libertarians and original sin
Joe Carter has recently written an interesting essay called Virtue Ethics and Broken Windows: Why I am not a Libertarian. He gets a lot of sympathy from me early on — as you might imagine — by emphasizing his belief in original sin and insisting that any political philosophy he signs on to needs to recognize the deep flaws in the human character.
So far so good. But then he writes: “the problem with libertarianism, like objectivism and liberalism, [is] that it require[s] accepting a romanticized view of human nature,” and to this I would reply: Not necessarily. It is true that many libertarians hold what we might call the moral man and immoral society view of things: that persons acting individually and independently tend to be good while the Collective tends towards tyranny. But it’s common among libertarians to hold this view in a relative rather than an absolute sense, believing that persons acting individually and independently are less immoral, or are capable of doing less damage to themselves and others, than the Collective.
So the real question here is not “Do you believe in original sin?” or, to put it less sectarianly, “Do you believe that human beings are naturally prone to doing the Bad Thing?” Rather, we should ask “What is more likely to mitigate the effects of our propensity to the Bad Thing, a condition of maximal liberty for individuals or a condition of maximal social order?” And of course either answer is a default orientation, not an absolutist stance: as Carter acknowledges, libertarians believe in the rule of law. So the real political decisions have to focus on cases, which, when they’re all added up, describe the scope of the rule of law.
All that to say that you can have a very low opinion of human nature and still be a libertarian; you just have to believe that our inevitable corruption has less dire consequences when personal freedom is maximized than when the rule of law has a far greater scope. And I would argue that the history of the past hundred years or so offers some evidence for this point of view.
Similarly, I don’t think Carter is right when he says that libertarianism “is rooted in an ethic of utilitarianism rather than virtue ethics.” I think it would be better to say that libertarianism doesn’t see the government as the primary custodian of virtue, at least not of most virtues. The model that George Will used to call “statecraft as soulcraft” makes libertarians cringe, not because they don’t believe in soulcraft or think that the cultivation of virtues is vital, but because they don’t trust the government to be a sound arbiter of what virtue is or to implement it in citizens. It is true that the Founders used that kind of language, but they lived in a much more ideologically unanimous society, with a narrower range of differences in citizens’ models of virtue. Our society is, I fear, too diverse in its moralities for that. I’d rather the soulcraft be left to families and communities, insofar as they’re willing to take up that essential task, and I’d like the government to enable that soulcraft simply through its role in preserving our freedoms.
I believe it’s lazy to have a discussion about whether people are basically bad or not. You point to the last 100 years, meaning Stalin and Hitler.
I would point to the last 250, since the Enlightenment, and the amazing progress (word chosen carefully) we’ve made. You can assign some of that to technology and scientific discovery…but the American revolution, and the ideals put forward but that and the French revolution, were just as important. So was the shift to a more centralized nation-state since FDR.
These innovations, and new human institutions, and higher levels of justice, do not tell a consistent collectivist or individualist story. There is not inexorable rise or fall. They don’t tell a story that when people get together to try and do things, they tend to evil – not even (arguably) most of the time.
You can only consider the Holocaust and dismiss women’s suffrage, or consider the Great Leap Forward and dismiss the American Experiment, if you simply WANT to see the world as Hobbes does.
News to conservatives and human-nature pessimists: Hobbes is not the last word on the true nature of man. He was a writer for his time, and his time was nasty, hence his conclusions.
— Steve C · Sep 26, 10:53 AM · #
Nice to have you back, Alan.
Firstly, Carter’s way off: libertarianism is not rooted in an ethic of utilitarianism; rather, libertarianism is a deontological antipode to egalitarianism. I’m not sure how Carter missed it, since he links to Murray and Boaz in his essay, but what he calls libertarianism’s “primary flaw” is a flaw for precisely the opposite reason he mentions. It’s not the Libertarian’s inclusion, but rather his devaluation, of a consequentialist ethic which ends up creating the flaw Carter mentions.
But more than that, Carter’s essay, your post, and Steve C’s Rule 403 response are emblematic of the staleness of modern political philosophy. Carter’s basic point is that Order is prior to Liberty. Libertarianism’s response is “Liberty is prior to Order!” Rawls’ response is “Justice is prior!” Egalitarians: “Equality is prior!” Consequentialists: “Why can’t you guys see, it’s not the Right, but the Good that’s truly prior?”
