) from the late Illinois Republican Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen:
“A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.”
Amazingly, the quote is 40+ years old.
Larison has been pointing it out for a long time. When Republicans ask how they can get back in the voters' good graces they suggest a number of things to change (generally following the Dougherty's Doctrine), but never militarism. Consider the reception Ron Paul, arguably the most right-wing candidate, got from party faithful when he was running. To dissent on war made him ipso facto a far-leftist in their eyes.
Here's another thing that people are about to re-discover: liberals are not anti-war. They are anti-Republican-war. When liberals run the show, they've got no problem wielding military force. Kennedy started the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, and Johnson escalated it. Bill Clinton sent the U.S. military on many foreign adventures, bombed Iraq and the Sudan, and when the Democrats held power people like John Kerry and Al Gore were calling for regime change in Iraq.
Or as a Clinton staffer said to a left-wing activist who complained about the flight of military jets when Clinton was inaugurated: “Those are our jets now.”
Note that Obama just signed an order sending 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan.
Nobody's bombed Iran, though. Those evil Republicans were all about… talking to the Iranians.
Freedom Fries were not, as far as I remember, either named or endorsed by the GOP – they were one guy's stupid idea.
(I'm also with Dan H. – while the GOP are hardly libertarians, I continue to think they're still significantly the lesser evil to liberty, as the two parties stand at this moment.
Believing that the Democrats are somehow against the things in the quote listed*, rather than against them when it's a Republican doing them seems to be unsupported by the history of the 90s.
* Except for defense budgets; the only Democratic presidency of the past almost-30 years, except for the one that just started, did in fact slash defense considerably. But it also had the excellent excuse of the cold war ending.)
Do you favor the kind of isolationism advocated by the Republicans in the 1930's? If not, it seems to me the issue is not “militarism,” but merely a debate over the details of a (fundamentally agreed) policy of making the larger world conform to our preferences. As we maintain lots of troops in Iraq and the coffins continue to come home from Afghanistan over the next four years, with the light still farther down the tunnel, I think it will be increasingly difficult to distinguish between the parties on the issue of “militarism.”
Freedom Fries were, actually, the idea of one particular Republican Congressman– Walter Jones (R-NC), who became one of the first Republicans to noisily oppose the war as well. (He represents the prickly backwoods mountain areas of NC, who have been Republicans for forever because they hated the state government and going off to fight for the wealthy city folk who owned slaves and disliked the revenuers. Libertarianish peopple.)
I'd have to be convinced that the Democrats are actually an alternative on those issues. I don't regard waterboarding as worse than what goes on daily in Supermax prisons (like ADX Florence in Colorado or in Fort Leavenworth), so if the idea is “we won't keep them in Guantanamo, we'll move them to Supermax or to “temporary” overseas prisons), who cares?
The Obama Administration position on rendition and indefinite detention is the same as the Bush Administration's, just with a promise to use it more reliably.
I guess we'll see if the omnibus spending bill actually has any defense spending cuts. Clinton did cut defense considerably– and a Republican Congress went along with it. (Did anyone seriously think that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey couldn't have started a budget crisis (and won) by insisting on more military spending? And yet they didn't, despite it being a putatively winning issue.)
I would be nice for there to be a more libertarian alternative. But as far as I can tell, libertarians ran away from the Republicans precisely when the Democrats offered little more than vague promises at best.
They also ran away from a Republican contender who had voted against the worst Republican excesses, including torture, the farm bill both times, both energy bills, the prescription drug benefit, etc., all because of “temperament.” I struggle to understand why voting for someone who you'd rather have dinner with rather than because of policy (just like how most people vote anyway, sadly) is particularly “rational.”
In case my last is too subtle — I am supposing that an isolationist candidate would be doing well to get 30% of the popular vote. (I could be wrong; if folks get sick enough of Afghanistan, maybe a majority will convert to “America First,” and let Russia, China and Iran expand their spheres of hegemony unmolested for a while.)
For now, it seems to me that the prescription for R's in not “eschew militarism,” but “don't wage wars that most voters consider needless and mismanaged.”
I actually wrote a post entitled What was so bad about Charles Lindbergh?
Guess that answers my question!
It really is fascinating to speculate what life would have been like if we had sat out the world wars, and put “American First.” Probably no Israel. If we let Europe, Korea, Japan to fend for themselves with nasty hegemonies the world — and our place in it — would have been worse in a variety of ways; but enough worse to justify the numbers of our servicemen killed in action the last 100 years? Of course the dirty secret is that by 1941 there were political advantages to FDR gearing up for war: full employment, economic recovery, and a populace focused on a foreign enemy instead of his mistakes. (I hasten to add, my tentative view is that FDR was at bottom well intentioned, and in fact played the hand dealt him suberbly.)
Oh, and to answer the question “what's wrong with isolationism,” — our electorate has the emotional maturity of a 16 year old. When some foreign malefactor hurts us, any politician who hesitates to punish him militarily is a wimp, and not taking action to keep us safe. Imagine a congressman arguing against the invasion of Afghanistan after 9-11.
Guess that answers my question!
It really is fascinating to speculate what life would have been like if we had sat out the world wars, and put “American First.” Probably no Israel. If we let Europe, Korea, Japan to fend for themselves with nasty hegemonies the world — and our place in it — would have been worse in a variety of ways; but enough worse to justify the numbers of our servicemen killed in action the last 100 years? Of course the dirty secret is that by 1941 there were political advantages to FDR gearing up for war: full employment, economic recovery, and a populace focused on a foreign enemy instead of his mistakes. (I hasten to add, my tentative view is that FDR was at bottom well intentioned, and in fact played the hand dealt him suberbly.)
Oh, and to answer the question “what's wrong with isolationism,” — our electorate has the emotional maturity of a 16 year old. When some foreign malefactor hurts us, any politician who hesitates to punish him militarily is a wimp, and not taking action to keep us safe. Imagine a congressman arguing against the invasion of Afghanistan after 9-11.