Category Archives: Liberalism

Hey, I'm a Statist!

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I’ll try to respond at length to Jonah tomorrow. But a couple thoughts. Again, I’m not the one who’s trying to talk about partisan coalition politics. Its not my main interest, and it’s not my comparative advantage. I’m trying to show how attractive classical liberalism can be once it is scoured of the conservative barnacles of the now irrelevant Cold War alliance and once it begins to take seriously (rather than just ignore) the powerful arguments of the best contemporary liberal thought.

I think maybe one of our main issues is that Jonah seems to think actually-existing-politically-relevant conservativism is in some sense “anti-statist,” and that’s why libertarians ought to like that kind of conservative. (Jonah: “If the right ever loses its anti-statism, we will have a race-to-the-bottom between two statist parties, one cosmopolitan and socialistic one nativistic and nationalistic.”) I have some questions about what the anti-statism of “the right” amounts to. But, hey, I’m not an anti-statist! I’m statist! Lots of libertarians are! So maybe statism isn’t ipso facto socialism? Like James Madison, for example, I want a state, I want its power constitutionally limited, and I want it democratically governed. I am a proponent of free-market liberal democracy — like Hayek, Friedman, Buchanan, and I’d guess a whole lot of market-loving economists. I accept the public goods justification for the state, more or less. I accept that regulations which correctly price negative externalities tend to make everyone better off, and are worth doing. I am morally and methodologically anti-nationalist–which is more unusual–but that’s not anti-statism. I don’t mind the fact of country-sized public goods jurisdictions, nor do I mind tax-financing of genuine public goods by more or less legitimate states. I just wish national jurisdictional boundaries should better respect basic liberties by being more porous. Nor do I mind the tax-financing of education or welfare programs that actually help members of a polity to develop the capacity and ability to meaningfully exercise their rights and liberties. I am a liberal! “Rawlsekianism” is a ridiculous word, but I actually think a certain fusion of the best of 20th Century classical/market liberalism and welfare liberalism is the best political philosophy. I also think it may be possible to persuade many other people of this, and that they will find it attractive. In my experience, the people open to this view are already relatively liberal, in the usual sense, and tend to favor Democrats. That’s fine by me. 

But I do have some admittedly amateur thoughts about partisan politics, and I think Jonah’s commitments may have led him a bit astray, so I’ll try to say something about that tomorrow.

I'm No Diderot, but…

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I loved Ross’s headline about my reply to his worries:

When The Last Pentecostal Is Strangled With the Entrails of the Last John Bircher …

Let me emphasize that I’m a committed liberal pluralist, and I think freedom of conscience and state neutrality are bedrock virtues of a just society. At the same time, I think that a politics that takes the fact of pluralism seriously is perfectly consistent with vigorous culture war. Indeed, I think pluralist democracies demand culture war (call it “public reason” if you want to be fanciful). I think crazy conservative talk radio is a healthy part of pluralist culture war, and I think the attempt to whittle away the cultural prestige of people with crazy religion-saturated politics is also a healthy part of healthy pluralist culture war. I will go to the mat to defend the freedom of Pentecostals and John Birchers to do their things. And I will go to the mat to defend the idea that ours would be a better society if individuals come to be so embarrassed by Pentecostalism and John Birchism — by the ideas — that these communities of belief die peaceful natural deaths. Cultures become what they are through a process of selection, and this is a process we help along by arguing with one another. The reason there are so many meta-arguments about what we are going to count as good arguments–as good reasons, as considerations worth taking seriously–is that once we come to a broad social consensus on standards, some factions in the culture wars are left defenseless and end up an impotent doomed remnant. One reason I’m not that interested in partisan politics is that I think it is a higher-order manifestation of factionalism at a deeper level of the culture. I’m interested in engaging at that level. I’d like to argue for reason, science, the utility of the extended liberal order, and the authority of the liberal moral sentiments. I sincerely do not know what practical politics or partisan alignments this implies. It’s fun to guess, but I know our guesses are very likely to be bad ones. As Doug North likes to say, we live in a “non-ergodic” world.

The Hope and Horror of Liberaltarian Alignments

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Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling have both discussed some or all of this passage from Ross Douthat, in which he expresses concern for the possible damage of a possible flight of libertarian intellectuals toward the left. I’ll take it in two pieces. 

What could happen … is a bigger-tent liberalism – somewhat chastened, perhaps, by some big-government failures in the Obama era – that makes libertarian intellectuals feel welcome, engages them in conversations about smarter regulations and more efficient tax policy, and generally woos them away from their culturally-dissonant alliance with people who attend megachurches and Sarah Palin rallies. This would make for a smarter left-of-center in the short run, but I think in the long run it would be pernicious. It would further the Democratic Party’s transformation into a closed circle of brainy meritocrats, and push the Republican Party in a yet more anti-intellectual direction. And it would produce an elite consensus more impervious to structural critiques, and a right-wing populism more incapable of providing them. The Democratic Party would hold power more often, and become more sclerotic as a result; the GOP would take office less often, and behave more recklessly on those rare occasions when it did manage to seize the reins of state. 

First, I think Ross is right to see this as a game about the distribution of opinion elites. Second, I think he’s right to imply that a GOP with a weakened libertarian influence would become a more “right-wing populist” party. Which I think helps me make my point. Why would an intellectual libertarian want to keep company with a group of flag-waving moral reactionaries? Masochism? Now, if I interpret this as an argument aimed at people like me, it’s an exceedingly odd one. Ross seems to say that a more liberaltarian Democratic party would both produce better regulatory and tax policy and win more elections.