There’s already a whiff of anachronism here, and soon it will be full-blown obsolescence. In the immortal words of Huey Lewis, I want a new drug.
Oh, and this — Contrary to what libertarians might believe, order does not arise spontaneously — is too funny.
— JA · Sep 26, 12:04 PM · #
two quick points:
Liberalism does not require a romanticized view of human nature. As my favorite liberal says, “man’s capacity for evil makes [liberal] democracy necessary.”
‘Immoral society’ and ‘original sin’ are compatible and of a piece if evil always takes place in a social setting (the society of Adam, Eve, and the serpent; Augustine’s “alone I would not have done it”).
— matt · Sep 26, 02:50 PM · #
I’ll second JA – great to have you back.
One quick question. You make the great point that:
It is true that the Founders used that kind of language, but they lived in a much more ideologically unanimous society, with a narrower range of differences in citizens’ models of virtue. Our society is, I fear, too diverse in its moralities for that.
Do you think it’s possible that this kind of prior agreement is a practical requirement for formal political liberty? In effect, that peaceful, lifestyle-homogenous communities can have a single part-time constable, but riots require martial law?
— Jim Manzi · Sep 27, 10:39 AM · #
Jim, you write: Do you think it’s possible that this kind of prior agreement is a practical requirement for formal political liberty?
I’m not sure about formal political liberty, but a community’s public virtue is inversely proportional to its need for state-enforced order — by definition, I think.
Obviously, the most efficient kind of order (“efficient” from the State’s perspective) is of the spontaneous variety. When the centripetal forces of shared culture are robust, the state can get away with expending few resources on fire-fighting (e.g., martial law for riots), heat and pressure release (e.g., mechanisms of justice) and redundancy (e.g., value-reinforcement in schools).
The problem, I think, is how to properly scale it up to the highest levels. Multiculturalism tries to solve this problem by going completely meta; it posits itself as the fundamental, unitary, centripetal baseline ethic, a boundary condition. It fashions itself as a kind of bright-light banner, under which we can marshal millions of Giambattista Vicos to usher in the Era of Potato-head Identity and Lifestyle Consumerism.
This would actually work in the long run if multiculturalism understood itself, particularly its own provenance, preconditions and built-in preferences. Rawls tries to address the inadequacy by positing “decency” as a unitary principle, a standard we can use to include or exclude, praise or condemn, a culture. As standards go it’s not particularly rigorous, but it’s a good start.
I’m sorry, what were we talking about?
— JA · Sep 27, 02:05 PM · #
“Do you think it’s possible that this kind of prior agreement is a practical requirement for formal political liberty? In effect, that peaceful, lifestyle-homogenous communities can have a single part-time constable, but riots require martial law?”
And if a prior agreement on shared values is a necessary prerequisite for political liberty, does a liberal framework undermine that homogeneity over the long-run? This may be the catch-22 of an inclusive, politically open society. The mythos of liberal governance tends to romanticize dissent (both political and social) as evidence that we live in a good society. I’m sympathetic to that viewpoint, but perhaps we need to do more to shore up our own homogeneity?
— Will · Sep 28, 01:02 AM · #
Jim, I’m inclined to think that the riots are more likely to be prompted by material inequality (real or perceived) than by ideological variation. This is one reason why I’m a nervous libertarian: in a libertarian regime the natural variations of personal intelligence and energy will likely result in significant material inequalities. In my dream world the more intelligent and energetic will participate in communities of virtue that will emphasize the need for voluntary redistribution of wealth . . . but I guess that’s why I call it a dream world.
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 28, 09:50 AM · #
Excellent critique.
— Alex Zola · Sep 28, 06:27 PM · #
Libertarianism is largely a belief system of white, Western males rooted in an uncritical and simplistic individualism. Its naivete, not surprisingly, has to do with its complete disregard for and lack of real grappling with the impact of history on individual lives, and the way that individual lives are inevitably indebted to the work and lives of others. E.g., the fact that each child comes into the world NOT as a blank slate but as an entity that has already benefited or been harmed by historical forces that long predate him or her, and by the conditions under which his/her mother’s body has produced and nurtured him/her.