Why shouldn’t I, an incrementalist classical liberal, think that’s an awesome result? Because on the rare occasion the GOP manages to govern they’ll wreck the country? And so thinky libertarian types should remain the redheaded stepchild of old fusionism so that right-populists don’t actually indulge their terrifying instincts? I’m not sure that’s what Ross is saying, but that sort of sounds like what he’s saying.  

This is obviously a political gloss on what is essentially an intellectual project, and I know Will, like many libertarians I admire, prides himself on not thinking in terms of partisanship. But for anyone who cares about political outcomes, I think it’s important to consider the correlation of forces when you set out on ideological projects – especially in a country where the two-party structure has been as durable as it’s been in ours. I understand the impulse for smart, independent-minded libertarians to flee what seems like an increasingly anti-intellectual American Right and seek conversations and alliances with the friendlier parts of the left-of-center. But the vacuum on the Right also militates in favor of smart, idiosyncratic thinkers trying to fill it, instead of fighting for a seat at the crowded liberal table. That doesn’t mean registering as a Republican, attending CPAC, or casting a vote for McCain-Palin (or the next iteration thereof). But it means being open to the possibility that the old fusionism, battered and bruised as it is, may still hold as much promise for the advancement of libertarian policy goals as “liberaltarianism” ever will.

I’m glad that Ross sees that the American Right is increasingly anti-intellectual. But I don’t think that’s best combatted by sticking it out and raising the intellectual tone of an increasingly hostile group of egghead haters. As I think Ross agrees, the balance of elite opinion matters. And I think intellectual capital flight from the right really does threaten the GOPs future success. If Republicans keep bleeding young intellectual talent because increasingly socially liberal twenty-somethings simply can’t stand hanging around a bunch of superstitious fag-bashers, then the GOP powers-that-be might start to panic and realize that, once the last cohort of John Birchers die, they’ve got no choice but to move libertarian on social issues. Maybe. I like to imagine.

But Ross’s crystal ball is no better than mine. So I think my best bet is just to go ahead and try to come up with a more coherent and effective version of practical market-friendly liberalism. I’d like to think that would be attractive to the tens of millions of Americans who think conservatives are vile, that conventional liberals are too deep in the pocket of the Democratic Party to actually promote prosperity and opportunity, and that libertarians are dogmatic, weird, and irrelevant.

Liberaltarian Reactions

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There are a ton of smart responses to my exchange with Jonah on liberaltarianism. (Brink, maybe we need to write that book.) Here’s Andrew Sullivan. Here’s Matt Welch. Here’s Reihan Salam. Here’s Ross Douthat. And here’s Virginia Postrel, not responding to my post, but drawing on her experiences at a couple recent Brink-devised libertarian/liberal events to draw out what she thinks is the real impediment to a reunion of contemporary classical liberals and our much more numerous liberal cousins. 

When you get political theorists together, they assume the big divide is over the relative weights given to equality and liberty–the old Rawls vs. Nosick split. But given the right flavor of liberals and libertarians, that’s bridgeable. The real division, I believe, is over regulation. Contemporary liberals will say, as someone did at dinner in DC, that they are against stupid regulations like the controls on trucking abolished in the late 1970s. And I’m glad for that.

But finding liberals who oppose any new regulation is almost impossible–no matter what the perverse consequences. My particular bugaboo is housing.

But the CPSIA is another good example. John Holbo at Crooked Timber is wondering why the law’s defenders–his fellow liberals, in other words–aren’t addressing the criticisms head-on: “Maybe thrift store shopping for children should become a thing of the past, because it’s too hazardous to life and limb. But, to repeat, I haven’t actually seen anyone 1) argue that the law shouldn’t, as written, have these really very sweeping effects; 2) argue that, even if it does, on balance it’s still a good law.” The comments do not encourage optimism about a liberal-libertarian/dynamist coalition.

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

Virginia’s right. Regulation has been a particular sticking point. But, the thing is, I don’t think there’s anything particularly intractable about this — as long as the problem is a genuine disagreement about the net benefit of a particular regulation. That can be hashed out. The problem is intractable when it reflects a deep enculturated distrust between classical liberals and contemporary liberals. The latter suspect that even moderate libertarian types reject the legitimacy of regulation altogether, and so are just being coy when pointing out the costs of regulation. Libertarians aren’t really interested in regulatory efficiency. They just hate regulation, period. They’re clever at the rhetoric of reaction, and all this talk of moral hazard or perverse unintended consequences is a front for what they really want: nothing. But, the thing is, Virginia and Ed Glaeser are simply right about housing regulation. The fact that most liberals won’t listen, due to distrust, is a problem not only for liberal/libertarian amity, but for the poor people hurt by bad regulation. From the classical liberal side, we become distrustful when liberals say they are perfectly willing actually to perform the cost-benefit analysis, but then somehow find that there is always a net benefit. That’s fishy! And so we come to suspect that this seemingly reasonable willingness to honestly and rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of regulation is a front for what they really want: everything.

But it remains that there are classical and contemporary liberals who really do share deep common values and common liberal aims. I don’t think you argue your way out of an impasse of contingent historical suspicion. I think you socialize your way out of it.