“Personal intelligence and energy,” the qualities cited by Alan Jacobs as the primary causes of material inequity, are only the last causes, and I’d argue not by a long shot the most important drivers of inequality, and there’s plenty of evidence to back me up. The massive wealth differences at work in the world today have much more to do historical oppression, inheritance structures, extended family wealth, and social connections. That’s why the differences in wealth (much more so than income) along racialized and ethnic lines are still so appallingly dramatic within the US today—not because, e.g., white people are smarter or more energetic.
— OH · Sep 28, 07:08 PM · #
OH, you failed to notice that my comment was about “a libertarian regime” — an imaginary entity — not about America or any other existing state “in the world today.”
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 28, 08:09 PM · #
Folks, I think you’re missing the main problem with libertarianism, which is its fallacy that the economy is a natural system being considered for “interference” by an intruding government. But that is not the case. The false assumption is: The background system of property and the economy is neutral and “natural” to begin with, and the people “earning” such and such obviously 1. deserved to get it in the first place 2. really got it by natural and free trading of goods and services and so any rearrangement by a supposedly separate government of that is “artificial interference” and a form of “stealing.” Well, that picture is mis-framed and isn’t how the state of affairs actually exists and works. Consider these points:
1. You owe the rest of civilization’s efforts for your even being able to talk, use math and science, etc., and by extension owe “society” for what you can accomplish. It could be considering repayment for the intellectual property rights of all past civilization, hence that justifies taxing output and earnings for the common good.
2. The money supply is controlled by the government and increased according to monetization of debt, manipulation of interest rates, etc. No way that can be treated as like a voluntary direct trade of a hard real-value currency for goods. The Fed’s interest rate fiddlings affect millions of people, they throw people out of work, determine who makes money (borrowers versus lenders, etc.) and most importantly, the expansion of a fiat currency system has to be politically allocated since “new money” is not an intrinsic part of direct commercial transactions (read about how the banking system works, how it enriches those involved in it by crediting banks with money they lent even before it is actually paid back, etc.) Indeed, when the Fed’s actions (e.g. interest rate hike) put people out of work they deserve compensation just like those displaced by flooding from a federal dam. Honest libertarians like Mary Ruwart at least acknowledge this situation, whatever they want to do about it.
3. Most business money is earned through corporations. The limited liability and partial legal personhood of a corporation is a privilege, not a genuine right. (The SCOTUS decision supposedly proving the contrary was fraudulently annotated anyway, see for example: How a clerical error made corporations “people” by Jim Hightower, http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/664.) Therefore we can “charge” for that privilege instead of providing it for free. IOW, we can demand conditions of what corporations do, like how much they pay their workers etc.
4. What proves that private property claims are more inherently “real” that government “ownership” anyway? Every time I hear that old glibertarian canard that “taxation is theft,” I counter with, “Then, rent is theft!” Really, if you claim that “owners” can charge for use of their property and make you pay them to stay there, why the hell can’t the public as a mass “owner” of the territory governed by their nation charge “rent” to the inhabitants thereby? And please don’t anyone try semantics arguments since any language’s same or different names for what in English we call “properties” and “governments” etc, don’t inherently prove similarity or dissimilarity. I think it’s so funny when folks like Sarah Palin and her buddies in the Alaska Independence Party gripe about how much of Alaska is “owned by the Federal government.” Well, the US government bought the land of Alaska from Russia (where now Putin rears his head into our airspace), so why do they even have to give any of it to private owners at all? The same question could be asked about the Louisiana Purchase, which contains many later States.* Property and government claims are all highly dubious anyway, just look at the “original justification” question of what gets them logically “off the ground” for a given claimant (not the same issue as the general validity which is hard enough, I mean why anyone’s borders or property lines should be “here” and not “there”…) Just look at the USA, all those people already living here and then others come in and claim “this is our land, our resources” etc.
* Wikipedia:
“The Louisiana Purchase encompassed portions of 15 current U.S. states and 2 Canadian Provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were south of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, northern Texas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans.”
— Neil B. · Sep 28, 09:03 PM · #
I thought it was interesting that you used “the Bad Thing” in this article. David Foster Wallace killed himself recently and his death has touched many people powerfully. He wrote a story when he a junior was at Amherst for the Amherst review that had a lot to do with the Bad Thing. I guess it just hit me in a certain way this being just two weeks after his suicide and the Bad Thing basically being the depression that led him to it. Maybe I’m just not familiar with other versions of the Bad Thing. I just thought it was interesting and made me a little depressed again.
— Noah · Sep 28, 11:53 PM · #